--- Christopher Tumber <christophertumber@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>
> >1 - Fundamentals of soldering - How to make a junk
> walkman work again
>
> I don't understand the significance of the Walkman -
> Are you just looking for something to solder on? It
> seems like diagnosing and repairing a Walkman is a
> pretty big detour from the point and would be better
> suited to some other class....
>
> If you want to teach soldering, why not get some
> unassembled 2600 PCBs (ie: Atari Age) and assemble
> them (Either solder in an EPROM with the class'
> programming project or maybe have them put a socket
> in them for more general use...)
What I had in mind was to get the student's feet wet
in soldering. There's nothing worse then botching what
could be a perfectly good EPROM cart. Now that I think
about it, getting a junk walkman to work would
probably be a waste of time.
I like your idea there, creating an Atari 2600 cart
such that when completed, it would work perfectly. No
programming, but just getting used to soldering. A
passing mark would be having the cart actually
functioning properly.
> >2 - Basic ATARI - Taking an ATARI ROM image,
> >downloading it by WAV format onto a newly
> constructed
> >ATARI cartridge
>
> Uhh... So you're going to build "Cuttle Carts"? That
> seems pretty... ambitious...???
>
> I really don't think this is what you mean to do...
> I think you mean to assemble carts, which involves
> burning ROMs so you'll need an EPROM burner, but
> that can be shared by the class and would be an
> awful lot more feasable than expecting everyone to
> show up with a "Cuttle Cart" (or even a
> Supercharger...)
Supercharger...that's what I was looking for.
Okay...so let's change the supply list to eliminate
the Supercharger and have the EPROM burner as
optional.
The point of this course was to get the student's feet
wet in burning an EPROM with a working ATARI 2600 game
on an assembled cart. Again, no programming. Let's
combine that with Course 1.
> IMHO calling it an "Atari Electronics Engineering
> Course" would a real misnomer. Assembling carts is
> not a sophisticated job (tedious and time consuming,
> yes) particularly since all the parts are so readily
> avaliable "off the shelf". Unless you're actually
> going to teach people to design/build a "Cuttle
> Cart" (or some other sophisticated project like
> reverse engineering the TIA or something) you're
> actually going to be spending 90% of the course
> teaching game design and programming. I'm thinking
> something "Atari 2600 Video Game Production Course"
> would be a lot more appropriate.
Noted...althought that would also make for an
interesting college course as well (Fully assembling a
working 2600 system).
Okay, so let's rename it AVGP...Atari Video Game
Production and leave AEENG to someone with a more
technical understanding then me. ;)
Thanks for the QA!
John
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