PC Mode "On-A-Stick" (from Atari store)

[Atarick]

An hour or so into using this thing, I think I see it's biggest utility as a pretty sweet emulation device. I easily brought up NES and 2600 ROMs without issue. You could obviously achieve this in Windows, but the user interface here simplifies that a bit. I am trying to tap into Steam but looks like most of the games in my library won't come up. Also trying to figure out how to go full screen or use a controller in Stella. All in all, a cool little add on.

[bugcatcher88]

I remember their July 2022 annual results document mentioning they were developing new hardware to compliment the VCS. I suppose they were referring to this USB device.

 

 

 

[acem77]

Shocked on how fast you guys got your USB sticks. Still waiting on a shipment notice for the system, extra controller and speaker hat I ordered. Sold out of USB stick while in my cart

 

Any chance people can make an image of this usb stick?

[digitalbilly]

30 minutes ago, acem77 said:

Shocked on how fast you guys got your USB sticks. Still waiting on a shipment notice for the system, extra controller and speaker hat I ordered. Sold out of USB stick while in my cart

 

Any chance people can make an image of this usb stick?

i too would like an image i tried to buy but sold out

[SoCalAttorney]

I have Windows 10 Pro installed in an internal SSD. It works great and does what I need it to do. Is there anything compelling about Debian that I should consider?

[zzip]

5 minutes ago, SoCalAttorney said:

I have Windows 10 Pro installed in an internal SSD. It works great and does what I need it to do. Is there anything compelling about Debian that I should consider?

For desktop use, probably not.

 

Where Linux becomes interesting is when you want to do a lot of customization or run exotic software

[digitalbilly]

On 12/3/2022 at 9:50 PM, digitalbilly said:

i too would like an image i tried to buy but sold out

I too am looking for a image but they have to create a image before they plugin and use the stick as the first time setup will attach the user account and profile.

 

PLEASE SOMEONE UPLOAD A VIRGIN IMAGE!!!

[Rob Merritt]

On 12/6/2022 at 3:20 PM, SoCalAttorney said:

I have Windows 10 Pro installed in an internal SSD. It works great and does what I need it to do. Is there anything compelling about Debian that I should consider?

I'm just looking for something new to do with my VCS.

[Greekgeek]

Is there any way to return to the VCS main menu when you are finished using PC mode?  So far, it seems all we can do is power off and remove the USB that has Debian

[joeatari1]

58 minutes ago, Greekgeek said:

Is there any way to return to the VCS main menu when you are finished using PC mode?  So far, it seems all we can do is power off and remove the USB that has Debian

That's pretty much it.  That is the way it was designed to work.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Greekgeek said:

Is there any way to return to the VCS main menu when you are finished using PC mode?  So far, it seems all we can do is power off and remove the USB that has Debian

There are a few other options you could do.

1) install a boot manager onto the USB key, such as grub2 or refind,  this will give you a boot menu to select which environment to boot into

2) there's a command called "efibootmgr" that you can use to set what happens on the next boot.   In theory you could put this in the shutdown scripts on Debian and force Atari mode to boot next time, although I'm not 100%  sure if this will override the BIOS boot order which says to boot USB before anything else.

[Wizzard]

On 12/3/2022 at 8:11 PM, Atarick said:

An hour or so into using this thing, I think I see it's biggest utility as a pretty sweet emulation device. I easily brought up NES and 2600 ROMs without issue. You could obviously achieve this in Windows, but the user interface here simplifies that a bit. I am trying to tap into Steam but looks like most of the games in my library won't come up. Also trying to figure out how to go full screen or use a controller in Stella. All in all, a cool little add on.

Could you please share the image of that USB on Internet Archive? I think that many of us would like to try this OS. You can use software like https://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html

[joeatari1]

1 hour ago, Wizzard said:

Could you please share the image of that USB on Internet Archive? I think that many of us would like to try this OS. You can use software like https://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html

Here you go:  THIS is all it is.  The only thing that is custom are a couple of wallpapers.

[Wizzard]

2 hours ago, joeatari1 said:

Here you go:  THIS is all it is.  The only thing that is custom are a couple of wallpapers.

Have you checked that? Ok, good to know. I thought there were some special emulators or custom games or something. They really could add the AtariOS store at least

[joeatari1]

It's just Debian already flashed to a stick for you and a few nice wallpapers put in there by Atari.  The other stuff on the stick are a BIOS and an OS image for recovering your VCS if you mess it up somehow.  It's really intended for people that have no idea how to put an OS on a stick with a few nice added bonuses.

[digitalbilly]

if you want the official PC mode image come and grab it here https://archive.org/details/pc-mode-image-20230116-001

[Wizzard]

Thanks, I tried it. It works, it really looks like generic Debian. It is useless for power users, but may be usable for Linux newbie.

[leech]

On 12/3/2022 at 12:11 PM, Atarick said:

An hour or so into using this thing, I think I see it's biggest utility as a pretty sweet emulation device. I easily brought up NES and 2600 ROMs without issue. You could obviously achieve this in Windows, but the user interface here simplifies that a bit. I am trying to tap into Steam but looks like most of the games in my library won't come up. Also trying to figure out how to go full screen or use a controller in Stella. All in all, a cool little add on.

I know this is a late reply, and you've likely already figured it out.  For Steam on Linux, you install Proton, then in Settings, go to Compatibility and click on "Enable Steam Play for all other titles." 

 

The reason this is a thing is because Proton (the compatibility layer Steam uses to be able to play Windows games) has a list of supported titles, though it currently works on most titles within Steam.  So you can flip that and try out any game.  Go to https://www.protondb.com/ to check out compatibility / workarounds.

[RadiATIon]

Following the updates, the grub menu at startup presents me with several Debians now. I always select the newest one but I get a few error messages and it still launches. How do I delete old lines and remove error messages? And for you, does it give the same result?

[OscarGungan]

I bought one of these with the Atari VCS during the Black Friday sale. My VCS showed up today but no USB drive. Are they pretty good at fixing things like this. The box the VCS came wasn’t taped great and there were gaps I suppose the drive could have slipped out of the box through. 

[john_q_atari]

@OscarGungan

 

You are not alone. This is the response I got when I contacted Atari about this issue:

 

Thank you for contacting customer support.

We are truly sorry that you only received part of your order. Your Atari PC USB will be shipping separately and our warehouse team will notify you as soon as the rest of your order is queued for shipment.

Best regards,
Atari Support

Edited January 3 by john_q_atari
Added @

[OscarGungan]

What’s crazy about it is it took a month to get the VCS and they have them in stock and I figured the delay was they were waiting for more of the USB drives to come in so they could ship them together. So, I was pretty surprised to not find it in the box. 

[atwwong]

On 1/3/2024 at 4:34 AM, OscarGungan said:

What’s crazy about it is it took a month to get the VCS and they have them in stock and I figured the delay was they were waiting for more of the USB drives to come in so they could ship them together. So, I was pretty surprised to not find it in the box. 

I was finally able to pick up my shipment today. There was no stick in the box. My order said it was fulfilled. I filed a missing package report with UPS.

 

Then I see this thread here at AtariAge. I had a long day and I'm frustrated. Maybe I'll try contacting Atari tomorrow. They should have notified us in advance if part of a shipment is coming later, instead of me trying to find out what happened.

[john_q_atari]

Has anyone got their USB stick yet? I'm still waiting on mine...

[OscarGungan]

12 hours ago, john_q_atari said:

Has anyone got their USB stick yet? I'm still waiting on mine...

I haven't received mine yet either. A while back I looked it up on eBay and I saw 2 completed listings go for crazy amounts. One was around $100 and one for around $300. The listings were old enough I can't find them on eBay anymore but I looked at them multiple times to see if I looked at it wrong. I'm planning on getting a SSD and install Linux on that. If that works out i may not even need it when it does show up.