Atari 5200 Digital Joystick Adapter on sale

If you like Atari 5200 games (which are similar to Atari 800 games), you may be interested in:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:31&item=320064613472

This is a special cable (with a small circuit in it), that let's you use an Atari touchpad or atari keyboard controller for the keypad functions of an Atari 5200 controller and let's you use the MPDOS software to do the joystick x/y/button simulation for games/applications that only use extreme values of x and y. It works great for games like Pac-man, Space Invaders, Mario-brothers, etc.

Pin-out schematic of the joystick adapter is included with item so you can use it however you want if you don't decide to buy MPDOS with it.

MPDOS Standard which works with it is also available on auction for Christmas special:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...MESE:IT&viewitem=&item=320064614051&rd=1&rd=1

Again, a bit confused. Does this work on a real Atari 5200?

Bill_Loguidice said:

Again, a bit confused. Does this work on a real Atari 5200?

Click to expand...

Me too! Give me an example setup using a PC and something else. In the other thread you said that you didn't have an Atari to explain with, that's okay, tell me about how it works with your Amiga. Heck, take pictures of the different connections and have captions if you're having trouble explaining it out.

Bill_Loguidice said:

Again, a bit confused. Does this work on a real Atari 5200?

Click to expand...

Yes, it's for a real Atari 5200. All of the products I spoke of are for real machines. The link I gave:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320064613472&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

is for the DB15 to two DB9 connectors. One DB9 connector goes to an Atari touchpad or keypad controller and the other one goes into the PC cable that comes with MPDOS or if you can build your own digital joystick that fits into those pin-outs.

Even the sound software I gave link for is real:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320063895901&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

It's just that it requires you to have MPDOS in order to use with Atari and Amiga. Otherwise, it works by itself fine on a PC without requiring MPDOS.

NathanAllan said:

Me too! Give me an example setup using a PC and something else. In the other thread you said that you didn't have an Atari to explain with, that's okay, tell me about how it works with your Amiga. Heck, take pictures of the different connections and have captions if you're having trouble explaining it out.

Click to expand...

I stated that I don't have the CABLE to make MPDOS work with an Atari ST. It does work on Atari 800, Atari 400, Atari 800XL, Atari 130XE, Atari 65XE, and Atari XEGS (and perhaps other Atari models which I don't have). Atari ST do not have the standard floppy connector that Amigas and PCs do (34-pin flat IDC). The 8-bit Ataris have a simpler SIO connector of which only 2 pins are really needed to do disk simulation. There's no need to worry, as there's a 7-day money back guarantee with all cables that Krishna Software sells (and all other products as well). Okay I will give two examples using the two cables I gave link for:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320064613472&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

This is link to Atari 5200 joystick adapter-- basically a Y cable splitting the DB15 into two DB9s-- one that connects to a touchpad/keyboard controller/digital joystick and other DB9 connector connects to cable given with MPDOS. I just played pac-man with an Atari 5200 hooked up to my TV with my Toshiba laptop hooked up to the Atari 5200 joystick port via the digitial joystick adapter and MPDOS cable. The touchpad lets me do the keypad functions like set level/# of players (* and # keys). The start, reset, and pause keys are also mapped into the middle row of the touchpad. Remember the touchpad is a more robust controller than the Atari 5200 controller since it has gold contacts and as far as my experience goes my touchpads have yet to go bad whereas all of my Atari 5200 controllers went bad. So the Atari 5200 controller is simulated with a touchpad + MPDOS.

Now the second example which I tried to explain previously in another thread:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320064614051&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

This is for MPDOS itself (standard version). MPDOS has a two-fold purpose- (1) to simulate peripherals like joystick, mice, keyboards, etc. Disk drives are simulated in professional version. Mechanical devices tend to go bad by use so the simulation of Atari and Amiga's peripherals like joystick, mouse, and keyboard using PC's peripherals serves the purpose of letting one use their classic machine with the simulated peripherals. (2) You can use your classic computer for distributive programming with your PC. You can run programs that use the PC's horsepower for whatever tasks need it and upload things to the Atari or Amiga and let it run the multimedia stuff that it's good at. I did this with a Gita CDROM which runs in a distributive environment of Amiga/Atari and PC. Best thing is to give it a try and see for yourself. The sound editor is also a distributive application that let's you use your Atari/Amiga with your PC. The link for that is:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320063895901&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

It's been said that the best products can be explained in a single sentence.
Applying that principle here, it appears you've got something to turn a thousand dollar laptop into a ten dollar joystick.
Or am I missing something?

That concocted principle is not true in many cases. You assume a principle to be true and then apply it on someone assuming he also accepts it. We would not have physics books if all of physics can be explained in one line.

I'll try anyway: MPDOS is a peripheral simulator for joystick, mouse, keyboard, and disk drives for Atari 8-bit machines and Amiga machines.

Atari 5200 Digital joystick adapter is for using MPDOS + touchpad to replace Atari 5200 controller since Atari 5200 has a DB15 connector not the Atari standard DB9 connector.

Here's link for that on Ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320064613472&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

If you only have Atari 5200, you can use your laptop arrow keys, or PC joystick for playing games on Atari 5200 but that does not mean that would be the only use for your laptop. It's just an application that you can close and use your laptop normally afterwards.

Currently, I really need a floppy drive for my two ST's. How is the fdd represented on the PC? How would I hook up between my Toshiba laptop and my ST? What would it look like on the ST's screen? I'm real interested since floppy drives for ST's are rare and expensive (just had two offers from two people of $45 turned down). And this seems to fill the ticket for functionality. I would only really need it for the fdd's though. I have joysticks and all the oterh peripherals (though mouse simulation seems neat, please explain that, too).

We're just confused and want more detail, not blowing off your product.

Nathan

On the ST screen, you would just see whatever you would see if you booted from a floppy drive normally. I asked the cable manufacturer and they would not do the cable for the Atari ST since it requires that DIN14 type connector which is non-standard. It does carry the same signals that the Amiga floppy drive connector carries so I am sure the software would not be too hard to adapt to it.

You don't have to use a Toshiba laptop. It's just the one that I used with the Amiga disk drive simulation. You can use any laptop or desktop PC with a parallel port of 1 Megabyte/sec or faster to be able to support the read-only mode for double-density floppy drives.

The Atari ST(e) mouse simulation works just fine if you want to try it out using MPDOS Standard:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320065196654&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

I tried it with Atari 520ST and 1040STfm. The joystick simulation also works with the same software for these machines.

I know those ST drives are expensive; my drive had that rubber band become loose and it no longer works; it only reads the boot block and after that has problems.

You would hook up the floppy simulator using the floppy drive cable (34-pin) as pictured on my website: http://www.krishnasoft.com/sps.htm. One end goes to the DB25 parallel port of the PC and the other end goes into the floppy connector. Similarly, for the joystick/mouse/keyboard simulation cable, one end goes into the parallel port of the PC and the other end goes into the keyboard connector and/or joystick/mouse connector of the target machine. On the PC end, it's a simple GUI application where you can select your parallel port address, target machine, and what type of simulation you are running. All the simulations are controlled with one software mainly written in 80x86 assembly language as Windows functions are too slow for simulating things with exact timing that are needed for many of the simulations.

One last question: Can the program simulate more than one peripheral at once? I need more than one parallel port, right? One port per peripheral?

NathanAllan said:

One last question: Can the program simulate more than one peripheral at once? I need more than one parallel port, right? One port per peripheral?

Click to expand...

The cable currently up on auction at:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320065196654&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=011

will simulate joystick, mouse, keyboard, atari (8-bit) disk drives all using that one cable. For amiga disk drive simulation (or Atari ST disk drive simulation), you would need a second cable attached to a second parallel port. That cable looks like a floppy ribbon cable as pictured on my website: http://www.krishnasoft.com/sps.htm.

Yes, you can simulate more than one peripheral at the same time (using one PC and one parallel port). Currently, the standard version of MPDOS simulates the keyboard and mouse at the same time using the one cable ( that is on auction.) MPDOS Professional for Atari simulates atari disk drives and atari keyboard at the same time using one cable. MPDOS Professional for Amiga will simulate Amiga disk drives, amiga keyboard, and amiga mouse all at the same time but using two cables.

For Atari, it usually won't matter if you can simulate the peripherals simultaneously, since once the game/application loads, you can switch to simulating some other peripheral. For example, I can simulate the disk drive and boot up some game like Starleague BaseBall and then just run the Joystick simulation to play the game.

Use Atari paddle as steering wheel with Atari 5200!

Use Atari paddle as steering wheel with Atari 5200!

Okay, I relisted this item as some people were confused as to what it does:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296...&item=320067805844&lk=ItemDescriptionANDimage

I guess there aren't too many Atari 5200 enthusiasts around here or just did not understand the auction. You can use an Atari 2600/atari 800 type paddle with your Atari 5200 with a simple wire change and this digital joystick adapter (DJA). You can use an Atari touchpad or Atari keyboard controller for the keypad functions.

MPDOS is in one of my other auctions (and yes, it does support Atari ST machines):

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296...&item=320067784515&lk=ItemDescriptionANDimage

Here's a partial listing of systems and simulations supported:

Atari 400/800/XL/XE/XEGS: keyboard and joystick simulation
Atari 520ST/Mega ST: mouse and joystick simulation
Atari 1040ST: mouse, joystick, and keyboard simulation (simultaneously)
Atari 2600/5200/7800: joystick simulation (Atari 5200 requires the DJA)
Amiga 500/1000/2000/3000/4000: keyboard, joystick, and mouse simulation
Amiga 600/1200: joystick and mouse simulation
Commodore 64/Sega 16-bit systems: joystick simulation

Other systems which use the standard atari type joystick.

If you decide to get the professional version of MPDOS or upgrade to it, you will also get disk simulation for all Amiga machines mentioned and all Atari 8-bit machines mentioned along with a assembler for direclty writing your own programs and uploading them to the target machine without requiring any drivers.

Rajni said:

Okay, I relisted this item as some people were confused as to what it does:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296...&item=320067805844&lk=ItemDescriptionANDimage

I guess there aren't too many Atari 5200 enthusiasts around here or just did not understand the auction. You can use an Atari 2600/atari 800 type paddle with your Atari 5200 with a simple wire change and this digital joystick adapter (DJA). You can use an Atari touchpad or Atari keyboard controller for the keypad functions.

Click to expand...

When you say "simple wire change", that's where the disconnect is. So, basically, you're saying that this is not a plug and play device. You can't simply use this Atari 5200 adapter out of the box, right? What is the "simple wire change"?

Rajni said:

I guess there aren't too many Atari 5200 enthusiasts around here or just did not understand the auction.

Click to expand...

More likely the former than the latter.

This site's emphasis is on vintage computers.
While some of us also have vintage consoles, it seems the Atari console enthusiasts hang out at atariage.com.

Rajni said:

Here's a partial listing of systems and simulations supported:

Atari 400/800/XL/XE/XEGS: keyboard and joystick simulation
Atari 520ST/Mega ST: mouse and joystick simulation
Atari 1040ST: mouse, joystick, and keyboard simulation (simultaneously)
Atari 2600/5200/7800: joystick simulation (Atari 5200 requires the DJA)
Amiga 500/1000/2000/3000/4000: keyboard, joystick, and mouse simulation
Amiga 600/1200: joystick and mouse simulation
Commodore 64/Sega 16-bit systems: joystick simulation

Other systems which use the standard atari type joystick.

Click to expand...

Why not just use a *real* 9-pin joystick? And for the mice, I believe there are PS/2 adapter available that allow you to use any off the shelf PS/2 mouse.

There is also the PSXjoy which allows you to use PlayStation compatible controllers on your Commodore 64 (or any other system that uses the 9-pin joysticks)

Cheers,

80sFreak

Atari 5200 digital joystick adapter

Atari 5200 digital joystick adapter

Bill_Loguidice said:

When you say "simple wire change", that's where the disconnect is. So, basically, you're saying that this is not a plug and play device. You can't simply use this Atari 5200 adapter out of the box, right? What is the "simple wire change"?

Click to expand...

It was designed for use with the MPDOS parallel cable so for that it does work right out of the box. However, some people wanted to know if they can use it without their PC so the answer is yes you can use it in analog mode with atari paddles with a simple wire change. The potentiometers on the paddles of Atari 800/2600 have resistance measurements going from maximum to minimum when you move left to right whereas on the Atari 5200 it is reversed. So you need to open up the paddle and move one wire on the potentiometer to reverse the resistance measurement.

I don't know the reason why they made the controllers for Atari 5200 use reverse resistance measurements.

ahm said:

More likely the former than the latter.

This site's emphasis is on vintage computers.
While some of us also have vintage consoles, it seems the Atari console enthusiasts hang out at atariage.com.

Click to expand...

I'll have to check out that site: www.atariage.com. I'm not too involved with too many websites-- just did the project for my own use and later decided some others may have some use for it.

Amiga and Atari assemblers are included

Amiga and Atari assemblers are included

80sFreak said:

Why not just use a *real* 9-pin joystick? And for the mice, I believe there are PS/2 adapter available that allow you to use any off the shelf PS/2 mouse.

There is also the PSXjoy which allows you to use PlayStation compatible controllers on your Commodore 64 (or any other system that uses the 9-pin joysticks)

Cheers,

80sFreak

Click to expand...

I had too many joysticks go haywire so not worth to keep reinvesting; the Atari 5200 does not use a normal 9-pin joystick. So I went for a permanent fix. With the digital joystick adapter:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Atari-5200-Digi...ryZ41009QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

you can use your computer's arrow keys to move the pac-man or whatever the case or use the PC joystick to control the X/Y motion and buttons for games that do not require an entire range of values. For those that require a range of values like Super Breakout, I suggested that they can hook up Atari paddles.

As far as for other computers, the link for that is:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Atari-800-ST-Am...oryZ4598QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This is a general solution (or an All-in-one type solution). You just need one cable to simulate many different peripherals for many different machines. I suppose if you just need to simulate one device for one machine, you can just get some adapter. Even then, you would be needing the extra keyboard or extra joystick or extra mouse. However, with MPDOS you can use your current PC's keyboard, mouse, and joystick with your classic machine. You run the application for simulating the peripherals and once you exit, you can use your computer as before.

There are no registry changes or driver installations in the system directory or anything like that. The simulations are embedded with optimized assembly language within the application itself. And if you opt for the professional version of MPDOS, you can even compile and run programs for Atari and Amiga machines. It will allow you to upload your code directly and boot your machine with the code that you write. I was recently playing around with Amiga copper lists using 680x0 assembly language and when the Amiga would crash (due to some bug in the code), I simply press the F8 key on my PC and reboot the Amiga with the new version of the code.

I have to say, these are really great products and you should be commended. The only thing that will stop you from really generating a LOT of interest with these in the appropriate areas is more clearly stating what these do and don't do. Even that's getting better though. Good luck.

Bill, well said.

Rajni - It's probably a good idea to update your own web pages with better descriptions based on the insights that you have developed here.