The Atari VCS team put out a new blog post and it goes over some changes to the design and it still looks pretty great.
Now that they've already announced a delay and upgrade to AMD Ryzen, the Atari VCS team is once again talking about the design of the unit and how they've overhauled the construction method to make it more streamlined.
It's worth noting, they're currently only showing renders of what it now looks like. As the pre-production models are on their way to their engineering team, which they say they will share actual photos when they have them.
Anyway, they say this refreshed design is "production-ready" and it's supposed to look a little closer to the classic Atari 2600:
What's happened? Essentially, they've raised it up a little and this has allowed them to move two of the USB ports to the front of the machine, to make connecting things up a lot easier (hooray). So it now only has two on the back, for things you connect/disconnect less often which does make a bit more sense. They've also removed the SD Card slot which they said was "redundant".
Another minor change is the front light, which across all models is now going to be in white and the same on the new joysticks and controllers to make it consistent.
As for the construction of the unit itself, it's no longer using their original (and pretty ridiculous) 16-layer ribbed sandwich which wasn't very practical and pretty wasteful. So now it's going with a much more standard approach consisting of four primary pieces: a top housing, a bottom housing plus front and back panels:
So not only does it save time, money and manufacturing waste, it should also be much easier to take the unit apart if you wish to tinker with the innards.
Liking what I'm seeing and hearing about it at this stage, but as always it's worth remaining sceptical until they actually ship. To be fair though what they're trying to do is no easy task, especially since they're doing it in public and a lot of this we wouldn't usually be seeing and hearing about.
See their full post here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I doubt there will be enough expansion (pcie) or sata ports to make it a highly useful server, though, but I might justify buying one with this argument. On the other hand, I never used any Atari console, so it's not like I have some nostalgia drive. I'll just wait and see.
Edit: why not make the front light RGB, though? It would be better to convey more messages, prettier (the user can customize it), and hopefully able to be turned off (not everyone like a white light in the face, esp. in a dark room in front of a screen, so red or off could be better options here).
Last edited by MayeulC on 2 April 2019 at 10:16 am UTC
Quoting: EikeThe Linux-powered Atari VCS is not changing design, core hardware or peripherials anymore and instead will be on the shelves next week. - Nobody, ever
Hey, you'll regret those words when it's finally released... in 2600.
See also: Star Citizen, Bannerlord.
Last edited by M@GOid on 2 April 2019 at 1:32 pm UTC
Thinking about it: Imagine a console that is actually similar to Stadia servers. Want an upgrade? Put a second one on the network and let them work as a cluster :O
Edited: Referred to Stadia as Strada
Last edited by const on 3 April 2019 at 7:41 am UTC
inlinuxdude Apr 2, 2019
Quoting: tmtvlQuoting: EikeThe Linux-powered Atari VCS is not changing design, core hardware or peripherials anymore and instead will be on the shelves next week. - Nobody, ever
Hey, you'll regret those words when it's finally released... in 2600.
2600.... I see what you did there.... at least they're not waiting until 5200, amirite?
slaapliedje Apr 3, 2019
Quoting: GuestThen the controllers will be non-centering.Quoting: inlinuxdudeQuoting: tmtvlQuoting: EikeThe Linux-powered Atari VCS is not changing design, core hardware or peripherials anymore and instead will be on the shelves next week. - Nobody, ever
Hey, you'll regret those words when it's finally released... in 2600.
2600.... I see what you did there.... at least they're not waiting until 5200, amirite?
REPORT JUST IN: You'll have to wait until 5200!
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: GuestThen the controllers will be non-centering.Quoting: inlinuxdudeQuoting: tmtvlQuoting: EikeThe Linux-powered Atari VCS is not changing design, core hardware or peripherials anymore and instead will be on the shelves next week. - Nobody, ever
Hey, you'll regret those words when it's finally released... in 2600.
2600.... I see what you did there.... at least they're not waiting until 5200, amirite?
REPORT JUST IN: You'll have to wait until 5200!
Were the controllers perpetually non-centering? I had always thought that they must be like the PC joysticks from back then, with a switch to change between being centering or non-centering. However, I never actually saw a 5200 in person, only in advertisements. Our next system after the 2600 was the NES.
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