DegasElite

All:
My sincerest wish is for all that are here to have a wonderful holiday season.  May you have health, happiness, and success in your lives.  And if not, a hope that those things come to you very soon.
We as a group have so much to be thankful for in our retro collecting and fun.  I always find that we can do much to improve the lives of others -- to give back by volunteering or giving to our causes of choice.  No pressure intended, but if you can, it feels good to give assistance to those in need and make our world a better place. 
My wife and I chose three charities to donate to this season.  Not only that, but the company I work for matches these donations!  I'll post links to the charities we chose.  Again, no obligation at all.  But if you decide to donate, please post links to those charities below to give ideas to others. 
For your info, Atari.io users have participated in and supported this type of giving for many years.  From Alzheimer's Walks, to Extra-Life video game fundraising...please SHARE your giving and give everyone a chance to support those causes.
Thanks very much!
 
Oregon Food Bank - https://www.oregonfoodbank.org/
They offer food assistance to those in need in the state of Oregon
  Oregon Energy Fund - https://www.oregonenergyfund.org/energy-assistance/
They offer assistance with utility bills to those in need in Oregon
  Senior Citizen's Council of Clackamas County - https://seniorcitizenscouncil.com/
They offer support and assistance to adults and seniors with disabilities in our home county.  

Hey,
I have been studying up on "Black ICE/White Noise," the cyberpunk RPG thriller for the Atari Jaguar CD, that was never completed before Atari's demise in 1996. It has been intriguing looking up information on it. It really interests me about how much effort was put into making this game. Well, I really don't know how much of the game is out there, if anything significant at all. I know that there are interactive video scenes compressed into Cinepak code when the player interacts with NPCs to get information and other things in the game. I have watched videos on YouTube about scenes from this still embryonic-stage game (or, maybe fetal-stage, if you might want to get technical about it). There is a documentary about the game that is coming soon, but I have only seen the trailer on YouTube. I am sure that some people are most curious about this obscure, incomplete game. I obviously am. Does anyone else know anything more about this topic? I assume it might be very little. Atari kept it really under wraps. Thanks for listening. 

My Dad’s family invested heavily in those drawers. They taped every show they had interest in and would sit and cut out commercials.  All tapes got a number and what was on them was documented on index cards and put inside those old time photo albums. My family thinking the drawers were made of wood stacked them about six high. Unfortunately the weight of the tapes destroyed the bottom two drawers. 

I have a VCR that is saved but that hardly gets used.  I still do have several VHS tapes with stuff that has not been transferred to DVD.

That's awesome!  Thanks for sharing!

Just noticed this posted by retroillucid over on Atariage. 
I checked and the link will allow access to the post and ROM whether or not you are signed in so non members are fine, HOWEVER if you are a member be sure to post a THANKS as well. 👍🏻
Being the huge ColecoVision fan I am I had to share the news for anyone not aware. 
CollectorVision shares the prototype ROM as they tend to do. 
I don't feel it's my place to share the ROM here so if you are interested check out his post on AA HERE to grab it:
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/358637-he-man-motu-prototype-for-christmas-2023/
 

There were other development systems, like Felix and I believe one called Rapier. But, whether or not they were before Alpine I do not know.

It's in the serial number, the second digit (not counting the B) tells you the year (3 for 93) and the third tells you the month (6 in this case). There is an Atari internal document explaing this; I will include it in the 3rd edition of Clipped Claws.

Was there a dev kit before the Alpine? What was Cybermorph developed on?

And power an Atari?  When do we move?

The orientation of the habitat's dish towards the sun takes all that light and runs it down light tubes that illuminate the entire space.  One would assume that a dish of that size, being some miles across, would be able to generate enough electricity 24/7 to accomplish a lot of tasks, heating, cooking and cooling being just a few.

Ahh.  Gotcha.  Solar panels to power some lights maybe? How could you eat?  Plan on cooking anything with heat or just raw foods?  Sounds interesting.

Naw, more like this...

 

 

Ultra-zoom version:

 

Prior to the Harmony cart (and subsequent Melody boards), Yarusso was getting boards from Joe Grand (AKA Pixels Past).  But when the option to use flash carts opposed to programming EPROMs and soldering boards, that's when he changed over.  Unfortunately, Yarusso kept a monopoly on those Melody pcbs, to the point that nobody can even purchase the boards for their own projects.  Likewise, the information on how to flash them has never been shared, either.

Far as I know the boxes and manuals Al has been outsourcing for the past few years. I only state this as I've seen posts from him when he got these items back from a print shop and not been happy with them, or had the items shipped straight to PRGE so they were ready to be assembled to have for sale.
I didn't know that Fred was the only one able to provide PCBs? What happened with Joe from Pixels Past? I want to say I've seen some projects with his logo on them that were more recent and weren't related to Atari, but still I remember Joe providing earlier PCBs in the mid 2000s.
 

The pcbs always came from Fred - both he and Chris Walton created the Harmony, and the Melody pcb (and variants of it) are a Harmony board w/o the USB + SD interface board.  But is Fred programming them, or is John C?
Yarusso always printed his own labels and manuals, and possibly the boxes? (though I think he might have out-sourced those).

Their even cheaper if you purchased the physical cart.

What John Champeau does for the Atari 2600 is nothing short of amazing. I started with Champ's Galagon, Wizard of Wor, and have now added Elevator Agent. These samples are enough to tell me that he is the Wizard of Atari 2600. Currently I play them on a 7800, but right now I can only dream that he or another genius will make it possible to also emulate them on the 2600+ and even the VCS-800. Yes, I'm one of those who'd like to have it all. But for today as Frankie Valli might sing it: 🎶 ...So close, so close, and yet so far. 🎶 😀
 

The ROMs are priced very affordably!

Champ Games sourced a supplier for the labels and manuals.

The parts are being provided by Fred Quimby aka Batari on the AA forums. But I think the initial labels and manuals were likely printed by Al or whomever Al uses for those since I believe that is of the exact same quality. But the PCBs were coming from Fred.
 

An article on GAMES THAT WEREN'T provides info and links to preview versions of Defender and Stargate for Atari 8-bit computers! 😲😎
Main article here (links to separate articles for each that contain the archives to download) 
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2023/12/defender-and-stargate-discoveries/
 
 
 

This is really cool!