RE: Atari CATBOX Project??

Personally I wouldn't bother making an emulation of the Cat Box. From my
experience in using one, it was very limited in what it can do and was a
pain in the arse to use. **Use only in the case Nostalgia**

On the other hand, not much else can do what it can do. You'd be better of
making an updated version to your own design, and with your own software.
The software was the real problem, cos it was so basic, and did very
little - every thing was done pretty much manually. Also, it was designed
before Atari used Z80 and 6809 so the pods to use these processors are hard
to find.

If you made your own, using a PC and parallel port, you could code it to do
anything the Cat Box did lots more. I have rough designs for a standalone
Cat Box using Hitachi HD64180 processor with LCD and keypad, wheras some
others have designs using Altera PLD and some the parallel port.

One person who's actually got it off the drawing board is Chris Toseland
(aka Muppets) http://www7.ewebcity.com/xevious/

Here's a handy resource if you want to know about interfacing parallel ports
(and lots of others besides).
http://www.beyondlogic.org/spp/parallel.htm

Personally, I've documented and emulated the Signature Analysis part of the
Cat Box for checksumming ROMS find it (temporarily) at:
http://www.freedomprojects.co.uk/siganal.zip (200kB'ish)

Phillip Eaton (D-Type/Flip-Flop)
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-vectorlist@synthcom.com
> [mailto:owner-vectorlist@synthcom.com]On Behalf Of Chris Starr
> Sent: 19 January 2001 06:49
> To: vectorlist@synthcom.com
> Subject: VECTOR: Atari CATBOX Project??
>
>
> Hi there,
>
> I just managed to get a complete set of schematics for an Atari
> Catbox, and
> wanted to see if I could make one, either hardware or a software emulation
> of the hardware using a parallel port for digital I/O to test rigs.
>
> I wanted to see if anyone had managed to dump the 2K rom that is in the
> unit, as this would be necessary for me to make the project work as it
> should.
>
> If anyone would like to assist or contribute any information it would be
> appreciated.
> Thanks.
>
> c-starr@erols.com
>
>

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Received on Fri Jan 19 04:58:04 2001