Atari Video Touch Pad Programming on a C64 (also, Zellers!)

[@Datan0de]

This is surprisingly timely! When I was a kid in the early to mid 80s, I did the same thing you did- plugged in the keypad controller, read the POKE values as I hit buttons, got disappointed, and gave up. I just recently moved, and have been busy unpacking. Got my C-64 set up about a week ago, and last weekend was setting up the retro consoles and came across the keypad controller. I considered taking another shot at reading it on the 64 and thought "well, someday." And then you posted this! I now have a plan for this weekend...

[@8_Bit]

Very cool, it's good to know that I wasn't alone in this strange quest :) Good luck with it!

[@8_Bit]

ERRATA: Starting around the 20:00 mark, I suddenly start mixing up the terms "row" and "column" presumably because I incorrectly labelled my row counter as "ccount" (for column) and hey, the code works so it must be right, eh? Sorry about that. Thanks to MilliVee1966 for pointing it out. Also, I misrepresented (and misunderstood!) how the ADC in the SID works. As c64-wiki.com/wiki/Paddle points out: "Note that the SID's analog inputs do not act like ordinary voltage-to-binary-style A/D converters, and thus cannot be used in this way. Trying to do so yields a highly unlinear characteristic that is hardly usable for much of what one would use a "regular" A/D converter. Consider the SID's analog inputs ohmmeters rather than voltmeters." Thanks to Adrian Gonzalez and MadModders for the correction.

[@MarkSeelye]

Column column column your boat gently down the stream...

[@MrDustpile]

Never mind, I'm more amazed you were ripped off with the Mastertronic games. In the UK, where they came from, they were around half or a quarter of that price.

[@8_Bit]

@@MrDustpile By 1985 (I think that's when we first got Mastertronic games here in Canada) the C64 games market was all disk, and most games were $30-$40 or even more. I think I paid $40 for the HHGTTG game I showed. So $10 for a Mastertronic game on disk seemed like a bargain to us.

[@WarrenPostma]

@@MrDustpile UK commodore games on cassette were dirt cheap. It was a great time to be alive. I loved ZZAP magazine. Blighty Commodore Fans were the best fans.

[@shickster1]

"It was terrible...I enjoyed every minute of it."

[@mrkitty777]

Grumpy Cat would agree 😸

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

I totally understand. There are a couple of videos on YT that have the Christmas soundtracks that used to play in K-Mart stores many decades ago in the background. They put a smile on my face too.

[@ScottHiland]

Came here to quote the same thing. It's like the Star Wars Christmas Special. 60 minutes of Wookiee warbling and you're still enthralled.

[@leadedsolder]

I worked at Zellers for a few summers, and surprisingly I still miss it. I think most of the appeal was the cafeteria.

[@8_Bit]

Both while researching this episode, and in the comments here since I published it, I've seen a surprising amount of positive memories from former employees of Zellers. It's great to hear that a big retail company could have many happy employees; it's too bad Zellers didn't survive Walmart!

[@PieFights]

@@8_Bit I remember Zellers and also Biway where I grew up in Niagara Falls Ontario we had the Niagara Square Shopping mall we had both a Kmart and a Robinsons

[@Mr_ToR]

This is awesome. Especially it is really awesome that you've shown how it's done with assembly. Me and my son made a lego robot with cheap servo motors connected to an Arduino which accepts control commands from his C64 via UART. We also made a basic controller program, which uses joysticks. Now we can integrate the assembly code into our basic program and use our Atari Keyboard Controllers, which I believe are just an earlier version of the Atari Video Touch Pad controllers.

[@3DPDK]

... and the last step in the process would be to "wedge" the ML routine into the normal system interrupt that scans the keyboard. Once you did that, the basic program you would write to use the pad would simply PEEK (49152) (in this case), when it needed a keypress value. The "last key pressed" location, 49152 would be updated 30 times a second by the system interrupt. The advantage would be the time saved in BASIC program execution because it's not calling the ML subroutine every time it needs a keypress value, and you aren't interrupting system interrupts.

[@robertsissco2439]

God, I'd love to just get this to work like a number pad for programming in BASIC. I have always hated using the top row numbers for ANYTHING on any system, they are always so far out of the way that it was a pain, plus I find myself hitting the wrong number more often then not. Would be interesting if one could make something based off of one of there for a mechanical number pad you could use.

[@Sultaneous]

Zellers was the absolute best place to buy games when I was a poor teenager - $5 Atari Cartridges (in box /new), $20 FastLoad cartridge, and who could forget the Video Game "Dollar Bins" where everything was 99 cents -> we used to grab everything we could! Miss those days. Hey! I still have my original in box Star Raiders with the controller, so I can follow along with the actual hardware. Great video.

[@8BitNaptime]

Me it was Canadian Tire.

[@scpalmer138]

This is almost exactly how I got my new copy of Star Raiders + Touch Pad during the crash -- but it was in the US and at a discount store called Heck's for about the same amount of money IIRC.

[@dkovacs]

You should add a routine to generate DTMF tones when you push buttons on the pad.

[@kke]

Or convert it into a bluebox for generating tones to make free calls!

[@ThetaReactor]

@@kke That's the easy part. Step 2 is building your own POTS network that is actually phreakable.

[@dkovacs]

kke it would be interesting to know if any telcos out there still use inband signaling.

[@15743_Hertz]

Fun hack! I remember playing around with the C64 joystick ports to read RTTY, (Radio teletype), and morse code. Basic was just fast enough for 74 baud teletype and maybe 20 words per minute, (WPM), morse code. Later I would use the joystick port trick on my Amiga to do the same thing using Modula 2.

[@raymondheath7668]

Good information. I am just getting back into hardware for C64 after 35 years. I am so rusty. Built an LED interface for user port to experiment how to output a byte Brings back so many memories

[@justinbohemier118]

Your voice is very soothing. I enjoy watching your videos, it helps with my anxiety. I had a C64 as a kid, but didn't know how to program, I just knew how to run games. It's interesting how much potential the C64 had with such low amount of hardware and ram. Please continue making videos, I'll keep watching them

[@8_Bit]

Hi, thanks! Just don't watch my April Fool's episode from 2019, all the rest should be good. :)

[@danieldaniels7571]

I loved that Infocom Hitchhikers Guide game. Never could finish it, though

[@devil8975]

Don't worry. Grab a towel.

[@AzBats0221]

Great video! I did something similar because too many Amiga games didn’t allow you to play using the keyboard. Using the (much modified) Touch Pad in Mortal Kombat was perfect.

[@NeilRoy]

Wow, nice to see I'm not the only one that tried to use that on my C64. I bought my Atari 2600 and games at Zellers really cheap as well. lots of bargain bin games back around 1988 or so I think. I got the same game with the keypad. Later on I also tried to use it with my C64 with no luck. Glad someone got it to work. I still have that controller laying around somewhere along with many of those cheap carts. It's so sad about Zellers, I shopped a lot in it. I still almost never enter Walmart, not a fan of the store, plus I like to shop in Canadian owned companies if I can first. The one here in Kingston was open for a long time. It finally closed down a few years back and Target bought up all their stores, and quickly closed down as well. I think I've been in Walmart twice. I miss the 1980s when we had so many more stores like that to choose from. Zellers, Woolworths and K-Mart I think was the third? As well as the MANY great computer stores we had at the time. Online sales and Walmart has ruined all that sadly. I lucked out on my datasette, I got it for free from St Lawrence college as they didn't need it anymore. Anyhow, I really loved this.

[@MattKasdorf]

I too bought my copy of Star Raiders for $1.97 at Zellers! Mainly for input for my Atari 400. Thanks for the re-memories. 🇨🇦

[@8_Bit]

Did Star Raiders on the Atari 400 support the Touch Pad? Or was there other software that supported it? Very cool!

[@MattKasdorf]

@@8_Bit I wrote a telephone dialing program, and this was the perfect interface... for $2, I couldn't make my own for less.

[@GeoffSeeley]

When I was in high school, I worked at Zellers as the "computer whiz kid" to sell Commodore 64's, etc. Great memories of Zellers! Thanks Robin!

[@neilloughran4437]

Amazing to watch this. I got this for xmas in 1982... price was about £45 in the UK. Insane price really... was a great game for the time and the controller was nicely used. It was nice to see you take out all the boxes and comics as I haven't seen them in nigh on 40 years... :D

[@AureliusR]

Wooo!!! New 8-bit Show and Tell episode! Zellers closed in Ottawa ages ago... too bad.

[@_commodore_]

It so cool to look at your videos every time. What a good job you are doing Robin C= ❤️🧡💛💚💙

[@YoreHistory]

As a fellow Canadian I remember it well. Here in Vancouver we had Eatons, Sears, Zellers, Kmart and my personal favourite Woolco for C64 and accessories. Woolco and Sears both had displays where you could interact fully with the C64...program, play games etc. Gateway to Apshai was my first C64 game! :) Star Raiders was the Alpha Wing Commander...it was a special game, particularly the Atari 800 version of the game. Good nostalgia thanks :)

[@Horganic]

Loved this. Zellers and Becker’s were my stomping grounds. What a treat to see some history along with a great project idea and demo. I had Ocean City Defender - who could forget that artwork?

[@H2Obsession]

Thanks so much! I remember having one of those Star Raiders control pads and *knew* it could be interfaced w/Commodore, but never had the chance to try it out! (I lost the Atari keypad before I got into serious CBM programming.) I always figured it had something to do with the POT lines, so thank you for explaining it in detail

[@3vi1J]

Oh this brings back memories... I recall going through a very similar process of decoding how I could read Intellivision 2 controllers with my C=64, 34ish years back. Nice job!

[@8_Bit]

Cool, I've got a pair of INTV2 controllers here that I should try. And there's also the ColecoVision controller, and someone just reminded me of the big Sesame Street plug-in keyboard; I assume it uses a similar principle though it seems to have way too many buttons so it might be more complicated.

[@3vi1J]

@@8_Bit I recall there being something odd about the dpad... but I sold all my C64 stuff, and even handed over my own code in return for money I applied to an Amiga in those days. I'd love to see you create asm libraries for people, and probably in much shorter time (i.e. weeks) than what it took my 16 year old self to figure it out.

[@n.h.s.a.d.m.]

So much to comment on. My friend had Hitchhiker's Guide boxed with the extras for his Atari computer. I loved all Douglas Adams stuff so much I eventually beat the game on Mac before they put out of a version with the hint system although it took me years and I sought answers from different people who had played it, some were even helpful! I miss Zeller's sooo much, still wear a few of the shirts and watches I bought there awhile ago before they disappeared. Whatever you needed they had it, even if it was a low-quality version, and the stores seemed to be everywhere. When the videogame crash was happening I remember seeing the large external window at Zeller's filled with boxed Atari 2600's that included 3 games for a steeply discounted price. Very cool Star Raiders box you have. When I got into game collecting I paid a premium for the numberpad controller to try to play SR on the 2600 but by then the game was too underwhelming to hold my interest. A few years ago I read all the Atari Force comics and I was really getting into it, the producers were so optimistic in the mailbag sections...and then suddenly they announced the plug was getting pulled on the series. They really were a form of advertisement for Atari and when the company crashed, the budget to commision the comics vaporized.

[@stuehleruecker]

One ony me first pay jobs were to repair a c64 controlled heater system for a school complex on the early 90th. After that only 8086 and bit of sparc. Today is all arm. But still remember some of that. The temperature were read on the joystick ports with switching the outputs to the many thermometer sensors. As this all sounds very familiar with me! Good old times....

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

• 4:38 - I actually did buy _Farmer Dan_ at a Zellers. (They're not pirated games, they're 3rd-party games and some knock-offs.) • 4:57 - And here I thought I got a good deal when I got Star Raiders CIB for whatever I paid on eBay. :-\ • 6:53 - The keypad was used with the BASIC programming cartridge to enter programs (which you couldn't save :-|). • I remember seeing Game & Watch games at Zellers and Towers. I got some NES games at BiWay and Consumers.

[@haweater1555]

Fellow Canadian here. All those retailers mentioned are long gone. You have the shortest KZbin user name I've ever seen.

[@radioman970]

Mastertronic! :) Last V-8 was crazy hard.. wonderful nostalgia

[@erroneus00]

I am absolutely impressed by your depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise along with how fresh you seem to keep it. Is this stuff "obsolete"? Yeah, maybe... but you know? So too is my beloved CoCo series (MC-10, CoCo2 and CoCo3 were all I owned in my youth... all gone... wish I thought to keep it) and my knowledge, expertise of the CoCo series was almost as good as yours with the C64 though there are still things I wish I had explored in the CoCo (and now the C64) but never got around to it. Now I'm older and things like this bring be back in time and offer a chance to do things differently. All that to say I really appreciate what you do here. Now for a request! I like that you've managed to patch in the same tools you use on the real machines onto the "theC64." (I refuse to call it maxi out of respect for theC64 developers who hate the use of that name.) I think we need to hack theC64 mini and theC64 to install those tools into the machine in a more permanent basis somehow. As they are ROM, it would only make sense to add them this way somehow. As there is only "one" "Commodore Basic" game, perhaps modified copies of this "game" could be created which include various combinations of tools including compilers and all of that cool stuff. This isn't the sort of thing the RetroGames folks would likely do but I somehow get the feeling that if someone like you asked them for advice on how you might go about doing that, you might get some help in that regard. And while modified versions of the "Commodore Basic" game could easily be installed and run from USB, it does manage to steal away a USB port. I also wonder if someone smart might come up with a "theC64" USB port replicator which could supply access to old Commodore peripherals over USB. That's probably outside of your range of expertise, but if you were to team up with "The 8BitGuy" and his network of resources, I'm willing to bet something really cool could be developed from that.

[@circuitsandcigars1278]

I bought my Commodore VIC 20.and cassette drive in 1983 at a now defunct chain called Child World in the US. In 1984 I bought a C64 and an MSD disk drive there

[@polluks2]

A hint for the 13:30 Basic program: Don't clear the screen but print two spaces after each number. Pretty cool episode.

[@johncarver9997]

So glad someone finally solved this!

[@mikekopack6441]

Nice!!! I remember trying to do that as well back in the day and didn't get very far. It seemed like a very weird signal pattern (of course, back then I was a kid and didn't know squat...)

[@sheffieldcj]

Hey there! New subscriber here - thank you for sharing all of this. I'm especially enjoying your Assembly Language videos and more than a bit jelly about you having met Jim Butterfield a bunch of times - such a legend; I can't fathom the number of hours I spent typing in games and utilities from Computes Gazette between the age of 8 and 15. I too remember Zellers having a much better selection of 8 bit software. Fun story - the Zellers in the video at 1:08 is on Robertson Road in Ottawa about 2 blocks from where I live. It used to be a K-Mart; it was the first place I touched an Amiga 500. Thanks again - looking forward to more videos! Perhaps consider doing a live stream too!

[@WarrenPostma]

The late great Jim Butterfield's awsome book on assembly/machine language remains one of my most treasured tech books of all time along with the venerable Commodore 64 programmers reference manual, on that crazy paper. What was up with that paper they used in that anyways?

[@CobraTheSpacePirate]

THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE EPISODES!

[@chuckshannon8585]

Back in the early 80's Zellers Management came to my high school's computer teacher looking for students to help them sell the Commodore Computers. I got hired on as a 'Zellers Computer Kid', they had special shirt for us to wear and we were primarily there to sell the computers. It was a pretty cool experience, ended up working for Zellers for about 4 years. BTW not too far from you, few hours south east in Sault Ste. Marie.

[@8_Bit]

That sounds like a pretty great job!

[@GeoffSeeley]

They did the same in my home town in Nova Scotia. I was the computer geek of the school (I knew more than the chemistry teacher who also taught computers) so I ended up following a similar path. Kept me out of trouble, gave me some cash, taught me how to deal with the public and run a cash till. Great memories.

[@haweater1555]

Canadian Tire was the source for my C64 stuff. I still remember going through the checkout to buy the unit and drive.

[@theyamo7219]

Never got much from CT as my local store never really carried much c64 stuff. Did buy a number of games for my VIC-20 there, however.

[@robertdaniels2005]

As a fellow Canadian I indeed remember trips to Zellers. I kept most of my game boxes until a few years ago when I gave all my C64 stuff to my nephew and now he carries on the tradition. I wish I did keep my C64 box as it still had the price I paid back then, $299.99 (I think that was 1984.) Zellers always had the best computer game stuff including the Mastertronic games and the Load N' Go games. I loved the game show games Jeopardy, Wheel Of Fortune and Family Feud but I also had Space The Ultimate Frontier and Alien. Alien was one of those games that I've never seen anyone finish. At least to my satisfaction. Might want to tackle that one yourself. Also an interesting peripheral I had was something called the Lip Stick. It came boxed in the Access game Echelon. You basically said "Fire" or any word for that matter and it would fire missiles or lasers. It could also be used for Spy Hunter to release the smoke screen or oil slick. It wasn't voice recognition but voice activation. I was just cool. However, I used to spend hours in the computer section in Zellers, it was great.

[@Sharklops]

I really enjoyed all the background information

[@WarrenPostma]

I bought my Commodore 64 at Canadian Tire, and also the Programmers Reference Guide, but the 1541 I bought at Zellers. I spent a lot of time poking around on Commodores at Zellers and Canadian tire before I had saved up the money to buy my own! I bought a bunch of MasterTronic games. MasterTronic re-worked UK games, and fixed them to make them NTSC compatible, if I remember correctly, once game developers started doing video interrupt hacks that made their games only work on PAL.

[@Blackadder75]

I don't know what is stranger.. That somebody can stay in a technological decade for all his life or that it is so enjoyable to watch it.

[@csbruce]

0:17 I didn't know Zellers was still around. The local Zellers closed decades ago. And Woolworth's, Sears, K-Mart. I wonder what happened to them. (Oh good, my latest Amazon order has shipped!) 5:07 My family got the Star Raiders game and controller also, probably around 1982. 5:52 So Atari Force was purely a marketing campaign for Atari, but DC kept making them? 9:15 You could have confirmed that both of the fire buttons are wired together my pressing the Right fire button. 10:39 Up to this point, I was guessing that they either rigged it up to use different resistances on the paddle inputs like the 1531 mouse does, or that they included a Decoder chip in the pad with inverted outputs, in which case they could read four rows of three keys with five digital I/O lines, with two outputs (encoded row select) and three inputs for columns. 14:19 They scan the key matrix in the same way the Kernal scans the main keyboard. 15:43 So they're just shorting out the Pot X/Y lines as two additional digital inputs? I take it that it's safe to short them out. I suppose this scheme saves them from putting a Decoder chip in the pad. 16:50 The display would be a persistent if you did PRINT "{home}{white}"PEEK(xxx)"{left}{space}{space}",PEEK(yyy)… 21:44 Can you read the potentiometers faster if you only need to distinguish full-on from full-off rather than get a stable, high-resolution result? 30:00 With the loud guitar and "Maximum Reverb" on the vocals, it's hard to make out the lyrics. Is that a blessing?

[@8_Bit]

Yes, I believe the original Atari Force was just a marketing campaign, but for whatever reason DC continued with a "proper" series afterwards that was pretty good (in my opinion) and had no obvious marketing or product placement to it besides the title and some character names (such as Tempest). There was supposed to be a reprint of the Atari Force series a couple years ago (it was even listed on Amazon) but never was released. I was hoping that would have a bit of new information about the series, like the Sword Quest reprint that did actually happen. Unfortunately I didn't show it on camera, but yes, the right fire button is also wired to the fire pin. However, it seemed to have higher resistance. Not sure if that's a minor manufacturing flaw in my particular unit, or a design choice to allow the 2nd button to be detected independently with the right hardware at the other end. Yes, the Touch Pad is just like the C64 keyboard, with a 4x3 matrix instead of 8x8. I should have mentioned that! I believe it's safe to short them out like this; it must be safe on the Atari 2600; I sure hope it is on the C64/SID too! Good idea re: cleaner output with the BASIC program. I've done that other times but I suppose this time I was in a hurry to move on to the assembly version. It'd be interesting to see if the paddle values could be read quicker in the way you're suggesting. I read somewhere (on c64-wiki.com?) that the SID reads the paddles in just 512 cycles, but the C64 PRG example shows the same ~900 cycle delay loop I ended up using. I tried shortening the loop and immediately got unreliable results and didn't experiment further. I dug around now and found the lyrics for the song, and posted them way at the bottom of the video description. I wrote and recorded this song about 3 years ago and almost didn't include it, but it was so on-topic that I figured I must, despite its weirdness. Despite the nerdy, nostalgic lyrics, musically I was trying to channel the Neil Young & Daniel Lanois collaboration "Le Noise".

[@DerykRobosson]

Woolies is still around here in Australia.

[@RamLaska]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who does this kind of running commentary with timestamps 🤓😂😉

[@cashcurtis]

@@8_Bit I totally dig the music.

[@OttawaInHD]

Great video that includes zellers history.

[@stupossibleify]

That's the first time I've ever seen Mastertronic games sold on disc!

[@8_Bit]

By the time Mastertronic made it to North America it was late 1984 or into 1985 (I'm not sure which) and the C64 market had almost entirely switched to disk, so I think they were forced into it.

[@WarrenPostma]

@@8_Bit And although the UK market kept making cassette games a long time after 1985 even, you definitely couldn't find a cassette commodore game here at a retail store in 1985 or 1986.

[@kobe3576]

I had a clone Atari 2600 when I was a boy. That console had like 200 built-in games. All these clone games you show here were included, but with a different name. I remember Keystone Cappers was called "Chaser" or something similar.

[@MilliVee1966]

Took me a bit to realize you mixed up rows and columns

[@8_Bit]

Ugh, I just rewatched and can't believe I missed that. I think it's correct for the first 20 minutes of the video, and then (inexplicably) I used ccount (column count) instead of rcount (row count) for the label, and then was mixed up for the rest of the video. Good catch, thanks. I added a pinned comment with the correction.

[@scinix8067]

8-bit show and Tell brain is configured for FORTRAN.

[@BillAnt]

There's something about physical media of both games and CD's which is just missing nowadays. Being able to hold it and appreciating the loving care it went into the design of the physical box, manual and media, is an entirely different feeling than downloaded/streaming media. I remember Mastertronic cranking out a crap load of games of various quality (mostly pretty low), as I recall it was a UK publishing house later acquired by Sega.

[@8_Bit]

Agreed! The early Mastertronic titles were mostly low quality, but they improved and produced some pretty great games later.

[@metalfoot7]

Zellers and K-Mart were the two go-to sources I had for C64 stuff in the late 80s, for sure. :)

[@brentboswell1294]

Our equivalent to Zeller's in Texas was a store called Gibson's Discount, which was put out of business by Walmart

[@tetsujin_144]

Finally, a way to have more inputs in a C-64 game that just a one-button joystick! :)

[@allenhuffman]

Thumbs up for Hitchhiker's being your first disk game.

[@Riptides99]

Your channel speaks to me. I had a C64 and all the gear for it, plus I had the Atari 2600 and the Star Raiders game with the pad. I was always disappointed it was the only game I could find that could use the pad, but this video in particular reminds me 100% of my childhood. BTW have you ever seen the Atari Joystick Add-on device which slipped over the top of the Joy stick itself and it had a trigger fire as A button, and a second button on top which was B button. The device had it's own cable and plugged into the joystick port for player 1, and then the joystick plugged into the back of that plug (daisy chained)? I think it came with a game and the device made the joystick look more like a flight stick, but been so long ago I can't remember much about it.

[@8_Bit]

I don't know if I've seen that joystick add-on. But now that you mention it, it's reminding me maybe it was Omega Race that included a special add-on like that?

[@markusfischhaber8178]

Very cool programming. I always stayed away from the Cia chips, because I fried some of them somehow and always though it was my Programm. Years later I learned that the Cia chips are just extrem fragile to static voltage

[@lordevyl8317]

I also remember when Canadian Tire also had VIC-20 stuff in their stores. Don't remember seeing any C64 stuff though, but I could be wrong.

[@maverickblah]

I liked Zellers as a kid but later on, when Walmart came into the picture, Zellers stores really needed to be remodeled, or at least changed the floor tiles which were almost all greyed out by then. And they still used cash registers with black and green screens into the 2000s. So by that point, the stores looked old. I believe they would have competed better if they remodeled.

[@neonhomer]

I actually had and played "Star Raiders"

[@robintst]

From what I gathered about Zellers, being a non-Canadian, it sounds like they were your version of Hills Department Store which was mainly a northeastern chain here in the States. Same kind of vibe and charm.

[@billkeithchannel]

My buddy had an Atari 1600 (or was it the 800?) and I got hooked on Jumpman Jr.

[@bltvd]

In the USA we had a store called Venture that was similar in being cooler than Kmart!

[@67amiga]

In my area, Oklahoma City, KMart bought all of the Venture locations when they went bust. Other than putting up KMart signs, KMart Invested ZERO dollars in all of those stores. Needless to say KMart left the OKC area once again not long after that.

[@MagesGuild]

I recall converting one of those to work as a Bandai Family Trainer mat (Nintendo PowerPad).

[@EpicTyphlosionTV]

I feel you, K-marts used to be all over the place here in the states. Now there's only a handful left, and they're likely going out of business very soon

[@mrkitty777]

Lord Waldemart of Walmart maybe is to strong?

[@15743_Hertz]

K-Mart is where I purchased my first VIC 20 for 90 bucks after the price drop due to the introduction of the C64. Fun times! No cassette, no disk drive, just an old TV set and a bunch of programming that had to all be reentered after reboot. Needless to say, the first thing I bought after that was a Datasette. ;-)

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

It's not Walmart that did Zellers and K-Mart in, it was Target. When Target came to Canada, Zellers and K-Mart sold most of their locations to Target, but then Target turned out to not be as good of a value as expected and ended up folding after just a few months. 🤦 The locations ended up getting sold and converted to other stores like Dollaramas or whatever. :-\

[@csbruce]

@@user-vn7ce5ig1z: Zellers and K-Mart wouldn't have sold their locations if the companies weren't already circling the drain.

[@MurasakiBunny]

I getting the 2600 just before the spring of the crash and getting Star Raiders and so many other games at 1 to 2 dollars each. That was a big day. If anything, the crash simply helped get a whole bunch of kids into video games right before the NES kicked in.

[@d.vaughn8990]

It’s ashame the “regional” department-type stores are gone. Each store chain had its own unique flair. Unlike Walmart, I enjoyed exploring the aisles!

[@lazyhansen]

Amazing!

[@paulmurgatroyd6372]

I recall that £49.99 was what I paid for my C2N in 1985. Seems like they just kept all the numbers and just put a different currency symbol in front of it.

[@bg45420]

I remember getting Star Raiders at a closeout store called Odd Lots. It wasn't a bad game from what I can remember.

[@calebbell5018]

I bought the Star Raiders game at Value Village when I was a kid. This was probably the late 1990's or early 2000's. It was just a bare cartridge, but I had a 2600 and the game art looked cool. I never could get it to work, and after a bit of internet research realized I didn't have the correct controller for it. I still have the 2600 and the cartridge, wonder if I can hack something together.... hmmmmmm

[@BoomRoomFive]

Hooked up my guitar to one of the pot lines and wrote ML and a basic GUI to sample, edit, mix, and playback 4 bit packed audio at 8 kHz by modulating the SID master volume. Sounded pretty bad but it sure was cool!

[@reliabletoasters]

I seem to remember getting Star Raiders from Zeller's as well. I loved that game, but the pad seemed superfluous.

[@8_Bit]

Wasn't the pad necessary for bringing up the galaxy map, warping around, turning shields on/off etc?

[@reliabletoasters]

@@8_Bit Ya, but mostly I just liked flying around shooting things.

[@paullambert8701]

I worked at Zellers in the late 90s. I would never have believed it would close down.

[@8_Bit]

I wish Zellers was still around! #BringBackZellers

[@theyamo7219]

Funny enough the brand had just been resurrected

[@madmodders]

The pot inputs do not expect zero to five volts. They expect a resistance as a pullup, that changes the time it takes for two capacitors to charge (as the text says where you showed the schematic), and that time is then presented as zero to 255. I've seen some people using a potentiometer as a voltage divider as they think the input is kind of a regular ADC, but the result is far from linear. :)

[@8_Bit]

Thanks, another knowledgeable viewer was correcting me too. I'll add an update to my pinned comment.

[@madyogi6164]

Man with passion for sure... btw SEI enables interrupt flag, not disables it ;) Lol, the demo at the end like I would listen to Pixies... ;) cool!

[@lisaallcock]

Good work!

[@wisteela]

Very interesting. Of course, it would also be interesting to get it working on an Atari computer.

[@shaanee]

lol I remember finding those in the bargin bin... and testing it .. but I didnt know the joystick port could be configured !

[@64jcl]

Laing Marketing games were sold in UK under the label Romik.

[@8_Bit]

Was that "Deflector" game sold in the UK? I think it might have been a Canadian exclusive (not that the UK was missing much!).

[@64jcl]

@@8_Bit , I dont think so. At least I have not seen this on the Romik label. I only have the Laing Marketing release on disk in my own collection. Nice to see there also was a tape version to hunt for. :)

[@BahamutOmega]

I think I had actually played that version of Deflector before. Not quite the same format due to having had it on floppy, but definitely same game. Likely same game if the way it plays was by reflecting enemy shots with the limited shield. After playing a cracked version of it, I can say it's definitely the same game. Still not a bad game when one realises that it is actually one where you need to time when to reflect and pop the shields while recovering energy.

[@kiltworm]

Seeing that old Colecovision controller made my brain squirt out some dopamine.

[@ThetaReactor]

It's pretty trivial to get a Coleco pad working through USB via an Arduino. I've got one connected to a Pico-8 box, and it works as well as those things ever did.

[@schtive81]

RIP Zellers. Wallmart sucks. My first job was working as a clerk at Zellers.

[@chriswatson2407]

Your screencap on the video looks like the screencap on the game cover!

[@theyamo7219]

I remember those Zellers Atari carts. Some of them were also imports from Europe

[@jovmilos]

I always hated programming on my C64, I am here for the end music I guess

[@johnchase7667]

I miss playing star raiders. it was a very good game.

[@katemoody1587]

I hope you have a resistor on those pot lines, the CIA does not like having those shorted. I killed a few CIA's and even some of the ports on my Amiga 1200 due to using an un-modded genesis controller on them (which uses pin 5 for its +5 volts which shorts out that pot pin every time you press a button). Ah, my poor Amiga... :( RIP

[@thumbwarriordx]

Time for the next level after this: Gotta get an oled Streamdeck to talk to a C64! I believe in you.

[@Bruh-rj5vw]

Let's make the Touch Pad A streamdeck

[@jarnolehtinen1390]

SID doesn't read voltage although it is very crude AD-converter. SID only measures how much time it takes from trigger signal to charge inbuilt capacitor to certain voltage level. Effectively it measures resistance and paddles are actually nothing more than variable resistor. 8-bit value is value of timer when certain voltage level is reached.

[@musclesmouse]

LMAO, I got recommended this and stayed to watch. I am an Atari 8bit computer guy.

[@vitoswat]

I believe making pad to work on 8bit Atari should be quite similar.

[@musclesmouse]

@@vitoswat looking this up. There has already been someone looking into this on the Atari computers. www-alt.akk.org/~flo/hardwaretester.html

[@lordevyl8317]

Pretty much all of Laing Marketing games were games made by Romik Software in the UK. Laing had a distribution deal with them

[@bigpopparand1]

Just subbed from 8bit guy nice channel !!!

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

There are a number of keyboard Atari 2600 games. BASIC Programming being one. On the Atari 8-bit, a simple Page 6 routine set to run in the vertical blank would read the keypad. Easy peasy.

[@8_Bit]

Star Raiders is the only "Video Touch Pad" game. BASIC Programming included a pair of "Keyboard Controllers" as they were called. And there was also a "Kid's Controller". All three of these controllers are functionally equivalent, but Atari gave them different names, cases, and distinguished between them for marketing purposes, presumably.

[@c6jones720]

I took one apart as a kid, I seem to remember it using resistors. I think it would have looked like a paddle to the computer

[@matthewburr4765]

I’m a new subscriber thanks to the 8-Bit Guy. You’re a fellow Canadian? Awesome :)

[@8_Bit]

Welcome! Yes, I'm in Thunder Bay, Ontario :) Thanks for the sub.

[@michaelwallen738]

Way beyond my skill and ability but cool video.. I have the Star Raiders boxed etc like yours.. Interesting what can be performed with it

[@foxabilo]

Hmmm, just need a couple of bytes to store a bit indicator for each button that is pressed and then at the end look at all the set bits to work out how many and what keys were pressed :D

[@rayf2145]

Stupid question: I was never aware that you can output on the control ports (tbh, I was never aware of anything other than C64 basic). Does that mean I can control outside objects with Hi/Lo signals? Great Video btw!

[@8_Bit]

Yes, you can send signals over the joystick port though the User's Port can also do that, and it's less prone to the interference that can happen between the joysticks and keyboard (I show that problem briefly during the BASIC programming section), so it's probably better to use the User's Port. Unless of course the thing you're wanting to hook up already has a joystick port attached to it! :)

[@xnztv]

Thumbs up!

[@MonadoBoy16]

Video Touch Pad: *Exists* Atari 2600 Keyboard controller: Am I a Joke to you?

[@8_Bit]

Apparently the Keyboard Controller is identical to the Video Touch Pad from a programming perspective. I don't have a Keyboard Controller but hopefully will get one soon.

[@pauldeane8369]

24:32 Oh yeah....piece of cake! - ....as I stare blankly....

[@BlackoutsBox]

HHGTTG infocom! Played this like crazy when I was like 6... RIp Douglas Adams

[@MurderMostFowl]

fascinating!