Movie Cart

[guppy]

2 hours ago, sfish said:

I can report the microSD Card extender works like a charm. It is not spring loaded, so there are no double-spring issues. It lays nice and flat against the bottom half of the cart case, so you should just be able to carve out the amount you need from the top and close everything up. 

Where do you get the extender?

[+sfish]

1 hour ago, guppy said:

Where do you get the extender?

This is the one I bought: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3G7RND6

[+-^CrossBow^-]

8 hours ago, sfish said:

This is the one I bought: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C3G7RND6

Yeap I bought a pair of them as well, but they haven't shipped out to me as yet. I have other items in that order and so having to wait on those first. But good to see that it will likely already work with the one I carved out already as it seems to fit width wise to near the exact shape of the SD card itself as the ready is doesn't add that much.. At least from the pics you have shown.

 

[+sfish]

After removing too much plastic in the wrong direction and then overcompensating in another, it turns out I'm very untalented at using a Dremel freehand.  

 

I've learned a lot and know how I will modify the case on my next run - after measuring everything more carefully. The good news is that my original findings are spot on - the extender sits flush against the bottom portion of the case which makes it easy to slide the card in and out anytime you want without having to modify both halves of the case. 

 

[Mockduck]

It almost seems thin enough you could use something like a sharp exacto knife to cut a notch into one side of the cart?

[livingonwheels]

4 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

It almost seems thin enough you could use something like a sharp exacto knife to cut a notch into one side of the cart?

Yes, that's exactly what I did.

[+littaum]

I got my movie cart innards this weekend - and just placed a bid on a cheap-o combat cart on ebay.  Hope I win.   Will try the exacto knife trick to cut a notch. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I used a small flat file to make the openings on mine. Now that I know that only the top shell half really needs to be modified, that will make it easier. The file I use is nearly the same width as a micro SDcard already so that also helps.

 

[Mockduck]

2 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I used a small flat file to make the openings on mine. Now that I know that only the top shell half really needs to be modified, that will make it easier. The file I use is nearly the same width as a micro SDcard already so that also helps.

 

Oh yeah even better idea, will give it better edges.

[+sfish]

2 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I used a small flat file to make the openings on mine. Now that I know that only the top shell half really needs to be modified, that will make it easier. The file I use is nearly the same width as a micro SDcard already so that also helps.

My original plan was to do this, but the only file I had was small and hard to control so I switched over to the Dremel. Guess it's time to pick up a cheap file.  

[+-^CrossBow^-]

2 minutes ago, sfish said:

My original plan was to do this, but the only file I had was small and hard to control so I switched over to the Dremel. Guess it's time to pick up a cheap file.  

I got a set of them for pretty cheap several years ago. Can't remember from where...might have been during a visit to Microcenter or something? Anyway, I've used them quite a bit as they are basically required tools when doing case shell modification work on handhelds and other things. The small flat file I have is only like 1mm thick and about a cm wide. So I can use small swipes at a time to remove material little by little. Once the initial groove is set in the plastic, then it basically controls itself on each swipe after that.

 

[Bomberman94]

Is there actually a source/a nice person that makes/prints a cartridge with the required hole for the SD Card? I think there are some people willing to pay for that…

[+sfish]

The only resources along these lines that I've seen in my limited search are 3D printed cases that are intended for smaller, OEM PCBs and people selling carts from which they've removed PBCs and labels. The latter is currently sold out, but here's a link to the former in case you wanted to see it:

 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/875456224/3d-printed-atari-2600-cartridge-case

 

I've asked that seller if the design would be compatible with the Move Cart PCB. We'll see if I get a response. 

 

Update: The response from the maker is that this case will not work with the Movie Cart PCB. 

[+Propane13]

Hmm... I have a 3d printer and am okay at making 3d models.  What is needed?

 

I may be able to help a little.

[Bomberman94]

10 hours ago, Propane13 said:

Hmm... I have a 3d printer and am okay at making 3d models.  What is needed?

 

I may be able to help a little.

That would be awesome - just need a nice case with opening to put into the micro SD card. The Movie cart circuit board that can be ordered should fit in a „plug and play“ way 😃

[+sramirez2008]

19 hours ago, Bomberman94 said:

I think there are some people willing to pay for that…

I'd buy one.🙂

[+Atari_Warlord]

I love this and am looking forward to showing this to some friends soon.  I'm still working on getting a cart ready for the board, but I went ahead and watched my first movie last night after learning how to work with TouchDesigner.  First up was the original despecialized Star Wars.  It seemed appropriate for a system that came out in 1977 to have a movie from the same year.  The next batch of movies I've encoded :

 

Sucker Pucnch

Dr. No

The Little Mermaid

Tron

The Empire Strikes Back

Raiders of the Lost Ark

[+-^CrossBow^-]

18 minutes ago, Atari_Warlord said:

I love this and am looking forward to showing this to some friends soon.  I'm still working on getting a cart ready for the board, but I went ahead and watched my first movie last night after learning how to work with TouchDesigner.  First up was the original despecialized Star Wars.  It seemed appropriate for a system that came out in 1977 to have a movie from the same year.  The next batch of movies I've encoded :

 

Sucker Pucnch

Dr. No

The Little Mermaid

Tron

The Empire Strikes Back

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Tron does seem like a no brainer for this and might actually look pretty good as well.

 

I've only encoded two full movies at this time. Runaway with Tom Selleck, and Electric Dreams. Haven't quite decided on what others I will try and rip to encode. But I now have both of my cartridges fitted with the extender boards in them and that does work very well. I had to make the openings a tiny bit wider on the sides to allow for some variance so that the extender PCB can be inserted and removed easily without rubbing or getting stuck against the plastic.

 

Also, even with the extenders in place, the Movie cart still 'just' fits back inside the original boxes that @rbairos ships them in.

 

 

[Phylax]

Got to try out a MovieCart today and I absolutely love it! It’s just so cool to see something that shouldn’t be possible happening on a stock 2600! It sounds bizarre, but I’m thinking of running it through a retrotink and artificially correcting the aspect ratio just to see how it looks.
 

In any case, add me to the group that would love to have a 3D printed shell with a cutout. While I do have donor carts I can modify, I’d welcome something custom made. 

[+Atari_Warlord]

I finished cutting up an old cart but not sure I want to make it permanent yet.  It currently requires needle nose pliers or tweezers to insert and extract the sd card.

 

I watched 3 more movies yesterday with the following observations:

 

1. Sucker Punch - the constant dark scenes make this one hard to see what is happening.  This will probably be the case with any movie that doesn't have much light.

 

2.  The Little Mermaid - the colorful scenes look really good. It makes me interested in trying other colorful animated movies like Sleeping Beauty.

 

3. Dr. No - the opening credits look fantastic with the colorful flashing lights and silhouetted dancers.  Some kind of feature length psychedelic light and music program would be fun to have for this cart.

 

[Supergun]

I have a key request for a “movie” that I would like to have for this. I’d like to have the intro to the game Night Trap. The initial loop of the introduction, attract sequence, and rolling credits.

 

Only the thing is, we really need to have the original laser disc quality footage as the source material. I can’t imagine how terribly grainy it would look if we were to use the already grainy Sega CD quality footage as the source material.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

36 minutes ago, Supergun said:

I have a key request for a “movie” that I would like to have for this. I’d like to have the intro to the game Night Trap. The initial loop of the introduction, attract sequence, and rolling credits.

 

Only the thing is, we really need to have the original laser disc quality footage as the source material. I can’t imagine how terribly grainy it would look if we were to use the already grainy Sega CD quality footage as the source material.

Honestly, due to the encoder results in the end. You aren't likely to tell that much of a difference and it is possible that the lower color quality from the SegaCD FMV might benefit in this case. But it would need to be captured and then converted. Also I never cared for the game so I didn't buy the modern release of the game that came out to modern platforms, but did any of those provide cleaned up FMV footage?

 

@Atari_Warlord I can also concur that darker scenes can be problematic for sure. Runaway has more than a few dark scenes since most of the movie seems to take place at night. But in the end and from a distance, I can still tell what is going on. If you are willing to edit the video for those scenes, you can increase the gamma through Touchdesigner using the record function so it knowns when to increase it and bring it back down to help with scenes like that. I've not really bothered too much. I think for Runaway I actually just set the gamma to 1.12 or something like that and encoded the entire thing set that way. 

 

On quality output overall, I actually took a movie that I made my own 4:3 cropped version of, and redid it both through Vega Studio and Handbrake. Handbrake made the video smaller in size at only like 7GB vs the 13GB from Vegas studio. Through VLC I could see a clear quality difference in the video. But... when I ran them through Touchdesigner to be encoded for 2600 Movie cart use, both videos came out at exactly the same size (1.3gb) and looked the same to me through the Movie cart playback on the consoles. So that is another reason that I don't know that getting the highest quality to start with is really going to make much of a difference here given how reduced it all ends up being on the Movie cart anyway.

 

[4ever2600]

Do the 3d0 version. Better quality. I don't believe it ever started out as a laserdisc game

 

I think they either remastered or are remastering for current consoles, Switch 25th anniversary.  Limited run or something. 

[Phylax]

Not sure if this was already discussed, but an observation I just had:

 

I put my moviecart in a donor shell, only to notice that it wouldn’t insert fully into the 2600 once assembled. Maybe I assembled it wrong? No big issue, just open the donor cart again, right? Well, opening it was 10 times harder than the first time, and it seems like the culprit is the PCB! Since it is as wide as the shell, it does not allow the plastic tabs on the side to flex while trying to pry it open. Lesson learned! I think I won’t reassemble it until I’m reasonably sure I won’t need to open it again! 

[+Atari_Warlord]

Tron turns out to be a real gem on this.  The graphics pop nicely and look surprisingly good.

 

I was wondering if it could handle multiple movie files on the sd card so tried it this morning.  The answer is no.  It appears to pick the first file copied to the card or the oldest dated file, it didn't use alphabetical order to choose.  It also jumped back to the beginning of the movie at about half way through.  I was able to fast forward past the point and continue, but it seems one at a time is the best way.