Just turned on my 5200 after 25 years...

[7800]

Yeah! I just got three total rebuild kits for my controllers. I have repaired them a lot 25 years ago, but each of them have specific problems that cleaning the contacts just did not fix. Hence the total replacement kits. I found the gold dot replacements AFTER I bought these kits.

The wire harnesses for the 5200 controllers are very delicate. It doesn't take much to mess up the traces... bending the wire the wrong way will make it malfunction after a while. I wish there was a company out there that made brand new harnesses for the 5200 controller...and the Trak ball controller.

[Lynxpro]

Psyber, PacMan Plus made some Atari-looking cartridge end label templates elsewhere on this board. I noticed you have a "custom" label on your Centipede cart!

[PsyberTech]

Psyber, PacMan Plus made some Atari-looking cartridge end label templates elsewhere on this board. I noticed you have a "custom" label on your Centipede cart!

 

If you are talking about the RED label on top. I put that there back in 1984. It is an Original Cart from the store.

[doctorclu]

The only reason I have an Atari 800 with 4 joysticks and an 810 drive in my garage was M.U.L.E. The floppy no longer boots.

 

My Atari BBS went up April 8th 1983 and ran until 2001. I started out with the 400, 800, then 800XL, 256k 800XL which I upgraded, and I also upgraded my 130XE to 384k/1088K, OmniMon, OmniView etc.. I was even president of the Atari Computer Club Supporting Suburban Sacramento (A.C.C.E.S.S.) for a while. Yep, I loved my Atari until the Falcon arrived without dual working com ports. Then I moved over to the PC for the BBS.

 

Not sure of anyone would remember the ISIS Atari Network. I was the world concentrator back in the 1990s.

 

Well the 800 has good solutions now that can replace the dead floppy disk, such as the SIO2SD, of course the Atarimax SIO2PC cable, and if you want to get really fancy there are build in compact flash drive solutions for the beige 800 (4 port). Good stuff.

 

I have heard of the ISIS network. I was in the Atari BBS before (1982-1989) and after (1999 onward) all that happened. I went to college in between. Sorry I missed that time frame. Do you currently run a BBS? If so what is the telnet address?

 

As for the 5200, I have not powered mine up in about four years. Need to power it up so I can say it was last week. But for mine I had a GREAT time playing in the 5200 high score club. The thing I like about the 5200 selection of games verses the Atari 800 selection when it came to the high score club is that the 5200 had few games, and mostly arcade ports we would play on a more regular basis. No real thinking with the games available in the more limited memory of the 5200, just a lot of action. Good times.

 

To make my experience a bit more complete I bought the Atarimax 128 in 1 cartridge (the forerunning to the cartridge you now have) and two of the slots were taken up by M.U.L.E. which worked fairly good as far as I could tell. I also liked the port of Archon, which is another E.A. game I love.

 

And I found multiple solutions for the controller. I first got the Redemption module which allowed the use of Sega controllers on the 5200. Not bad. What REALLY worked for me though was when I got a Wico joystick and keypad controller. Later someone made a box that when coupled with the keypad controller would use regular Atari 2600 sticks. After that I was set.

 

And WHAT IS IT WITH WOMEN AND CENTIPEDE?

 

I looked into that for a few minutes because I have known quite a few non-gamer girls that liked and played the hell out of Centipede. Some have said women have an usual fear of bugs and here is a chance to zap them from a distance before they get too close.

 

That made sense to me, but what also makes sense is that Centipede was actually programmed by a woman, Dona Bailey:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130082/the_original_gaming_bug_centipede_.php

 

So the undertone of the game, the colors, the feel, probably hit the right vibe for women.

 

But there are two things that women really love of the geek world that really surprised me:

 

Video Games : Centipede.

Comics: Iron Man

 

Women lloooovvveee Iron Man and Tony Stark.

[joystickjedi]

Hate to ask, but I am kind of a noob... where did you order your kits and Atarimax from?

[Lynxpro]

Hate to ask, but I am kind of a noob... where did you order your kits and Atarimax from?

Atarimax.com