kevin242 Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 What is the value and rarity of a Starpath supercharger? It sounds pretty interesting, but I have no idea how much it is worth or how rare an item it is? tia kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacob Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 I got mine boxed (with dragonstomper) for $15 at a used bookstore where i usually get most of my atari stuff, then a few weeks later got a loose one with 5 game cassettes at the same place for $20. I'd never heard of them before & have yet to find anymore. It depends on who you ask (& if they themselves are actually looking for one or have one to sell.) In my area (Tucson AZ) anything atari that's not Pac-man, E.T. or Combat is pretty rare. I've seen them on e-bay occasionally & they never get past the $25 mark (of course the condition & if it's been modded can also affect value & desirability.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xot Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 Neither very rare nor very valuable, but still very useful and very cool. A bare Supercharger unit shouldn't run you more than $10-$15. Some of the cassettes can get pretty pricey, but the commons ones such as Phasor Patrol, Fireball, Commie Mutants and Suicide Mission rarely if ever go for more than $5-10 unless they're boxed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin242 Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 oh cool, what is the mod you are talking about? If I pick one up could I write bootleg/hacked/homebrew games to tape/cd to load thru the supercharger as well as the orig game tapes? Im mostly interested in checking out the enchanced games. kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted October 8, 2004 Share Posted October 8, 2004 oh cool, what is the mod you are talking about? If I pick one up could I write bootleg/hacked/homebrew games to tape/cd to load thru the supercharger as well as the orig game tapes? Im mostly interested in checking out the enchanced games. kevin The Supercharger next to your PC is like having a disk drive for your 2600 (load only of course). So you can load existing games to it as well as write new ones. I can only wonder what might have happened had Starpath had open-sourced the development tools. People might have started writing 2600 games using their home computers of the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin242 Posted October 8, 2004 Author Share Posted October 8, 2004 so could I concievably use the Supercharger to load up a homebrew or a rare cart rom that I could otherwise never play on the 2600? kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted October 8, 2004 Share Posted October 8, 2004 so could I concievably use the Supercharger to load up a homebrew or a rare cart rom that I could otherwise never play on the 2600? Yes, but only those who are <=4K. And most of them only if you slightly modifiy your SC. For larger games you need a CuttleCart or the coming KrokoCart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Yancey Posted October 8, 2004 Share Posted October 8, 2004 If you search this site, you will find threads on doing the modification on your own. Like Thomas said, you could play all games <=4K. That's quite a few and includes many homebrews. The mod is pretty easy with soldering iron, wire, a switch and a chip. It'll cost <$10 easy. Since you already have 2 superchargers, you should give it a try. You can get all the Supercharger games on a CD called Stella Gets a New Brain. Search for it here on the site-- you should still be alble to buy one pretty easily. You can load and use it through a Cd player without modifying anything. Good luck and have fun! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin242 Posted October 8, 2004 Author Share Posted October 8, 2004 what? I dont even have one supercharger yet! So the mod is what lets you load any game? Can someone clarify what the mod does and what it is? I was thinking if/when I get one, why couldnt I store the games on a pc and then load them thru the sound card? Or like you say make a cdr of every game and load them using my port cd player... I would like to collect the orig cassettes as well, if that is practical (I dont see many around). kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacob Posted October 8, 2004 Share Posted October 8, 2004 I modded my extra supercharger using the instructions found on this site.It was pretty easy. The tricky part (for me at least) was getting the roms to an acceptable WAV format that could be read by the supercharger. (using makewav was the best & easiest - after you figure out the DOS command of course) that's if you want to store the games on a cd. If you just want to keep them on your PC, then just keep them as ROM files & use any program to simply "Play" the images straight to your supercharger. (through the "audio out" jack. - you'll need a 1/8" to 1/8" connection). Keeping the roms on my pc was kinda impractible since my Atari setup is in a different room, so I had to find a reliable way to have them on cd. - also to safely back-up the games I have on cassette (don't know how much longer those will last!) I got the chip from the texas instruments site (all I did was request a free sample & they sent me 2 chips for free with only a small shipping charge.) I have an extra one by the way if anyone wants to try the mod. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted October 10, 2004 Share Posted October 10, 2004 how much is "Stella gets a new brain" worth to buy the CD?? and you said that if I get this CD it has ALL the supercharger games on it and I don't have to mod my supercharger?? Thanks in advance, Shawn Sr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackjack Posted October 10, 2004 Share Posted October 10, 2004 I don't know people usually pay for the Stella cd, but my completed auction searched turned up $25 - 30 Here's one with a 25 bin on it. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW If I understand you correctly though, you're looking for a fairly easy way to load any rom up to your 2600. If you'll be able to get about a hundred bucks together, it looks like the Krokodile Cart will be your answer pretty soon. It's llookin pretty sweet! http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=58439 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin242 Posted October 10, 2004 Author Share Posted October 10, 2004 If I understand you correctly though, you're looking for a fairly easy way to load any rom up to your 2600. If you'll be able to get about a hundred bucks together, it looks like the Krokodile Cart will be your answer pretty soon. It's llookin pretty sweet!http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=58439 It's sort of a dual curiosity. Im interested in checking out some of the starpath games and to collect the cassettes, but there are some carts out there I know I will never own because they are so rare that it would be nice to still have a way to play them on the real hardware. Plus I've dabbled with programming on the 2600 and it would be cool to run stuff like that on my Heavy Sixer as well.. I wouldn't want to modify the starpath because I lwould want to keep it in it's orig form for my collection... I guess it is something I will worry about when I actually get a supercharger.. kevin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vb_master Posted October 10, 2004 Share Posted October 10, 2004 Loose: $15-$20 Modded: $45 Here's a link to the modification. The Supercharger can load all games of 2K and 4K size with the modification, and a small number of games that are 2K and 4K unmodded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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