Rob Mitchell Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 Ok .. I'm excited about this one .. I will buy this one! After two years of work, this will be my final post: This project is now owned by RetroGames LLC, which mean I will not release any source files anytime soon. As the 2600 is now part of their coming lineup, you will soon be able to buy a real Atari 2600 in a joystick that can play all the games while the competitors do not run original roms. I am looking forward for this to happen since it would fulfill one of my goals of having a low-power 2600 with features like game pause, multi-game selection, etc. About RetroGames LLC, you can contact them through dev-relations@protectedfromreality.com http://protectedfromreality.com/2600OnAChip/ Thanks Raindog for finding out about this update! Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 That's awesome... a cartridge slot would rock... as well as audio/video composite cables. Stick the cartridge on the front of the joystick, in front of the fire button. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 well no matter what they do with it, if the stick really uses a 2600 on a chip, I can guarantee that there will be a cart port/etc hack for it :-) Can't wait to see this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 I wonder how long it will take them to make it? I would buy one if it can really play more than a few built-in games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 I hope the chip can be bought for hobby projects too. It would be a shame if all the effords get wasted just for some commercial releases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 I was thinking about it, flash cards with roms on it would be better, having the system load a .txt file of the roms, then load the games as they are selected. but yeah, i hope this doesn't get commerically, because then cutbacks will be made, and it'll end up being just another jakk's stick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HermChase Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 I knew this would come around at some point. In fact, I thought of it a few times myself. :wink: Anyway, I knew someone would make one of these once there was either a 2OAC (2600 on a chip) or if they could shrink down the hardware enough to fit into a modded joystick. I can't wait to see how this one turns out! ---------- Chase Hermsen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susuwatari Posted September 13, 2004 Share Posted September 13, 2004 I'd say it's about time that 2600 on a chip gets done for release. I'd love to have one, I could turn an common cart info a mini 2600 console. Small enough to tuck away in 2600 cart holders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Mitchell Posted September 13, 2004 Author Share Posted September 13, 2004 I'd say it's about time that 2600 on a chip gets done for release. I'd love to have one, I could turn an common cart info a mini 2600 console. Small enough to tuck away in 2600 cart holders. I like this idea. One cart plugged into another! Two carts connected to eachother! Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jagasian Posted September 14, 2004 Share Posted September 14, 2004 Why not put the 2600-on-a-chip inside a Cuttle Cart? Call it Cuttle Cart 3. It would basically be a 2600 that lets you use SmartMedia cards to make your own multicarts, yet still let you use original 2600 peripherials. Seems like a killer to me. Don'y bother with emulation, have the real thing all inside a Cuttle Cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seob Posted September 14, 2004 Share Posted September 14, 2004 I like the idee of Jagasian. I've searched the web alot and i have only found a handfull of programmable carts that can be programmed without a eprom burner. Unluckly they where all out off sales. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 I asked some questions and got some answers about this unit. It is going to have a USB port and will basically have an embedded Cuttle Cart type device, but unlike the CC the games will be stored on flash RAM. However, the games get copied to SRAM when run so that Supercharger and other cart types that write back to RAM will work properly (without wearing out the flash RAM). So even though it won't have a cart port, you'll be able to load in any ROM image. The USB port will also be used so that you can use another one of these units as a 2nd joystick for 2-player games. However, there are no hooks for paddle games. It might be possible to alter some of this as the internal firmware itself is upgradable. It is going to have composite video out but it will be possible to access the Y/C signal on the board for those who want to mod it. I didn't ask about the stereo audio signals. They are going to make this thing as open-source as possible so it will ship with technical info for people to use to tinker with the unit. Supposedly there is no secondary CPU in it. Everything in it runs off of a 6502. I'd be interested in knowing how the USB port works as everything I've heard about USB indicates that it's too much overhead to hook to 8-bit machines. Overall it sounds like a great unit and if it's cheap enough it might make a more affordable base platform for VCSp mods. It's like a TV-Boy on steroids. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+5-11under Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 However, there are no hooks for paddle games. It might be possible to alter some of this as the internal firmware itself is upgradable. Do you mean software hooks, or hardware hook-ups? Either way, thanks for the info. It sounds very exciting. 5-11under Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
compacho Posted September 20, 2004 Share Posted September 20, 2004 OMG!! This is very huge news which deserves a huge applause. So lemme get this straight. Its gonna have a small flash hard drive inside of it to store multiple ROMs? Good news that it will be open source too. I hope they can sell the chips seperatey too. It would be perfect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted September 20, 2004 Share Posted September 20, 2004 However, there are no hooks for paddle games. It might be possible to alter some of this as the internal firmware itself is upgradable. Do you mean software hooks, or hardware hook-ups? Either way, thanks for the info. It sounds very exciting. 5-11under I would hope that whatever microcontroller logic wraps the 2600 chip has the ability to feed a pot signal to the 2600 a pot signals, but it doesn't sound like it can (a flaw in the design). I'm sure this controller approach had to do with how they were planning to support a 2nd player through USB and the general availability of USB-compatible controller hardware. They get a good bang for the buck hanging everything off of a USB bus. It also opens the door up for other hobby peripherals. I'm also hoping that the 2600 on a chip actually exposes the controller lines so that you could somehow pop it out (or more likely desolder it) and use it in another context. If the final design actually is a 100% compatible 2600 at its core then you'd think it would, but I don't know how deep they embedded the actual hardware core. They could very well have done a system-on-chip like thing where it's impossible to work around all the USB support hardware. This is the general trend in low-poer designs like PDAs. We know they at least allow access to the Y/C signals internally so that's encouraging. I think the best part about all this is just the technical feat of getting a 100% compatible (assuming it is 100% compatible) TIA design reduced to VHDL. This will pretty much insure the future playability of 2600 games on authentic hardware, moreso than software emulators or JAKKs type stuff. We'll just have to wait and see how well the final thing runs. However, if they really did implement it right down to the gate level then you'd expect EVERYTHING to run including problematic stuff like Kool Aid Man and Robot Tank. It will be interesting to see what kind of distribution this thing gets. Given that the 2600 on a chip was made possible through the TIA schematics rather than a clean-room reverse-engineer, there might be some legalities, although I believe the TIA's patent has expired. Nevertheless, I would be surprised if this thing were to go on sale through well-known outlets. More likely it will be like the NES sticks that are sold in the grey market, i.e. the mom-and-pop kiosks in the middle of the mall and mail-order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted September 20, 2004 Share Posted September 20, 2004 So lemme get this straight. Its gonna have a small flash hard drive inside of it to store multiple ROMs? Yes, but I don't know how large the FLASH ROM space is. I doubt it's large enough to store the entire 2600 catalog on it but you never know. I think the smallest MMC FLASH ROM you can get these days is 32MB. If it's at least that big then you could store a pretty large percentage of the 2600 catalog on it at a time. There may also be a limitation in the menu software since they are apparently running almost everything off the embedded 6502 (it's not just a 6507). Maybe the 6502 runs at a higher clock when it menu mode or something. You'd think it has some other kind of cheap video hardware to handle text better in menu mode or maybe it just shows numbers instead of names. We'll just have to wait and see how they did it. I could have kept asking questions like this but I'm sure the info will come out sooner or later. Good news that it will be open source too. I hope they can sell the chips seperatey too. It would be perfect. If they don't sell chips, if these things are cheap enough and mounted the right way we could cannibalize them to make VCS portables that ran a lot longer on a charge than they do now. If they expose every console signal then they could also be used to replace vintage 2600 boards in the old cases. That's another question I didn't ask, whether you could access all the 2600 console switches directly or not. Games like Starmaster or Space Shuttle won't be playable otherwise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Great Hierophant Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 Any Atari 2600 must have six switches, two joystick ports and a cartridge slot for it to be a proper Atari 2600. If you remove the Color/B&W and Difficulty Switches, then certain games will be unplayable and many others less enjoyable. The joystick ports must be able to accept the analog signal of a paddle or the digital signals of keyboard controllers, Indy 500 rotary controllers as well as a second joystick and joysticks with two independent fire buttons. The cartridge port is used for bankswitching methods difficult to replicate in hardware (Pitfall 2) and those not yet created. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted September 22, 2004 Share Posted September 22, 2004 So lemme get this straight. Its gonna have a small flash hard drive inside of it to store multiple ROMs? Yes, but I don't know how large the FLASH ROM space is. I doubt it's large enough to store the entire 2600 catalog on it but you never know. I think the smallest MMC FLASH ROM you can get these days is 32MB. If it's at least that big then you could store a pretty large percentage of the 2600 catalog on it at a time. There may also be a limitation in the menu software since they are apparently running almost everything off the embedded 6502 (it's not just a 6507). Maybe the 6502 runs at a higher clock when it menu mode or something. You'd think it has some other kind of cheap video hardware to handle text better in menu mode or maybe it just shows numbers instead of names. We'll just have to wait and see how they did it. I could have kept asking questions like this but I'm sure the info will come out sooner or later. Good news that it will be open source too. I hope they can sell the chips seperatey too. It would be perfect. If they don't sell chips, if these things are cheap enough and mounted the right way we could cannibalize them to make VCS portables that ran a lot longer on a charge than they do now. If they expose every console signal then they could also be used to replace vintage 2600 boards in the old cases. That's another question I didn't ask, whether you could access all the 2600 console switches directly or not. Games like Starmaster or Space Shuttle won't be playable otherwise. I have a CC2 and 32meg MMC is enough to hold the entire 2600/SC/7800 library many times over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
compacho Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 Can't even 16mb flash drive hold most if not all of 2600's library? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 Can't even 16mb flash drive hold most if not all of 2600's library? I dunno. I've got 11.1 MB on mine and don't even have close to all of the possible games on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 I'm missing maybe 100 roms, and I'm barely breaking 2 mb's for my Atari 2600 rom collection. Atari 7800 games must be huge in comparison then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 I'm missing maybe 100 roms, and I'm barely breaking 2 mb's for my Atari 2600 rom collection. I think that you're missing a few more than that. The BINs in my Z26 folder total 10.7 megs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 Do you put things like PAL titles on it? I believe I'm only missing the Supercharger games, many homebrew games, and recent protos from the past few years. Or at least I think I am. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Since this thing has a USB port, it'd be kinda neat if it supported the stella adaptor. Hint, hint.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 The BINs in my Z26 folder total 10.7 megs. Yes, there are about 3,000 ROMs now, but most of them are just pirates or hacks of existing games, plus a lot of WIPs of homebrews. If you use some solid compression algorithm (RAR!), you can squeeze those into less than 3MB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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