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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Moviecart â Full length color movie and audio cartridges for stock Atari 2600
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if this would run properly on a moded Atari Flashback 2...
bitwize wrote 1 day ago:
See also: the port of Dragon's Lair to the TI-99/4A.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB3oHdSjfCE
Salgat wrote 1 day ago:
So the cartridge is the computer and basically treats the console as a
dumb display? That's not as exciting as I was hoping.
MegaDeKay wrote 1 day ago:
Ever hear the term "racing the beam"? That came out of game
programming for the 2600. There is a book named after the technique
that is pretty great and well worth a read.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam
JetSetIlly wrote 1 day ago:
The 2600 is streaming the data from the cartridge, including the
program that is run on the 2600. We should remember that there's no
frame buffer in the 2600, so there's considerable work done by the
2600 every frame - just as there is when its working with any other
cartridge.
The 2600 kernel that runs on the 2600 is excellent but the encoding
method is what makes a real difference here. Lodefmode did a great
job with this. The use of playfield/background and player colour is
exceedingly clever.
Salgat wrote 1 day ago:
It reminds me of the gameboy player for the SNES, where the entire
gb console ran inside the cartridge and used the snes for inputs
and display. In this case a PIC controller is the cpu in the
cartridge doing the heavy lifting.
greenbit wrote 1 day ago:
No frame buffer. The target CRT display scanned an electron beam
from left to right in about 63 microseconds, snapped it back in
just a couple more microseconds, working gradually downward to
produce about 200 such lines before taking a couple milliseconds to
return to the top. The 6507 had to literally write the pixels into
that raster in real time, and was just skin of the teeth able to do
that, hence the phrase 'racing the beam', leaving just the retrace
times for any other program code to run. To get video from a cart,
all that still has to happen. Pretty cool.
mdswanson wrote 1 day ago:
Now, if we just add Sloot's compression technique, we can include an
entire movie library on a single cartridge!
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloot_Digital_Coding_System
creativenolo wrote 1 day ago:
8k for a prompt perhaps
cpeterso wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting mystery!
> The Sloot Digital Coding System is an alleged data sharing
technique that its inventor claimed could store a complete digital
movie file in 8 kilobytes of data â violating Shannon's source
coding theorem by many orders of magnitude. The alleged technique was
developed in 1995 by Romke Jan Bernhard Sloot â¦
> just days before the conclusion of a contract to sell his
invention, Sloot died suddenly of a heart attack. The source code was
never recovered, and the technique and claim have never been
reproduced or verified.
utensil4778 wrote 1 day ago:
I love the absolutely crazy things happening in the retrocomputing
space right now. We have these chips with many, many orders of
magnitude more computing power available for peanuts, and the obvious
thing to do is apparently to cram them into these ancient machines for
fun.
Throwing a bunch of compute into a cart and using the "real" computer
as a very bad GPU is such a fun idea.
hinkley wrote 1 day ago:
I want to see retro gaming built on ESP32 hardware.
utensil4778 wrote 1 day ago:
Action Retro just posted a video of an AppleII card based on the
ESP32. It plays Doom
waltbosz wrote 1 day ago:
exact spot in video where it plays Doom
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/NT5fb6wR5M8?si=b1WKlpCk5BNE8ETc
hinkley wrote 21 hours 42 min ago:
ESP32 with 4MB of RAM.
ljf wrote 1 day ago:
[1] And [2] Though I'm sure there are loads of others!
URI [1]: https://github.com/harbaum/galagino
URI [2]: https://www.hackster.io/john-bradnam/galagino-esp32-arcade...
MegaDeKay wrote 1 day ago:
Outstanding! And props to the author for creating a 2600-style manual
for this with "The Jerk" (Steve Martin at his finest) on the front
cover and "more great titles to add to your collection" on the back,
including Star Wars and Kramer vs. Kramer. I'm curious why he chose
"Model CX2615" for this though. That was "Demons to Diamonds" and was
released in 1982, though his manual clearly shows "(c) 1977 ATARI,
INC."
greenbit wrote 1 day ago:
Just waiting for 'E.T.' to get the treatment. =P
wombatpm wrote 1 day ago:
They did fix the game already.
URI [1]: http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/
k12sosse wrote 1 day ago:
Keeping it period accurate.. 7 more years until cloak and dagger would
come out!
URI [1]: https://youtu.be/tB6Uj2RGhPU
germinalphrase wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
Thatâs some deep nostalgia right there.
cs702 wrote 1 day ago:
This is exactly the sort of gem I love to find occasionally on HN.
Done not for money, but, if I may paraphrase George Mallory, because
the challenge was there.
Someone had to do it.
VelesDude wrote 1 day ago:
I always say, I was so stupid/pointless - it had to be done!
greenbit wrote 1 day ago:
Right? Expecting to see this on hackaday soon, if it isn't already.
pryelluw wrote 2 days ago:
About four hours of total content from 4GB is really nice. The
cartridges seem to go for $25. This is a cool medium to explore. Gonna
have to put me on one of these.
YesThatTom2 wrote 2 days ago:
Iâm impressed! The way the 2600 does graphics I would have thought
this to be impossible but you did it!
manny_408__ wrote 2 days ago:
Wow very cool
jbosh wrote 2 days ago:
This is exceedingly cool use of cartridges. Just as a thought
experiment I've often wondered if some of the cartridge based consoles
could be expanded considerably. Along the lines of this project, would
it be possible to throw an arm chip in a cart and send these as h.264?
I'm not at a computer but would love to see how differently some modern
codecs compress.
VelesDude wrote 1 day ago:
On top of all the other examples, Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi 2 was
a cancelled SNES games from 1995 that was going to us a 21MHz ARMv3
processor for AI. I just like the idea that they would throw in a
processor that was probably about 5-10 times the power of the main
system CPU.
That a very similar spec ARM processor would become the brain of the
Gameboy advance many years later.
Uvix wrote 1 day ago:
Assuming by SNES you mean Super Famicom (since thereâs no way a
shogi game was going to be localized!) - it did release. The NES
port was cancelled, though.
JetSetIlly wrote 1 day ago:
Yes. The Harmony Cart and the UnoCart/PlusCart both have ARM chips.
Games have been made that make full use of the chip. Probably the
most impressive IMO being Robotron from ChampGames.
The PlusCart also includes a WiFi chip for Internet access.
Exciting times in the world of the Atari2600.
SomeoneFromCA wrote 1 day ago:
I was thinking about making a chess cartridge for a famicom, with
something like lower end arm in it.
KerrAvon wrote 1 day ago:
You may already know this: there were pretty decent chess programs
for 6502 CPUs back in the day; you donât really need an ARM
unless you want to run a modern chess engine.
SomeoneFromCA wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
Not for famicom afaik. And I see no point putting yet another
6502 on cartridge.
Uvix wrote 1 day ago:
There was a Super Famicom shogi title that did exactly that,
Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi 2.
SomeoneFromCA wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for the info!
raldi wrote 2 days ago:
See also tom7âs Reverse Emulation video:
URI [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0
pafje wrote 1 day ago:
The "making of" video is also great :
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTlNVUmBA28
Lutzb wrote 2 days ago:
Definitly! Check for example [1] allows for realtime raytracing on
the Super Nintendo using a Cyclone-V FPGA.
URI [1]: https://github.com/ShironekoBen/superrt
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