Kid Vid Voice Module

[herr professor]

I've been thinking about this add-on and it leaves me with a few questions....

 

1. Does it actually read any data off the cassettes? Or is the atari 2600 just controlling the playback of the interface, like MMC(ask and audio engineer) or something? Or Both?

 

2. I get the impression that this thing is a pretty pricey collectors item.. how much do they go for? Anyone think it would be possible to hack the cassette drive from the 8-bit line of computers to work on this?

 

I think that since the feature to run these god awful games ina emulator exists it might be cool to develop some actually good titles for it.

 

How about rpg voice acting

[Eckhard Stolberg]

1. Does it actually read any data off the cassettes? Or is the atari 2600 just controlling the playback of the interface, like MMC(ask and audio engineer) or something? Or Both?

 

The Kidvid tapes have the audio on one of the stereo tracks and some data beeps on the other stereo track. The data track only contains information about wich tape is playing and about when the next segment or the end of the tape have been reached. Then the VCS pauses the tape player until the next game segment has been solved.

 

2. I get the impression that this thing is a pretty pricey collectors item.. how much do they go for? Anyone think it would be possible to hack the cassette drive from the 8-bit line of computers to work on this?

 

I don't know about the 8-bit cassette drive, but I think it should be possible to build an adapter for any normal stereo tape player that has inputs for being paused.

 

I think that since the feature to run these god awful games ina emulator exists it might be cool to develop some actually good titles for it.

 

How about rpg voice acting

 

Currently z26 is the only emulator to support the Kidvid games, and we are simulating the tape support for the existing games only. So in it's current form z26 can't be used for developing new Kidvid games.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg