THE400 Mini

[infinite.pies]

7 minutes ago, Sean_1970 said:

I had a note yesterday saying delivered Saturday and then a message this morning saying it’s coming today - checked detail and the courier is Royal Mail, which is pretty rare for Amazon these days so that might account for the time being all over the shop. I usually have Royal Mail delivery by midday so only a couple hours to go. I’ll hopefully get both unboxing and Let’s Play videos uploaded this weekend.

At least it’s on the way. My order, placed in January, still hasn’t even been despatched. Thanks Amazon.

[Preppie]

20 minutes ago, Sean_1970 said:

 I usually have Royal Mail delivery by midday so only a couple hours to go. I’ll hopefully get both unboxing and Let’s Play videos uploaded this weekend.

I don't think Royal Mail deliver today (Good Friday)

[Sean_1970]

19 minutes ago, Preppie said:

I don't think Royal Mail deliver today (Good Friday)

According to the website there isn’t outside of Scotland 😁

 

 

Edited March 29 by Sean_1970

[infinite.pies]

21 minutes ago, Preppie said:

I don't think Royal Mail deliver today (Good Friday)

According to their website, there are no deliveries in England, but they’re operating as normal in Scotland.

[deffroe]

According to Amazon delivery tracking my package arrived at the final station at 2am this morning.  Still not gone out for delivery, expected by 10pm today.

What is the actual benefit of pre-ordering from Amazon?  Could've placed an order yesterday morning and have it delivered same day.

[www.atarimania.com]

29 minutes ago, pps said:

Problem is really just a wrong image of the game. I really can't understand how such a mistake can happen... Is there no one who takes control, if everything is correct?

Wow... If that's really the case and withouth blowing things out of proportion, this is inexcusable.

 

I mean, you pay the license for an iconic game and you just pick an unverified image without playing it through? There are only 25 titles, not 50. Also, is the team aware of the .atx format and the preservation efforts of some people? Feels so amateurish... This may be the reason Flip and Flop is the cart version and not the superior disk release.

 

Could somebody check whether Boulder Dash has that prolonged "ping" sound at the very beginning of the game? I heard this in one of the reviews and this would mean it's a cracked file as well.

[deffroe]

And....just had notification its arriving by 2:30pm

[twh/f2]

17 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

Wow... If that's really the case and withouth blowing things out of proportion, this is inexcusable.

 

I mean, you pay the license for an iconic game and you just pick an unverified image without playing it through? There are only 25 titles, not 50. Also, is the team aware of the .atx format and the preservation efforts of some people? Feels so amateurish... This may be the reason Flip and Flop is the cart version and not the superior disk release.

 

Could somebody check whether Boulder Dash has that prolonged "ping" sound at the very beginning of the game? I heard this in one of the reviews and this would mean it's a cracked file as well.

I fully agree . This is massive. And completely inexcusable.

Only chance I see here is an immediate firmware update and an official excuse. This not only to the customers but also to the licensor.

Actually a licensed M.U.L.E. "hardware" was to me the one single reason why I bought the 400-mini thing.

 

 

Edited March 29 by twh/f2

[Preppie]

25 minutes ago, Sean_1970 said:

According to the website there isn’t outside of Scotland 😁

 

 

I guess there has to be at least 1 good thing about living in Scotland 🤣

[Sean_1970]

Just now, Preppie said:

I guess there has to be at least 1 good thing about living in Scotland 🤣

Rich coming from someone who lives in England, but okay 😜

[Fred_M]

14 hours ago, MrFish said:

OK, so I guess you tried it on real hardware to for comparison. I should have at least posted a video of some decent emulation for it. This video doesn't say in the comments, but I'm pretty sure this is Altirra running it. There are some other videos where Altirra is being used too.

 

Anyway, thanks for taking time to test Instrumentarium out.

 

As promised, here is a direct capture of the Instrumentarium music playing on the 400 mini. I am curious to know what you think of the audio quality 🙂

 

 

[Fred_M]

1 hour ago, pps said:

Problem is really just a wrong image of the game.

 

It would be fun to find out which image they have used 🤣 Let's try to find it on the internet 🤣

[+DjayBee]

8 minutes ago, Fred_M said:

 

It would be fun to find out which image they have used 🤣 Let's try to find it on the internet 🤣

Can somebody owning a 400MINI create USB sticks formatted with an EXT2 and and XFS filesystem AND create symlinks on them pointing to /.

 

Maybe the console not only mounts FAT32 sticks but also such with an official Linux filesystem.

And (another) maybe it follows symlinks when browsing the external USB stick.

 

Then we could browse and (another) maybe find a way to extract the internal filesystem.

[Fred_M]

18 minutes ago, DjayBee said:

Can somebody owning a 400MINI create USB sticks formatted with an EXT2 and and XFS filesystem AND create symlinks on them pointing to /.

 

Maybe the console not only mounts FAT32 sticks but also such with an official Linux filesystem.

And (another) maybe it follows symlinks when browsing the external USB stick.

 

Then we could browse and (another) maybe find a way to extract the internal filesystem.

I don't know how, but if you are interested take a look at the developments of various "hacks" for the C64 mini. I think it runs the same software, the carousel and options look very similar.

[pjedavison]

The MULE issue appears like it might be an emulation bug rather than a wrong disk image. Just tried the Atarimania .ATRs of both the Ariolasoft UK and Electronic Arts versions and both exhibit the same graphical glitches. The Homesoft "Multi-Joy" .XEX version crashes. And the other .XEX I have only appears to support 2 players regardless of system.

 

EDIT: The version on Fandal's website seems to work perfectly. https://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=4190 So if you want to play MULE, use that one for now.

 

EDIT the second: Scratch that, it is the disk image -- those graphic glitches show up in Altirra also. So Atarimania has some duff images of the game, and that's likely where they were sourced from, at a guess.

 

As someone who's involved in this sort of thing for the day job, I can speak from experience that a lot of licensors are more than happy to license out the rights to their games despite the fact they, themselves, have absolutely no archive of the software in question themselves. That leaves projects like this with no option but to source their own images from the Internet -- and that, of course, leads to mistakes like this. Should have probably been caught by QA though.

Edited March 29 by pjedavison

[pps]

19 minutes ago, pjedavison said:

The MULE issue appears like it might be an emulation bug rather than a wrong disk image. Just tried the Atarimania .ATRs of both the Ariolasoft UK and Electronic Arts versions and both exhibit the same graphical glitches. The Homesoft "Multi-Joy" .XEX version crashes. And the other .XEX I have only appears to support 2 players regardless of system.

 

EDIT: The version on Fandal's website seems to work perfectly. https://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=4190 So if you want to play MULE, use that one for now.

Ah, I see, you found a working version.

Just to make it clear for everyone. This pic was taken using the same atr, I used before, but I started a 3 player game to be sure emulation is fine...

[pjedavison]

in case anyone doesn't see my edit above:

 

Scratch that, it seems like it is the disk image -- those graphic glitches show up in Altirra also. So Atarimania has some duff images of the game, and that's likely where they were sourced from, at a guess.

 

As someone who's involved in this sort of thing for the day job, I can speak from experience that a lot of licensors are more than happy to license out the rights to their games despite the fact they, themselves, have absolutely no archive of the software in question themselves. That leaves projects like this with no option but to source their own images from the Internet -- and that, of course, leads to mistakes like this where seemingly working images (i.e. they boot!) have issues. Should have probably been caught by QA though.

[Fred_M]

LOL, so they probably downloaded the games from Atarimania 🤣

 

By the way, I found a simple solution for the bad responses of the CXJoystick that worked for me. More about that here:

 

 

 

[Master Phruby]

For games that use the SELECT and OPTION buttons, how do you press those? 

 

Also how do you turn it off? I pressed the power button on the back it wouldn't turn off. 

[pjedavison]

4 minutes ago, Master Phruby said:

For games that use the SELECT and OPTION buttons, how do you press those? 

 

Also how do you turn it off? I pressed the power button on the back it wouldn't turn off. 

If you're talking about games you're loading from USB, default mappings are right ring button for Select, Menu for Option and top ring button for Start. You can also access them via the on-screen keyboard (press Menu and Home together) or remap them from the Game Settings page.

 

Some of the carousel games use alternative mappings. Push up on the joystick from the carousel to see that game's specific mappings.

 

To turn it off, press Menu from the carousel screen, go to Advanced Options and the shutdown option should be there. You can probably also hold down the power button until it turns off, but the shutdown function from the menu will likely be kinder to the machine.

Edited March 29 by pjedavison

[Irgendwer]

On 3/26/2024 at 6:12 PM, LS650 said:

GenX Grownup has posted a lengthy (35 mins) review where he goes into quite some detail on setup, configuration, loading games from USB, testing various games, etc.

I have to say from watching the video it looks pretty darn good.

Does anyone else wonder about the "SysInfo Speed Rate" displayed here:

?

Edited March 29 by Irgendwer

[+DjayBee]

44 minutes ago, pjedavison said:

in case anyone doesn't see my edit above:

 

Scratch that, it seems like it is the disk image -- those graphic glitches show up in Altirra also. So Atarimania has some duff images of the game, and that's likely where they were sourced from, at a guess.

 

@www.atarimania.com ^this^

[pjedavison]

4 minutes ago, Irgendwer said:

Does anyone else wonder about the "SysInfo Speed Rate" displayed here:

?

I've also done a similar vid addressing some questions that popped up in this thread: 

 

[Irgendwer]

On 3/28/2024 at 4:20 PM, smoore said:

Looks like the Mini could fit into the cartridge door of the 400...

[www.atarimania.com]

Well, guess any publicity is good publicity...

 

In our defense, our page clearly states we're missing the original disk image (yes, I know it's available as an .atx now, it just hasn't been added to our site yet). 

 

If you're going to pay a license and charge something, at least be 100% professional and either:

- play the title thoroughly to check everything works fine

- get the preserved disk which is also available, although from another source

- if you don't know where to look, discreetly ask archivists how to get a fully functional version

 

None of this was done, which is a bit sad.

 

Edited March 29 by www.atarimania.com