Discussion on:

Oh boy, Space Invaders! (Cracking Open the Atari 2600 video game console)

As I do Cracking Opens on these pieces of vintage electronic equipment, I marvel at one thing -- they still work. I'm am almost certain this Dell workstation I am using will NOT be working 30 years from now.

Do you still play games on your Atari 2600?

That was my fav.

Anyone know if they have it for pc and where to get it?

Thanks

Stella is one of the best Atari Emulators around.

Just Google it, and you will find hundreds of sites to download this magic program.

Also do a search for Atari Roms and you'll find your favorite games.

Works very well. I have Pitfall and a slew of other ROMs, too.

...is my hero!

Find a Flashback 2 (not a Flashback). It is a plug and play TV unit (like the joystick games), that looks just like a mini Atari 2600 (it IS a mini Atari 2600, with no cartridge slot), and about 30 games on ROM. Comes with 2 original Atari Joysticks (you're going to HATE playing Pitfall on Stella with regular PC d-pads, and aftermarket solutions like the Stelladaptor or other Atari 8 way style USB sticks are going to cost you as much as the Flashback 2).

You can find this at Target, Walmart, or other retailers... or google it.

But make sure you get the Flashback 2. The original Flashback is a NES on a chip doing emulated games, and evidently bites.

We bought a Flashback 2 when they came out a few years
ago - it is the genuine Atari experience with my favorite
old games. It includes Pitfall.

I remember reading at the time that Atari commissioned
an engineer to build an emulator console. He was a fan,
though, and gave them much more - a modern Atari 2600
that lacked only the cartridge port.

The Atari Museum has a "hack" link describing how to
install a cartridge port on a Flashback 2 so that you can
actually play your old cartridges on the new machine...

http://www.atarimuseum.com/fb2hacks/

This has to be one of the coolest things any tech company
has done lately. Now if Apple would just re-release the
Apple II... (grin)

Here is something that may help you out:

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=4959

Could be on Mame32 if you can get a copy of that somehow.

My first car too! 4-door and a kind of semi-nasty blue. I miss that old beater.

Cheers!

http://www.hotrod.com/featuredvehicles/hrdp_0611_72_nova_w2w/photo_02.html

Gotta love the old beater that let's you make some serious cash from the unwise or unsuspecting...

Funny how Novas are respected by both young and old now(either with 22's and slathered in gawdy paint or tricked out with the slicks n skinnies with a weind blower pokin out of the hood)...yet in the late 70's it was grandpa's ride and so not cool.

Same here. Also a nasty blue 4 door. Loved the low-tech ride so much that I bought a '66 Chevy II (base model Nova) with power NOTHING!!! Not even a radio. I like to tool around and let the road noise just wash over me. Aaahhh...

Had an old Atari 2600 laying around in the basement a few years back and decided as a joke to cram into it an 8 port router, I had to take the old guts of the console out, but the router fit perfectly in the space, then just had to feed the patch cables in through a hole I cut in the back.

It sat on the office network for about 2 years, used to drive people nuts what that old machine was doing in a server room.

I miss the 80's and pixelated games like Indiana Jones. Best game ever was Gauntlet, was so ahead of its time, 4 player action with great sound effects and voice over when a character needed food, about to die. Played the hell out my console. (sob)

I still use that line frequently when something is on the fritz.

We had the 2600, tons of games and loved them. Neighborhood friends were always over playing, and we became known as 'The Cartridge Family' because of all of the games we had.
I had all the Activision games - loved the Tarzan yell when Pitfall Harry grabbed the vine! Remember the 'Imagic' line of games, including a kick-ass Space Invaders rip-off called 'Demon Attack'? I found a 2600 with about 20 games at a yard sale several years ago and grabbed it up cheap.

We actually started off with a Pong game that my father built from a HeathKit electronics project. It had CRAPPY slider controllers.
Yeah, the 360 is great but it's amazing to look back...

Funny you should mention playing games on my 2600. I have two...one is hooked up and ready to run, the other still works and is collecting dust at my mom's house.

Once in a while, when my wife and I are feeling nostalgic, we'll fire up the 2600. There's nothing like an evening of playing Fishing Derby or Adventure on a classic 2600.

This is an unmodified 2600. During the first big sales year, the small hex buffer chip (4050?) blew by the millions here in the North East.

Atari supplied a anti-static mod kit consisting of silver tape that went across the switches to the center metal housing, and diode/capacitor pairs that went on the joystick input lines (to be soldered to the circuit bd, replacing the disk caps) to prevent the static charge from damaging the hex buffer chip.

The switches would jam as there were inexpensively made. The other common repair items was the 9v jack soldered to the circuit board, and the joystick input connectors (bent pins).

We repaired many thousands of these things - I remember them stacked up around the shop in huge piles.

I play some Ataria, SNES etc. ROMS on my PC, but prefer the arcade ROMS from my childhood, ORIGNIAL Mario bros., Donkey Kong (and DKJr.) Joust (which is also on the ferry to Vancouver Island, a fav of mine, Elevator Action just love shooting our the lights and watching them fall on the bad guys heads, tempest (which always rocked), and a few others of course.

You be careful with that 2600 though, these new fandangled electronic things can be tricky to get back together if you are not trained properly.

I have introduced my kids to the 2600 and all of it's glory. Sometimes they'd rather play that than the Playstation!

Mike

I bought a 2600 off eBay a few months ago. For the price of a new game for the XBox, PS3, or Wii, I received a working 2600 with all the connections and about 20 common games.

Some of those 25-30 year old games haven't held up well over the games ... but some have. I have a few games that are still a lot of fun, and frankly, offer a lot more play value than some of the latest games.

There's a very active hobbyist scene (see atariage.com) and some folks have released 'homebrew' games that are just as well-designed as the better original release games from the 70s-80s.

Was it tapped? Or taped? I don't see any screws...

i still have one i bought in 1976 for my daughter,with all the setup{wires,joysticks etc},and about 20 working games.any interest. good daddy

Intellivison was my console, really good interaction and the graphics were the best at that time. Sea Battle was my favorite game, kinda like the board game Risk, but with navel equipment. Wished mind still works though.

If you had bought the Atari 2600, it WOULD still be working! Mine is...

Intellivision versus Atari... might be the ORIGINAL Linux versus Windows debate.

Anyhow, I've got a working one. I picked it up at the Bakersfield Goodwill for $5.99. I got a Cuttle Cart 3 from Chad Schell Electronics for $150.00 for it. You can google for more information.

How nice to hear people still discussing on that after nearly 30 years...
I had (and still have somewhere in my parents' house) a 2600, if I remember well my father bought for me during a businees trip in the US, ahead of its official distribution in Italy.
I was very happy with it, didn't like the Intellivision but at the time thought Colecovision looked better, at least for what I could guess from advertisements on Topolino (the Italian Mickey Mouse's weekly comic book)!!

Sooner or later I'll check if my 2600 still works, though I may have problems with the controllers that I later used (and abused) with my Commodore 64!

The teen age...

I remember a cartridge company that used to make the Intellivision cartridges in playable form for Atari2600. You could get the HIGH RES Intellivision Baseball for Atari, it looked like an Intellivision cartridge with a fat base to fit the 2600 console.

I might be a 2600 fanboy but only a loser would have Intellivision; bloated games, requries more memory and a whole new console, keypads don't work as long as 2600 joysticks,and you have to buy all new cartidges as the old Atari cartidges are no good.

Until they come out with Intellivision SP1, I'll stick to the 2600SP3. Intellivision is for n00bz!

In my experience with the 2600, the joystick controllers were the weakest point. A friend and I together bought a 2600 shortly after it was released. The first model we had was defective: it must have had a bad video chip! Its replacement worked well, though we had eventually had the springs in the joysticks give out from use! In later years Atari changed the internals of the joysticks, but I can still recall them wearing out from overuse.

LOL! You guys are killing me. The best part is there is a thriving community of propeller heads that still argues these points vehmently, and there are still strongly held opinions on all of these issues...

Is the Atari 2600 a better GAMING console? Or is it that the INTV had games that were truly more engaging and intellectual, a better harbringer of today's complex plot oriented games? (I personally think both are generally true, but not necessarily absolute).

And controllers... NOTHING gets a flame war going stronger. People are so particular about this part. The 2600 controllers were great. Cheap, reliable, easy to fix, and with very few moving parts, but only 8 directions and one fire button. The INTV consoles were uncomfortable, but on certain games that 360 disk really shines. They also had the membrane keypad. Everyone hates the 5200 controller, the first analog console controller ever. I, and a small other fringe of lunatics, love it. I can't stand d-pads, and ANYONE that grew up during or post Nintendo NES loves them and can't fathom a REAL joystick. Get those different opinions in one forum, and you've got an eventual flame ware for sure.

The sound and the graphics loocked better on the Intellevision, dont know why and some games were better like one of a naval battle that had a huge map and you commanded subs and other battle ships. I had 2600 and I loved it (river raid, moon patrol, dig dug, combat, pac man, chopper command, frogger, etc.) but that naval war game I saw at a friend's house in the Intellevision really caused me envy

I too felt that same envy when I purchased Donkey Kong for the Atari and my friend got it for Coleco Vision (perhaps it came with CV...I'm not sure). His version looked and felt very much like the arcade and I believe it had all the levels. My version of course looked...well, it looked Atari with only two levels.

I had a major temper tantrum as a child while playing video games (and only then...go figure) and I distinctly remember impressing several friends with how well the Atari joystick withheld the extreme pressures of my rage...

Picture this...remove the rubber cover from the joystick and you're left with a slender plastic tube sticking up from the base of the stick (I did this for palying Activision's Decathlon series of games). Now, sitting at a homemade desk built from particle board (that pretty tough chipped-stuff), you get enraged from being cheated by the game...you pressed the button to jump, but your decathlete overstepped the line....RRRAAARRRR! With right hand gripping under the stick and in a dumbbell curl fashion, proceed to slam the stick into the underside of the desk. I kid you not, I have the desk still in my father's basement and it has a myriad of half-moon and oval-shaped divots in the underside of that desk. I think in the 8 or 9 years that I played with Atari 2600 and my Commodore 64 (the Joystick could be used on both), I probably only went through about 5 or 6 sticks (the last 2 or 3 were definitely flimsier than my first several)...unbelievably tough sticks though. I really should take a picture of the underside of that desk. Of course, if I posted it somewhere, I'd feel even more sheepish than I already do for both acting that way and reporting it here now. :-P

Viva la Memories! (I'm sure that's not French, please don't correct it.)

Last nite I was marveling about the video capabilities on my XPS M1530 and looking for a better video card for my PC (currently an Nvidia 7300, suggestions are welcome!) and now that I looked at some screen caps of these games of yore I just stopped to think about it for a moment. The way we had to stretch our imagination was just FANTASTIC. I am not dizzing what videogames have become, but our time was just different, and I am glad we are here go compare and enjoy technology this way. Thanx!

A common habit was marking the year and week of manufacture on the chip. A chip with a 7748 would indicate one from 1977, week 48 for example.

That's an interesting fact I did not know. Thanks.

Wow I havent seen one of these for years how things have progressed!!

That's an adjustable inductor. The thing that you would have noticed inside is a ferrite core that moves in or out, adjusting the inductance of the coil, which is the enameled wire wrapped around the outside of it. Very likely it has nothing to do at all with "sound output".

NTSC sound is provided by an FM subcarrier that is offset from the (surpressed) AM video carrier by 4.5 MHz. The adjustable inductor most likely adjusted the FM subcarrier to exactly that offset for best sound quality.

Lol,

I have a modem for mine. You used to download games and paid by credit card per game downloaded. I bought that back in 1979 or 1980. The modem was "fast" 300 baud.

This is an older model. The later ones did not have the cast pot metal housing. They had sheet metal shields that were held together by twisting tabs on one part into slots on another. BTW, I repaired hundreds of these back in the early '80s. The most common problems were the cracked solder on the power connection and damage to the 7805 voltage regulator from third-party reversable-polarity 'wall warts'.

It was the first gaming console in my family and neighbourhood and boy we were the envy... I have moved on to a Wii, but the best part is it still works even today...

I miss the sound of the controllers after some abuse. All those bits of plastic grinding around inside.

The 2600 was one of the best simple 2 player game consoles. I also have a "Super charger" for the 2600 that gave it more memory and allowed more sophisticated games to be played on it. It plug into the game console and you uploaded the programs through cassette tapes. Allowed some 4 player games and 3D games. Still amazed how well it works even now.