Video 61

DISPATCHES FROM THE LAB Monday, March 4, 2024 Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the sixth entry of what will be my personal Blog, sharing small slices of life with you from around the Twin Cities and 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 operated since 1983 and I have been at it now for over 40 years! Have you ever wondered what you might do if there were to be a long term power outage? I would miss my video games. So I thought for this Blog post I would experiment a little with my Atari Lynx and rechargeable batteries, and see what we find. Things to Think About: Power outages in severe weather Hurricanes Snow storms Black and brown outs Heatwaves Natural disasters Taking your Atari Lynx on a camping trip or RV First off, I know the Lynx is a battery hog. Those double "AA's" do not last long, and won’t be enough to get you through a long term power outage. What can be done? Let's step into my lab and explore some options: Atari Lynx Battery Pack "AA" Rechargeable Batteries in the Lynx "D" Rechargeable Batteries + Atari Lynx Battery Pack Using Solar Power to Recharge Batteries Light Weight Batteries The Official Atari Lynx Battery Pack, and Third Party Battery Packs One survival option for a long term power outage is the official Atari Lynx Battery Pack. It comes with a shoulder strap and is large enough to hold six "D" sized batteries, and makes you look like the Terminator when it's strapped to your side. It will keep you electrified long enough to get you through a road trip, or a couple of nights without power, but when loaded with six big batteries it gets pretty heavy. Eventually though, that too will exhaust your batteries. There was the NAKI Power Pak, a third-party rechargeable battery option that clipped onto the Lynx and added quite a bit of weight hanging off the back. There was also the Best Electronics battery pack - but the batteries for both of those products are long past their date, and no longer will hold a charge. "There might be other aftermarket battery packs out there, I just am unaware of them if there are. Pairing the Atari Lynx Battery Pack with rechargeable NIHM batteries is the way to go." @Video 61 TEST 1: "D" Size Rechargeable Batteries + Atari Lynx Battery Pack Now let’s try playing out this scenario of a long term power outage and see how much life we can squeeze out of the Lynx. What would happen if the power outage lasted so long that it exceeded the life of the "D" size batteries? The Atari Lynx Battery Pack takes six “D” batteries and can power your Lynx for several hours, but even they eventually will run out. We can stock up on extra “D” cell batteries, but that gets expensive and heavy to bring with you, especially if you're evacuating a storm. I decided to try something different, so I went out and bought rechargeable NIHM batteries. They may cost a bit more at first, but you can recharge them over and over again, giving your Lynx nearly unlimited power and saving money over time. I found that the NIHM batteries are much lighter, so the Battery Pack is not so heavy and burdensome. This is an excellent option that lets you pair original Atari hardware with the ability to recharge your power, and not keep burning through batteries and hard-earned bucks. I should also mention that the Atari Lynx Battery Pack was a good Jack Tramiel product. It’s heavy duty and well designed, with a metal knob and screw mechanism helping contain the weight of six "D" batteries and competently holding it all together. Pairing the Atari Lynx Battery Pack with rechargeable NIHM batteries is one good option to consider, especially in a long term power outage. It's nice knowing you have a portable power pack ready to go. TEST 2: "AA" Size Rechargeable Batteries + Atari Lynx Let’s experiment with another option: When I purchased the batteries, I also got "AA" rechargeable batteries to power the Lynx the “regular” way, with 6 "AA" size batteries in the Lynx itself. So what kind of life can I get, and how will the "AA" batteries compare with the "D" batteries? I used by own Lynx to test this out, leaving it to run using my Blue Lightning demo dealer cartridge that is looped with the game playing in attract mode, and timing how long the different sizes of batteries and power options lasted before the Lynx ran out of juice. The "AA" size rechargeable batteries went 3.5 hours. The "D" size batteries in the Atari Lynx Battery Pack went almost 8.5 hours. The Lynx only quit working once the batteries were exhausted. After both sizes of batteries were exhausted, I used my handy little battery tester ($6 at Menards) to see how worn down they were: Here’s where it gets weird: Both sizes did exactly the same thing. Of the six "D" size batteries, two were worn down almost exhausted. Another two were close to exhaustion, but still were usable. The last two were still almost fully charged. Yet that was not enough battery life to sustain play. It’s weird how the batteries were used up on the Lynx. These same results were replicated exactly with the “AA” size batteries on the Atari Lynx. "The "AA" size rechargeable batteries went 3.5 hours. The "D" size batteries in the Atari Lynx Battery Pack went almost 8.5 hours. The Lynx only quit working once the batteries were exhausted." @Video 61 No Sun Visor Required So if the lights go out, and you have exhausted your battery life, get this: a solar powered battery recharger. These may be helpful if you live in areas with hurricanes or extreme weather, where you could be without power for several days after the storm and would enjoy a break playing games on your Lynx. They can also be handy on road trips or if bringing your Lynx along camping trips where you're away from electricity for extended periods of time. The solar battery charger I'm using can charge "D" / "C" / "AA" / and "AAA" size batteries. Using the solar battery charger, it took about four hours in the sunlight to recharge eight batteries: four "D" sized, and four "AA" size. One idea would be to have a solar battery charger recharging one set of batteries, while you continue to play video games on your Lynx with another set of rechargeables. This would be like doing laundry and knowing you still have clothes to wear while the rest of the laundry is in the wash. It's a good idea for rechargeable batteries too, especially if you're waiting on the sun to do your charging for you. Also, a solar battery charger could be very handy to keep in the house for use in inclement weather or a natural disaster. It's not just the hurricane or the snowstorm, it's the week after when the sun comes out and there's still no power until the crews are able to restore it. Using the sun to charge batteries in a long term power outage has benefits beyond just keeping your video games playing. For now, I'm going to keep experimenting. Later on, once all the batteries are recharged, I will test our different options again to see how good and deep the battery charge is using solar. Will the batteries last as long using the solar powered battery charger as they do with the regular battery charger, or will solar end up giving the batteries a weaker charge? Let’s see how these different power options perform in the long term, and I’ll report back here with my findings. Thanks for reading, - Lance Please visit me online for more at www.atarisales.com

hi everyone, i did plug the riot eprom into my 7800 dual chip set cartridge board, and did get a reaction. bright yellow screen with background noise. so the 7800 is trying to read it, but lacks the second e-prom, i tried it in both sockets, worked better on the bottom one. also got the atari logo on the xenophobe, but that's it. it requires the second chip also. it might be a beta version. i found more eproms, nothing on the labels, they were so old they had fallen off. but it was dark inside the tube, so they may have survived. when i plug them in, like just about everything i ever had got out of atari, they show graphics and sound, only garbled. telling me they need more than one e-prom, and which board, and or which platform are they for? a puzzle for sure. lance www.atarisales.com

hi everyone, This video is to show the options that we've added to the Atari 7800 version of "Delta Space Arena" to make it more of our game and not some "Omega Race" clone. its a short commentary, because stop is my favorite option. but we show all three options. lance www.atarisales.com

DISPATCHES FROM THE LAB - RAIDERS OF THE LOST EPROMS Monday, Feb 26, 2024 Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the fifth 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 operated since 1983 and I have been at it now for over 40 years! Quick update here from the Lab I wanted to share with all my friends on Atari I/O so you’d be the first to see. While I was working in my warehouse high atop the escarpments of the Twin Cities, cleaning up my office with my lab assistant on Saturday, we unearthed a trove of 7800 EPROMs I didn’t realize I had, and may have discovered Road Riot 4-Wheel Drive for Atari 7800 with a few other things. Like Rampart, Pit-Fighter, and Steel Talons, Road Riot 4-Wheel Drive was originally an arcade game from Atari Games that was released on Atari Lynx and believed to be in development for the Atari 7800 as late as 1993. I will try testing these EPROMs in some of my developer boards on the 7800 and see what we can get. It may take time to get this all sorted, but we will figure out what we have and I will report back here with more updates as we make progress. We were cleaning up my warehouse office on Saturday and I said “Well, I know I’ve got EPROMs here from Atari that we should go through and catalog, and I know that I have them in two different places in the warehouse and in my office.” I hadn’t looked at these, and they were sitting in a package from Atari collecting dust for decades. My warehouse assistant and I pulled them out, and of course like everything I got from Atari, there was no rhyme or reason to it, it just gets thrown. In those days, Atari would send me all sorts of things from EPROMs to joysticks, just thrown in a box and sent to me with hardly any documentation at all. One of the things we were looking for was Fatal Run documentation, which we found. Because I don’t have the strength to venture into the warehouse all the time to do this, I thought some of it could be in my office and we should spend some time looking in my office and cleaning up in there. We started cleaning up and sorting through packages, and of course there were tubes and tubes of this stuff from Atari that I got towards the end of the Jack Tramiel days. One of the packages I got from Atari were full of tubes of chips. If you don’t work with electronics you may not know, chips come in protective plastic tubes, usually five to ten or more at a time. And I’ve got rolls and rolls of this stuff, and you don’t know what they are - there’s just a kazillion part numbers and labels, or there’s nothing. Some of them are so old that the labels have fallen off to the bottom of the box and gotten all mixed up. And it’s hard to find out what they are, because it’s like trying to put a puzzle together. Not only are the labels missing, mixed up, or mysterious, but you have to figure out what the chips are and where they go, and on what board. For example, Midi Maze for the Atari XE was a 256K game, but they put it on a board that had 8 chips on it originally, so you’ve got 8 different chips that you have to sort through and figure out what goes where and get it to work. When I found the EPROMs, most of them had labels on them. I found Sentinel LO and HI chips, Xenophobe HI, and KLAX LO and HI chips which I believe is a different version of KLAX than the one I’ve published before which was also given to me by Atari. I found Barnyard Blaster and Food Fight, both of which are PAL and have dates from mid-late 1989. That 1989 date is a little later than NTSC Barnyard Blaster, and quite a bit later than NTSC Food Fight, which was completed and shipped to retailers by May, 1984. So what does it mean that PAL Barnyard Blaster and Food Fight were being worked on as late as the Summer and Fall of 1989? Well, it’s possible these games play no different than the originals - but it’s also possible these versions of Barnyard Blaster and Food Fight could be different in some other ways. You just never know what Atari would’ve done, sometimes PAL market games had different sprites, they may have played different, or had other changes to the game beyond just PAL and NTSC. Sometimes those things would happen. Save Mary surprised me - I said “Hey look, these are on 7800 chips!” That’s different than what I’ve seen before. In my trove of EPROMS we unearthed, we found Save Mary on two 64K chips (LO and HI), not on two 16K chips as you might expect to find. Like KLAX, this is NOT the same version of Save Mary that I published years ago. The Save Mary I got from Atari that I used to sell, that is on one 32K chip which is different from what I found. This is Save Mary on two 64K chips, which means this would be a 128K game, which is what a lot of the newer 7800 games were put on towards the end. It may well be the 7800 version of Save Mary, or it may be that they started to work on it for the 7800 and got the 2600 ordered on there to get it to work and go from there. Another chip I found only had half a label, with part of the EPROM window exposed. I don't know if this EPROM survived, but hopefully it will be okay. We will have to see. The half of the label that was still stuck on the chip has handwriting on it that I think says "Save" followed by the number 4800, which usually means it's 48K. I'm wondering if this is a 48K version of Save Mary? "The test cartridges used two chips, but the final production cartridge would only use one, so there’s a LO and a HI on the test cartridge. The test cartridges were set up for a 64K game or a 128K game, with two sockets. So that’s why there’s two Sentinel (LO and HI), two KLAX (LO and HI) and two Save Mary (LO and HI)." @Video 61 The weirdest, most curious EPROM has a handwritten label that looks to say “Riot”. Clearly this is an EPROM and not a RIOT chip for the Atari 2600. The EPROM is dated 1993, which is very late for 7800 development but not unheard of. We MAY have found Road Riot 4-Wheel Drive for the Atari 7800 - we’ll have to see. The label on the EPROM says “Riot” on it, it’s dated 7-20-93 and it has the number “2” circled, which means this could be one of two chips needed to test the game - a HI and a LO. This date I believe is two months newer than the last version of 7800 Toki that has been shown, so two months after Toki was nearly complete and ready to go, this game “Riot” was still being worked on for the Atari 7800. Even if this does turn out to be Road Riot 4WD, it’s possible we’re still missing one of the chips needed to get it working. I can imagine someone testing the game and on such a tiny label writing “Riot” instead of “Road Riot 4WD” almost as an abbreviation of the name, it was common for these guys to do that, just because the EPROM labels are just so tiny. Atari 7800 Games thought to have been in development during 1991-1993: Pit-Fighter ElectroCop Steel Talons Toki Rampart Road Riot 4WD More? From my knowledge there were at least five games in development under Atari Corporation for the Atari 7800 as late as 1993, probably more. In those days, the Atari Lynx still had life in it, and Atari Jaguar was coming up on the horizon. The story as I hear it was that Jack Tramiel took one look at 7800 Pit-Fighter and how bad it looked and put the kibosh on anything more for the 7800. He pulled the plug right then and there and that’s all she wrote. We know Pit-Fighter, Rampart and Toki have been found in different levels of completion, and the date on this “Riot” EPROM is newer than all of those. We will have to research to see if this chip dated 7-20-93 is the latest 7800 EPROM dev date known to exist. It may be, I don’t know for sure, but it’s got to be close. 7800 ElectroCop was shown at the 1991 CES and Juli Wade told me she had an EPROM of it on a cartridge in her desk but wouldn’t share it with me. I had hoped John Skruch would. I don’t know if ElectroCop was one of the batch of 7800 games still in development as late as 1993 or not, but the other ones definitely were. It would be cool if we could find those hidden away somewhere in my warehouse office too. It may take time to get this all sorted, but we will figure out what we have and I will report back here on my Blog with more updates as we make progress. Stay tuned! Thanks for reading, - Lance Please visit me online for more at www.atarisales.com

hi everyone, we have a new device, we are experimenting, thats why its not the best video. but we will get it better as time goes by. lance www.atarisales.com

hi everyone, Welcome! In this video, we test the two-player option in the Atari 7800 game "Novawolf," by Video 61 and Atari Sales. We use the 90-degree and then 45-degree angle options. We added various options to "NovaWolf" because we didn't want a simple "Solar Fox" clone. We wanted to make our game and have our own stamp on it. Thanks for watching! Lance www.atarisales.com

this lot has SOLD! thanks for your order! Lance www.atarisales.com

i remember a argument with sam about what type of computer they were going to use once jag programming kicked into high gear. the programmers refused sams offer of tt030 with 144 megs of ram, and demanded peecee's. of course emulation, which had to be ironed out later in debugging. but cybermorph was before that, and for the panther. so most likely tt030's. there were co-processors in the panther, i even have the development paper work and a actual panther. but never got deep into it because why! lance www.atarisales.com

this lot has SOLD! thanks for your order! Lance www.atarisales.com

Announcing NOVAWOLF A New Action Game for Atari 7800 Available NOW! • 1 or 2 Players • Space Action • Simultaneous 2-Player Option • For Use With 2-Button Joystick or Control Pad hi everyone, NovaWolf is now available for the Atari 7800 video game system! NovaWolf is a very fun and addicting action game with a simultaneous 2-Player action option. NovaWolf is now available. currently we are taking orders via e-mail only at video61@atarisales.com, or video61atarisales@gmail.com when inquiring about NovaWolf or any other item from @Video 61 please let us know if you live in the u.s.a., or another country due to shipping. at this time we are only accepting payment via paypal, checks or money orders. to mail in a check or money order, please go here for instructions: http://www.atarisales.com/ordering.html price will be $39.95 and includes free shipping if you live in the u.s.a. NovaWolf is not listed on our website yet. we are constantly busy and will get it listed A.S.A.P. NovaWolf requires the Atari 7800 ProLine Joystick, or 7800 ProLine Control Pad for two button play options. to inquire or purchase please include where you live, and email us with your order at video61@atarisales.com, or video61atarisales@gmail.com thanks again everyone! without you, we would never be able to bring new stuff to the atari community. thanks! Lance www.atarisales.com MORE FROM LANCE & VIDEO 61: $99 Boxed Lots SALE! View More NEW Releases from Video 61 Email Lance with Questions or to Order Detailed Ordering Information Visit Video 61 at www.AtariSales.com Read Lance's Blog! Lance's Laboratory

this lot has SOLD! thanks for your order! Lance www.atarisales.com

hi justin, we can cover that in a future blog post. thanks! lance www.atarisales.com

new lot number six, date 11-16-2023 BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #6 ATARI LYNX, 5200, 400/800/XL/XE! hi everyone, we are happy to offer this batch of customer returns we purchased out of Atari decades ago. these items were returned to Atari for various reasons by retailers. many times they are still new, or opened boxes, but complete. many games are still shrink wrapped, but the boxes are poor, that is why many of the games were returned to Atari, poor boxes, which made the games unsellable. we have perhaps thousands of these Atari games left in our warehouse, but the games and boxes were sent to us unsorted. Atari just threw everything in shipping boxes and sent them to us... so we are not sure of how many titles of these we have, or their numbers. since we don't have the time to sort these boxes out, we will just put up batches for sale, offered exclusively to Atari I/O Members at a discounted price. as these are discounted items, we are unable to mix or match or look for certain titles, because we have no time, and i feel the price is right for this batch. among our customer return items, there are titles for Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, and Atari 400 / 800/ XL / XE. There may be Atari Lynx and Jaguar games also in the future! there will be no warranty on these. this batch will be $99.95 and includes free shipping if you live in the u.s.a. this is not an auction, and we are not negotiable on the price, as its firm and fair. to inquire or purchase please include where you live, and email us with your order at video61@atarisales.com, or video61atarisales@gmail.com please do not internally e-mail me from atari.io with your order here are the titles included in this batch: ATARI LYNX 1-pitfighter lynx 1-s.t.u.n. runner lynx 1-batman returns lynx 1-kung food lynx 1-rampart lynx ATARI 5200 1-dig dug atari 5200 ATARI 400 / 800 / XL / XE 1-super breakout 400/800/xl/xe cartridge 1-star raiders II 400/800/xl/xe floppy disk 1-silent butler 400/800/xl/xe floppy disk thanks! Lance www.atarisales.com MORE BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOTS AVAILABLE NOW: BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #1 - Atari 2600 incl. Berzerk, Red Box Donkey Kong, Red Box Q*Bert & more! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #2 - Atari 2600 incl. Krull, Stargate, Defender w/ DC Comic, Circus Atari & more! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #3 - Atari 7800 incl. Donkey Kong Jr., Food Fight, Xevious, Robotron:2084, Tower Toppler & More! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #4 - Atari 7800 incl. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Joust, Centipede, Galaga, Food Fight, Robotron:2084 & More! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #5 - Atari 2600 incl. Red Box Q*Bert, Solaris, Desert Falcon, Phoenix, Super Breakout, Summer Games, Winter Games & More!

new lot number five, date 11-16-2023 BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #5 ATARI 2600! hi everyone, we are happy to offer this batch of customer returns we purchased out of Atari decades ago. these items were returned to Atari for various reasons by retailers. many times they are still new, or opened boxes, but complete. many games are still shrink wrapped, but the boxes are poor, that is why many of the games were returned to Atari, poor boxes, which made the games unsellable. we have perhaps thousands of these Atari games left in our warehouse, but the games and boxes were sent to us unsorted. Atari just threw everything in shipping boxes and sent them to us... so we are not sure of how many titles of these we have, or their numbers. since we don't have the time to sort these boxes out, we will just put up batches for sale, offered exclusively to Atari I/O Members at a discounted price. as these are discounted items, we are unable to mix or match or look for certain titles, because we have no time, and i feel the price is right for this batch. among our customer return items, there are titles for Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, and Atari 400 / 800/ XL / XE. There may be Atari Lynx and Jaguar games also in the future! there will be no warranty on these. this batch will be $99.95 and includes free shipping if you live in the u.s.a. this is not an auction, and we are not negotiable on the price, as its firm and fair. to inquire or purchase please include where you live, and email us with your order at video61@atarisales.com, or video61atarisales@gmail.com please do not internally e-mail me from atari.io with your order here are the titles included in this batch: ATARI 2600 1-real sports volleyball 1-red box q*bert 1-real sports tennis 1-winter games 1-summer games 1-phoenix 1-ms. pacman 1-pacman 1-desert falcon 1-super breakout 1-solaris 1-e.t. hanging tab on back still glued shut thanks! Lance www.atarisales.com MORE BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOTS AVAILABLE NOW: BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #1 - Atari 2600 incl. Berzerk, Red Box Donkey Kong, Red Box Q*Bert & more! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #2 - Atari 2600 incl. Krull, Stargate, Defender w/ DC Comic, Circus Atari & more! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #3 - Atari 7800 incl. Donkey Kong Jr., Food Fight, Xevious, Robotron:2084, Tower Toppler & More! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #4 - Atari 7800 incl. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Joust, Centipede, Galaga, Food Fight, Robotron:2084 & More! BLACK FRIDAY BOXED LOT #6 - Atari Lynx, Atari 5200, Atari 400/800/XL/XE incl. BATMAN RETURNS, Pit Fighter, STUN Runner, Dig Dug, Star Raiders II, Super Breakout & More!