by James Peyton
Now you can play all the Atari 2600 you can muster in one simple setup. All you need is one particular cartridge and one stand alone ROM source. That would be the Cuttle Cart by Chad Schell and an MP3 player. Or better yet, the Ipod.
When using the Cuttle Cart and a CD player you are limited to 99 tracks, and thus 99 games a CD. But with the Ipod you can put your whole library of Atari games in one single source to play on the original 2600! Your 650+ library (or whatever) is readily available now. This is Awesome for Classic Gamers like us. The Ipod is very expensive, at a whopping $400 dollars. That is the drawback. I got a deal on mine, or I wouldn't have bought it. ( No, it wasn't hot.) You also have to be a Mac user to use the ipod, as it uses software for the Mac OS. I don't see why you couldn't use nearly any MP3 player that can link to a PC, however, to store and play all your games.
Let's say you have a Mac and an ipod. How does it work? First, you create Game CDs from your library by converting them into sound CDs. The Cuttle Cart comes with Makewav, a program to do this for you on PC. There is a MAC version also at Mactari Tools on the Web. It requires using a programming environment, and needless to say, I haven't got it to work).
Second, launch Itunes and dump your games into it. Here I am using Itunes 2.0.3 or greater, which comes with the ipod. This is apple's answer to Winamp, but with more capabilities. Go to FileŠNew Playlist. You create a playlist, ( a list of tracks with a play order) called say, ATARI. You copy the CD full of ROMS in .wav format into the playlist. You do this by dragging the CD name in the source into the playlist also in the source. The source is merely a list which are like folders you drag and drop into. One will show your CD, one will show your Library (all your sound files) and the rest will be all your playlists. You would have been required to already convert your roms to .wav files with Makewav and have burned them onto CD.
When importing into Itunes, you have a choice of changing standard audio into .wav , .aiff, or .Mp3 files. The .aiff file is the same used for audio in imovie. All but Mp3 files use automatic settings. When importing audio to change to Mp3, you can choose various options and settings. You can choose various settings from 8-320 kbps, in mono or stereo. You can choose various settings from 8 - 48 khz. There are two on-off checkboxes. One is for smart encoding. This changes settings as needed to maximize sound quality. You can experiment with this.
The other is Variable Bit-Rate encoding, or VBR. This is used to reduce file size by filtering inaudible frequencies below 10 Hz. This feature should not be used on the cuttle cart since it reduces quality.
Chad Schell says the Cuttle Cart requires high-quality Mp3 files to work. So far, I haven't got Mp3 files to work. Let me know if anybody gets it to work with the different settings. Wavs work as I tested it out with The Stella Gets A New Brain CD. I have e-mailed Chad Schell numerous times, and he is very helpful.
Now you have a play list with hopefully a bunch of tracks in it. Now you may be tempted at this point to play the tracks and start a new musical revolution. But save that for later. Now you're ready for the ipod.
Thirdly, you plug in your ipod to your Mac with the firewire cable. As soon as you do, your Ipod will automatically start loading in your playlists and charging up. The settings can be automatic update or manual. If on automatic, you will lose anything on ipod that is not still in your computer. So back up your data if you use this option. When it is finished, it will give you an ok to disconnect. Set up your Atari 2600, plug your cuttle cart into the ipod, and voila!
Navigating your Ipod is easy. You use a jog wheel (which is very much like a 2600 paddle controller) to scroll through the playlist and pick a game. Now all you have to do is press play on your ipod. If you are on the go and happen to have your ipod with you, (say, at a board meeting) you can even play an Atari game. The Ipod has breakout on it. (it's own version of course). You use the paddle, uh, jog wheel to play the game. Breakout was designed by Steve Jobs when he worked at Atari. Neat, huh?