Re: [stella] Re: Need programmer: Atari 2600 RPG Project

Subject: Re: [stella] Re: Need programmer: Atari 2600 RPG Project
From: Chris Wilkson - MCD <cwilkson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 07:44:06 -0800 (PDT)
> 
> Chris Wilkson said:
> 
> >I hafta be selfish here.  I don't own a supercharger, and I loath, detest,
> >despise, abhore (point made) the idea of making my 2600 dependent on a PC.
> 
> Sorry, I got a little carried away on that brainstorm, but I was just
> outlining possibilities.
> 
> >Why not do this with a cart?  The cost may be more, but it's not huge.
> >I can build my Mega Cart for around $20 (granted, no packaging, docs,
> >or label).  And I would be more than happy to burn (and play ;) ) test carts
> >for anyone who asked.  I might even make blank loaner carts available to
> >developers.  And the thing is easy to use!  No serial i/o, no waiting for
> >new data to load.  Just "ask and ye shall receive".  Bang!  New data.
> >
> >I really want to see a project like this happen.  But the 2600 community is
> >small enough without limiting the audience to supercharger capable gamers.
> >And using the pc as a drive just flat destroys the spirit of what you're
> >doing.  I can see maybe using it as a fileserver...one load per game.
> >Maybe.  But a game should not swap data to/from the pc whie it's running.
> >It's just wrong.
> 
> Your cart has up to 128K ROM and 16K RAM if I remember correctly, right?
> That is enough for a pretty big game.  Are you using EEPROMs, and if so,
> what sort of burner would I need to test something using your cart?
> Testing a program of this type isn't possible on current emulators, and I
> couldn't deal with the delays in having someone else do testing (I'm the
> type who'll change one instruction, compile and run, repeat until it works.
> =) )

Erik,

I use a standard 27XX series eprom (27C010 I think) + 32K SRAM.  So any
standard eprom burner would work fine.  I wanted it to be easy to use.

-Chris

> 
> At a production cost of $20, the final price would be around $35-40
> including an author royalty (more than the $5 of Rescue Bira Bira and
> Edtris, I'm sure) and shipping.  That isn't too bad if the game world
> rivals NES Zelda or Final Fantasy.
> 
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