Vaporware made real Commodore Atari 2600 Cardapter

[Mr SQL]

 

    

 

The Commodore Atari 2600 Cartridge Adapter was Vaporware in 1980 but the R&D looked real:

  Was a prototype produced?

 This MADPlanet article from 2011 sheds more light on the mysterious Atari Cardapter suggesting if a prototype was produced it would have had to have been similar to the units produced for the Colecovision, Intellivision and Atari 5200 which were basically an entire Atari 2600 inside an expansion unit.

That's not really an Atari 2600 adaptor and the marketing was misleading. "playing Atari games on the other system with the adapter" really meant adding an Atari console to it; these adapters can be modified to run as a stand alone Atari 2600 clone console.

These Adapters were defended as the only possible way to play Atari on other systems at the time since 1 Mhz target platforms supposedly cannot in any way emulate or run each others programs natively.

Maybe the Game Loader was an Atari adapter that was truly different as described? 

This description details Commodore sound and graphics being used to play Atari 2600 games of all different types. 

It would be awesome to play Atari 2600 games with a VIC-20 soundscape and graphical skin!

Fake product to fool investors?
Maybe a fake prototype Cardaptor was presented at CES to lure unsuspecting investors like a mock up made from blinking Christmas tree lights cardboard and paper mache.

No real Adaptors only Knock Offs
It would have been easy to fool Investors at CES because there were no real Atari adapters on the scene just Knock Off Atari 2600 consoles that you plugged into your existing system which marketing called an adaptor, with marketing magic. 

I'm working on the real version of the product and Loader described to natively run Atari programs with CBM graphics and SID sound rendition! 🙂  

Here's the thread on AtariAge, in the Commodore section. The Loader is running a real Atari program written in BASIC and Assembly with no changes to the BASIC and Assembly code on a stock C64.  

CBS RAM and SuperCharger bank switching formats are supported transparently by the Loader and TIA graphics transposed to VIC-II in real time. 

Haven't added the sound yet, the SID is a subtractive analog synth like a Moog. Atari TIA to SID sound will be transposed dynamically by the loader in real time on 1 Mhz systems as described by the R&D team for that phat Commodore sound while playing Atari for real, on your Commodore 64.

 

[slobu]

Sounds like the Chameleon 64.  You can use that as a upgrade to a real C64 or a C64 clone by itself.

How are you dealing with the shortages going on?

[Mr SQL]

19 hours ago, slobu said:

Sounds like the Chameleon 64.  You can use that as a upgrade to a real C64 or a C64 clone by itself.

How are you dealing with the shortages going on?

The Chameleon 64 sounds really cool, I like that it has FPGA cores for the Atari 2600 and the C64.

I am not affected by chip shortages, Gameloader is running Atari 2600 program on an unmodified C64.

This is a software only solution using a soft ANTIC blitter accelerated by the VIC-II. 

I have just uploaded a surprising benchmark where it it is outperforming a real Atari 2600.

[Amigaman]

Any update on this project 2 years later?  I want this so bad!!!

[Mr SQL]

On 3/13/2024 at 6:01 PM, Amigaman said:

Any update on this project 2 years later?  I want this so bad!!!

Thanks! Yes I am working on the next version with more color support and improved sound. 

Here is a SuperCharger game running on a real Atari and in the emu on the C64:

This game takes advantage of the SuperChargers ability to dynamically change code to rewrite the soundtrack every level.

In the C64 emu the SID sounds even better than the TIA and the graphics are enhanced:

 

[slobu]

Sorry to go partially off topic.  Is this part of your C64 to 2600 project?  I saw your post in other forums saying it got leaked / stolen.  Hope you find a second wind with that project.

[Mr SQL]

25 minutes ago, slobu said:

Sorry to go partially off topic.  Is this part of your C64 to 2600 project?  I saw your post in other forums saying it got leaked / stolen.  Hope you find a second wind with that project.

Thanks. Yes someone broke the TIA to SID emulation and deliberately released a non-working version to make the C64 to 2600 project look bad.

 That was disappointing but motivated me to focus on improving TIA to SID emulation even more. 

I've been sidetracked with sound frequencies and envelopes but will be get back to working on compatibility for bB 2K and 4K games.