CrossBow

Don't feel bad, I would have passed on that O2 myself as I have zero nostalgia for them. I never even knew the original Odyssey existed as a kid much less the O2. I only knew of the smaller pong clones they released like the Odyssey 300 that we had first before getting the VCS.

Wanted to provide an update in this thread for any looking for parts. Best I believe still sells the original mylar flex for the Lynx II systems. But as they are NOS from the 90s, I've found that on half of them I end up having to apply additional kapton tape around the ends of the LED power indicator. If you weren't aware, Atari never actually soldered the power LEDs to the flex. They are just attached via tape. As a result, that tape over the years isn't wanting to hold up as well as it used to and the mylar used isn't designed to be soldered to so it can't handle the heat from an iron. Well, you could use some conductive paint or ink to try and correct for this, or.. There are now brand new mylar flexes for the Lynx II being created by Retrosix out of Europe. I've ordered a few of them as it came out to be about the same cost wise as ordering from best with shipping and Bradley's min requirements. The new flex looks very much like the originals, but has a soldered on power LED to them and seem more durable in that regard. However, they use a bubble conductive section for the buttons for the backlight, power..options..etc and they will have a different feel. Not sure how they will last over time as compared to the originals using small metal domes but time will tell. https://retrosix.co.uk/Lynx-MK-II-Ribbon-Membrane-p370595071

Hmm...not sure how that would look through my Extron/OSSC combo setup. Most interlaced stuff ends up looking combined through the extron as part of how it handles image processing and conversion of the video to 640x480 output that I have it set to (lowest resolution output it will allow).

I just got myself a Fujinet 1.5 in about 2 weeks ago and thanks to it, I've had the 130xe out in play mode longer than I can ever remember before. Wonderful device and I still don't know all of the tricks it can do just yet.

Put a high speed SD card in it if you want to try and run some of the FMV video files through it. This might be my most used flash cart in my entire collection as it just works and it plays everything.

ITC#77 released this morning and focuses not on anything technical this time, but checking out and playing a new game released for the Atari 8-bit computers. This is the first video I've done that involved the 8-bit Atari computer line and I hope this is a good one to start. Attack of the Petscii robots was designed and programmed by David Murray, better known at The8-bitguy from his YouTube channel. David has released other games over the past few years but mostly for the Commodore computer systems. 'Petscii Robots' I believe is his first release for the Atari 8-bit line and I hope it is a trend that continues. The game is quite fun and much more challenging than initial impression might have you believe. Many of the other maps or levels you can play on are very clever in their design and variety. In this video, I go through the contents of what you receive in a physical purchase of the game and show some game play with commentary explaining how the game is played. I then include direct capture footage from my 130xe without commentary to better see and hear what the game sounds like. If the game looks interesting to you, I would encourage you to think about purchasing a version of it to play as it not only helps David of course, but might entice him to create more games for the Atari community. There are talks of other ports in the works including for the 5200! That really needs to happen and I think the game would be a great fit on the 5200.

My worst missed opportunity involved a Saturn game. My ex-wife and I were visiting relatives in another part of our state for the weekend. While there, we hit up all the junk, secondhand, thrift store businesses we could locate. Mostly just to look around and have fun. One of these was located in what I think was an old chicken barn. One of those huge ones that extends back for some distance? The back half of the place had the roof caved in slightly and the walls tilted to the sides a bit but still standing and they were still showing items in it. Anyway, as we got ready to leave I noticed some Saturn games standing up between bookends on an old console TV I believe it was. One of those games... was Panzer Saga. It was listed at $45 but at the time I didn't know its value or familiar with the game. Additionally, my ex wasn't into the hobby like I was so spending $45 for a Saturn game I didn't know anything about in the early 2000s wasn't something that would sit well with her. So I left it behind with it always making me wonder in the back of my mind. Sure enough when we got home a few days later I looked it up and found out what I had missed. I insisted we go back for it the next weekend. I had a feeling it would still be there because of how obscure the place was. Obscure was right. We weren't even able to find the place again when we went back the next weekend to look for it. We must have visited well over a dozen such places that day and finding that exact one I figured would have been easy, but nope. Never did locate the place and now I wonder who got that amazing deal on Panzer Saga to this day. Because I know only one thing... It wasn't me.

Stones 'n Bones is really the only digital pinball table anyone needs! Ruiner is also pretty good, but I always prefer to fire up Pin Fantasies when given the choice between the two.

That could be fun! Although again I only own a handful of homebrews and actual games. I never even knew about the Veccy back in the day and only learned of it much later in the early 2000s. I was gifted the vectrex I have now from local collectors and enthusiasts who went in on it together as an appreciation to me for my at that time 10 years of hosting the local OVGE event here in Tulsa. I've recapped it, and added both of Charles Tweety's kits to remove the buzz completely and also provide external audio output both mono and stereo since then.

I don't own a lot of Vectrex homebrews or homebrew projects. But then I don't play the Veccy as much as I should and it deserves. But I do have one of Richard's first revision VecMultis with the SD card and also a 1st revision VecFever. So this one is really to just support the hobby further and it looks nice!

Star Raiders, Tempest, Blaster, The Last Starfighter, Galaxian, Centipede, Star Wars: TAG, just to name a few. Course some of them really shine with the trakball instead, but most of the games I really like on the system pretty much play best with an analog controller. I have an old AA redemption adapter for use with 7800 or Sega controllers but rarely use it.

Sounds like the pokey needs to be calibrated. If I can adjust a console/controller set so that Bounty Bob controls in all directions well, Gyruss moves around the screen with ease, and The Last Starfighter has the same movement speed and response up/down/left and right, then that is a properly calibrated console and controller.

He contacted me about 3 weeks back to pay him for it which, I did pretty much immediately. I won't have a case for it and I will need to create a sticker for the eprom window as I don't believe they arrive with that covered already. And yes, I saw the video on the 8-bit version and the limitation they ran into. But I also think that if they could have gotten a few more interested people to help in creating it in btimap mode, it would also sell quite a few copies. There aren't that many new Atari 8-bit releases and you know how we are in the Atari world, we always hunger for more games! If some cool Pokey tunes could have been made that would have helped as well. David didn't mention it, but in composite you kinda get some colored effects as well. You can even see it in his video when he is showing it playing on a CRT. You can see that the floor titles have a red hue to them. The air conditioner cooling fans will also have some blue on the lines that make up the outlines and such. If anything, when I get my s-video cable in for using with these systems, I might be more saddened by the lack of color! LOL! I would like to see them make a 5200 port though. The keypad would act to select the items without scrolling through them with the one button using your selected item and the other being used to fire in the direction you have your controller. But I don't think that will happen unless he gets quite a lot of interested and sales in the current Atari 8-bit version.

I paid for my Jason Vec Multicart like 3 weeks ago and still waiting on it. Not that I need it as I own 2 other multicarts for the Vectrex already LOL. Still anything Vectrex is cool and always worthy of owning.

I also purchased this and I think mine came in around the same time. I do wish they could have found a way to put some color into it as we know the Atari 8-bits could pull it off and the sounds are good but the music... well, I don't listen to it and I guess that is the reason it is turned off by default. Still the game is a lot of fun and I'm still trying to find the best way to get through the first map. I don't have any working disk drives for my 130xe so I've been playing the digital ATR of the game Dave includes on my Uno. Also, why didn't they are least have the game support standard joystick controls for at least moving around and have the button double so that a single press could activate whatever item you are holding, but press and hold the button plus a control would fire the weapons? I've not had an instance where we needed to shoot on the move yet although I'm sure that could be a thing on later maps. I saw on FB where Dave mentioned someone is thinking of porting this to the 5200 but they aren't sure there is enough demand for it with cartridges needing to be made. Although I think many 5200 gamers also have the Atarimax carts they could use to play it as well. Still though, if the game requires 48k on the Atari, they would have to be pretty creative with porting it over to the 5200 and its 16k RAM limitation.

@- Ω - you have PM.

@RickR are you sure? I appreciate it but I want to make sure your are good?

If for some reason, Rick should happen to pass on it, I'm also very interested in your DL for the Ti. I still kick myself for not buying it when I had the chance.

We only went a few road trips that I can recall back in the early to mid 80s. I never owned any of the hand held LED or tabletop Coleco units so I only had the Atari at home for playing my games on. What we did was the usual car games that have been around forever. Like trying to see who can get the highest in the alphabet just using license plates from different states. We also had some card games designed to be played in the car. One game we played a LOT of was the game Mille Bourne. It is a French card based racing game. Simple rules and it didn't require a ton of space to play it. I also had my Garfield books that I took with me and read quite a lot as well. I don't remember ever really having coloring books as I didn't do much of that outside of school. I also slept a lot on such trips.

I'm at over 3000 games myself at this point across all the platforms. I too have stopped collecting for the most part and more about playing stuff. As an example, although not on a console, I finally go around to playing XCOM: The Bureau on my PC. I've had that in my steam library for well over 2 or 3 years when I snagged it on sale as part of an XCOM collection bundle. Kinda ticked I hadn't tried it earlier as I've had quite a lot of fun with it! It isn't nearly as strategic as the actual overhead view games have been, but still quite fun to play through and work on combos with your squad to take out alien baddies. I need to go back through Gameeye soon on my tablet or phone to make sure I have everything I can listed and fully updated. I know there are some games etc... that I've gotten over the past year or two that I likely forgot to add.

I have been using Gameeye since its very early days. It is wonderful! I have most of my entire collection on it. The ONLY issue is that it doesn't cloud save anything. So if you want to have the app on multiple devices as I do, then I have to remember to export my database on the most recently used device, email that export to myself and then I can load up the exported file on the other devices from there. I've also found it is MUCH easier to manually add in the games vs trying to use the barcode scanner at least in my case. They do have a means to request games to be added/updated in the system, but all of the submissions I initially put for the homebrew games were turned down because at that time, they were only allowing official released games. However, since that time I've noticed that some of the AA releases are now available although many will not have values on them since they have gone through second hand sales circulation as yet. Lots of other things don't have values either like my arcade games or most of my computer games in my collection.

What are you looking to have done on the H6er's? I've only got 3 UAVs for 7800 use and TBA has closed their store until October I think? So I've gotta ration them UAVs LOL! If you just want the BIOS installed then that is doable for sure. But I do need to discuss the current logistics in PM until things are finalized on this.

For some of you that might not frequent the AtariAge forums and even if you do, you could have easily missed this. But sometime back Mike (RevEng) created two demo screens for the Atari 7800. One is an on screen chart that shows the safe boundaries to program game elements within to be sure they will appear inside overscan areas on different display types. The other was a graphical Atari 7800 logo screen that is pretty cool to see in action. Long story short, Bob (PacManPlus) wanted to get that new graphic loader onto a new BIOS to replace the original. After working with Mike to get that done, Bob decided he would take it a step further and make it work like the PAL 7800 BIOS. In that this new BIOS would not look for the encryption key in games and allow the use of PAL and unsigned Atari 7800 games to operate. It would have the new graphic logo loader screen with the ability to bypass it and go straight to the game if wanted and... He decided to program a new game to be built into the BIOS that would come up in the same way that Asteroids Deluxe comes up on the PAL BIOS. Only this game titled as Kiloparsec would be exclusive to the Atari 7800 and only available through this new BIOS. Other changes to the BIOS were made to improve compatibility with some Atari 2600 homebrews that apparently have issues with the current PAL BIOS upgrades that exist. This new BIOS will be available soon and hopefully offered in not only a DIY kit but also with a kit + Install services option as well. It will be offered through the Atari Age store when it is all finalized. In the meantime, I do have 10 of these new programmed BIOS chips and the rest of the kit parts available for client installs. Here is a very short video showing the new BIOS in action on my personal Atari 7800 for testing. Notice there isn't a game in the cartridge slot. Here is a link to the original thread where this all came to be. Again, you would be forgiven for having missed this since the thread title this was all discussed in doesn't say anything about a new BIOS being worked on. It just kinda happened shortly after Mike released these demos. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/318624-a-non-interactive-title-screen-is-a-safe-screen Just wanted to bring knowledge of this project to you guys.

Fred Quimby is the developer behind the Hokey. You also know him as Batari over at AtariAge. Thus far he has only sent a few of his new Hokey chips to Al to be tested with 7800 pokey games. Al hasn't reported on that testing yet. But from what Fred has stated, the Hokey won't be available to everyone until sometime in September currently. But apparently it can be programmed for lots of stuff like the dual pokey modes and Covox digital PCM sampling that the PokeyMax is also able to do. I asked about getting one to test in the Dragon Fly cart but he stated he was only allowing the few he has right now to be used for testing and for his own Concerto carts project for now.

I can't even being to imagine... my condolences as well to you and your family.