Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Gonna reflash the cart because Shamus, the original, isn't on it at the moment. I would never have remembered the Option key thing.

Man, that's awesome. Shamus is worth jumping through those hoops to play again on real hardware.

Every now and then I get overwhelmingly depressed when I think about all the great games I've never played. I've spent a lot of time and money (more time than money, but substantial amounts of both) surrounding myself with gaming options. I could walk upstairs right now and fire up any number of old gaming systems, each of which has thousands upon thousands of good games I tried yet.

None of those old classics deserve to be forgotten. I, and Cathryn Mataga, appreciate your efforts.

Normally I just use it as a computer because I'm not a hardware person, but couldn't a Raspberry Pi or any of the "Altoids tin sized" single board computers (SBC) be useful if you have to send data signals? My understanding is many of the 40 GPIO pins that are not dedicated for things like power can be progammably accessed to send or receive data or combined and used like an old-fashioned serial port, or one of the other devices on the board may act as or provide a serial port.

One guy who demonstrates working with hardware said that thin wire as used in wire-wrap is inexpensive. Alternatively an Ethernet cable can be cannibalized by chopping the two ends to provide 8 wires.

Gonna reflash the cart because Shamus, the original, isn't on it at the moment. I would never have remembered the Option key thing.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Yes, definitely. I don't have a Flashcart solution for the Apple of C64 here. I guess I would categorize these games as, "Ones I Could Only Play On The Atari 8-Bit, Though They Might Have Been Released For Other Non-IBM Systems Too."

Most of those games were also released for the PC ... although those versions are terrible. You're talking old DOS, CGA versions of stuff. Almost any other 8-bit versions are bound to look (and sound) better.

I thought the intro to Crypto was superb. If the additional $3 inspired it, that was $3 well spent.

My oldest console copiers, the Super Nintendo ones, can connect to a PC via a parallel port. None of my laptops have parallel ports and neither does my workstation. I think the only machine I own that has one is my server, and I'm not taking everything offline just to use it. Fortunately, a parallel port connection is not required -- you can dump straight to floppy with them.

My Nintendo 64 copiers are a mixed bag. I have one (the D64 Junior) that's parallel only, so that one's out. Then I've got two (the D64 and the CD64) that read from CDs, and the Z64 which reads/writes to Zip Disks. The CD-based ones support parallel connections for dumping games to a PC, but (a) pretty much everything that needed to be dumped has already been dumped, (b) if I really needed to dump something, I could use the zip disk one, and (c) all of these are out in my garage gathering dust at the moment, so it's a pretty moot point.

I have a Sega Genesis flash cart that I ordered from Tototek. I think I said it connects via serial, but I just checked and it's a parallel one too. Some of these things don't even work in Windows and require DOS. They're definitely dated.

All the current flash stuff either (a) connects via USB, or (b) reads SD cards. If I were in a place in my life where I was again wanting to have 30 consoles hooked up hot and ready to go, I would invest in some of the newer ones. I know for NES, SNES, and Genesis they have USB/SD solutions now at (I think around) $100 a pop.

The only vintage console I owned when games were still being released for it was the Atari 2600. I bought my NES when people were selling them to buy a new Genesis or SNES. I bought my SNES when it was on sale because the PlayStation had come out. I didn't buy a real Genesis until the 2000s. Even while I owned these systems, I probably had a dozen or less physical carts for them. I've always really been about computer gaming, so the nitpicking people do about emulation (the colors aren't quite right in the Japanese release of doki poki sumo hoki!) really don't bother me. The last time I fired up my emulation computer was when you guys (ICJ and Vark) were here. Just not enough hours in the day for everything.

Flack wrote:That's a pretty good list of classic games! For some of them I think it just depends on the system you grew up on. Like Choplifter and Lode Runner and several of them, I played them on the Apple II and the Commodore too.

Yes, definitely. I don't have a Flashcart solution for the Apple of C64 here. I guess I would categorize these games as, "Ones I Could Only Play On The Atari 8-Bit, Though They Might Have Been Released For Other Non-IBM Systems Too."

But I don't want to lump computer families in together.

I think all of the games you mentioned that don't work sound like multi-loaders ... is there anything on the cart's compatibility list about those?

There is! The cart can't handle that.

Which.... sucks, but is understandable. There is a lot of talk about how "Alternate Reality: The City" is a transcendent Atari 8-bit game. I'd love to try it. It is two disks and there are paranoid checks for piracy once you have it going.

-- "Argh!"

You may have mentioned it and I might have missed it, but how does that flash cart connect to your PC? I have a couple of older flash carts that require a serial port which are now almost worthless. Seems ridiculous to keep a 486 around for an old Genesis flash cart.

Ah, yes. The device that goes from the Atari to the PC is the "SIO2PC" device, which uses USB.



Mine looks like that, but I paid $3 extra in 2007 to get the version that had the blue LED instead of the red one. Doing so partially inspired the introduction to the Cryptozookeeper novella, available exclusively on the Cryptozookeeper CD.

That's a pretty good list of classic games! For some of them I think it just depends on the system you grew up on. Like Choplifter and Lode Runner and several of them, I played them on the Apple II and the Commodore too. But yeah, the flash cart is the way to go for sure. Not only are original and copied floppies dying left and right, but I recently read that people are starting to have trouble with getting vintage blanks to even work.

I think all of the games you mentioned that don't work sound like multi-loaders ... is there anything on the cart's compatibility list about those?

You may have mentioned it and I might have missed it, but how does that flash cart connect to your PC? I have a couple of older flash carts that require a serial port which are now almost worthless. Seems ridiculous to keep a 486 around for an old Genesis flash cart.

This is a great site that has a screenshot for tons of Atari 8-bit games:

http://atari.fandal.cz/games.php?name=

You can also search on stuff, like "paddle."

So far my game list is:

Choplifter
Archon
Archon II: Adept
Jumpman Junior
Lode Runner
Wizard of Wor
Championship Lode Runner
Shamus Case II
Ataritris (Tetris clone, doesn't work?)
Bruce Lee
Jawbreaker
Kaboom!
Junior Pac-Man
Kangaroo
Food Fight
Q-bert II
Forbidden Forest

Looks like I have 300KB of space left on the cart.

Autoduel would not load. The Witness, Seven Cities of Gold and Mail Order Monsters take two disks and the cart can't handle that. I have M.U.L.E. and Ultima 4 as individual flash carts, so I don't need to put them on the cart.

Gonna try to find a working version of David's Midnight Magic and Night Mission Pinball -- the disks I had would not load properly.

There are also three or four "lost classic" 8-bit games that seem to make lists that I'll discuss tomorrow. But I am trying to find things like lists of "the 50 greatest Atari 8-bit games" and the like.

As to why I am doing this...

I have one project going to get a hard drive on my Amiga 1200. I want to put a number of games I've heard about on that Amiga 1200 and play them and learn something from them.

It also struck me that there's a bunch of great games I actually enjoy in 2012 that I can't play... but I could play them if I simply connected my Atari 800XL up, put the games on a flash cart and got them going that way.

I had already connected my Atari 800XL to my television a while ago. I was 99% of the way to being able to say, "I want to play Choplifter or Lode Runner" and just turning on the television and doing it.

I'm psyched that, at least for the Atari, I seem to be all the way there.

CHRIST. This took all night.

Props to the dude at www.atarimax.com but there desperately needs to be a document explaining how to get this shit to work.


I have an Atari 800XL (8-bit) computer. I have a SIO2PC cable. The blue LED version. I have an Atarimax flash cart. What I want to do is program the flash cart with Atari games.

What I had to do is connect the SIO2PC cable to my Windows 7 machine. I needed to login to the Atarimax forum and get the Windows 7 drivers as an attachment to a post.

I then had to install and run APE on my Windows machine and use a .ATR disk image that I created using a program called Max Flash. Max Flash lets you take actual games (in .exe or .atr form) and assemble a disk image.

With APE running, I then had to load the disk image I created in Max Flash in Drive 1.

I then had to turn my Atari 800XL on, but hold the OPTION key down. That was the trickiest part, and that is not documented ANYWHERE. I only happened to remember it. If you hold the OPTION key down, a menu will come up on your Atari 800 and say, "Hey, do you want to erase the cart and write the disk image on your computer?"

That is what it is doing now.

OK, I needed to get all this shit in one place. I am going to take photos and screenshots and put thsi together as a how-to guide on Caltrops. Keep in mind that all my stuff here is from 2007 -- the Atarimax creator eventually made it so that you can plug the cart itself into your PC (I think). Saves a few steps.