Atari Pong (Page 2/2)
82-T/A [At Work] MAY 12, 10:09 AM

quote
Originally posted by Australian:

I have some cool gadgets for games all play Atari , c64, Omega. n64 ps1 2 3 Dreamcast my favorite easiest to use is superxconsole or run same o/s on android tv.

raspberry pi3+ 20k games
raspberry pi4 30k games
pandora 3d 8k games
superxconsole pro 50k games
pc 100k games.




Yeah, MicroCenter (some of you may know this store) has an Atari Raspberri Pi3 that comes pre-loaded with a bunch of Atari ROMS officially licensed. It's maybe $30 bucks, but there's a shortage of RPis for some reason... so the prices are exponential right now.

Looks like it's $100 bucks now: https://www.microcenter.com...-kit-raspberry-pi-3b

And it says "In Store Only." I was just in the store in Vienna, VA a month ago, and they were totally sold out. They still had the "kit" just minus the RPi3... you had to supply your own.

[This message has been edited by 82-T/A [At Work] (edited 05-12-2022).]

Jonesy MAY 14, 03:29 PM

quote
Originally posted by Wichita:

Atari Pong was actually created without any code, but built with hardware circuitry alone.

I find that somewhat impressive.







I remember when I was in high school i dated a girl and her parents had one of those sit down pong tables.. Was pretty cool. Totally 70's.. Always wanted to take it apart to see how it worked.


Jonesy MAY 14, 03:34 PM

quote
Originally posted by Patrick:


I have my old Atari 520ST sitting in its box behind me as I type this. When I bought it brand new in 1988(?), I paid an extra one or two hundred dollars to have the memory upgraded to 1 MB. Yes, ONE full megabyte.

I used it back in the 90's along with my MIDI keyboard synthesizers, as the Atari had built in MIDI ports. It was a neat setup. I still have everything. One day I'll set it all up again.



I still have my Atari XE.. Which is basically the same thing as yours, but has the console cartridge port on it. It was compatible with the 2600 carts, and had its own carts as well. Had a keyboard, and port for a floppy drive, which i have. Still got a ton of games on the old big floppy disks. Gotta use two converters to hook it up to my tv though. From coax to AV, then from AV to my upscaler box, to hdmi to my tv, lol. Works good though.

The Atari of today really isn't the same company at all. Its more a few people who own the rights to the Atari name and games, and just license them out to companys to produce emulator consoles and stuff. That Atari VCS is basically just a emulator on a chip, not real "hardware"...

My favorite game..

Rescue on Fractalus.. Great game for its time.. First time i ever played something from a 1st person perspective.. You just fly around the planet looking for stranded pilots to pick up and rescue. Shooting ships and enemy gun towers and stuff. Sometimes an pilot you try to pick up might turn out to be an alien, and he'll jump up in front of your cockpit window and punch through it.. Used to make me jump when i was a kid lol.



Found this while looking around. This guy remade Rescue on Fractalus on the Unity engine. Plays just like the original, but with much nicer graphics.. It's pretty damn cool. Free to download as well.. He even made a VR version..

https://www.lsdwa.com/projects/fractalus/

[This message has been edited by Jonesy (edited 05-14-2022).]

Cliff Pennock MAY 15, 12:54 PM
I was one of the first (perhaps the first) persons in the Netherlands owning an Atari 800. The original, not the XL. That was long before Atari was officially introduced here. I started the Atari User Group and when Atari finally was about to be sold in The Netherlands, they came to me asking if I could write some demo program for them, showing off what their system could do.

A few years later they introduced the ST line of computer and before it was sold worldwide, they gave me a 520 ST to again write programs for it. I still have that system. If I recall correctly (will have to check), it has serial number 0000000119.
Max The Chainsaw MAY 15, 04:34 PM

quote
Originally posted by Jonesy:


I still have my Atari XE..




All this time i assumed I was the only one on this board who used Atari computers back in the day. I still have my 520ST (also upgraded to 1 full meg) and my 130 XE that was upgraded to 320 K! All my hardware was upgraded with whatever was available at the time. All of it is currently stored away in totes for several years now.

I miss them from time to time but too old (Lazy actually) to drag it all out and hook it up again.
IMSA GT MAY 15, 11:27 PM

quote
Originally posted by cvxjet:
All of the top brass were swingers....Kind of hard to concentrate on the biz when you are constantly chasing tail.





Funny thing is that I was friends with Jack Tramiel who purchased Atari and founded Commodore computers back in the day. We always had lunch at his house and talked about the past "antics" of the executives. Since they were based out of Sunnyvale (Borregas Ave), on the other side of the freeway was the Brass Rail. Before the 2600 was released, some of the higher-up's took (stole) several 2600 units and were selling them right on the top of the bar at the Brass Rail with a cardboard sign stating the price.
Nolan Bushnell was another unbelievable person. I remember his little rented garage in Sunnyvale where he designed pong. That era was one of the best times of my life.
RWDPLZ MAY 16, 08:01 AM
At the start of 2020, I started buying and fixing old Atari 2600 consoles. I wanted one of the originals made in Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, so I bought a 'Heavy Sixer' that was advertised as broken. After doing some research, it turned out I had what is still the earliest known serial number unit. The 2600 was released in September 1977, and the chips in the console were from the 14th and 15th week of 1977. It had obviously never been opened, and didn't have any of the updates described in the service manual. Got it functional after replacing all the capacitors, doing the updates, and replacing the RIOT chip, as well as socketing the other chips.

You can still buy a lot of NOS Atari parts from a place in San Jose that bought out the remaining inventory back in the 80's, I bought some of the repair and update parts from him. The ordering system is a throwback to 20 years ago, one step above mail order.

https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/
Jonesy MAY 16, 09:26 AM

quote
Originally posted by RWDPLZ:

At the start of 2020, I started buying and fixing old Atari 2600 consoles. I wanted one of the originals made in Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, so I bought a 'Heavy Sixer' that was advertised as broken. After doing some research, it turned out I had what is still the earliest known serial number unit. The 2600 was released in September 1977, and the chips in the console were from the 14th and 15th week of 1977. It had obviously never been opened, and didn't have any of the updates described in the service manual. Got it functional after replacing all the capacitors, doing the updates, and replacing the RIOT chip, as well as socketing the other chips.

You can still buy a lot of NOS Atari parts from a place in San Jose that bought out the remaining inventory back in the 80's, I bought some of the repair and update parts from him. The ordering system is a throwback to 20 years ago, one step above mail order.

https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/



That's cool, iv never tried to repair a Atari, but iv had to do many board repairs on old NES, Sege Genesis, SNES, and i just recently repaired a Sega Master System that had been dead in a closet for 25 years, lol.. Works great now.. And iv taken apart and fixed pretty much all the old handheld's.. Except for the Sony handhelds, never tried to take any of those apart. I sometimes buy broken systems that are really cheap, often get them free. They often just need a cleanup, or some minor soldering work to get them working again. There have been a couple times were iv had to hunt down a chip to replace, but those old chips tend to hold up and last for a long time. But most of them are still pretty easy to get. Fixed a Atari Jaguar last year, someone had plugged in the wrong AV cord to it and blew out the regulator chip. Quick chip swap and its up and running again.. I just hate to see these old consoles get trashed because of minor things that can be repaired. They are getting more and more rare, so i like to try to preserve them.

[This message has been edited by Jonesy (edited 05-16-2022).]

82-T/A [At Work] MAY 19, 08:21 PM

quote
Originally posted by Cliff Pennock:

I was one of the first (perhaps the first) persons in the Netherlands owning an Atari 800. The original, not the XL. That was long before Atari was officially introduced here. I started the Atari User Group and when Atari finally was about to be sold in The Netherlands, they came to me asking if I could write some demo program for them, showing off what their system could do.

A few years later they introduced the ST line of computer and before it was sold worldwide, they gave me a 520 ST to again write programs for it. I still have that system. If I recall correctly (will have to check), it has serial number 0000000119.




That's awesome! Do you have any pictures of the system you can post? Do you ever visit AtariAge.com? Lots of people there, a bunch from the Netherlands too.

I'm on there with the same name... minus the at work part... lol.