106 replies to this topic

[Curt Vendel]

Say hello to MARIA...


The GDS layered structure has been fully recovered and resynthesized.




Curt

[Retro Rogue]

Woohoo! Wonder how many sites are going to take credit for that work now.

Edited by wgungfu, Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:32 PM.

[Bakasama]

I take it, there's a not so secret project that we'll know about eventually.

[Shawn Sr.]

Curt Vendel, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 PM, said:

Say hello to MARIA...


The GDS layered structure has been fully recovered and resynthesized.


maria_cif.jpg

Curt

I love you (no homo).

[Retro Rogue]

David Hasselhoff, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:36 PM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 PM, said:

Say hello to MARIA...


The GDS layered structure has been fully recovered and resynthesized.


maria_cif.jpg

Curt

I love you (no homo).

Hahahahaha

[Shawn Sr.]

wgungfu, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:39 PM, said:

David Hasselhoff, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:36 PM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 PM, said:

Say hello to MARIA...


The GDS layered structure has been fully recovered and resynthesized.


maria_cif.jpg

Curt

I love you (no homo).

Hahahahaha

Seriously though, you guys are awesome. I can't wait to see the house this thing sits in or more like I can't wait to buy it

[jaybird3rd]

It's a thing of beauty. Thanks for your hard work in recovering this design.

I'd still love to see a new MARIA implementation combined with the Flashback 2 chipset to create a new 7800 clone. With the increasing interest in 7800 homebrew development (and I'm champing at the bit to join in with a game or two of my own), I think such a system would have some exciting possibilities.

[DracIsBack]

Curt Vendel, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 PM, said:

Say hello to MARIA...


The GDS layered structure has been fully recovered and resynthesized.


maria_cif.jpg

Curt

Cool. What's the driving force behind this effort?

[Curt Vendel]

Back off man... I'm a scientist... er, I mean a Historian.

All about preserving Atari's history and legacy. This stuff came out of the dumpsters, so they wanted it to disappear from the world, ain't gonna happen under MY watch!


Curt

DracIsBack, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 6:47 AM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 PM, said:

Say hello to MARIA...


The GDS layered structure has been fully recovered and resynthesized.


maria_cif.jpg

Curt

Cool. What's the driving force behind this effort?

[Gorf]

Curt Vendel, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:22 AM, said:

Back off man... I'm a scientist... er, I mean a Historian.

All about preserving Atari's history and legacy. This stuff came out of the dumpsters, so they wanted it to disappear from the world, ain't gonna happen under MY watch!

In all seriousness, I have to ask.....Why? I say let it go man.

[Gorf]

jaybird3rd, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 12:01 AM, said:

It's a thing of beauty. Thanks for your hard work in recovering this design.

I'd still love to see a new MARIA implementation combined with the Flashback 2 chipset to create a new 7800 clone. With the increasing interest in 7800 homebrew development (and I'm champing at the bit to join in with a game or two of my own), I think such a system would have some exciting possibilities.

So far the only possibilities I've seen are repeats of old classics....trust me. I'ev wasted plenty of time
wanting to resurrect the oldies but goldies...however, how many times does anyone actually play them once
they played through them? In gaming, we need a 'new drug' but I dont have much hope for that. After what
I've seen released over the past decade, Im not very hopefull. Fromt he classic systems and especially the
new over powered and greatly under used newer systems. As far as I am concerned, both Sony and Microsoft
can give away their new systems and I would not be intersted. Wii? A better attempt but really, besides
a different controller scheme that keeps you from gaining a fat ass, what have they done that is so special?

[GroovyBee]

After seeing this I've had to supress a mad plan to build a MARIA, 68000 and POKEY games system (like it should have been released back in the day ) just to see what it can do .

[Retro Rogue]

Curt Vendel, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:22 AM, said:

Back off man... I'm a scientist... er, I mean a Historian.

All about preserving Atari's history and legacy. This stuff came out of the dumpsters, so they wanted it to disappear from the world, ain't gonna happen under MY watch!


Curt

So when can we expect to find the used napkins, kleenex, and half eaten sandwiches you found as well resurrected and re-synthesized?

Edited by wgungfu, Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:54 AM.

[DracIsBack]

Curt Vendel, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:22 AM, said:

Back off man... I'm a scientist... er, I mean a Historian.

All about preserving Atari's history and legacy. This stuff came out of the dumpsters, so they wanted it to disappear from the world, ain't gonna happen under MY watch!

I love it! Shame that this stuff goes in the dumpster.

And - of course - I was hoping you were going to say that the chip was gonna be used in a new 7800 with S-Video/Composite outputs shipping soon.

[Ransom]

DracIsBack, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 2:15 PM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:22 AM, said:

Back off man... I'm a scientist... er, I mean a Historian.

All about preserving Atari's history and legacy. This stuff came out of the dumpsters, so they wanted it to disappear from the world, ain't gonna happen under MY watch!

I love it! Shame that this stuff goes in the dumpster.

And - of course - I was hoping you were going to say that the chip was gonna be used in a new 7800 with S-Video/Composite outputs shipping soon.

Wait -- you didn't get yours yet?

[jaybird3rd]

Gorf, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:35 AM, said:

So far the only possibilities I've seen are repeats of old classics....trust me. I'ev wasted plenty of time
wanting to resurrect the oldies but goldies...however, how many times does anyone actually play them once
they played through them? In gaming, we need a 'new drug' but I dont have much hope for that. After what
I've seen released over the past decade, Im not very hopefull. Fromt he classic systems and especially the
new over powered and greatly under used newer systems. As far as I am concerned, both Sony and Microsoft
can give away their new systems and I would not be intersted. Wii? A better attempt but really, besides
a different controller scheme that keeps you from gaining a fat ass, what have they done that is so special?

Not to take this thread off-track, but I've made exactly the same kinds of points in mos6507's Homebrew Discussion thread about the over-reliance on ports among homebrewers instead of original games, and the over-representation of the 2600 instead of other classic systems that are equally deserving of support (like the 7800). I too would love to see more experimentation and more original ideas in games, and I think the homebrew game development environment has the potential to accomplish this in ways that commercial game development and even shareware/freeware development cannot.

What is so valuable about the work that Curt and others have done is that it has provided the rich reservoir of knowledge that is needed to ignite the game development process: schematics, technical documentation, source code, the algorithms needed to sign game binaries for use with the stock 7800's protection scheme, development tools and libraries, etc. As more of these resources are rescued from oblivion and made available to the public, the barriers to entry are disappearing, and the easier it is becoming to learn the 7800 and to develop new games for it, both as a technical/intellectual exercise and as a means of artistic expression. Seeing all these resources, it's only natural for creative people to be inspired to do something with them.

As for me, I actually have this fantasy of using my technical writing background to organize all these various sources of knowledge into a book about homebrew game development, taking the reader from the basics of binary arithmetic all the way through the intricacies of MARIA and the 7800 architecture. I'd have to learn a lot more about the 7800 myself, and I'd want to get a few games under my belt first, but this is the kind of inspiration I'm talking about.

[Kurisu]

This shows alot of promise to my hopes that in the future, vintage machines will be reproduced with originally designed parts, thus allowing the device to stay around "forever".

there really is no reason for a company NOT to allow and support long ago discontinued hardware to be replicated exactly by another company: simple licensing at its best, I would say.


...one day...

[Random Terrain]

Bakasama, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:34 PM, said:

I take it, there's a not so secret project that we'll know about eventually.

Maybe this means we'll have something even better than the Stellacon. (Now if the pause button would work on Atari 2600 games and it had 4 controller jacks so two joysticks and two sets of paddles could be plugged in at the same time, I would probably jump so high, I'd crack my skull open on the ceiling and snap my neck.)

[Mitch]

Hmm, so which model is this 1702, 1712 or 1722?

Oh, and nice work, by the way.

Mitch

[GroovyBee]

Mitch, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 5:08 PM, said:

Hmm, so which model is this 1702, 1712 or 1722?

I doubt its the 1722 because that was only a definition in Oct 84. There appears to be text in the bottom left acorner ("GCC") and maybe also the right corner too. I expect Curt knows what it says .

[batari]

Curt Vendel, on Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 PM, said:

Say hello to MARIA...


The GDS layered structure has been fully recovered and resynthesized.


maria_cif.jpg

Curt

That is cool, but I want to know how you're going to synthesize TIA chips...

[Gorf]

batari, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 5:46 PM, said:

That is cool, but I want to know how you're going to synthesize TIA chips...

Good point.

[Curt Vendel]

Your right Steve, lets toss out the original copy of the Constitution, hey why not ask Woz to throw out the last remaining Apple 1's too. Give the Smithsonian a call, tell them to toss out the recovered Mercury 7 capsules too, hey its just history, right :-/



Curt

Gorf, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:30 AM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:22 AM, said:

Back off man... I'm a scientist... er, I mean a Historian.

All about preserving Atari's history and legacy. This stuff came out of the dumpsters, so they wanted it to disappear from the world, ain't gonna happen under MY watch!

In all seriousness, I have to ask.....Why? I say let it go man.

[Curt Vendel]

Dude --- you're getting very depressing, try some lithium, I hear it works well for manic depressants.....



Curt

Gorf, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:35 AM, said:

jaybird3rd, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 12:01 AM, said:

It's a thing of beauty. Thanks for your hard work in recovering this design.

I'd still love to see a new MARIA implementation combined with the Flashback 2 chipset to create a new 7800 clone. With the increasing interest in 7800 homebrew development (and I'm champing at the bit to join in with a game or two of my own), I think such a system would have some exciting possibilities.

So far the only possibilities I've seen are repeats of old classics....trust me. I'ev wasted plenty of time
wanting to resurrect the oldies but goldies...however, how many times does anyone actually play them once
they played through them? In gaming, we need a 'new drug' but I dont have much hope for that. After what
I've seen released over the past decade, Im not very hopefull. Fromt he classic systems and especially the
new over powered and greatly under used newer systems. As far as I am concerned, both Sony and Microsoft
can give away their new systems and I would not be intersted. Wii? A better attempt but really, besides
a different controller scheme that keeps you from gaining a fat ass, what have they done that is so special?

Edited by Curt Vendel, Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:24 PM.

[Curt Vendel]

shhhhhhhhh........ your not supposed to tell anyone about those...

jeeez, this guy just can't keep a secret.

wgungfu, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 10:53 AM, said:

Curt Vendel, on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:22 AM, said:

Back off man... I'm a scientist... er, I mean a Historian.

All about preserving Atari's history and legacy. This stuff came out of the dumpsters, so they wanted it to disappear from the world, ain't gonna happen under MY watch!


Curt

So when can we expect to find the used napkins, kleenex, and half eaten sandwiches you found as well resurrected and re-synthesized?