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Classic Games (Games) Hardware

Fixing That Old Game System 303

Posted by michael from the warm-up-that-soldering-iron dept.
larsoncc writes "Emulation is a great way to preserve past game systems, but what if you could keep these digital dinosaurs running for decades? Well, you can, and some of us do. It's not easy for me to 'let go' of that vintage (circa 1978) Magnavox Odyssey2, or toss my Atari 7800 in the closet because I don't have a power supply. Here's my article to help you solve common problems with 15 different systems, and general tips for the others. Viva la TI-99/4a!!"
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Fixing That Old Game System More

Fixing That Old Game System

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  • thats what emulators are for. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cyrax777 ( 633996 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:40PM (#10743762) Homepage
    I dont even bother with reparing my old systesm I just emulate them.

    • Re:thats what emulators are for. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What if nobody's made an emulator for your favorite obscure system? What if the emulator doesn't play it right? What if you want to use the original controller? What if you believe in respecting copyright law, no matter how ridiculous it may be?

      • Re:thats what emulators are for. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:47PM (#10743807) Journal
        Actually, it's not disrespecting copyright law to play a game on an emulator if you actually own an original copy (regardless of what Nintendo thinks).

        As for nobody making an emulator for your favorite obscure system... well, nobody's stopping _you_ from doing that. The emulator not playing it right can be annoying, however.

        Also, you can probably use the original controller as well, if you are game for a little hardware hacking.

        • Re:thats what emulators are for. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bob beta ( 778094 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @07:55PM (#10744136)
          If you're game for a little hardware hacking, you maintain and keep the original hardware running.

          Ten years from now, guess whose 'investment' will be worth more? The guy with a Pentium II he has to keep up and running to 'emulate' the old game, or the guy who's kept his old game running in top condition?

          Mangling classic console gaming controls to plug them into a printer port on some shitty x86 box is just vandalism against the old hardware.
          • Yes, but the cost of making a mistake on a controller is not as steep as the cost of making a mistake on the actual system.

            Besides, it's highly feasable to actually _build_ your own controllers to whatever specification you want.

      • Indeed - you're full of What If's... (Score:4, Informative)

        by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:53PM (#10743840) Journal
        "What if nobody's made an emulator for your favorite obscure system?"

        There's not very many of these, although there are a few like the Jaguar that aren't emulated very well.

        "What if the emulator doesn't play it right?"

        Unless you're talking about the same few from the question above, you will find that most emulators play games perfectly down to the last pixel, and in some cases, they look a lot better (as is the case with the playstation games.)

        "What if you want to use the original controller?"

        They make adapters so you can use SNES, PSX, Genesis, N64, and other controller types, right on the USB port.

        "What if you believe in respecting copyright law, no matter how ridiculous it may be?"

        If you believe emulators themselves are breaking laws, well, go nuts I guess. But they aren't. Downloading ROMS of games you don't own is, but why said anything about that?

        Lots of holes in your arguement, man.

        Personally, I believe emulators will be the only way to preserve these games given enough time.

        • Re:Indeed - you're full of What If's... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @07:35PM (#10744041)
          Unless you're talking about the same few from the question above, you will find that most emulators play games perfectly down to the last pixel, and in some cases, they look a lot better (as is the case with the playstation games.)


          PIXEL PERFECT??!?! [the2d.com] Hahahahaha! There are lots of holes in your arguments, man. Here is a tip, Star Ocean does not look like that pixelated buggy mess on a real SNES.

          Well, the SNES emulators such as ZSNES and SNES9x don't emulate things correct down to the last pixel. Here is a good article [the2d.com] describing many of the inaccuracies of SNES emulators. Hell, the co-processor used in many SNES games, such as Pilot Wings and Super Mario Kart still doesn't have all of its opcodes emulated!

          Also, can you tell me what happens when you have a game that displays at native digital resolution X with refresh rate Y, but your computer is not capable of displaying resolution X and your CRT can't do refresh rate Y? You have to scale up the game's resolution, but that causes aspect ratio problems as computer CRT's have a slightly different aspect ratio than NTSC TVs. So you get both aspect ratio distortion and aliasing, unless the resolution your computer displays is a perfect multiple of your console's resolution, which is highly unlikely. To correct for aliasing due to scaling, emulators typically blur the image to get rid of the jaggies. Compare an emulated SNES game side by side with a real SNES. Big difference! Oh, and back to the refresh rate differences. Games sync to the refresh rate of a TV, a rate that your CRT cannot do as it is a really low refresh rate. So if you spend allot of time you can get your OS to use a really high refresh rate that most CRTs do not support, but is a perfect multiple of the native SNES refresh rate...

          Should we even get into the fact that the OS your emulator is running on is not a real-time OS, and most likely has latency spikes, causing the occassional stutter, hicup, etc? Early consoles such as the SNES have no underlying OS, so the timing of each instruction is always the same, always precise... and some games actually depend on the percise timing because they are all written in machine language... unlike later game systems such as the Playstation, for which games were programmed in higher-level languages such as C and displayed graphics and played sounds using high-level APIs. Hence for these later systems, precise pixel perfect timing issues are not as important.

          My point is that this is all very very far from pixel perfect. But I guess you have never really compared both side-by-side.

          On the topic of console controller adapters. Most of the console adapters suck. They don't support other peripherials like light guns, spinners, and paddles. There are some exceptions. The Atari 2600 has a great controller adapter that supports every 2600 peripherial and the N64 Adaptoid is another good adapter. However, many of the PSX adapters have serious lag issues... some worse than others.

          The SNES is a really big offender. Almost all of its USB adapters just plain suck. The "Super Joy" USB adapter won't let you press the X and B buttons at the same time, and the same goes for the Y and A buttons. That is a serious problem for some games. Not to mention that the SNES adapters also have latency issues.

          On your last point, yes emulators are the long term future of classic games, but if we all throw away the real thing too early, we will end up with subpar emulation that isn't as good as the real thing. Some gaming systems, such as the NES have highly accurate emulators such as FCE Ultra and Nestopia... but other systems such as the SNES have a long way to go before I put my SNES in storage.

          • Woah, calm down killer. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @08:01PM (#10744166) Journal
            Wow, you wrote a friggin essay on two words I used, "pixel perfect."

            While, no, I have not studied an SNES game with a magnifying glass on both an emulator and then on the real console system, hell if I can tell a difference on the 100 or so games I own.

            I can't tell the difference on the Genesis, NES, TB16, Atari 2600 - 7800's either.

            So fine, maybe that wasn't the right word to use - so how about this: "Pixel 'I can't tell the fucking difference so it might as well be perfect to 99% of the people playing them.'" That work for you?

            You also mentioned that "almost" all of the adapters for the SNES suck, well, that insinuates that SOME don't. Hey, I never said buy a shitty convertor.

            " but if we all throw away the real thing too early, we will end up with subpar emulation that isn't as good as the real thing. "

            I didn't say we should. But these systems WILL die out, some day. You won't be able to get them easily, the games won't work, etc.. And even if you could, who cares? If emulation is as good as it is with some game systems, I don't see the point. Why would I have 12 game systems all wired up in a big mess to my TV when I could just run them all on a single XBox or PC?

            And, I don't know too many people that play SNES games all day long anymore. It's usually every once in awhile to play a few of their favorites for a little while, then it's back to the Doom 3's, Far Cry's, and Everquests.
          • The SDD-1 (Star Ocean, Street Fighter Zero 2) has been emulated for some time now; it works in at least SNES9x, and I believe ZSNES, too. A terribly hacky workaround used to exist, but now the SDD-1 chip itself is completely emulated.
        • Unless you're talking about the same few from the question above, you will find that most emulators play games perfectly down to the last pixel, and in some cases, they look a lot better (as is the case with the playstation games.)

          You are not kidding. I downloaded epsxe because the laser in my PSX is going bad. I tried Tobol #1 and I was simply AMAZED at how good it looked. There wasn't even a comparison. Using OpenGL or Direct3D makes flat shaded polygons look so much better than they originally did.

          Any
          • Totally - I've played a handful of PSX games and they look great! I usually use Gravis Gamepad Pro's to play - the things are identical to the old PSX controller. It's great!

            ePSX is a really good emulator.

            Even older Nintendo, Genesis and SNES games can look better with the different filtering techniques that they can use.

        • There's not very many of these, although there are a few like the Jaguar that aren't emulated very well.

          Bah, the ONLY game worth having on the Jaguar was Tempest 2000. I know, I had all the games made in cartridge. Trevor McFur was a nice technology demo.

          I LOVED my 3DO and doubt there will ever be a working Mac emulator. I had a BOATload of games for it. When it was finally being discontinued they had the games at Best Buy for $15 and under (mostly around $10). I played Gex, Soccer Kid and Pandemon

          • Well, fortunately Tempest 2000 runs pretty well in Project Tempest - after all, it was made specifically to run that game. It's not perfect though, that's for certian.

            Not to mention, the Jaguar controllers had all those buttons and stuff, so it's difficult to play any Jaguar games without learning all the keymaps first. Good thing Tempest doesn't use too many.

            I never once played the 3DO. I'm not aware of any 3DO emulators, but I've never once looked for one either. Maybe you'll find one of them super
      • What if you want to use the original controller?

        These guys have you covered.

        http://www.blackchopper.com/
        • That's nice for the consoles, but what about the older computers?

          I bought for my TI99 a red/black joystick that had microswitches in it. Time, as well as not having that joystick anymore (well, maybe it's just time!) is probably why I can't do as well on some of the games.. the feel of that joystick was unique, to say the least...

          A friend of mine was talking one night about the old intellivision controllers... there's a company out there that sells some of the old intellivision ROMS legally, but of cours

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Did you read the first line of the original post? He said that he recognized emulation but this is for the folks who don't want to do that.

    • Emulation is NOT the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:50PM (#10743821) Homepage Journal
      You cant emulate the 'feel' of having the real thing in your hands.

      Sure you get to run the *software*, but you lose everything that makes it special and worth saving.

      Real history is lost when we lose the old classic hardware ( both games and computers ).

      Really sad to see so many people that dont appreciate history for what it is, and consider it 'throwaway'.
      • > You cant emulate the 'feel' of having the real thing in your hands.

        More or less you can.

        Three years ago or so, I built a device described in a joystick driver for linux that plugs into the parallel port, and on the other end of that cable is a box with 4 NES plugs, 2 SNES plugs, 4 9-pin DIN for sega (MS and G), and two connectors I dont recal the name of for the TG-16 pads.

        They were aligned in the box in rows for players 1-4.
        You plug one controller of any type in for each player, and load the drive
      • Maybe some people (you, apparently) are all nostalgic about seeing the old Nintendo or Coleco under the TV, but most don't seem to care.

        I don't. I can use my old controllers on my computer and beam the picture to my TV from this infra-red video thingy. It "feels" like I'm playing Super Mario Bros. The picture and the sound are both exactly like the original..

        I like computer hardware like the next guy, but talking about preserving hardware and talking about emulation are two seperate subjects, and I t
      • Don't you remember how every controller before the dualshock2 was terrible?
        • For digital controls, the SNES game pad is far better than the dualshock2. God I hate the crappy PSX D-pad. However, for analog controls, the dualshock2 is great... but the SNES has none of these, as well as many other older gaming systems.

          So why would somebody want to use analog sticks or at least have them cluttering up their controller and analog buttons, when they are playing old Atari, NES, SNES, or Gameboy games? Most people would prefer a nice simple digital controller for these kind of games. T

      • Re:Emulation is NOT the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Zangief ( 461457 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:12PM (#10744857) Homepage Journal
        In Fanrenheit 451, this wise man tells montag, that the good thing about books is their touch, and scent, and the feeling of the book.

        I have grown to think like this too. An ebook is just not a real book, even if the only difference is nostalgia. The original feeling matters, and matters a lot.

      • Re:Emulation is NOT the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)

        by KodaK ( 5477 ) <sakodak&gmail,com> on Sunday November 07, 2004 @03:31AM (#10745522) Homepage
        To add a bit to this:

        The Commodore 64 has a sound chip called the SID (Sound Interface Device) chip. It had a few different versions, but it has a really distinctive sound. I won't go into the nitty gritty tech-specs, I'll just say it had 3 voices. Interested parties can employ google.

        Emulation gets close, but audiophiles would know that the sound isn't quite the same when you compare an emulated SID to a real one.

        Musicians pay BIG money these days for a MIDI device that has one or more SID chips in it so they can use it as a synthesizer. Personally, I just paid $50 for a C=64 MIDI interface so I could utilize one of my 64's in my studio. I believe that that's the retail price when it was new in 1983.

        A little known fact: the engineers at MOS (later Commodore Semiconductor Group) that designed the SID chip later left Commodore and founded Ensoniq, which in its early days made bona-fide synths. Most people either love their synths or hate them (I love them, for the record.)

        Back to the point: emulation can get close, very close in some cases, but it's not exactly the same thing. Especially when you're dealing with these old chips that had exploitable flaws.

  • I wish (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LennyDotCom ( 26658 ) <Lenny@lenny.com> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:42PM (#10743774) Homepage Journal
    I wish I had the games I wrote for my timex sinclier. That wher on cassete tape. and an emulator that would run them. I was so proud when I ran out of room in the 2K built in memory and had to attache the 16K ram expansion.

    • Re:I wish (Score:5, Interesting)

      by daniel_mcl ( 77919 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:48PM (#10743811)
      IF you still have the casettes, you might try recording them to wave files and looking for/writing a program that can decode them. I think I remember that the stella interpreter for Atari 2600 could read its casette recordings.

      Google turns up a whole bunch of emulators for various Sinclair machines; I can't reccomend one in particular since I haven't used them, but you can probably find a good one for your machine.
    • Man,

      I really wanted the ZX Sinclair. I never got one. But a few years later there was a machine that was sold in Sweden. I'm not sure if it ever made it out of Sweden, the Luxor ABC80. And it still has the best basic out there (and I'm counting VB .net).

      I wrote a break out game (you know, with the paddle at the bottom and the bricks at the top). Man, those were the days.

      I think it had a Zilog Z80 cpu, or something like that. Man, I haven't thought about that for years.

  • Ahhh ... you don't need all that stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:43PM (#10743784)
    Here is what I use: Windex, Radio Shack component cleaner and Q-tips. Windex for the exterior and the RS component cleaner for RF leads and cartridge contacts. Occasional Amour-All to give it a nice shine if you're gonna advertise it on eBay.
    • The one product I would recommend is Goo Gone. It works very well on nasty price-sticker adhesive and other gross stuff.

    • Armor All BAD (Score:4, Informative)

      by murderlegendre ( 776042 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @07:12PM (#10743934)

      Despite the promises or anything you have heard, never, EVER use Armor All on a plastic or vinyl surface that is not already dried/perished/damaged. Armor All is very good at removing the native polymers in the plastic and replacing them with itself. Once it has made it into the surface, you will continually need to replenish the Armor All or risk losing the plastic. I have seen this product ruin more dashboards, tires, motorcycle seats, trim rubber and so on than I would care to recall.

      If you want an Armor All type finish on your plastics, use a hand glaze or plastic dressing. These products are available from auto stores, and auto paint suppliers. Slightly off-topic: if you want your old car/cycle tires to look like new, use a little brake fluid on a rag.. works miracles.

  • Aren't we missing something? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Emrikol ( 21551 ) * <emrikol@decarb o n a t e d.org> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:43PM (#10743789) Homepage
    How do I fix my old PSX? My Original Playstation. I know the "turn upside down" trick...but for the life of me, I can't seem to find any place that sells laser assemblies anymore. If I ebay or froogle for it, all I get is tons and tons of stuff for the ps2.

    Damn technology.
    • Try washing the lens(with swab covered in pure alcohol). Then try tapping the laser housing pretty hard(near the lens but don't touch it). If that doesn't fix it, try boosting the voltage a small amount on the laser(fixed all my probs, but if you do it too high it wears the laser out, google can help you here). And if your laser assembly is totally dead, a used psx isn't too pricy to get for replacement parts.
    • I replaced the laser in my playstation with one from a Sony portable cd player. They have the same connector and it wasn't too hard to bodgy up the proper mounting. Plus it has the added bonus of reading cdrw's now.

  • what's for dinner mom? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheViciousOverWind ( 649139 ) <martin@siteloom.dk> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:46PM (#10743804) Homepage
    I really like one of his suggestions:

    "Demo Discs (XBox Magazine) Don't Play - I wish I was joking about this, but here's the solution. Boil the disc for 20 seconds (or less). It actually works. I've tried it, and I swear on my life it works...[snip]"

    I can realise how it might work, but I really have to wonder what was the motivation behind the guy who first discovered the procedure.
    "YOU STUPID CD, WORK OR I SHALL BOIL THEE!"

    • Re:what's for dinner mom? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The reason boiling a disc works is because DVDs are manufactured by sandwiching the reflective gold layers between a thin layer of plastic. During maufacturing, the layers may not be glued correctly and causes minor warpage which makes the disc difficult for the DVD drive to read. Heating the disc with water softens the glue slightly and allows the layers to even out.

  • /.ed already! (Score:4, Informative)

    by BostonRob ( 779771 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:47PM (#10743810) Journal
    Google Cache link available without photos

    Google Cache [216.239.39.104]

  • Slashdotted, mirror: (Score:4, Informative)

    by dealsites ( 746817 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:50PM (#10743825) Homepage
    Mirror [dealsites.net]

  • Coral link & list of systems (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ghostgate ( 800445 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:53PM (#10743846)

    Here's the coral cache link [nyud.net], and here's a list of the systems included in the article:

    Odyssey^2
    Atari 2600
    Intellivision
    Atari 7800
    TI-99/4a
    NES
    Genesis
    Sega CD
    Turbo Grafx
    Saturn
    Dreamcast
    PS2
    XBox
    GameCube
    GameBoy Advance

  • Too late! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by base_chakra ( 230686 ) * on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:55PM (#10743855)

    Wow, I really could have used this information 20 years ago! I was devestated when the power supply to my TI-99/4a blew out from overheating, and lord knows those Odyssey2 joysticks weren't built to last. Actually, any information about repairing and replacing hard-wired peripherals would have been helpful back then.

    One console that's missing from the list was an early console (does anyone remember the name?) that competed with the original Odyssey. It was the ultimate in hard-wired madness. All of its games were built-in, and were selectable with a sliding knob. It had two hardwired sliding-stick controllers, and possibly the first console lightgun, which was made of pig iron and weighed approximately 185 pounds. The monochromatic games were all variations on table tennis and "shoot the square". And yes, that used to be fun. :)

    • Re:Too late! (Score:3, Informative)

      by bfree ( 113420 )
      Was it the binatone [old-computers.com] you were looking for? Your description rang a bell except the controllers were detachable and just wheel-like knobs. Memories, if my parents didn't love to dump everything I bet it would still be in the attic getting wheeled out every few years at times like this!

      • Re:Too late! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by base_chakra ( 230686 ) *
        I've pored and pored through pong-story.com and old-computers.com, and I have not found it. I had no idea there were so many different Pong units. The model I remember was an American release that looked vaguely similar to this [old-computers.com], but the controllers had sliders, not knobs, and the deck's finish was silver and faux wood. The controllers also were silver. The game selector slid up and down, and highlighted the selected game in orange. I think the gun may have been detachable, and it may have been one of the li

  • Too bad the C-64 doesn't show up there... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @06:57PM (#10743866)
    ... even when it's a computer, most people bought it simply as a game system, and a fine one it was.

    Anyway, the weak link in th C-64 was not the computer itself, but the power supply, which was separated. Since it was somewhat complicated (fully regulated) and encased in a solid black epoxy box, most people didn't bothered to fiddle with it. This site [devili.iki.fi] has the complete schematic for a power supply, from where you can either fix it or build a new one entirely.

    • Another problem was the disk drive alignment (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ghostgate ( 800445 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @07:11PM (#10743930)

      The disk drives (1541 and 1581) were notorious for getting out of alignment. There was actually a small BASIC program written to help "knock" it back into alignment. You can see it on this page [www.hut.fi], near the bottom.

      • I used to have an alignment disk for that (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @03:06AM (#10745467) Homepage
        Way, way back, in the early 90s, when I was a skint student working in a computer shop in Aberdeen, in the frozen North-East of Scotland, I had a special C64 disk drive alignment floppy.


        It had tracks written deliberately out of alignment - track 0 and 1 (iirc) were written very "broad" so any drive would read it, then the subsequent tracks were written "too far in" gradually moving into correct alignment, then going "too far out". So - you put the disk in, it would boot, upload special firmware to the drive, then it would step through the disk counting which tracks gave it the "best" read (least CRC errors).

        Then - and this is the truly horrifying bit - it would gently wind the head all the way to one end, and then very, very quickly slam it into the other end stop. It would do this a few times, then read the alignment tracks again, then slam the head a few times, then reread the alignment tracks... and so on, until the head was absolutely bang on centred.


        The guy I worked with told me to never, ever, *ever* run that disk with a customer in the shop...

  • Sometimes Emulation Sucks! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @07:05PM (#10743904)
    Older gaming systems had very little power, so programmers would code the games in low-level machine language, and they would use many different hacks, tricks, and some games even time things based on counting CPU cycles and precise timing delays between different hardware subsystems. So it shouldn't be a surprise that games developed for these consoles play best on the original console.

    The SNES is probably the best example of this [the2d.com] because it was probably the most complicated and powerful game console, which was still programmed using low-level machine language. The aforementioned link describes inaccuracies in the best SNES emulator, ZSNES. Further comlicating matters is that some SNES games have separate co-processors built into the cartridge, and so the emulators must also emulate these separate processors, which have their own instruction set, protocol, timing delays, and communication bus. Since SNES games were written in assembler, developed soley for one fixed hardware platform, and then only tested on that system... it shouldn't be a surprise that the games play best on a real SNES.

    Yet most gamers have never actually compared a real SNES to emulation. Some games are emulated better than others, but some are just downright bad. Of course, emulation is always improving, and in the distant future, when the real SNES's are all dust, emulation will be the only option. Hopefully it is perfected by then.

    Of course, you can cheat and use a Flash Cart [tototek.com] or Game Copier [tototek.com]
    (2) [consolefever.com], (3) [consolefever.com], with a real SNES, so that you get the best of both worlds: tons of SNES games on a real SNES with real SNES controllers all hooked up to a TV in front of a comy sofa!

    • Sometimes it's better.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vhold ( 175219 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @08:59PM (#10744414)
      And on the flipside.. emulation is sometimes better, at least in my opinion.

      My PS2 dualshock controller with USB adaptor is more comfortable in my hands then any older controllers. With video filters like SuperEagle, many games look much better without losing their charm. The ability to save anytime is a massive improvement to many games (sure you can abuse it to beat any game easily, but thats a choice), good bye long winded code inputs. Built in gameshark support with downloadable codes.. Some emulators even have half way decent online functionality..
      • Heh, I was recently guilty of abusing the save state to get ahead in a game.

        Legend of Zelda on my Pocket PC. I didn't feel like killing 100 octorocs to buy the big shield, so I went to that log with the "Money Making Game". A -50 rupee? (Restore saved state), Yoink!

        I was in the right, of course. Those damn like-like's had no business stealing my damn sheild in the first place.
    • Actually, for what I want it to do, most of the time it is.

      I think you must be looking at these things through rose-colored glasses. I still remember the Nintendo skipping frames (not really frames, but it's a simplification that makes sense) a bit when there were more than 10 enemies on the screen. I remember some old games that were impossible to beat with no save game feature. Worst of all, I remember when my games got too dusty to use, and I'd have to fiddle with them for twenty minutes or so to get
      • The SNES has copier's that can do cheat searches, real time save, fast-forward, etc. Also, all of the emulators emulate the SNES slowdown, flicker, etc, which you describe. So they have the "problem" you mention because not emulating that would make some games no longer run correctly. Have you even compared an emulated SNES to the real thing? I think most people who emulate have not compared them side-by-side. It is not rose colored glasses. I play allot of SNES games on a regular basis, and I have po
  • worst designed system ever. The controllers weared out fast (OK, I played way too much Xevious) and if the tabs that were build into a 7800 cartridge to allow the added contacts to connect broke, you just downgraded to a 2600. I also curse the backwards compatiblity, since that was the reason I got a 7800 instead of a Nintendo at the time (that and it was $40 bucks cheaper). I've heard these consoles where just dumped on the marked to cash in on the resurge, and it showed.
    • The controllers weared out fast (OK, I played way too much Xevious) and if the tabs that were build into a 7800 cartridge to allow the added contacts to connect broke, you just downgraded to a 2600. I also curse the backwards compatiblity, since that was the reason I got a 7800 instead of a Nintendo at the time (that and it was $40 bucks cheaper). I've heard these consoles where just dumped on the marked to cash in on the resurge, and it showed.

      At first I thought you had confused the 7800/5200, but then

      • Re:To this day I curse the 7800.... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:46PM (#10744949)
        Trust me, get to really playing and the 7800's controllers wear out fast. The problem is poor design: There's a small piece of very cheap plastic at the base of the Joystick shaft that circles the shaft and is needed for the Stick's contacts to connect. The plastic would wear down long before the contacts, keeping them from getting pressed. This is in addition to the fact that the 7800 joystick was _really_ uncomfortable after an hour or so. The best joystick ever, to this day, is the Epyx 500xj. Solid metal shaft, durable clicking switches. Great for 2600 games but I don't think it was 7800 compatible. If it was, I had long since got rid of my 7800 by then.

        The trouble with the 5200 controllers wasn't durability, it was that they where analog, and all the 5200 games where designed for digital control. An analog joystick isn't the best choice for pac-man...

  • Totally unrelated, but I just tried to run my legal, paid-for copy of C&C Generals and my paid-for, legal copy of Alice Cooper's Goes to Hell (which I have bought at least twice - once on vinyl 20 years ago) popped up telling me to go to hell. I have 2 CD drives.

    Yeah, I'm clueless - remember when Klaatu was said to be the Beatles? I got sucked into that one also.

    I'm guilty, I guess. [lyrics-songs.com]
  • Where are all the replies complaining about this not being a news item that inexplicably get modded up?
  • I saw a "100,000 games in 1" emulator [promoguy.net] for sale at a mall. Judging by it's $50 price it seems like it was a bootleg NES/Famicom system from China. Woudln't this kind thing by illegal to sell? Or does Nintendo license their ROMs? Anyway, seems like a convenient and cheap way to play your old games on a big tv and without a computer.

    Looks they can be purchased online here. [daddydeals.com].

    • That would be one of the eighteen million famiclones on the market in Hong Kong; they actually are clone Famicom/NES hardware. The games are invariably pirated games, pirated Hong Kong originals, or very occasionally an actually legal Hong Kong original. The claims of "100 000 games in 1" generally mean that you have a few games many times over, sometimes with different titles and slight variances in then numbers of lives, etc. Often you have many "games" that just crash the system altogether.

  • The TI99/4a was/is not a game console (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foldedspace ( 463615 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @07:59PM (#10744155) Homepage
    Yeah, there were games for it, but I've never seen a game console with a dot matrix printer and a 5.25" floppy drive. I also wrote some BASIC programs on it. I never did that with my Atari 2600. Yep, I had one. :P

    The connector for the peripheral expansion box gave me worries when I had it. It was a thick sheilded ribbon cable with a heavy plastic connector hanging off the end of the keyboard. I think I used a chunk of wood to support it.

    I do remember the video being horrible though. (the tip in the article is about the video). I even bought the TI brand monitor. I think it was a 13"?
    • I wrote BASIC on the Atari 2600 :)

      When I look at the video from the TI on a Commodore 2002 monitor, or even an original 10" TI monitor, it appears a bit pixelated -- kinda grainy. The actually worked pretty well when designing graphics.

      Now, on a TV set, the graphics were great. In fact, the ColecoVision used the same graphics chip (or a relative to the TMS 9918A, anyway.) (Tech note, the 99/4 had the 9918, the 4A had the 9918A, which IIRC had an additional bitmap mode lacking in the original chip.)

      Ano
  • I've been trying to find a way to fix my TI-99/4A's RF converter for years... little did I realize I could just make a simpler adaptor myself! Thanks for the info! Time to go play some Parsec now... :)

  • The state of emulation. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by crhylove ( 205956 ) <rhy@leperkhanz.com> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @08:23PM (#10744282) Homepage Journal
    Anyone who would do this instead of emulating or contributing to the (largely open source) emulator community is missing alot of things about how fun classic gaming has become.

    Alot of people have trouble setting up emulators. This is due to the fact that most games play much better with 3rd party plugins than the original included plugins. Do a little research, or just try this:

    Get yourself a boat load of roms. (shareaza, irc, google, there are ways). Then install zsnes, set the video to 1024x768 and turn on hq3x.

    This improves the playability of old snes roms so much that it is amazing. Especially with a high quality usb controller (i like the saitek p2500), and a projector. Mario is over a foot tall and not jaggy at all! People come to my house ALL THE TIME, just to play dr. mario with foot long pills.

    Another big favorite is mortal kombat 4 (n64 edition) on 1964 with the jabo video plugin, at 1024x768, with 8x AA and 8x ansio enabled. The people are nearly as tall as real people and their blood sprays all over the room.

    Another key element is a good little surround sound system. I like the logitech z640 set of speakers and a cheap audigy, but there are other options.

    It's cool to restore old consoles as a hobby, but for raw playability and user experience, a kick ass PC set up right with a projector and wireless gamepads, seriously takes it. None of my friends even play their xbox/ps2/gamecube anymore! (They do play vice city ALOT on this particular pc setup, can't wait for the pc version of san andreas!!!)

    rhY

  • One very important NES fix missing (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 06, 2004 @09:02PM (#10744429)
    The article's section on the NES mentions the "Blinkies" ("You put the game in, turn your Nintendo on, and the screen alternates between blue and white.") but doesn't explain the real reason why this is happening: the original NES has a lockout chip to prevent people from playing unlicensed/third-party games on the system. When a game blinks, but you can still see the game's title screen in between each blink, it's because the lockout chip is freaking out.

    Fortunately, there's a very easy mod to disable the lockout chip by opening the NES up and cutting a pin on the PCB. It used to be really easy to find the mod on Google, but it seems to have disappeared (could Nintendo's legal department have squashed it? That'd be ridiculous if so, this is well within fair use). Regardless, you can get it at archive.org [archive.org] -- I'm pretty sure that's the how-to file I used when I did the mod a few years back. It worked like a charm, and I highly recommend it!

  • All you need to know (Score:3, Funny)

    by DongleFondle ( 655040 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @09:21PM (#10744484)

    Blow on the cartridge.

    Failing that, blow in the console.

  • scan rates (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @09:34PM (#10744526) Journal
    One of the things I've found a bit interesting is how awful some older games look on a VGA/SVGA or higher resolution display that were designed with TV monitors in mind.

    I fondly remember games on my 2600 and C64 that looked cool, but when seeing them on a high res monitor they looked like crap (emulator also).

    It seems many designers back then took into account the low resolution nature of monitors and low scan rates to kind of use a natural form of anti-aliasing.

    So when using that emulator of old games be sure to lower your monitor refresh rate (if possible) to what the game was originally ment to play under and it will look as you remember it!

  • Reseat the Chips! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Paul Slocum ( 598127 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:48AM (#10745299) Homepage Journal
    One key universal fixit that I didn't see mentioned is to reseat the socketed chips. I've fixed so many old systems by applying a little force to socketed chips until they "crunch".

    A few other tips:

    Always unplug power supplies when they're not in use. It says this in the old manuals, and my experience is that it dramatically increases the life of the supply.

    Also, since I deal the most with the Atari 2600, a common problem is that the switches start getting sketchy. This is usually that the solder joints have cracked (which can be fixed by just re-heating them with a soldering iron) or just that the switches need a little contact cleaner sprayed in them. And the paddle controllers almost always need their pots sprayed with contact/tuner cleaner.

    It's amazing how well those old systems hold up if you take good care of them.

    -paul

  • cleaning up battery corrosion (Score:5, Informative)

    by DZign ( 200479 ) <averhe AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday November 07, 2004 @02:42AM (#10745403) Homepage
    I only read the first paragraph and already disagree..

    Battery corrosion can and must be cleaned up.
    Yes you need an acid. But this does not sound as bad as it looks.

    Vinager wil do the job.. I neutralised some battery-corroded cpu boards of 25 year old pinball machines this way.. www.marvin3m.com/fix.htm explains how to deal with battery corrosion.

    Leaving the problem like the author suggests is the worst thing you can do ! Because battery corrosion just keeps on burning and traveling over pcb's and if you wait long enough, nothing will survive anymore. It can even travel through connectors and wires and attack other pcb's which are connected to it.

    I recently fixed a pinball cpu with battery corrosion.. bought the game cheap, 'it always worked and stopped working one day'
    the cpu looked ok, no obvious signs (green color) of leakage, battery had even be removed in the past..
    however 2 ic sockets didn't make any contact at all anymore.
    So my guess is that the battery had leaked and it had been cleaned off but not really neutralised, and the stuff that got under the ic's kept burning away..

  • More Detailed Look at Cleaning NES and Games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xanderwilson ( 662093 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @08:02AM (#10746039) Homepage
    For more details about how to clean your NES without a cleaning kit, I wrote up a set of instructions back in college: How to Clean your NES and Games [alexwilson.com].

    Alex.

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