At 12:39 AM 5/28/98 -0500, you wrote:
>This is going to sound insane, but you can get an amazing and bizarre
>look into what the VCS is doing by physically disassembling it and
>pressing your hand against the underside of the processor board while a
>game is running. What the processor is doing shows up on the TV as
>various interference patterns. The best results I've had so far have
>come from pressing one thumb against a couple of the pins leading to
>the cartridge slot and the other against some of the resistors about
>halfway down the side. (This is on a six-switch NTSC Sears dated July
>28, 1980; your results may vary.)
>
>What's going on, I think, is that your body acts as a large resistor,
>letting you connect things (like the address bus and the video)
>together in such a way that analog things like the color phase are
>tweaked enough to be visible but digital signals are basically
>unaffected. I'm going to have to go to Radio Shack tomorrow and
>get some big resistors so I can examine this more systematically.
>
>Tangentially, if I ever had to pick a program to enter in a Core Wars
>competition, the Parker Bros Frogger cartridge would be at the top of
>my list. That game can take some amazing abuse (bus lines shorted
>together, etc.) and still keep drawing a valid playfield in spite of
>it all.
>
>eric
>
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>
uh, huh.. and Robin Williams once did an 'Televangelistic' comedy routine,
a portion of which is... "and I want you to grab the back of the TV set and
feel the power of Comedy... Yeah, as it shocks your ass across the room,
SOMEBODY will have a laugh!" :)
Ron
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