Could the Atari 2600 paddles be used on a CV?

[Pixelboy]

Quick question which I'm sure has been asked before: Could a CV game use an Atari 2600 paddle controller for player input? Has anyone ever tried to make that work?

[+Mitch]

Quick question which I'm sure has been asked before: Could a CV game use an Atari 2600 paddle controller for player input? Has anyone ever tried to make that work?

 

Hmm, I don't think the ColecoVision controller port outputs +5v, so I guess the answer is no.

 

Mitch

[Bruce Tomlin]

Quick question which I'm sure has been asked before: Could a CV game use an Atari 2600 paddle controller for player input? Has anyone ever tried to make that work?

 

Hmm, I don't think the ColecoVision controller port outputs +5v, so I guess the answer is no.

 

Mitch

The paddles don't use the +5 volts. They're hooked up to a simple R/C circuit, unlike the Vectrex controls which are rigged up as a voltage divider. The Coleco doesn't have the necessary R/C parts. Also, it uses the same pins as outputs instead of inputs.

 

Another important problem is that the 2600's R/C circuit is designed to take about 1/30 second at the max, which means that most games use the current scanline count to determine the paddle value. There is no way to get the current scanline on the Coleco, so you would have to do your own timing, without the benefit of WSYNC or anything else as an external timing aid. This means that to get an accurate paddle reading, you would have to be doing nothing for most of the display interval.

 

Of course there is support for a spinner/trackball (one dimension per controller port) which could be used instead. And before you get any crazy ideas, it doesn't take the raw quadrature inputs of the driving controller. They need a little extra circuitry to work with the Coleco spinner support.

[Pixelboy]

Of course there is support for a spinner/trackball (one dimension per controller port) which could be used instead. And before you get any crazy ideas, it doesn't take the raw quadrature inputs of the driving controller. They need a little extra circuitry to work with the Coleco spinner support.

Speaking of spinners, is the spinner on the Super Action Controller "handicaped"? I seem to remember something about a guy who tried to play Turbo with it and he had to spin the spinner like crazy to get the car to move left and right (I didn't try this myself). Does this mean the SAC spinner is not precise enough to be used as a paddle for a game like, say, Breakout or Arkanoid?

[Bruce Tomlin]

Of course there is support for a spinner/trackball (one dimension per controller port) which could be used instead. And before you get any crazy ideas, it doesn't take the raw quadrature inputs of the driving controller. They need a little extra circuitry to work with the Coleco spinner support.

Speaking of spinners, is the spinner on the Super Action Controller "handicaped"? I seem to remember something about a guy who tried to play Turbo with it and he had to spin the spinner like crazy to get the car to move left and right (I didn't try this myself). Does this mean the SAC spinner is not precise enough to be used as a paddle for a game like, say, Breakout or Arkanoid?

It's more likely because the driving controller has such an enormous (like 4 inches diameter) encoder wheel. And of course Turbo was written for it. It just gives a lot more pulses per revolution. The spinners might actually be useful for a paddle game, especially if variable accelleration (like the mouse on a Macintosh) is used. Since I already have written trackball test code, I might just see what I can do with it.