is there anything that works with the 2600 junior? i've heard that synthcart doesn't play nicely with it
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
Hahah! that's the best part 'bout chiptunes, 'testing' the consoles!
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
Victory Road wrote:
is there anything that works with the 2600 junior? i've heard that synthcart doesn't play nicely with it
I've never tried my synthcart on my Junior, but I dont know why there would be a conflict. AFAIK, the Junior has the same chipset, no fundamental differences. The only thing I've ever seen a problem with was a slight difference in the cartridge slot. have a slightly damaged Popeye(?) cart that wouldn't retract the dust cover on my light sixer but would plugin fine on the Junior. Never had any 'compatiablty' issues with running games, but your mileage may vary 
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yogi wrote:
So Little Scale, wile we're on the subject, you got any time line for the a2600 interface. Know you got your hands full at the moment, but if its near term I got'a start saving my pennies!
tomorrow.
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it won't be a physical product you can buy, just instructions, open source code and schematics.
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
little-scale wrote:
it won't be a physical product you can buy, just instructions, open source code and schematics.
Cool! another project!!
EDIT: didnt read you first post.. VERY WAY COOL 8)
Last edited by yogi (Mar 1, 2013 5:27 am)
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Victory Road wrote:
is there anything that works with the 2600 junior? i've heard that synthcart doesn't play nicely with it
Synthcart won't work as well because of the switches vs buttons on the console itself to select the settings
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yogi wrote:
little-scale wrote:it won't be a physical product you can buy, just instructions, open source code and schematics.
Cool! another project!!
EDIT: didnt read you first post.. VERY WAY COOL 8)
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
little-scale wrote:
Victory Road wrote:is there anything that works with the 2600 junior? i've heard that synthcart doesn't play nicely with it
Synthcart won't work as well because of the switches vs buttons on the console itself to select the settings
OK that makes allot of sense; never thought of that, the diffs with the C/BW, ect switches.
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
little-scale wrote:
yogi wrote:Cool! another project!!
EDIT: didnt read you first post.. VERY WAY COOL 8)
Such a very good year!! And should work well with the Junior too!
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yep. the junior is actually my atari console of choice for gigs - i just bought another one recently actually.
eventually i'd like to run a minimal dual atari 2600 setup for live set 
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
little-scale wrote:
yep. the junior is actually my atari console of choice for gigs - i just bought another one recently actually.
eventually i'd like to run a minimal dual atari 2600 setup for live set
Oh yes, the Junior is so compact.. I got this one and used it a little, but I'm a real 'wood grain' nut, still hanging on to the heavy sixer I got in the '80s. There's a little magic in that black plastic.
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Milwaukee, WI
I've always had reliability issues with my 2600's. Too many capacitors to change! I'd like to see some of the new fabbed PCB designs come to fruition. There was a pic of one posted on atariage that was never posted of again, and thelonghorn engineer was working on one called project unity. Maybe the flashback (which uses a recreated TIA as part of a larger SMT chip, AFAIK) is now the best option?
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I've never ever had reliability issues with my Atari's, and I've got about 4 of them.
Weird!
Maybe get a PAL one 
?
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
Theta_Frost wrote:
I've always had reliability issues with my 2600's. Too many capacitors to change! I'd like to see some of the new fabbed PCB designs come to fruition. There was a pic of one posted on atariage that was never posted of again, and thelonghorn engineer was working on one called project unity. Maybe the flashback (which uses a recreated TIA as part of a larger SMT chip, AFAIK) is now the best option?
Yea I'll have to say there can be age issues. the switches get damaged., 7805s blown, but I've never run across cap fails. Just got my feet wet with a GameGear, now that was a mess. I have a couple 'Sears' heavy sixers with trashed mylar ribbon cables. On the good side, the 4 switchers seem pretty rugged.
Thelonghorn eng's project was a cool idea but you needed to swap chips, so it wouldn't help if you had a blown chip.
I think the future is with FPGAs, there are allot of open IP cores out there for classic systems, especially in the MAME world. One big problem is reverse engineering the custom chips, not allot of info on the old silicone. Some times it boils down to de-capping a chip and tracing gate by gate.
Imagine a generic SoC platform that can be re-configured to a host of classic systems, at the gate level.