[HN Gopher] Moviecart - Full length color movie and audio cartri...
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Moviecart - Full length color movie and audio cartridges for stock
Atari 2600
Author : Lutzb
Score : 261 points
Date : 2024-04-27 12:49 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jbosh wrote:
| This is exceedingly cool use of cartridges. Just as a thought
| experiment I've often wondered if some of the cartridge based
| consoles could be expanded considerably. Along the lines of this
| project, would it be possible to throw an arm chip in a cart and
| send these as h.264? I'm not at a computer but would love to see
| how differently some modern codecs compress.
| Lutzb wrote:
| Definitly! Check for example
| https://github.com/ShironekoBen/superrt allows for realtime
| raytracing on the Super Nintendo using a Cyclone-V FPGA.
| raldi wrote:
| See also tom7's Reverse Emulation video:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0
| pafje wrote:
| The "making of" video is also great :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTlNVUmBA28
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| I was thinking about making a chess cartridge for a famicom,
| with something like lower end arm in it.
| Uvix wrote:
| There was a Super Famicom shogi title that did exactly that,
| _Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi 2_.
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| Thanks for the info!
| JetSetIlly wrote:
| Yes. The Harmony Cart and the UnoCart/PlusCart both have ARM
| chips. Games have been made that make full use of the chip.
| Probably the most impressive IMO being Robotron from
| ChampGames.
|
| The PlusCart also includes a WiFi chip for Internet access.
|
| Exciting times in the world of the Atari2600.
| VelesDude wrote:
| On top of all the other examples, Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shogi
| 2 was a cancelled SNES games from 1995 that was going to us a
| 21MHz ARMv3 processor for AI. I just like the idea that they
| would throw in a processor that was probably about 5-10 times
| the power of the main system CPU.
|
| That a very similar spec ARM processor would become the brain
| of the Gameboy advance many years later.
| manny_408__ wrote:
| Wow very cool
| YesThatTom2 wrote:
| I'm impressed! The way the 2600 does graphics I would have
| thought this to be impossible but you did it!
| pryelluw wrote:
| About four hours of total content from 4GB is really nice. The
| cartridges seem to go for $25. This is a cool medium to explore.
| Gonna have to put me on one of these.
| cs702 wrote:
| This is _exactly_ the sort of gem I love to find occasionally on
| HN.
|
| Done not for money, but, if I may paraphrase George Mallory,
| because the challenge was there.
|
| Someone had to do it.
| greenbit wrote:
| Right? Expecting to see this on hackaday soon, if it isn't
| already.
| VelesDude wrote:
| I always say, I was so stupid/pointless - it had to be done!
| k12sosse wrote:
| Keeping it period accurate.. 7 more years until cloak and dagger
| would come out!
|
| https://youtu.be/tB6Uj2RGhPU
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Outstanding! And props to the author for creating a 2600-style
| manual for this with "The Jerk" (Steve Martin at his finest) on
| the front cover and "more great titles to add to your collection"
| on the back, including Star Wars and Kramer vs. Kramer. I'm
| curious why he chose "Model CX2615" for this though. That was
| "Demons to Diamonds" and was released in 1982, though his manual
| clearly shows "(c) 1977 ATARI, INC."
| greenbit wrote:
| Just waiting for 'E.T.' to get the treatment. =P
| utensil4778 wrote:
| I love the absolutely crazy things happening in the
| retrocomputing space right now. We have these chips with many,
| many orders of magnitude more computing power available for
| peanuts, and the obvious thing to do is apparently to cram them
| into these ancient machines for fun.
|
| Throwing a bunch of compute into a cart and using the "real"
| computer as a very bad GPU is such a fun idea.
| hinkley wrote:
| I want to see retro gaming built on ESP32 hardware.
| ljf wrote:
| https://github.com/harbaum/galagino
|
| And https://www.hackster.io/john-bradnam/galagino-
| esp32-arcade-3...
|
| Though I'm sure there are loads of others!
| utensil4778 wrote:
| Action Retro just posted a video of an AppleII card based on
| the ESP32. It plays Doom
| mdswanson wrote:
| Now, if we just add Sloot's compression technique, we can include
| an entire movie library on a single cartridge!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloot_Digital_Coding_System
| cpeterso wrote:
| Interesting mystery!
|
| > The Sloot Digital Coding System is an alleged data sharing
| technique that its inventor claimed could store a complete
| digital movie file in 8 kilobytes of data -- violating
| Shannon's source coding theorem by many orders of magnitude.
| The alleged technique was developed in 1995 by Romke Jan
| Bernhard Sloot ...
|
| > just days before the conclusion of a contract to sell his
| invention, Sloot died suddenly of a heart attack. The source
| code was never recovered, and the technique and claim have
| never been reproduced or verified.
| Salgat wrote:
| So the cartridge is the computer and basically treats the console
| as a dumb display? That's not as exciting as I was hoping.
| JetSetIlly wrote:
| The 2600 is streaming the data from the cartridge, including
| the program that is run on the 2600. We should remember that
| there's no frame buffer in the 2600, so there's considerable
| work done by the 2600 every frame - just as there is when its
| working with any other cartridge.
|
| The 2600 kernel that runs on the 2600 is excellent but the
| encoding method is what makes a real difference here. Lodefmode
| did a great job with this. The use of playfield/background and
| player colour is exceedingly clever.
| greenbit wrote:
| No frame buffer. The target CRT display scanned an electron
| beam from left to right in about 63 microseconds, snapped it
| back in just a couple more microseconds, working gradually
| downward to produce about 200 such lines before taking a
| couple milliseconds to return to the top. The 6507 had to
| literally write the pixels into that raster in real time, and
| was just skin of the teeth able to do that, hence the phrase
| 'racing the beam', leaving just the retrace times for any
| other program code to run. To get video from a cart, all that
| still has to happen. Pretty cool.
| Salgat wrote:
| It reminds me of the gameboy player for the SNES, where the
| entire gb console ran inside the cartridge and used the snes
| for inputs and display. In this case a PIC controller is the
| cpu in the cartridge doing the heavy lifting.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Ever hear the term "racing the beam"? That came out of game
| programming for the 2600. There is a book named after the
| technique that is pretty great and well worth a read.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam
| bitwize wrote:
| See also: the port of Dragon's Lair to the TI-99/4A.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB3oHdSjfCE
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I wonder if this would run properly on a moded Atari Flashback
| 2...
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(page generated 2024-04-27 23:00 UTC)