So, on with the show.
Inspired by a "Hack A Day" article posted the other day, I found myself a cheap and really, really boring to play hummer racing game
What is so special about this dumb little game? It's core is a Commodore 64.
I added a molex connector to connect it to the 5v and ground on an old AT power supply
I also discovered that the power switch actually cuts ground rather than power, therefore, if the game is grounded in some other way, it will turn on by itself.
I found some information on attaching a PS/2 keyboard (you know, a regular computer keyboard) to the game in order to access a command prompt
Here's a PS/2 port I harvested from an old computer motherboard
Here's a pic of it with the PS/2 connector connected to the game
and a closeup of the PS/2 connector with the keyboard connected
And, if you hold down the "Tab" key when you power the machine on, you get an actual command prompt
I even wrote myself a little program, it went something like this:
10 print "hello"
20 goto 10
Not having a start/stop or reset button I was then forced to restart it to make the program stop
The game has a built-in flash chip that is writable, unfortunately, the kernal has a bug and has trouble saving correctly. But, the kernal can be patched to work correctly. from what I understand, the current utility to do this doesn't work quite right on the US version of the game, but the next version should.
My next step is to add a 1541 floppy drive to it, and if I'm feeling brave, doing a video and audio mod that will improve the quality.
It is small enough that someone could make a portable from it, it's about the same size as the hacked down atari 2600 board, but I would think doing something similar to Ben's Atari 800 laptop would probably be the most productive portable.
