Re: C16 played Atari 2600?

Right after I got my C=64 in 1983 I saw an ad in one of the computer mags
that had a cartridge port emulator to allow your C=64 to run 2600
cartridges.

Commodore VIC-20/2600 game adapter - Rumored to exist. Was advertised by
Protecto in mail order ads in during the 1983 time frame. Plugged into VIC
expansion connector and provided 2600 software emulation. Original price,
emulation quality, and reliability all unknown.


The September 1983 issue of Electronic Games (page 41) shows an
advertisement for Cardapter, a 2600 cart adapter for the Vic-20. The
distributor was Cardco, Inc. in the US, LSI Distributors Ltd in W est
Canada, Hobby Craft Canada in East Canada, and Audiogenic in Europe.
Additional information on this bit would be interesting.


Andy

"Dombo" <dombo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:479c8a7f$0$24433$5fc3050@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bill H schreef:
On Jan 27, 7:57 am, Bill H <b...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 27, 7:31 am, "Riccardo Rubini" <rub...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





Bill H wrote:
on:http://www.old-computers.com/museum/doc.asp?c=97
Is it true that the C16 could play the Atari 2600 games? How?
I've never heard about it, but it sounds like bull***. Give a look at
the
edge connector of an Atari 2600 cartridge:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030226/atari-2600-pcb.jpg
Does it resemble in any way or form the C16 edge connector?
http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/cbm-1551-tcbmi.jpg
Absolutely not. Case closed.
Riccardo
It did say they were "pretty much the same". But the interesting thing
it said was that a small basic program would let you play them. That
is the "How" I was wondering about. Would it have been possible to
emulate the Atari 2600 in Basic on the C16 and then "play" the Rom?
The 2600 wasn't all that powerful inside and the programs were often
small.

Bill H- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

A little more on the Specs of the 2600:

CPU 6507
Ram: 128 bytes
Rom: 4kb max
Graphics: 160 x 192, 128 colors (16 colors, 8 levels)
Sound: 2 mono channels

With such limited specs I would think that the C16 (or any other
commodore) could handle this (not sure in Basic though).

I am pretty sure it is impossible, especially if you consider how the
video display on the Atari 2600 worked. The 2600 didn't have video memory
which it would read autonomously, like on the Commodore and most other
computers. Basically the video chip on the 2600 is one dimensional, it
only knows how to display on horizontal line. If you want the next line to
be different from the previous line the video chip had to be reprogrammed.
Since 15625 (PAL) or 15734 (NTSC) times a second a new line is written on
the video screen, it requires accurate timing from the software. Due to
the entirely different hardware on the Commodore's it is not possible to
achieve that precise timing and emulate the hardware as well. The fact
that the hardware on the Commodore is in many respects more powerful
doesn't really help.

For the Coleco console there has been a cartridge that added the ability
to play Atari 2600 games. Essentially this was nothing more than a full
2600 system on a cartridge, the console itself was more or less degraded
to a power supply.


.

Quantcast