Jump to content

dauber

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    587

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    13

 Content Type 

Posts posted by dauber

  2. Atari 7800 Cartridge port TIGHTNESS

    in Atari 7800

    Posted

    So I have an Atari 7800 with a very tight cartridge port, BUT:

     

    This is NOT the usual cartridge port tightness that can be cured by cutting or removing the plastic band around the cartridge port.

     

    This is not the usual "Activision/Imagic cartridges are a tight fit" situation.

     

    Atari 2600 cartridges are absolutely fine. They go in and out without a care. Just like on any Atari 2600.

     

    But Atari 7800 cartridges? Forget it: they're so tight that I actually popped the motherboard out of place just by removing a cartridge. I even tried completely removing the plastic band around the cartridge port so that all that was left was the bare cartridge port, completely exposed. Still nothing. It's got a death grip on the cartridge PCB and doesn't want to let it go.

     

    Anybody know of a way to fix this problem? I posted about this on AtariAge, and most I got was, "I heard there's a way to fix that." But nothing further...

  3. WANTED: Feedback for Space Invaders for Atari 7800

    in Atari 7800

    Posted

    I'm looking for the next episode of the Atari 7800 Homebrew Podcast (you can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or use this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/homebrew78 )

    What are your thoughts on Space Invaders? (BTW, it was actually a pretty popular title at the table at Midwest Gaming Classic; lot of people wanted to try it out.)

    This game will be covered on Episode 9.

    You can also e-mail text or audio to homebrew78 -at- fab4it -dot- com.

    Deadline is 11:59pm CDT on Wednesday, April 19. Any comments from after then will be addressed in a later episode.

  4. The Atari 7800 Homebrew Podcast

    in Podcasts

    Posted

    Unfortunately, despite things that actually were under my control, this episode is not live from Midwest Gaming Classic. If you're at Midwest Gaming Classic, come visit the Pie Factory Podcast table and try out some homebrews, including a few that haven't yet been released! In the mean time, you can listen to some thoughts on Super Pac-Man, yet another classic from Bob "PacManPlus" DeCrescenzo.

     

    http://fab4it.com/homebrew78/media/hbh_episode_008.mp3

  6. Midwest Gaming Classic 2017

    in Events & Expos

    Posted

    Hey there...I'll be at Midwest Gaming Classic representing Pie Factory Podcast (Jimmy G will be there with me as well) and The Atari 7800 Homebrew Podcast. I'm not sure where they'll be setting us up -- we might not know literally until we arrive at the hotel -- so I figured I'd just give a heads-up.

     

    What we will have:

    - Some random giveaways.

    - Stickers from our Zazzle stores so you can advertise us. :)

    - you can play Tinkle Pit (via MAME)

    - And...this is what we're really excited about...with the very generous permission of Bob DeCrescenzo, we will have two of the new 7800 homebrews that are about to be released but aren't released yet -- Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest and Super Circus AtariAge -- available for demo purposes, so if you wanna try 'em out on a real, live 7800 (with an Edladdin or UberArcade controller to boot!), come to our table! We'll have other homebrews available to demo, including all the ones I've talked about during my homebrew podcast episodes and a few that will be featured in upcoming episodes.

  7. 8BitGuy modding an Atari 7800

    in Atari 7800

    Posted

    I think on Longhorn Engineering's page it tells you. The previous 7800 mod I did had that wire and the guide as to how to connect it. Unfortunately, the sound wasn't balanced -- on Beef Drop the TIA was super-loud and the POKEY was barely audible. I just grabbed a mod off eBay for my backup 7800 and it actually came with a 6.8k resistor for that exact problem.

  16. Contemplating one's mortality...ughh....

    in Off Topic

    Posted

    Heh. I've been working on #4 my whole life. I'm amazed that my annual physicals have always come back good (basically, the only thing ever wrong with me is a vitamin D deficiency, most likely because I usually have my physicals done in the winter) despite my obesity. Thankfully my family has good genes; long life runs in the family. But I want to treat those genes the best I can.

  17. Contemplating one's mortality...ughh....

    in Off Topic

    Posted · Edited by dauber

    Good God, I'm so sorry, RickR. :(  You and your family will be in my thoughts and prayers.

     

    My healing really isn't much -- I wasn't hurt too badly; I limped the rest of the way to work (and I was able to take my bike over for a really quick repair and was able to ride eight miles home the same night) and my knee recovered within a few days, and my arm is just a little sore, just maybe a sprain, if that....the $241 (AFTER insurance) X-rays revealed that all was good.

     

    Thing is...it's hard to talk to my wife about this stuff because it's hard for her to *hear* it...she doesn't want to think of losing her husband. I didn't even tell her about the instructions I typed up.

  18. Contemplating one's mortality...ughh....

    in Off Topic

    Posted · Edited by dauber

    Okay, this is just going to be weird, so I apologize...

    About a month ago I had a nasty spill on a sudden patch of ice when I rode my bike to work. I fell and hit *really* hard, and my arm is still recovering. (Didn't break anything, but it was still nasty.) And I realized had I slid about 12-18 more inches, I could have ended up in Lake Michigan. I know how to swim, but, man...I don't know how well it would have worked out in that cold water with a fat guy on a bike and wearing a backpack! (Man...and the one day I didn't have a camera attached to the handlebars...I could have gotten some spectacular footage of an epic spill!)

    Anyway...I don't know what came over me, but I got this idea to write out instructions as to what to do with me should I be discovered dead or unconscious as a result of a bike accident and stuffed them inside a pocket in my backpack. What to do with my various material possessions, what to do if someone puts up a "ghost bike" in my memory (spoiler: either have my wife disgustedly throw it in the Chicago River or have it fixed up and donated to a charity; I know they mean well but I freaking HATE those things), what to do in terms of a funeral, etc.

    And the thing is...after I printed it out I felt completely mortified, almost as if I signed my own death certificate or something. I almost felt physically ill. My wife and I haven't made out a will yet and I *know* that a lot of the things I wrote in that note would probably not be...let's just say "allowed"...on a real legal will, but it was stuff that I was absolutely sincere about. (Such as, in my memory, have the city of Chicago designate a day in which people are allowed to take sledgehammers to cars that are parked or pulled over in bike lanes despire there being a wide open parking space immediately adjacent to the bike lane -- I can't STAND THAT, and I was dead serious about that, and conversely designate a day in which pedestrians are allowed to shove cyclists over if they're riding on sidewalks. Again, people would chalk it up to my sense of humor, but I'm absolutely serious about that. If you're on a bike, get OFF THE DAMN SIDEWALK unless 1) you're only using it as a VERY BRIEF crossover *and* 2) there are no pedestrians in the way.)

    Really, it almost felt like I was writing a suicide note, even though the first thing in the note said, "If I don't survive, believe me, it was *not* a suicide attempt" because...I would never do that. Ever. EVER.

    After a few days I dug the note out and tore it up and flushed it, and I felt better. Then later on I stumbled upon the document on my hard drive and re-read it and once again felt like total death...

    Ever do anything like that and have that same feeling??? How did you deal with it???

  19. A piece of my childhood about to be removed from the planet...

    in Retro

    Posted · Edited by dauber

    Kind of going along with nosweargamer's post about Sears...a place that brings back fond childhood memories for me is not just closed (it's been closed for a couple of years) but is now on the verge of a judge-ordered demolition: Lincoln Mall in Matteson, IL.

     I lived in Bourbonnais, Illinois when I was a little kid. We didn't have a mall back then (there is now one in neighboring Bradley), so my familly -- my parents, my ten-years-older brother, and I -- would take a trip to Lincoln Mall every month. It was about a half-hour drive. That was the nearest place to shop other than the mediocre Meadowview Shopping Center in Kankakee. I'd always be excited to go. Usually on the way there we'd stop at Frank's Nursery & Crafts, a store my mother loved. While she was in there, my dad and my brother and I would often just sit in the car waiting listening to the radio (usually a baseball game, as my dad and brother are both big baseball fans), or my brother would check out Ortigara's Musicville in the same strip. After that we'd go to the mall. Maybe a trip to Venture would sneak in either before or after the mall. (Those of you not in the know, Venture was basically a store along the lines of Target but more rustic, I guess.) My brother would venture off on his own or maybe stick with my dad and me, and my mom would check out clothing stores and such. Usually we'd go to Record Bar, maybe one of three book stores in the mall (as predicatble -- B. Dalton and Waldenbooks, sometimes the much larger Kroch's and Brentano's, and usually my mom would join us for that), basically stuff that wouldn't bore us. I remember there was a weird novelty place called Joker's Wild, which sold a bunch monster masks and had one of those crazy mirror thingies. My dad and I would share a box of popcorn from KarmelKorn. There was no food court at the time - all the food joints were spread apart. My dad and I would usually have lunch at the McDonald's there. Three things I remember about that McDonald's: 1) the burgers were actually pretty good there, unlike at most other McDonald's locations; 2) in the middle of the menu above the counter there was a second-hand one-minute timer with a sign saying that your order would be ready for you by the time the second hand made a full circle -- and damned if we didn't always get our order in under a minute!; and 3) it was the place where the flavor of onion first made me throw up (they forgot to leave off the chopped onion; I always found the flavor of onions disgusting).

     

    And of course there were other common mall stores in that mall -- Stride Rite, Chess King, Wicks'n'Sticks, the Baldwin piano/organ store (and there was always, ALWAYS, a fat guy in a suit demoing one of the organs at full blast; not the same fat guy every time, either!)...oh, but no Orange Julius. Instead there was a competing business called Orange Bowl. Record Bar eventually became a Musicland (a Sam Goody-owned store). The anchor stores in its heyday were Carson Pirie Scott & Company, J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward (closed in the late '90s I think), and Wieboldt's (closed in the late '80s; don't remember what - if anything - replaced it in the mall....maybe a Sears?? I know there was a Sears when the mall closed but I don't know whether it was Wieboldt's replacement.)

    Sometimes we'd go into the Montgomery Ward. I remember they had a Commodore VIC-20 out on display with a little sign with a very, uhh...basic BASIC program you could type in. Eventually the Vic-20 was replaced with a C-64. (Wow...I'm a programmer for a living now, and it all started with the Commodore demo models at Montgomery Ward in the early '80s!) If you exited Montgomery Ward on the lower level and turned to the right, there was...well, here's the story.

    One time when I was a REALLY little kid...maybe about five years old...we went into this place my brother loved called LeMans Speedway. I don't remember much about it, but I remember it had a lot of pinball machines. Next time I went to that place it was shortly after I first discovered Pac-Man and other video games. LeMans Speedway was now called Bally's Aladdin's Castle. And so began the tradition of my dad giving me a dollar for video games. Man, I was a bratty kid...sometimes I'd cry when my last token was gone. (Once when my dad wasn't looking, when I spent my last token on a Donkey Kong game that didn't last long, I claimed that it ate my token. My dad tracked down a worker, who would open the coin box and trigger a credit for me, so I got a fifth game that day!) Once in a while my dad would claim one of the tokens and we'd play a two-player Ms. Pac-Man. Some of the popular machines had a second monitor attached and placed on top of the cabinets so that others could watch the game in progress. There was a video jukebox. Many remember the bumper cars, but I don't; where the bumper cars were was a room full of primarily cocktail tables, and years later the cocktail tables were gone and replaced with NeoGeo cabinets.

     

    This Aladdin's Castle was a magical place for a kid like me. What I remember most is the smell of burning circuits. I only encountered that aroma in two places: there, and YesterCades of Red Bank. I also remember the oddly-shaped tokens. It was at this Aladdin's Castle where I first saw Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man & Chomp-Chomp (dead serious about that, too), Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, Professor Suck-Man, and Pac-Land. Man, what a great place. My dollar, sadly, never lasted too long, and my dad wouldn't give in to my pleading for even just one more quarter, but if I saw a stray token on the floor or if my brother had any extras he didn't want to use, I was allowed to use 'em.

    Lincoln Mall was also where I met The Lone Ranger. Thanks to some Google searching and finding a blog post complete with a photograph from the event, I now know that it was in August 1979, just a couple of months shy of my fifth birthday. We took our monthly trip to Lincoln Mall, planned around the fact that The Lone Ranger would be there. Well...I had zero freakin' clue who this "Lone Ranger" guy was, but my parents made a huge deal about how I have to meet him. So anyhoo...my mother wandered off to the stores she usually checked out, while my dad and I got in line to meet The Lone Ranger. Right before we get to his table, my dad bent over and told me, "Be sure you tell him, 'I see you on TV!'" Now, inside my mind, I'm thinking, "Wait, this guy is on TV?? Huh. Well, whatever you say, dad!" But when we got to his table, I did exactly what my dad told me and said, "I see you on TV." The Lone Ranger responded; I don't remember what he said, but I'm certain it was very friendly. And he gave me an autographed picture. And that was that.

    Years later -- I think I was in college -- I was cleaning out a junk drawer in my dresser, and I found a couple of autographed pictures. One was from this guy named Eric Jackson, a Michael Jackson impersonator who appeared at The Carriage Lane Mall in Kankakee some time around 1984, 1985-ish. I have no idea why I stood in line for his autograph, so I tossed the autograph. The other was the Lone Ranger pic. I remember thinking, "Ahh, yes, I remember that day when I stood in line to meet the guy in the Lone Ranger getup." The picture was signed "The Lone Ranger." No other information there. No contact info for his agency of record or anything, so of course, there's no way this was the real Clayton Moore. So the picture went in the garbage. Ahh....except...remember that blog post? Well...that blog post told me what an idiot I am, basically: I threw out a genuine Clayton Moore-autographed picture of Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger, whom I met in August 1979 at the Lincoln Mall. D'OH!!!! (To this day I haven't told my parents that I threw it out.) And now I live practically next door to Nicholas Senn High School -- where Clayton Moore was educated. So every time I take my dog out to poop, there's that constant reminder of what a boob I was!

    But anyhoo...

    Had some good times at Lincoln Mall. I remember some time in the '90s a couple of friends wanted me to join them there just to hang out, so after work I headed over there. In the space that once was Bally's Aladdin's Castle was now just an unnamed space, much smaller than Aladdin's Castle was in its heyday, that had a row of games on the left, and a row of games on the right; all modern stuff, no classics. It was sad seeing what it had become.

    My wife is from New Jersey, so I told her about the mall closing and of course stories of my adventures there. We traded stories of our childhood malls being closed. Yeah, I'm a big supporter of stores going back to the downtowns, but man, this is still sad. I lived in New Jersey from late 1998 until spring of 2006, when I moved to Chicago. Shortly after that move I took a drive over to Lincoln Mall...I got there too late -- it had closed for the day -- but I could tell it was a tragic shell of what it once was.

    Chris Rock once said that everywhere you go, there are two malls: the mall white people go to, and the mall white people *used to* go to. The former mall was Orland Square in not-too-far-away Orland Park. It always was a more attractive mall, but it had no arcade. And, sure enough, Orland Square is still going strong to this day, but sadly, it's no different from any other mall: a few anchor stores, and clothing stores for teenagers who want to be hip.

    I'm sure everything I typed is a common story with people my age. (Except maybe the Clayton Moore story...but let's face it: Jay Thomas has a MUCH better Clayton Moore story!) But still...just wanted to get this out.

  22. The Atari 7800 Homebrew Podcast

    in Podcasts

    Posted

    Say, I realized that I have a game picked out for the April 8 release (Super Pac-Man; there's a feedback thread for that on the 7800 forum), but...nothing planned after that.

     

    Any requests??

     

    Can't do Pac-Man Collection! yet -- need to do a ton of pre-work for that one (and have been working on it already for a couple of months!). I want to save Santa Simon for closer to Christmas.

  24. Would you collect Atari porn games from Mystique/Playaround!

    in Atari 2600

    Posted · Edited by dauber

    I dunno..if anything, maybe for resale value, but since I don't think I ever did anything like that (buy something I normally would keep for myself but just hoard it to sell for a profit), I really don't know. It's not so much that it's *adult* material, as...let's face it...Atari 2600 pornography is about as erotic as a dead Armitron watch...but some of it is disturbing. Yeah, just the fact that Custer's Revenge was even considered for release bothers me. No matter the intent: I don't care if those in charge were pro-woman and not a racist bone in their bodies and honestly just thought it'd be a laugh, it's just...not right. You don't go there. (Then again, this was during the age when game developers snorted coke in the office as some people drink coffee.)

     

    I guess when I look at it there are a few reasons none of the Mystique games are in my collection:

    - They're not easy to find and, ergo, expensive;

    - They just plain suck...really, they're low-quality ripoffs of much better games, for the most part;

    - Just not a high priority for me; right now my priority in collecting is upgrading my loosies to CIB versions.

     

    Okay, I'll put it to you this way: I won't put anybody down for wanting to collect this stuff. (And I consider myself a Christian, too.)  It's just not my bag, baby. Hey, if I buy a lot from eBay or something and there's a Mystique game or two, fine. (Although if it's Custer's Revenge, I'd probably....be very uneasy about keeping it around.) I'm just not going to actively seek that stuff out.

    Going the arcade route...we covered three adult games on Pie Factory Podcast, mainly because nobody else would. They were all basically the "complete a puzzle to expose a NSFW picture" type, pretty much just nudity, but one of them -- Miss World Nude '96 -- was so disturbing in its implementation that I didn't want to play video games for several days...

×
×
  • Create New...