Re: [stella] VCS Hard Drive

Subject: Re: [stella] VCS Hard Drive
From: Rob <kudla@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 13:29:27 -0500
On Sunday 19 January 2003 03:36, Glenn Saunders wrote:
> >tethering an Atari to a PC to get it to do neat stuff feels more like
> >cheating.
>
> Not necessarily a PC, just anything that can act as a makewav-style
> file-server.

I have a Helio (out of production PDA by Vtech) that has something like a 
75MHz processor (no FPU, sorry would-be Doom2600 authors), can run Linux, and 
has a serial input and an audio output.  I haven't used it in a year or so 
and now that you mention it, I'm thinking of throwing Linux and makewav on it 
to do what I'd originally hoped to do with my MP3 CD player before 
discovering that 10-15% of ROMs converted with makewav freak out the Cuttle 
Cart if you MP3 them.  

That would be probably as far as I could go with it, but maybe someone who's 
better at serial port programming and/or hardware hacking could take it 
further - you can get a Helio fairly cheap on ebay at the moment.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=helio

The next step would be to somehow make a 4K RAM cart and figure out a way for 
the Helio to directly write code to the RAM during gameplay ;)  I don't know 
how much space would be left over after you get a Linux kernel, sound driver 
and UI (I'm not even sure I'll be able to get a zipped complete Good2600 set 
on there, I think it only has 8MB of battery backed RAM and 2MB of flash for 
the OS) but it seems like while they're available, it's the obvious next step 
in hacking external devices to the 2600.

More Helio-related links:

Helio home page (increasing number of dead links):
http://www.myhelio.com/

Linux for the Helio:
http://vhl-tools.sourceforge.net/

Rob

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