Atari 5200 Guy

Does the 400 Mini have a format option? It’s very possible the USB drive’s file structure may have been changed and your 400 is not recognizing it. Let me see what I can research to try to help you. One question: what did you use to reformat the USB drive?

If you can't find it there try here: https://www.atarimania.com/pgemainsoft.awp?type=U&system=8

The creator of Atari's SIO interface is the same person who came up with USB. I would say both interfaces were probably related in some way. SIO is an interesting interface. You can power any 5-volt device with it if you need to. Disk drives could be stacked on one another and placed somewhere else as long as the SIO cable was long enough to reach it. You could have up to 4 disk drives, a printer, modem, and a program recorder. There was no speech expansion I'm aware of because POKEY could do it with some genius software programming. The 5200 also has an SIO port but it's in the form of an expansion bus.

A bit of advice: Even if you attract a small group don't give up. Keep it going. Sometimes it takes a while for something dedicated to a single product to shine and be discovered by newcomers. SPACE (the only Atari computer club left in America that I'm aware of) is still going and has a small group of people still a part of it. Even if it is a handful of people it's still hanging on. So don't give up. The newsletter looks nice and is full of information. I'm not a huge fan of the TI myself but I do have one with 3 games. I barely use it but it is a neat computer. Your newsletter brought a bit of insight to the system as a whole. But, my goodness, that thing gets long with add-ons! I think I'll stick with just the computer 😉. Learning how to program it would be of interest to me as mine didn't come with any books of any kind. I know these can most likely be found online but reading it through a newsletter really brings out the nostalgia for me.

While it is a cool mini computer, I feel it would be nice if it did receive more VCS exclusive content. I think it would benefit and be better remembered for games that were made just for it and not on every other platform in the galaxy. Just like XBOX has Halo, Nintendo has Mario, Sony has Gran Turismo, it needs its own games.

I just did a livestream last night showcasing the VCS playing ATS using Debian and Steam.

It played my ATS flawlessly. Whoever said the VCS couldn’t handle graphic intensive games was wrong. ATS has some impressive graphics. Not on the scale of CoD but can still be demanding. On my gaming PC ATS started crashing a lot. It never crashed or bogged down on the VCS. I’ll try it out with Borderlands 2 & 3, ETS 2, Sniper Elite, Saint’s Row, and Pac-Man CE DX. I’m curious at what the VCS is really capable of doing. Keep in mind mine has been upgraded to 16 GB of RAM. However the AMD chipsets Atari used are nothing to sneeze at. Those processors are gaming processors pure and simple.

It took me a while but Debian and Steam are installed. And look what my VCS is playing: That’s American Truck Simulator on an Atari! It just loaded. I’ll make one delivery and let you know how the trip goes.

I was very hesitant about doing the PC Mode because I take original integrity seriously. Probably more than I should honestly. Im doing this for a few reasons. Reason 1: The VCS has more modern PC chipsets in it than my gaming PC has ATM. It also has a much smaller footprint. Reason 2: I want to join in on this month’s VCS challenge. While I could use my gaming PC I thought using the VCS would simply be cool. Reason 3: We all need to face facts…all gaming consoles will reach the end of production and support. The Atari VCS will not be immune to this. If I can extend its ability to keep gaming then I’m all for it. Reason 4: I would like to see if it can handle my large Steam library. Those are my reasons. I’d rather play my VCS than XBOX to be honest. Long live Atari!

Debian on the VCS is underway. Please stand by…

Well, I don’t know if I did a good thing or a bad thing but since I don’t use my XBOX One anymore I gave my VCS the XBONE’s external hard drive. It’s 4TB. I’m going to try to install Debian again but it keeps looking like it wants to partition the VCS internal storage and I don’t want that.

Debian keeps trying to partition the VCS' internal storage space. I'm trying to find a way around that.

I'm trying to figure out how to get Debian on my Atari VCS. I have tons of old laptop hard drives lying around and an external hard drive case I can use for them. My PS5 is using it at the moment. I don't have a thumb drive that's more than 16 GB. The biggest one is currently attached to my VCS for all the games I purchased. I want to be able to access Steam without Windows because I have well over 300 games there. I'd like to see how it can handle my trucking simulators. I don't really want to use the PC Mode on my VCS because it just doesn't feel right but, let's face it, Atari branded or not it's still a computer.

Can the VCS use MAME?

I haven't been able to keep the multiplier up enough to beat my old score. It's a fun game but I'm obviously not very good at it. LOL.

I gave up for a while. I can’t get close to the score I made.

NeoSprint just got another update today. Does anyone know what it was for?

OK. Thank! You can have this one back.

And these too.

Here ya go.

This has been sold. Thank you.

This has been sold. Thank you.

That’s wild. Just a while ago BitCoins were not worth much.

My first attempt: 26,315

Imma going to have to setup my VCS now. Drats! I'm going to borrow the Atari IO World Champs Logo. I'll return it when I'm done. Thanks!