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HOW I SURVIVED 4 INCARNATIONS OF ATARI IN 40 YEARS

THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ATARI DISTRIBUTOR Monday, September 18, 2023     Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the third entry of what will be my personal blog, sharing small slices of life with you from within my Lab. For those who are new to Atari I/O let me introduce myself. My name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and I am the world's oldest surviving Atari dealer. You may have heard of me before as Video 61 Atari Sales which I have consistently operat

Video 61

Video 61 in Lance's Laboratory

Tic-Tac-Toe part 2.

It took a couple of days but I think I have the game working with win detection. It was really stubborn for some reason. During the madness, my computer crapped out on me, so I had to force a shutdown and turn it back on again. After I turned it back on again, I decided I should really get some sleep. I awoke at about 9 a.m. I was really hot. Whenever the furnace is on, it gets really hot in my room and not elsewhere in the entire house. It's stupid, but oh well. So I went back to programmi

Wumperdinkle Sniy

Wumperdinkle Sniy in my projects

Tic-Tac-Toe

So it took 6 hours, but I finally got x and o input working. Use the left controller for x and the right one for o. Next up is win checking. I have about 300 bytes left to do that in. I'll do that later sometime. It works just like I intended it to: pressing up makes a letter in the upper middle, etc. Diagonals work well too. Press ACTION to put a letter in the center part. Now I will test it on a real Odyssey 2. I just took my pills this morning. One tried to escape. I could fee

Wumperdinkle Sniy

Wumperdinkle Sniy in my projects

X vs. O

I'm making a new game for the Odyssey 2. This because I got real bored. The title screens switch between a screen with x's and a screen with o's. First I plan to make a simple tic-tac-toe game as an Easter egg. You'll move the joystick to the desired space, and press ACTION to use the center square. I'm imagining something like the Tic-Tac-Toe game on the Channel F. If you click on the link above and download the zip file, I've also included the code for the game. Which shows a l

Wumperdinkle Sniy

Wumperdinkle Sniy in my projects

Weird Paddle 3 issue on a 2600 4-switch?!

I've seen something similar to this before although not in the way I was seeing with a recent 4 switch console I was servicing. As part of diagnostics I will use Paul Slocum's excellent Test Cart program as it should some primary colors, shows the current state of all switches minus power of course, but also has a basic graphical view of each controller and small block on the bottom that will move left/right when you plug in paddles to test those too. So all in all a nice utility to know that al

Yum! for the Game Gear

I find it easier to work on Game Boy projects since I can use C on them. Well, I guess I could use C for Game Gear as well, but since I learned how to program the Game Gear in assembly before I learned the Game Boy in C, I just decided to keep using assembly for Game Gear. So here is a Game Gear program I have been working on. It's called Yum! It's a very simple game, yet I was having quite the trouble programming it. I thought I had made it random, but someone pointed out it wasn't. So I w

Wumperdinkle Sniy

Wumperdinkle Sniy in my projects

An introduction.

Hello. I decided to make a blog for all my stuff I get busy working on. I have made lots of projects. I completed a lot, but I continue to make more. I live here in Oregon, which, while having a reputation for being rainy all the time, I don't find it so. It's supposed to be in the 90s this weekend. I maintain the Atari 2600 Land, which used to be a project of mine, but I don't care about it much any more. Even so, I will NOT entertain offers from Atari about buying it. I also periodically

Wumperdinkle Sniy

Wumperdinkle Sniy in personal musings

Day Trip to Evergreen Air Museum

A quick trip on a beautiful Saturday to the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville Oregon.  It's about an hour drive from my home.  This museum is most famous for housing the giant WWII Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose".  I assure you, it is huge.  Also a picture of the author on Atari Day with an Atari shirt, relaxing in an old airline seat, a delicious lunch at a place that serves sandwiches on fresh-made bread, a sweet late 60's Ford Falcon I spotted in a parking lot, and our current sweet ride

RickR

RickR in Trip blog

Jinks (Atari 7800)

OK.  Im new to Jinks.  I have read where many people have dogged it.  I have watched video reviews on it where it didn't do so good.  Granted it is not a typical 7800 game I'm use to.  From a technical standpoint it actually does some impressive feats.    I have to admit that I don't belong in those majorities.  On the contrary I find Jinks rather fun.  I did find a few flaws here and there like my ball disappearing all of a sudden or going through objects it shouldn't but the game is s

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari 7800

Memories Make Objects Valuable

The other day, I was cleaning out drawers upstairs, which were full of our kids' school stuff.  Old papers and art and various supplies and books..  Out came this purple box, which I assumed was a pencil box.  But when I opened it, nope!  It's a Nyko Gamoboy game case.  And that writing on it?  That's my wife's handwriting.  It all came flooding back to me like a sharp zoom!  My oldest child's first game system was a Gameboy Color.  We learned pretty quickly that if he took it to a fri

RickR

RickR in Collection

How Alternative "Budget" Packaging Helped Keep Atari Developers In Business

Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the second entry of what will be my personal blog, sharing small slices of life with you from within my Lab. For those of you who are just getting to know me for the first time, my name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and for nearly 40 years I’ve been in the Atari business operating Video 61, one of the last surviving original retail Atari distributors. We started in the video business as a local chain of video rental stores serving the

Video 61

Video 61 in Lance's Laboratory

First Time Playing Crossbow

I have had this game called Crossbow in my collection for a while now.  It is for the XE computers.  Tonight, I played it for the first time.  Keep in mind that I have never played this game before let alone heard of it. How did I do?  I got 478,000 points.  I have no clue if that is good or bad because it doesn't take long to start racking up points in this game. Did I enjoy the game?  Oh yes!  I even played a second game but did not do as well.  I have yet to discover how to reach th

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in A8 Software

Join AtariAge at the 2023 Portland Retro Gaming Expo!

AtariAge will again be attending the annual Portland Retro Gaming Expo, taking place this year October 13-15 at the Oregon Convention Center! We'll have an even larger booth this year, the largest we've ever had at the show. And we'll have many new games available to purchase at the show, as well as demos for upcoming games! The AtariAge booth will be located right near the main entrance to the vendor hall, so you can't miss it as you enter the show! Many homebrew developers will be in att

AtariAge News Feed

AtariAge News Feed

Atari 7800 - Self activating fire buttons?!

I received an A1 series 7800 main board in the mail recently where the owner stated it was working properly but was missing a pause button for some reason. Well, when I receive a 7800 system for services, one of the things I do is to pull up a test utility without any controllers plugged in. The reason for this is to ensure that the system controller ports are working properly. But you ask... "How does not having any controllers plugged in, help to know if the ports are working properly?" E

Just a simple but kinda cool project?

The 'Tower' was without power most of last week due to powerful storms on Father's day. As a result it put me behind a bit on console services and projects. Well last night as I've been working kinda constantly on console stuff to try and get caught up, I took a break and decided to do something I'd been meaning to try and implement for a while now. I'm sure many of you here are aware of the Atari Vox? In summary it is a small device that plugs into controller port 2 on the 2600 or 7800 sys

Loctite and ABS = Gallium and Aluminum...

So over the past few months, I've been trying to find ways of making the RCA jacks that I install into consoles more secure so they don't free spin over time. What I've been doing in the past that actually works 90% of the time far as I know...is that instead of using the small lock ring washer that typically comes with RCA jacks, I use inner star washers of the right diameter to do the same thing, but with more points of contact to lock into the plastic. It also has the advantage of holding the

Intellivision Consoles can be quite frustrating! - Black Screen of Death...

Seems to be lately that I'm getting in more and more Intellivision consoles that all arrive with the same similar condition. Basically what most might call a black screen when powering on the console but it is more like a dark grey screen with a few lines along the bottom of the screen of even lighter grey. Pressing the reset button does produce a full black screen that will flicker and come back to the same dark grey screen or sometimes it might do something different like an all fuscia colored

Atari 7800 Top Favorites

My first 7800 was received in the early 1990s...long after the company stopped making them.  What games I got with it was pretty much all I ended up with.  I admit I had mixed feelings about the system because I wanted to like it, I wanted to enjoy the games, but the controllers were keeping me from doing so.  Often times I forced myself to play it, enduring hand cramps for a couple of hours, just to play it.  The only game I found I liked using the joystick on was Ms. Pac-Man. That's it. So I p

Atari 5200 Guy

Atari 5200 Guy in Atari 7800

A New Challenger Approaches! - A7800 BackBit Pro Adapter has arrived at the ITC!

Received my BBPro 7800 adapter today and we have some really good things and some not so good that I'm hoping can be worked out in time. - First the good, is that the menu of course is easy to navigate working in the same manner - This might be the fastest loading flash cart for the 7800 with the exception of the older Mateos cart - Plays the many of the original released games without issues including both Commando and BallBlazer with properly balanced and proper sounding Pokey audio! Ni

Vote Now For Your Favorite Atari Homebrew Games!

Voting is now OPEN for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards, celebrating the best in new Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, 8-Bit, Lynx and Jaguar homebrew games released in the past year! VOTE HERE: https://forums.atariage.com/forum/203-atari-homebrew-awards/ VOTE for your favorite homebrew games in twenty-one different categories, such as Best Graphics, Best Music+Sound, Best Packaging and Best WIP! Voting closes on February 17th, so make sure you make your voice heard on your favorites! The winners o

AtariAge News Feed

AtariAge News Feed

We all make mistakes... Keep better track of the screws!

Won't got into too many details on this other than to state up front, that I try to be as transparent as possible with the work and services I provide. As a consequence of this, mistakes can and will happen. It is just a matter of when. One such big mistake happen to me this week while installing a very expensive DCDigital setup into a clients Dreamcast. I actually had the main installation done and was ready to test. However, in order for a DC to boot up, it requires that the cooling fan and GD

CrossBow

CrossBow in Service Work Stories

Atari 5200 BackBit PRO 4-port Soft Reset notes and modification

The BackBit Pro multi-system flash cartridge is quite amazing in all the systems it supports and the Atari 5200 is one of the newest systems to recently be added over the past few months. One cool thing that the BBPro cart has for the 5200 side of things that other similar devices do not have, is the ability to reset the console and go back to the game folder browser without having to power cycle the console. This feature works out of the box on the 2-port model 5200s by having a selector switch

The Ivory Tower 5200 got some TLC

I originally did most of the work on this 5200 about 8 years ago. It was also one of the first projects I did and to be honest, the wiring work inside wasn't that great. For some time I had wanted to redo it all similar to how I redid my 7800 about a year ago but just never got around to it. Well, now that I have a new BackBit Pro flash cartridge and it was designed to allow resets back to the game menu, I felt it was time to perform a small modification to allow this function of my BackBit Pro

CrossBow

CrossBow in Service Work Stories

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