PTherapist wrote:

Received an Atari 2600 Jr. & a bunch of games today and set about testing it: […]
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Received an Atari 2600 Jr. & a bunch of games today and set about testing it:

Of all the 2nd hand systems I've bought in the past, this thing just about tops it for how pristine and in good condition it is. Aside from some slight dust, this thing is practically brand new, not a scratch or scuff on it, I'm very impressed!

As you can expect, it's all working great and I now finally have a real Atari 2600 to add to my collection. Going to save it until Christmas Day to play it though, as it was a Christmas present from the family, I'm traditional like that. 🤣

Next year at some point I plan to get an SD Flash Catridge for it, but the 12 games I have so far should suffice in the meantime.

Amazing. I've always loved Atari since my childhood days, I had a 2600, but somehow it disappeared decades later (I think I can blame some parents for that), but I can play the games with my Mac emulators. All I need is to buy a bluetooth version of Atari's controller. I can make one with parts of an old controller, but I am not in a hurry to do that.

My favorite games were the classics: Missile Command, Enduro, River Raid. I used to play them with my dad.

bfcastello wrote:

I've always loved Atari since my childhood days,

You likely know this, but just in case I'll mention the 2004 Atari Flashback 2 is a nice & relatively cheap substitute. Good build, good sticks, and it can be modded to take cartridges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback … ari_Flashback_2

It's awesome to see people enjoying old hardware whatever it is so this question is not meant to discourage the enjoyment and pursuit of anyones hobby but I was wondering if I'm alone in feeling that having been of the age to own an Atari 2600 at the time its the one retro platform I have no desire to revisit ever, I'm wondering if the people who are into it are younger than me or simply just had a nostalgia to play with a system they had time appropriately during their youth?

Shagittarius wrote:

It's awesome to see people enjoying old hardware whatever it is so this question is not meant to discourage the enjoyment and pursuit of anyones hobby but I was wondering if I'm alone in feeling that having been of the age to own an Atari 2600 at the time its the one retro platform I have no desire to revisit ever, I'm wondering if the people who are into it are younger than me or simply just had a nostalgia to play with a system they had time appropriately during their youth?

There is only one correct answer. It's quite simple...

https://youtu.be/h4fZcirE9aI

Yeah if I saw an intellevision or a colecovision on the side of the road I would certainly stop to pick it up, I'd be excited. If I saw an Atari 2600 on fire on the side of the road I wouldn't piss on it to put it out =P.

pewpewpew wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

I've always loved Atari since my childhood days,

You likely know this, but just in case I'll mention the 2004 Atari Flashback 2 is a nice & relatively cheap substitute. Good build, good sticks, and it can be modded to take cartridges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback … ari_Flashback_2

Yeah they sell it here in Brazil. It's almost exactly like the one I had previously. As usual with things here in Brazil, they sell expensive.

But I thought I could do a cheaper one with a raspberry Pi and a custom case to look like an Atari. It's a project for the future, when I have some time.

Shagittarius wrote:

Yeah if I saw an intellevision or a colecovision on the side of the road I would certainly stop to pick it up, I'd be excited. If I saw an Atari 2600 on fire on the side of the road I wouldn't piss on it to put it out =P.

L-O-L ... although, I gotta say, the homebrew scene has done amazing things with the 2600.

Decided to revisit my attempt at mixing ADPCM on the X68000. I hadn't noticed before that the description on page 303 of Inside X68000 is copypasta from a YM2608 datasheet and is NOT the actual format used by the MSM6258. It says on the previous page that the real format is 不明 (not clear) 🤣.

The correct one seems to be this but with the order of the nibbles swapped: https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Dialogic_IMA_ADPCM

Shagittarius wrote:

Yeah if I saw an intellevision or a colecovision on the side of the road I would certainly stop to pick it up, I'd be excited. If I saw an Atari 2600 on fire on the side of the road I wouldn't piss on it to put it out =P.

This is possibly the funniest thing I've read on Vogons in a long while.

I never liked the 2600 myself either, by the way. 800XL has a very fond place in my heart though.

Designed this for a case badge:

Original:

Shagittarius wrote:

...but I was wondering if I'm alone in feeling that having been of the age to own an Atari 2600 at the time its the one retro platform I have no desire to revisit ever, I'm wondering if the people who are into it are younger than me or simply just had a nostalgia to play with a system they had time appropriately during their youth?

Yah. My working-theory is you had to have been a little kid growing up with these. I was a little older, already in the arcades, and the 2600 versions of those games are just unbearably bad.

I was gifted a FB2 in 2004, and it's still mint in the box, in the back of the closet, waiting to be precious to somebody else. Lovely sticks, great style, horrid 'games'.

And I sure can't cast stones -- I /did/ have a Coleco Combat. Loved it. Took it to pieces. Made experimental controllers. Just listened to thoses "rrr-rrr-rrr" motor effects... I'd totally like another one of those to spend time with.

Swapped the DVD-ROM CD-RW combo drive for a multi DVD drive (burner) on my ThinkPad T42 and cleaned the Cybernet Elite-4i Zero-Footprint-PC up (removed the price sticker and cleaned some of the marker off), will need to do more and fix the chassis as some of the plastic is either missing or there's a crack.

System before the cleaning

System after the small cleaning

Inside

System specs:
80GB Western Digital
CD-ROM drive
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz
2GB DDR
Intel Graphics (yuck)

Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon being installed

Playing Dynablaster and Gianasisters with my son today, on this Amiga.

I gave up on trying to get Windows 98 to behave and on trying to find a perfect browser for that. Instead I am tuning up a Windows 2000 Professional VM and I installed BWC kernel extender just for a modern browser. I will install apps for vanilla win2k that won't make use of BWC, like WinZip 14.5, iTunes 7.3.2. That will retain the vanilla feel. And I will set up a theme for New Moon 28.x / SeaMonkey 2.49.5 that will resemble Netscape 9 so it will be good enough to be my retro VM.

bjwil1991 wrote:

System after the small cleaning […]
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System after the small cleaning

Inside

That system looks great. I love that form factor, looks like a modern-style micro computer. Would be excellent for emulating old micro computers. 🤣

Installed Star Trek Bridge Commander on my recently built Windows XP gaming rig, then dived in to adding mods which then crashed the darn game! I'd forgotten how picky it was.

I'm on Windows 2000 Professional, theming my New Moon 28.x and SeaMonkey 2.49.5 to look a lot more like Netscape. I just need the original desktop icons (can be PNG, I can make the ICO later) for both 4.x and 9.x versions of Netscape. Themes used are SeaZilla (for SeaMonkey) and Moonscape (For New Moon). For SeaMonkey I had to use another add-on to ignore Seazilla's incompatibility.

Here's what I got so far:

wiretap wrote:

Designed this for a case badge: […]
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Designed this for a case badge:

Original:

That's a pretty good job. What software did you use to draw this with?

The Atari 2600 was still going strong in the early 1990s. I remember swapping cartridges with friends around that time.

Errius wrote:

The Atari 2600 was still going strong in the early 1990s. I remember swapping cartridges with friends around that time.

I can't say I had that luck. I was still playing Atari 2600 and I had recently been gifted a Phanton System (one of those clone SEGA consoles) when the 90's were beginning. I used to play them with my dad. I never owned a Nintendo console, really.