GENERAL STARPATH SUPERCHARGER QUESTIONS

2.1 What is the Starpath Supercharger?

This post is from VGR, but I made a few edits. Hope he doesn't mind:

The Supercharger was made by Arcadia (who was later forced to change their name to Starpath). It is an extremely long cartridge, longer than a Xonox double-ender. The Supercharger has a blue label on it. The end of the cartridge (the end which doesn't plug into the 2600) is a large handle. Coming out of one side of the cartridge is a cord, ending in a plug which can plug into any cassette player's earphone jack.

Basically, then, the Supercharger is a giant cartridge which connects to any cassette player.

The games for the Supercharger are not cartridges. They're normal audio cassettes. Needless to say, that allows for a lot more program space. The Supercharger cartridge interface itself has 6K RAM. Games have to run from RAM rather than ROM because the memory has to get written-to every time you load in new games. The result is twelve games which are superior to a lot of other 2600 games. Dragonstomper and Escape From the Mindmaster are two of the best. These two and Survival Island in particular take advantage of the ability to save portions of the Starpath memory and load in new data for new levels. These are known as 'multiloaders'.

Since the games can be copied, we put them all on a single CD.

For the game list, read section 3.3.2.

2.2 Whatever happened to Starpath?

3.1 What is the background on the hobby Starpath CD project?

3.3.1 What was on it? (general)

Every Starpath/Arcadia game released, in PAL and NTSC formats (save Survival Island which only recently resurfaced for PAL) and an NTSC version of the most complete SWEAT! extant. Also, SoundX, a great Asteroids-clone pre-release version of Suicide Mission, and Carol Shaw's unreleased 1978 game POLO are present.

This CD acts as a standalone audio-CD, but also has an ISO-9660 data portion readable by a CD-ROM. Included on this data portion are a lot of image files as well as some development software which allows you to talk to the Supercharger to write your own games. A Vectrex portion includes high-quality cleaned-up overlay scans (much better than what you can find on the net) and legal ROM dumps, and more.

And don't forget the booklet. It is 4.25x5.5" in size, with an intro from Steve Hales, instructions, reviews, color cover and backcover, and more. The first 100 or so booklets were hand-initialed by Steve Hales. The pressing was limited to 400 units, about 350 of which were sold to consumers, the rest reserved as personal backups by the "Cyberpunks".

This CD is not for use with emulators. This is not an emulation! This CD is primarily an audio-CD to replace original Arcadia/ Starpath audio tapes and MUST be used with a genuine Starpath Supercharger cartridge and Atari 2600-compatible console (2600, 2600 jr., most 7800s, and so on). There is a data portion which requires a computer w/CD-ROM to use, but the computer will always only be a cross-compiler and file-server for the actual Atari 2600 hardware. Neat, huh?

3.4 How was it done?

This whole project was organized on the internet. Calls went out for 'tape donators' and a special hook was put into my email address to collect names onto a list of people interested in the CD once it is done. Eventually I gathered a team of people to help me. Russ Perry handling rights negotiation, Dan Skelton handling CD artwork, Jim Nitchals handling the initial tape remastering.

Believe me, it's a long story and I don't even remember the whole thing.

3.5 How do I find one? How much?

4.1 What do I need to begin?

Software was included on the CD for PC and MAC to encode audio from 6502 ML into Starpath audio .WAVs for playback (bin2tape), as well as decode the Starpath audio signal and put it back into 6502 ML. The PC version of Bin2Tape was not properly beta-tested and was DOA but was rereleased by Bill Heineman in a working form on the net. Still, for now, Bob Colbert seems to have the lead in making the better program (see below). These tools, combined with a 6502 cross assembler, can be used to write 2600 games. The Supercharger has 6K RAM onboard which, due to it being more than the 4K ROM limit, and it being RAM, opens up a lot of doors for the 2600 which writing for ROM simply keeps shut. Jim also included some hints on 2600 and Starpath programming to get you started, as well as sourcecode to many of the games. I think any 16-bit or greater machine with at least 8-bit sound should be able to run the software.

Bob Colbert (hatchets buried permanently, knock on wood) is currently supporting his own standalone freeware program called "makewav". If you are an Amiga owner like myself, makewav is the only choice for you. If you are a PC owner, you may also want to use makewave over bin2tape. For instance, due to CD pressing concerns, most the .BINs on the data portion of the Supercharger CD are padded to 32K. I don't believe the current version of bin2tape will read these effectively. Makewav will! Makewav has other compatibility enhancements and optional flags as well. Check it out.

Both bin2tape and makewav can be used to send preexisting 2 and 4K ROM dumps of commercial cartridges to the supercharger, although I do not endorse this if it is used for piracy.

Bob Colbert's Cheetah program can be used in conjunction with this to modify games for infinite lives, etc similar to Game Genie. Since some commercial games bang on the Supercharger bank select register, causing crashes, Bob Colbert designed a hardware modification which write-protects the Supercharger RAM and allows most incompatible games to run.

Relevant 2600 programming information and support files to be found at this URL:

http://members.home.com/rcolbert1/super.htm

4.2 Is there a mailing list of programmers?

Yes! Subscribe via stella-request@biglist.com
post to stella@biglist.com

You can subscribe and unsubscribe through a web interface as well.

This is an Atari 2600 programming cooperative and discussion group. Beta-test source code and binaries are often published here.

Past archives are also available in a searchable interface.

So, if you wanna code, get a Supercharger, get the software, and get onto the stella list. Even if you plan on coding via an emulator a Supercharged 2600 is important to verify the integrity of your games. Many games will run fine on emulators but screw up on authentic 2600s. Even if you intend to distribute via cart it's much more convenient to debug with a Supercharger. No more test-EPROM burns...

4.3 Are there any URLs with useful information?

5.1 Does this mean the Starpath games are public domain?

It took some subtle negotiation to get the permission to produce this CD legally and by the book. This CD does not signal that the games are suddenly public domain or freely distributable, therefore I will frown upon any effort to upload the Starpath games onto web sites (we've had some close-calls, with lots of nasty email exchanges to boot.) Other ROM images, it's really too late to do anything, but the rights of these games have been well established. Despite the commercial CD effort being dead for now, it is in the best interest of the "classic community" to respect these rights to facilitate professional efforts to present classic games in a suitably pleasing deluxe format. (For details of the commercial release read on.)

Also the developer software should not be used as a pirating device. This would defeat the purpose of including "DEVELOPER" software.

(stepping off the soap-box)

5.2 Did any magazines write about it?

The CD was written up in the following periodicals:

• Digital Press had a blurb on it
• 2600 Connection devoted a whole issue to it (which one again??)
• Replication News, a CD manufacturer's trade journal, had a piece on it (I have yet to see this one, BTW)
• Wired magazine had a collumn on it (February 1997, p. 171)

BTW, it also made the rounds through 3d0 and maybe elsewhere in the industry.

5.3 Did you ever find a PAL Survival Island?

6/11/97

I got an e-mail from a guy named Chris Hind who claimed to own an honest-to-goodness PAL version of Survival Island. We were skeptical because we had gotten our hands on one before that was labelled as a PAL version but upon decoding turned out to be byte-identical to the NTSC version (as odd as that sounds).

We then assumed that there never was a true PAL version of Survival Island. It turns out that we were wrong. This game must be pretty rare in Europe because despite all the exposure on r.g.v.c. it's taken this long for anyone to come forward with a genuine PAL Survival Island, and it's unfortunate that this game did not make it onto the official CD. But it is fortunate that the Arcadia/Starpath catalog has been properly archived in its entirety down to every single byte of released code, remaining betas and source, and the vast majority of the released printed material (a little more of this has surfaced as well).

If you are one of the handful of Supercharger CD owners who use PAL televisions, please email me (cybpunks@hotmail.com) and I'll see about sending you the 3 loads in .BIN form which you can then run makewav or bin2tape on to generate a viable WAV file. I'm not putting these up on an ftp or web server because these games remain copyrighted outside of the domain of the Supercharger CD. That also means you should reserve it for personal use only.

If you contacted me in the past and I didn't get it to you, contact me again. I have the .BINs.

5.4.1 What are the long-range goals of the mailing list?

A poll conducted a several months ago revealed that about a half dozen people are planning to have completed a mature game in one year's time. Since then I've seen steady progress in at least a few individuals. Two or three new games may be written by the end of 1999.

5.4.2 The 1st Annual Stella Programming Contest!

**********************************************
**STELLA's 20th BIRTHDAY PROGRAMMING CONTEST**
***********SPONSORED BY CYBERPUNKS************
**********************************************


Ever since the Starpath Supercharger CD was released in late 1996 I had wanted to sponsor a contest to encourage programming but I had no way to provide a suitable prize.

All this changed when I shot at Nolan Bushnell's home for my documentary in the summer of 1997. I printed out a special "Happy 20th Birthday to Stella" signature certificate on parchment-style paper which has the following autographs:

• Nolan Bushnell - Father of videogames, founder of Atari
• Al Alcorn - co-founder of Atari
• Ron Milner - designer of the Atari 2600
• Joe Decuir - designer of the Atari 2600, 400/800, and Amiga
• Steve Mayer - designer of the Atari 2600
• Larry Wagner - original head of 1st group of programmers who completed Combat and wrote the number-crunching part of Video Chess.
• Larry Kaplan - Symbolic of the originator of 2600 programming tricks: Air-Sea Battle, Bowling, Bridge, Kaboom.

Only 4 of these certificates exist.

Piero Cavina won for his excellent game, Oystron.

No contest was announced for subsequent years, unfortunately, since no games were completed via the list. The only new games that surfaced were the mysterious THE CORE, as well as Eric Bacher's ALFRED'S CHALLENGE, Merlin's Walls, and Pesco, created independent of the list. See below for more recent developments.

5.4.3 What's happening on the list right now? What's been completed?

In total there have been a couple decent Tetris clones written, and Piero Cavina is wrote an excellent multisprite shooter game called "Oystron". Erik Mooney worked on a Space Invaders clone that used playfield graphics instead of sprites. Greg Troutman wrote This Planet Sucks, a hybrid of Space Taxi and the Taito game Lunar Rescue. Bob Colbert has been working on and off on a Sabotage clone.

There have been many technical demos created on the list such as text scrollers, and a cool flickering moving dual six-char which was intended to be used for a 2D fighter type game. The latter turned into an Amiga Boing ball demo, quite impressive. Most recently (2/2000) a Gravitar-like game was completed that is probably already worthy of an award, but some say the difficulty needs to be ramped down a bit.

You can purchase cartridge versions of most of these programs at Hozer Video.

Some links to the binaries are available through Nick Bensema's 2600 site.

5.5 I heard that a commercial CD was planned? Will it ever come out?

6.1 Why did you decide to do this project?

At the time I was producing commercials on a Newtek Video Toaster/Flyer nonlinear editing system and after getting in touch with some ex-2600 programmers via the Starpath CD endeavor, it seemed a logical extension for me to combine my interest in the 2600 with my videography and moonlight making a documentary, since it is the 20th anniversary of the machine.

6.2 What is the focus, or thesis, of this piece?

It is a birthday party for Stella, and a coming-together of many famous figures in Atari past where they discuss their groundbreaking work in front of the video camera. Call it "Stella: Anthology" if you like. I call it "Stella at 20: An Atari 2600 Retrospective".

The thesis is similar to an IEEE article from 1983 which states that the 2600 survived well beyond anyone's expectations due to its amazing flexibility, which was exploited by some very creative programmers. In addition, the piece will focus on the changes in the industry from the perspective of those who helped to create it.

Along the way we will learn the genesis of the machine and the games that made it famous and kept it alive for 14 years.

As for style, I'd like it to be visually exciting, not just simple talking heads. Lots of animations, sound effects and music, screenshots of the games, pan and scan on old photos (Ken Burns effect), and so on.

The focus has shifted somewhat, away from individual interviews and more towards a pure roundtable, casual chat approach. This has resulted in much more candid, looser conversations which, though harder to edit, are more of what I'm looking for, since more of the personality of each person comes through this way.

6.3 How did you locate all the programmers?

Mostly word of mouth via email. It was a domino effect as people knew people, or at least knew people who might know people. And getting them located was only half the battle, I also had to get them to commit to attending. This became easier and easier as people slowly committed (the power of peer pressure) until even Nolan Bushnell decided to participate.

6.4 What is the status on it?

During the winter of 1997 there was a contract dispute over post production services which drained the remaining funds from the project and left it nowhere near complete. What followed was a very long and painful year in which I tried to find a way to fund an editing system. Also in 1998, Jim Nitchals (who funded the shooting phase) sadly passed away and was no longer available to help. This January, as a final effort, I sent a plea to the Atari alums, asking for donations... That plea was answered and volume 2 of the series was released at the CG Expo in the summer of '99.

See the NEWS section for all future Cyberpunks updates. As a result, this FAQ will no longer be added to, only maintained with updated links and information. Future products will have their own support pages.