Atarimania Forum

Heh! I wanted to have the first post on the 5200 section. Definetly my fave system Atari or otherwise.
Anybody else a fan of the big black behemoth??

Well, i´m not a fan, but i like this big machine, also the 5200 carts are impossible to find here in Argentina, you might have to import them only.

Arqueologia_Digital wrote:Well, i´m not a fan, but i like this big machine, also the 5200 carts are impossible to find here in Argentina, you might have to import them only.

Do you have any games, or just the unit itself? Do the televisions in Argentina support the 5200? I know there was no PAL version of the 5200 released......is Argentina PAL or NTSC compatible?

Hi and welcome to the site!

I really LOVE the design of the 5200. Still, although the feel IS a bit different, it's nothing more than a revamped A8 computer to most of us Europeans. I wonder how well the console would have fared over here if launched in 1982...

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Atari Frog wrote:Hi and welcome to the site!

I really LOVE the design of the 5200. Still, although the feel IS a bit different, it's nothing more than a revamped A8 computer to most of us Europeans. I wonder how well the console would have fared over here if launched in 1982...

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Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Yeah, the feeling is the same here in the states. But some of the games have improved controlls such as Centipede with the Trackball, and Space Dungeon and Robotron with the dual joystick coupler (actually, are those last 2 available for the A8's?)

jetset wrote:

Arqueologia_Digital wrote:Well, i´m not a fan, but i like this big machine, also the 5200 carts are impossible to find here in Argentina, you might have to import them only.

Do you have any games, or just the unit itself? Do the televisions in Argentina support the 5200? I know there was no PAL version of the 5200 released......is Argentina PAL or NTSC compatible?

Well, i don´t have a machine, but i know some guys that own it and it worked on an NTSC/PAL compatible TV...

I am a fan of Atari 5200. There is a lot more trackball based games than A8 and because they are easy to fix (assuming you don't want to put the shield back on). I think this topic needs some technical reference links to the Atari 5200. So let me propose a couple of questions which I was googling around and didn't find any answer on the web.

Which register do you read for the 2nd button (top button) on the A5200 controller?

If it's the shift key for the 2nd button, then it seems that POKEYBASE+9 (KBCODE) would contain it (not sure which bit as it's bit 6 on A8) as well as POKEYBASE+15 bit 3. Of course, button #1 is the trigger line (GTIABASE+16 bit 0).

What are the pinouts for the wires going into the RF Modulator on the A5200 motherboard?

I know that on Atari XL/XE series, there's a +5V, audio, composite video, and Ground going into the RF modulator and the A/V are not usable directly as normal audio/video but need some amplification or modification. I ask this since once you remove the shield to try to fix an Atari 5200 and can't put it back (or don't want to put it back because of corrosion), the RF signal may get some interference.

To those unfamiliar with MPDOS SuperPro or MPDOS Pro, it allows uploading a multimedia CDROM to the Atari 8-bit (650MB of compressed audio-visual data decompressed on PC but displayed and played on Atari 400/800/XL/XE). I took a couple of snapshots of the images from MPDOS SuperPro and converted them into Atari 5200 ROMs recently.

I guess you'll have to burn them to an EPROM or some Flashcart to run the ROMs on the Atari 5200. Each ROM consists of a 160*200*30 image using mixture of Graphics 9+10. No sprites were used so image can be enhanced with color but I'm no artist so just showing graphics capability of Atari 5200 here. On the Atari 800, images like these (thousands/millions) are uploaded in real-time via the joystick ports along with digitized audio.

I'm enclosing a picture snapshot of the image from a camera as well. First ROM uses bright and dark shades and has some flicker in the bright areas but the second image you can hardly see any flicker. Both going by tests on a Panasonic TV. Not sure yet what various LCD or emulation does with this stuff.

Okay, it's giving me error "The extension rom is now allowed." Can I email these to someone here and they can post it? Let me know the email address.

I rather like the 5200, partly because it is such a quirky system.. But Centipede played with the track ball is a really awesome game.

Serious wrote:I rather like the 5200, partly because it is such a quirky system.. But Centipede played with the track ball is a really awesome game.

Seriously, Serious I find it hard to play with the trackball because I find the joystick to give me better pinpoint control. But it's fun to play with the trackball but I just don't find it accurate enough for Centipede except maybe in Missile Command.