Can someone explain what a supercharger is/does?

[KAZ]

I've heard about this thing, but don't know what it does.

 

Can you play some games ONLY if you have a supercharger?

 

Thanks!

[MattyXB]

Yes, some games are only avaible on tape. So you need a cassett-player and hook up the SuperCharger at the headphone exit. Turn your Atari on and then you can read the text Press Play or something like that.

Now press play and see how the game load in the SuperCharger. If it is ready there stand you must press stop. Now you can play some better games.

 

All Starpath games only avaible on cassetts.

[mos6507]

quote:

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Originally posted by KAZ:

I've heard about this thing, but don't know what it does.

 

Can you play some games ONLY if you have a supercharger?

 

Thanks!

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FAQ

 

You can get this:

 

Stella CD

 

Here:

 

Hozer Video

[KAZ]

So let's see if I got this straight (I went to that stella site by the way).

 

You hook the supercharger into your Atari 2600, and then you hook a cassette recorder into the supercharger via the headphone slot.

 

Then somehow you get WAV files from the internet, and transfer them to a tape, which you stick into the cassette recorder, and it somehow transfers games into the supercharger to play on the Atari 2600?

 

I think I've got this whole thing confused, but I think it is very complicated.

 

How in the world can the Atari 2600 play games from just WAV files? There has to be some "video" element to them....or perhaps it just makes the sound "better" on some games.

 

Please continue your explanations, I don't have it clear yet.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Okay...the games themselves are being read from the supercharger in audio binary format. The Wav file format allows you to record the static sounding info as it did originally on tape. The Supercharger converts the audio signal to the actual 1 and 0s that the 2600 recognizes as being data. So the supercharger looks like a cart with game data to the 2600. It can't tell the difference one way or the other.

 

The sound on the tape sounds like what a Modem does when it connects up to the web. Like when your online and your spouse picks up another extension in the house..and yells "Hey! Why is there only loud static on the phone!!!". That static is the actual game data in a sound format that we can hear. The supercharger converts that sound of static to something more like actual program code being read from a standard cartridge.

 

Okay...that is about the best way I can describe it. The actual getting of the wav files themselves is easy if you use Winamp or something similar. Basically you can take the BIN format file...run it through winamp and have Winamp save the file in Wav format. Then you have the audio format that the supercharger converts back to binary data the Atari understands.

 

Okay I hope your head didn't explode from all that...I know mine almost did..and I actually understand how it all works!!!

[utamav91]

I always thought it was the thing that adds horsepower to a blown/injected engine on dragsters and nitro funny cars.

[KAZ]

I see, so the supercharger is inserted into the Atari 2600 (it looks like a regular 2600 cartridge I suppose?), and a another cord comes out of it and hooks into the cassette recorder's headphone slot.

 

That is just neat.

 

How do you get wavs from your computer onto a cassette tape then?

 

hook the cassette recorder into a back slot of your computer, like the audio in port or something?

 

And like someone else mentioned, I suppose you could hook the supercharger into a computer directly instead....in order for it to HEAR wav data.

 

I'm starting to understand.

 

[ 04-24-2002: Message edited by: KAZ ]

[KAZ]

Here's a silly question:

 

What if I were playing a supercharger game on the Atari 2600, and decided to press STOP on my cassette player.

 

Would the game immediately end? Or is the "data" already into the Atari?

 

The more I learn about this thing, the more I want to eventually have it!

[Nukey Shay]

The supercharger works by using RAM memory. Once it's fully loaded, the data remains in it's memory until the power is lost. Turning off the player at that point has no effect (since the program is still in it's RAM).

[+-^CrossBow^-]

well...the I don't have one myself either...but the way I understand it. when you insert the supercharger it will tell you to press play on the tape. If the data is missing then it will come up and tell you to rewind and then press play. Once all the data is read it will automatically either start the game playing or tell you to press stop and then the game loads up.

 

I suppose if you pressed stop in the middle of the load process it would simply ask you to rewind and start over.

 

As for getting the converted binary to wav files onto tape...yes you could hook up the tape player (any tape player) with a Mic input on it to the PC soundcard Line out jack. Then use Winamp or windows media player to play the wav file and recorder it to tape. Yet it would be easiest and quickest probably to simply connect the supercharger up to the line out on the PC soundcard and just play the wav file with winamp or whatever whenever the super charger wanted you to press play.

[MattyXB]

Yes, I own one and its like -^Cro§Bow^- tells. The titlescreen say what you must do.

 

I have think first time too that this is hard to understand. But then after I try a bit it is easy.

First the volume was not loud enough, so it load not correct too in my SuperCharger. First I have wonder what have I done wrong. Later I have try it with louder volume and it work better. If this is not loud enough the screen tell you rewind the tape and try again. And sometimes some games work fine, but for the next game is not loud enough, then you must make it louder too.

 

After it load complete in the SuperCharger it will tell you press stop. Then the game is in the RAM from the SuperCharger. You will see it when it load, there are 2 (green by me) fields going to the middle if the complete screen is full he load the game complete in the RAM. Then you can play.

[KAZ]

Awesome, I think I completely understand it now.

 

I have an emulator (Z26) and a bunch of bin files....

 

So let's say I took Pitfall! bin file, and converted it to a WAV file using Winamp, I suppose I could then play Pitfall! from a cassette tape using supercharger?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

quote:

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So let's say I took Pitfall! bin file, and converted it to a WAV file using Winamp, I suppose I could then play Pitfall! from a cassette tape using supercharger?

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This is correct. You could either put it on tape or play directly through the PC. However, it must be mentioned that the supercharger is limited to 8k games I believe. So any games larger than that will not work as the Supercharger won't have memory to store it all.

 

Hence the Cuttle Cart!!!

[NE146]

quote

How do you get wavs from your computer onto a cassette tape then?  

 

Well in this "modern" day and age there are nifty programs out there specifically made for this purpose like 'bin2wav.exe' that you simply run, select the bin file, then whammo blammo, you got instant ugly sounding files blaring out of your PC, all ripe for input into a supercharger or Cuttlecart.

 

I got my version of this program as it was included with my CuttleCart (a.k.a "the SUPER-DUPER CHARGER). Highly recommended but unfortunately as we all know is no longer available

[StanJr]

As for the Supercharger looking like a regular cart, not quite. Its a monster thing about twice the size of a regular cart with a big handle and a cord sticking out of it.

 

But the games are neat-o and well worth getting. Getting these tapes has become something of an obsession for me.

 

I did not know about the volume thing. Thanks Matthais!

[The Piper]

I so recently discovered(thx very much people)that it can play some of the roms through your soundcard into your atari, or a recording source.Now I have an Atari 2600 CD system.Heh heh heh yesterday i had the 11 sprite demo on my t.v. for hours.

[MattyXB]

You can change the bin file to wav with winamp? Never know it before. I have use a programm calls makewav.

 

And I have hear that only files with 2k and 4k working, never try 8k.

 

[ 04-25-2002: Message edited by: MattyXB ]

[The Piper]

I don't think the 8k+ games work.Just some 2k 4k games.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Only 2k and 4k games working on the Supercharger? Then it simply doesn't make sense why their games never made it to cart format? Afterall with Bankswitching you can get quite a lot on a cart. Just Checked..the limit is 6K roms for the Supercharger...you can mod them to take up to 8K but it is tricky I hear.

 

Anyway, that should clear that up..

[SlimJim26]

A supercharger goes in a car to make it go faster vrooom!!!

[slapdash]

I'm pretty sure you can't mod the game or Supercharger to play an 8K game on it... The 6K limit is all the RAM you have, so you couldn't fit 8K into that 6K no matter what you modified.

 

However, some 2K & 4K games need to be modified slightly before they will work (or work properly anyway) on a Supercharger, because they access a memory location that the Supercharger needs.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

quote:

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Originally posted by -^Cro§Bow^-:

Only 2k and 4k games working on the Supercharger? Then it simply doesn't make sense why their games never made it to cart format?

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The benefit the programmer had/have is, that you have additional 6kb of RAM. That gives us the chance to do a lot of tricks, that aren't possible with the limited 128 bytes of RAM the 2600 has built in. Therefore e.g. Starpath Frogger looks much better than the normal version.

[mos6507]

quote:

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Originally posted by Russ Perry Jr:

I'm pretty sure you can't mod the game or Supercharger to play an 8K game on it... The 6K limit is all the RAM you have, so you couldn't fit 8K into that 6K no matter what you modified..

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The whole idea behind the Cuttle Cart was to take the foundation of the Starpath Supercharger audio system and have it support other larger cart configurations.

 

Unfortunately, this does not include, for instance, an 8K+ all-RAM configuration. It only supports simulations of other cart types (16K+Superchip for instance, being one of the largest).

[Eckhard Stolberg]

quote:

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Originally posted by Glenn Saunders:

Unfortunately, this does not include, for instance, an 8K+ all-RAM configuration. It only supports simulations of other cart types (16K+Superchip for instance, being one of the largest).

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Actually there is the Cuttle Cart loading mode which you could use for your own games, if you really wanted. It allows you to write to the whole 64K of RAM in 2K chunks using the Supercharger writing method. Unfortunately in this mode the 2K CC BIOS is always mapped in, so I'm not sure how useful the CC mode really is for writing games.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg