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Custom Handheld Atari 2600
Krimsen
sent in linkage to what has got to be the coolest hack I've seen in months. He built a portable atari 2600. Looks like a game boy, but it plays the old carts, and even features the old wood grain. Absolutely stunning. Someone's gotta sell these things.
We've already had posts like that too!
(Meanwhile, on CNN)
CmdrTaco Wins Vote In Florida!... Planet Earth Baffled!!
They just changed the matrix.
This wasn't Flamebait, it was Interesting.
Of course, i'm sure someone's going to mark this post as Flamebait now...
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Nope, Emmett's gone.
Interestingly Atari made their own Space War catridge. Games lasted a long time, particularly if both competitiors ran out of fuel!
Can anyone tell me why Space War was the only PAL only cartridge in an Atari catalogue I obtained in 1982? There were a number of NTSC only games around at the time, but most of these would not have worked outside North America for cultural reasons (baseball, that pseudo-Rugby League game they call football). Was there a legal problem with Space War?
It would be easier to just software emulate the Atari 2600 since the 6507 only ran at 1.19MHz. With many of todays PDA's and handhelds running processors at over 200 MHz it wouldn't take much work. The hardware interface from the PDA or handheld to the cartridge would be the only hardware job. Maybe a USB adapter so that you run the old games on your handheld.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would meet another Space War guy ;)...
I think me and my brother once played a single game (out of fuel) for maybe a whole hour. Don't remember, it was a _long_ time ago. And it was a cool game.
Wasn't there a limit of 10 minutes per game? Or did this apply to just some of the game variants?
Slashdot has run this article before. When you experience 'deja vu', it is a glitch that means they changed something in The Matrix (The Matrix was obviously a closed source project). Just don't complain and enjoy it in blissful ignorance, or exit The Matrix and eat mush over at k5.
(no offense, I love k5)
Mike
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Custom Handheld atari 2600s? As opposed to those regular, plain-jane mass produced portable Atari 2600s everyone used to have?
Not to be anal retentive, but slashdot headlines are starting to become less and less accurate as time goes by.
Its easy kids! To make news and articles on Slashdot, merely search for a particular subject in the archives, find a story, and post it for submission! Its that easy!
Has
futang futang!
It's a pretty interesting hack, and certainly one that I'm surpised he got working the first try ;) The reason why the atari's motherboard was not smaller to begin with are interesting; generally put you don't use long tracks for your health due to stray capacitance and all... And it wouldn't seem that RF is an issue from surrounding components because well, it's mainly digital.. and it worked for this guy :)
-bugg
Is it possible to Slashdot Geocities?
Something tells me we have seen this subject before.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Granted that this has been posted before, it's still the best hack I've seen for the old atari's. With X-mas just around the corner, wouldn't it be great to give/recieve one of these? Some people like me have tons of old Atari carts but no working console to enjoy them on.
Maybe if we hit this guy's site enough, he'll get the idea that we want these things.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
Kuro5hin already has an open submission queue. Go there if you want that.
Wouldn't it be boring if Slashdot and Kuro5hin were exactly the same?
- Joe
-Joe
...people wouldn't be stupid and post "Man, slow day for slashdot...they don't even read their own page." Its amazing how nobody that reads slashdot ever makes a mistake... or *gasp* miss a story themselves every now and then.
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This post is a repeat of about a billion other ones just like it. Group behavior is funny.
We all know by now this is a repeat. Oops, they messed up. Since I really don't have anything to say about the story (other than "that's kinda cool") since I don't now, and never did, own an Atari, I want to instead comment on how they might prevent repeats like this.
Open the submission queue! I have to wonder why they don't do it yet. Given that many people instantly saw this as a repeat (I didn't, missed that day), you'd think allowing them to moderate/comment on the story while in the queue would help...
From the FAQ answer as to "How about a page for rejected or pending story submissions?":
If you want to prevent worse stories, then open up the queue! That way people will be able to see how the community acts to their writing, and might actually get useful feedback. Since I have no way of judging whether a story is "good" or not, I have no way of knowing how to make a "better submission." The only other problem I can think of is repeats in the story queue.
You wanna know why you get so many repeats? I'd love to be able to go through the submitted stories and see if I'm sending in a repeat. But I can't! The only way I know I was being redundent is either after someone else's story was accepted. If they decide not to run a story, I never do! Let's say they decide not to run some piece that a hundred people think they should submit. Well... those hundred people can't see that they're all getting rejected, so in they come!
Yet again, he's missing the oppertunity. Sure, people will abuse it - but having hundreds of people going over to verify is better than just the few active authors. (How many are there? 10 to 20?) If you're really that constrained on time, then think please - you don't need to make this take more time - it can actually take less! Think about it as outsourcing the story submissions - the editors still choose what goes on the front page, but the readers can help by "moderating" the stories, allowing the editors to spend less time in the story queue - not more.
Yes, this is offtopic, but it should be addressed at some point. I know why CmdrTaco says he doesn't want to do it, and I just personally disagree. Since most of the thread is currently talking about how this is a repeat, I though trying to offer constructive critism might actually help.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
What about a nice middle ground, where moderators get access to the submission queue? Then give them a few 'submission points' to use there (as well as their standard 5 mod points), and let them work their magic?
/. sees the queue, but it should also help the truly good, non-repeat stories float to the top of the queue, where the /. guys can then deal with them better/easier.
:)
This should stop junk/troll submissions, since not all of
Imagine being a 'submission moderator' for a few days with a few points, and being able to mark things as '-1 Repeat' or '+1 Geeky'... Hell, I'd love to be able to correct the grammar/spelling in some of the submissions!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
If I remember my "Ancient History of America" class, teenagers in 1987, upon the receipt of Super Mario Brothers II (which in reality was not originally a Mario game but was a game called Doki Doki Panic for the famicom disk system (disk image name: yumekojo.fds ) that featured arabian characters instead of the mushroom planet people) were so enamored raw power of the 2-mhz, 4kb machine that they ran into the street to publicly burn their Atari cartridges, vowing never to be seduced by crappy graphics and gameplay again. Collections like my 76 carts are rare these days.
Of course, to play any of the classics, just get an emulator and down all 6 or 7-hundred roms from classicgaming.com . However, you only need one game. Combat. Combat revolutionized 2-player gaming (not an easy task considering it's predecessors like pong.... and.... uhm.... super video pong) and has not been surpased yet. Ever. Combat is, no conest, the greatest game of all time. Combat rocks. Period. End of Story. Hundreds of hours of fun at your local frat house. Play it today, or you will die an empty man.
Hmm... now we're posting stuff that's not even two months old... Here's an idea for a study: how does the "slashdot effect" change when we repost a story? How 'bout when we repost it three, four times? How does the "effect" vary with the Time Between Posts (TBP)? This would be an interesting study on the "collective memory" of an online community. Now, where can I find a bored grad student to thrust this on?
How can the fifth post of an article be moderated as "Redundant"? When I began composing this post, there were no other comments on the article at all. Think a little bit, please moderators.
Couldn't you do like an MP3 player and rip the carts to files and then have it able to upload those images to flash memory on the unit and thus save a shit load of space and having to carry carts? You don't really even need to have a PC for this. Just give the unit a way to plug into the cart-upload unit and manage the carts you have uploaded w/ some simple interface like the savegame manager on the PSX. It could be quite interesting.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Not sure how the contracts were written, but I don't think /. belongs to CT anymore.
/. feature entitled "A Day in the Life of CT"?
BTW, not trying to troll, but: what the heck does he do all day? Submissions don't seem to be cleaned up (links corrected, speling, grammar, etc.) and while it might take a while to check out 500 submissions, does it really take that long when your office has a T-1/OC-3/something-much-faster-than-my-dial-up.
BTW, I could be wrong about the length of time taken, or what clean up of submissions occurs. But when CT's favorite refrain is "we don't have time", it sounds a bit like an excuse from the days when he was still studying for exams. I'm just curious. How about a
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
actually, if all of the slashdot authors read EVERY story which came across the site, and could recall everything which was ever mentioned in quickies, i'd be seriously concerned for their social life.
just think, slashdot is free. there are no guarantees anywhere that one of the authors isn't going to go out and enjoy the big blue room. we are human we are allowed to make mistakes. perhaps this author thought that the story deserved more attention. perhaps he had never seen it. perhaps he just wanted to post it again. it's his decision.
if you people have a problem with slashdot, just stop coming. it'd make it much more enjoyable.
i for one am glad they reposted this article, as i wanted to read more about what the hard core techs at slashdot thought about it's feasibility as a commercial product, and how hard this hack is.
moral of story: if you have a problem with slashdot's authors, either filter them out or go somewhere else. i hate whiners.
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears