[HN Gopher] Atari has launched collectible arcade circuit boards...
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Atari has launched collectible arcade circuit boards of retro
classics
Author : ajdude
Score : 113 points
Date : 2023-07-24 13:55 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (retrododo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (retrododo.com)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| "Atari"
| m000 wrote:
| Nostalgia exploitation at its purest form. Mini-consoles at least
| had _some_ function.
| kamranjon wrote:
| These can replace damaged boards so I think they serve good
| function of keeping old cabinets alive.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Except its generally not the PCB itself that fails, its the
| components on the PCB.
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't know about early Atari PCBs, but in WPC era
| pinball, you get things like battery leakage corroding PCBs
| or power circuits where the traces lift from the heat (see
| that in CRT chassis too). Sometimes you can fix those, but
| too much repair and the board ends up a scorched mess.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| From the FAQ of atari.com:
|
| > Do you ship to my country?
|
| > As of this time Atari does not ship orders outside of the USA
|
| It's a pity, I got interested in that Atari VCS as I was looking
| around on their website.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| just use a proxy shipper
| pestatije wrote:
| no chips though
| crtasm wrote:
| Source: https://whynowgaming.com/atari-launches-new-range-of-
| replica...
|
| Store:
| https://atari.com/collections/hardware?filter.p.product_type...
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| This would be a fun project if the sold a pack of all of the
| chips too. Anyone know if you can still buy all of these? It
| would NOT be a fun project to de-solder all of this from an old
| board (IMO).
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| There is a lot of jellybean TTL chips on these that are easy to
| get still. But then there are chips like Pokey's that are no
| longer made. You either have to salvage one from somewhere [0]
| or get something like an FPGA repro [1].
|
| But that isn't your biggest problem. These are vector games, so
| your real problem is sourcing the no-longer made vector monitor
| that is scarce, finicky, and driven by voltages that could kill
| you. And then there is all the associated high voltage bits
| like the flyback transformer. The other route to go is to
| vector mod a plain-jane CRT by rewinding the deflection coils
| [2].
|
| [0]
| https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_nkw=atari+pokey+chip&Brand=&...
|
| [1] https://paradisearcadeshop.com/products/pokeyone-v2-fpga-
| ata...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci9qiGVMF7s
| dtx1 wrote:
| I recently had the chance to play a Vectrex System in the
| Nationaal Videogame Museum in the Netherlands and I'm sad to
| say that modern display tech can't replace these Vector
| Displays. They have that certain analog vibe to them that you
| can't replicated with a digital screen no matter how good it
| is.
|
| Sadly, it's really unlikely that anyone is ever going to
| produce new CRTs again so I would highly suggest to visit
| your local retro arcades ASAP because these Displays will die
| and can never be replaced again.
| intrasight wrote:
| $245. Yikes!
| crote wrote:
| That's insane. Those are manufactured for _at most_ $20
| (assuming tiny quantities), and even if you lost all the
| original design files reproducing them isn 't _that_ expensive.
| progre wrote:
| For a pcb. No components.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Yup, that's the price as a collectors item, but also as a spare
| part for devices that can be sold at thousands quids once
| repaired, so if the price was based purely on demand over offer
| it would still make sense. Whoever had the idea is a genius to
| me.
| junaru wrote:
| Those boards alone cost half a MiSTer.
| readingnews wrote:
| Would it kill any journalist or website to link to the company
| that you are talking about in your article? [0] Why yes, yes it
| would.
|
| As an aside, I have the spool of the original Lunar Lander for a
| PDP9 (or 11, but I think 9)... at one time there was a forum and
| they told me that some people would purchase / take it, as I did
| not want to chunk it, and I just do not want to hang on to one
| more thing for life... but I lost that forum/bookmarks in the
| midst of a computer crash. I wonder if anyone is still interested
| in that kind of stuff, as I thought MAME etal made that kind of
| collecting less desirable.
|
| [0] https://atari.com/collections/reproduction-pcbs
| behringer wrote:
| It's more collectable now than ever. Put it on eBay to see it's
| real value.
|
| If youre looking to give it away, I can give it a very good
| home!
| phkahler wrote:
| I sold the last of my vector games to a friend a couple years
| ago. I threw in a Major Havoc board for free since he has a
| similar cabinet to try it in. Then I Googled it and found
| someone who did a from-scratch cabinet build and could only
| find a board for... $1200. Ah one man's former hobby is
| another's treasure!
| motohagiography wrote:
| Every time I see an Atari rebooted story I wish there were a way
| to connect with one of the luxury brand conglomerates like
| Kering, Hermes, Richemont, LVMH or another one about picking up
| Atari as a heritage brand and doing a real design and tech firm
| out of it that evolves a design language into new products.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| The problem is these brands only know about one thing: creating
| Veblen goods.
|
| So they'd turn Atari into overpriced Atari products that only
| the 0.1% would buy and it'd ruin the brand even more.
| motohagiography wrote:
| People who know how the luxury business works would know that
| Atari perfume would be perfectly accessible in every airport
| and drugstore. Notes of vanilla and tang crystals over
| bakelite and moldy carpet. Only half kidding.
|
| A version of something like the Kyocera KY-01L or Punkt
| dumbphone (e-ink phones) but without the inferior Android OS,
| and for some smarter narrow use cases would be a play. We
| don't have luxury versions of tech because it's all too
| general purpose, where we can simulate the features of any
| other general purpose machine on any general purpose machine.
| There's no bar to any of it. The beauty of Atari was it just
| played games. The 2600 was a single purpose device, it was
| what it did. They failed when they had to compete with other
| general purpose computers.
|
| I'd apply Atari to produce single purpose devices.
| toyg wrote:
| I feel like Atari is missing a trick by not going after the Edu
| market. They could make it easy for students to rebuild old games
| and old boards, through some sort of subscription program for
| school.
| II2II wrote:
| They wouldn't be very useful in education unless you could
| populate them with difficult to obtain chips. It is essentially
| the schematic in PCB form. Depending upon what they included in
| the silkscreen, it would be even less than a schematic (e.g.
| you would not know the specifics of each component). The
| education market would also expect some accompanying materials,
| such as the theory of operation and datasheets that are under
| copyright (assuming they haven't been lost to time).
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| My guess is that this wouldn't be appealing to a younger crowd.
| Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and it is the older folks with
| the interest and the cash to make efforts like these viable.
| For Edu, something slapped together around Retropie that is
| cheap and not difficult to assemble is already popular.
| jmount wrote:
| I suspect you are right. The systems are clever compromises
| against the affordable technology options of they day. What
| feels clever/satisfying will differ by era. Or, as I assume
| you are anticipating, kids these days also have their own
| good and interesting ideas.
| samtho wrote:
| For a younger, student electrical engineer, they could easily
| gain the appreciation for the engineering that went into
| these things. Especially as a someone who wrote a lot
| software prior to completing my EE training, I wanted to
| learn on something that was fairly "pure" to learn major
| concept and patters on: a large MCU that only breaks out into
| a bunch of connectors is not it. While convenient and
| inexpensive, it doesn't let you learn the more basic concepts
| that empower you to understand what is going on a at the
| lower levels of its operation.
|
| I would love to be able to teach (or have had the opportunity
| to learn) system architecture from analysis of arcade
| cabinets, starting with a CPU, adding ram, rom, peripherals,
| etc. Ben Eater's 6502 computer kit[0] comes very close and is
| closer to the ballpark of what I would want out of a learning
| experience.
|
| [0]: https://eater.net/6502
| sschueller wrote:
| Populating those would be a huge pain as it appears all pads are
| soldered shut.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Are they even drilled? I don't see vias on the bottom side
| either.
| baz00 wrote:
| They aren't. There is a white background behind the original
| image which makes them look filled.
| anjel wrote:
| Animation cels redux
| Dwedit wrote:
| Unpopulated PCBs WTF
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Totally.
|
| I think this is like the whole buying vinyl records to hang on
| your wall (of which I have several).
|
| I suspect they're not really intended to be used other than for
| decoration
| rightbyte wrote:
| Why would even hardcore collectors buy these. Like a vinyl
| reprint but without the groove.
| bluescrn wrote:
| People have made replacement PCBs for the Amiga and C64 and
| populated them with original parts.
|
| Very niche product/project, but you can replace a damaged PCB
| or build a 'new' retro machine (when combined with other
| projects to manufacture new cases and keyboards/keycaps for
| these machines)
| ilyt wrote:
| I'm guessing 200% to 400% margin on those ? PCBs are cheap and
| I'd imagine adding a bit of paint to on those isn't all that
| expensive in bulk.
|
| Atari is a terrible shell of a company that should die already
| murderfs wrote:
| Probably closer to 1000%. You can get working PCBs of that size
| for $16/unit from PCBWay: you can probably drive that price
| down a lot if you don't actually care about the PCBs working.
| UV printing costs on the order of cents, and PCBs are an
| especially easy substrate to print on (flat and thin).
| robotresearcher wrote:
| From the Atari site, to be clear about the main motivation:
|
| "At 11.5 x 20.75 inches, these boards are stunning wall pieces.
| These boards use the original bill of materials, follow the
| original schematics, and can be used to replace damaged original
| boards by using the original parts from these boards."
|
| https://atari.com/products/lunar-lander-reproduction-pcb (under
| 'Product Details')
| ThomW wrote:
| What letdown -- they're unpopulated PCBs. I'd buy Major Havoc in
| a second if it was ready to pop into my Tempest machine. :)
| samstave wrote:
| You might really like my friends little niche gaming cabinet
| company (custom full size arcade cabinets)
|
| https://www.instagram.com/arcade_army/
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yeah... but the manufacturing processes for those chips are
| long, long gone. Nobody's building fabs for CPUs like the MOS
| 6507 which only have 3,218 transistors in total (seriously).
| That CPU hasn't been in production since 1992, so any
| replacement would be a complete redesign, or an FPGA packaged
| inside to simulate that part, which would no doubt cause its
| own griping. It would also be pointless, because emulating a
| 6507 cycle-accurately is pretty easy nowdays. Same goes for the
| other chips. If you can emulate with perfect accuracy because
| the tech was so primitive back then; what's the point of making
| what will still be a redesign?
|
| At that point, just build a MiSTer (FPGA-based
| reimplementation), then get or build an arcade cabinet adapter
| to have your MiSTer provide the brains.
|
| https://misteraddons.com/products/mistercade
| jameshart wrote:
| Then can you emulate a 6507 cycle-accurately on a surface
| mount board that fits within the package envelope of an
| original 6507 DIP-28?
| djmips wrote:
| That exists but for 6502. The 6507 was not used on arcade
| boards, just for the 2600 home console. (Of course it could
| be easily modified to be used as a 6507)
|
| This is a link to some emulated 6502 cycle accurate units
| both using ARM or FPGA
|
| https://github.com/MicroCoreLabs/Projects
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| [dead]
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| [dead]
| cowsup wrote:
| So they're selling a reproduction board, that does not
| actually work with original hardware, for over $200 a pop?
| That's some expensive wall-art.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > that does not actually work with original hardware
|
| Well, if you were to populate it with the chips from your
| old board, it would work. So as a replacement part if it
| was _just_ your PCB that was cooked, it 's not a terrible
| option. Just having the _option_ to get such a brand-new
| ancient part is still valuable, regardless of cost.
|
| On the bright side, I could spend $500 more on Mac Pro
| wheels.
| sixothree wrote:
| I'm not sure I would even trust it. But if everything was
| socketed it might be a fun project.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I definitely wouldn't trust it if they're not certifying
| that they work and providing the exact revision of the
| board. Even boards that appear to have the same layout
| may be different - it was common to screw up a trace
| layout on a first version and need to manually solder
| bodge wires during assembly.
| DominoTree wrote:
| They are providing the specific revisions: Lunar Lander,
| Warlords (Rev D), Black Widow (Rev A), Gravitar (Rev C),
| and Major Havoc (Rev D).
|
| And their site also states "These boards use the original
| bill of materials, follow the original schematics, and
| can be used to replace damaged original boards by using
| the original parts from these boards."
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Walk into an art gallery sometime and you'll see even more
| expensive wall art.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > Nobody's building fabs for CPUs like the MOS 6507 which
| only have 3,218 transistors in total (seriously).
|
| But you can still buy 6502 compatibles built on other
| technologies and processes, right? (Not sure if you can get
| them in DIP but still.) Differences in voltage levels are
| bound to cause changes, but jumping straight to emulation
| seems excessive (even if it's probably actually easier).
| timmytokyo wrote:
| You can still buy 65C02 chips (DIP, CMOS version) from
| Western Design Center [1]. I've bought a few in recent
| years.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Design_Center
| hashtag-til wrote:
| Agreed. They could have the whole decorative thing, and in a
| little corner put an STM32 and breakout components, with the
| whole emulated game... I'd pay good money for something like
| that.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| I've never really dug into arcade hardware before but this is the
| third time in a week I've seen either a bare chip of a full
| cartridge assembly and I am curious now: was it possible to swap
| this boards between machines and they would just work, assuming
| they had the right controls? Was each publisher using their own
| connector or was there an industry standard?
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Was each publisher using their own connector or was
| there an industry standard?
|
| Before the JAMMA standard, it was truly chaotic. Manufacturers
| didn't really have their own per-manufacturer connectors; it
| was more like each individual game had its own custom wiring
| setup.
|
| Manufacturers would sometimes release upgrade kits for specific
| existing machines. For example, Atari created Black Widow as an
| upgrade kit for existing Gravitar machines (and _only_
| Gravitar)
|
| JAMMA wasn't a magic cure for everything. It specifies pinouts
| for buttons and things but there can still be e.g. video sync
| issues. But it was a huge step forward.
|
| In Japanese arcades you would see a lot of these standardized
| cabinets. They allowed arcade operators to swap in a new JAMMA
| (etc) game at low cost with close to zero effort. Sega's Astro
| City cabinet is probably the most famous, I think.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_arcade_cabine...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| There are some examples of a manufacturer using the exact
| system for several games. Williams, for instance - the
| hardware that ran Joust also ran Robotron 2049 and several
| other games, requiring no more than a ROM swap and controller
| layout change.
|
| It's actually not uncommon to find out that a Joust cabinet
| has painted-over Robotron 2049 panel art and vice versa,
| depending on how many orders of what they got in a particular
| week.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Amusement_Machine_and_Ma...
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Depends... They were _mostly_ all swappable. I 've got a
| vintage arcade cab that has been converted to the "JAMMA"
| standard/pinout. Some PCBs (but not all) that aren't JAMMA can
| be converted to JAMMA using an adapter you put on the PCB.
|
| It was extremely common in some places (tennis clubhouses,
| bowling places, etc.) to have one or two arcade cabs and then
| semi-regularly switch the PCB inside it. For some cabs you
| could even change the "marquee" (the top of the arcade cab,
| above the screen: typically showing the name of the game)
| easily too, so that it would match the PCB inside.
|
| People running bootleg arcade cabs typically wouldn't bother
| changing the marquee: they'd just swap the PCB (typically for a
| bootleg PCB).
| ofrzeta wrote:
| How could a PCB without ICs make a "stunning wall piece". I am
| not even talking about functionality but aesthetically the appeal
| comes primarily from the chips in concert with the connection
| traces.
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(page generated 2023-07-24 23:03 UTC)