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• Max2play what is needed to make jivelite work software#

To overcome this for a joystick, which can in principle take up an infinite number of sub-positions, the thought of something. As said earlier, the infrared transmitter can only encode eight specific positions and send them to the receiver. However, I see that this design would have led to problems. A joystick with two fire buttons on the handle which would make moving and firing with one hand possible. The controller started more as a joystick than a joypad. However, the configuration in the drawings differs from the device that appeared on the market. Could I trace the patent on that device? Yes, the British patent no.2158667 filed by Cheetah Markting on and granted on January 20, 1988, describes the wireless game controller. This aroused my interest because I know my way around the various patent databases.

On one of the advertisements for the R.A.T., I saw “Patent Pending”. A drawing of the initial design of the R.A.T., rather as a joystick, in Cheetah patent application GB2158667 Probably, therefore there are very few left, and that makes it a rare item. The device can indeed be used from quite a distance but it also means squinting to see the little CRT of that era. The fact that you have to use the thing with both hands and aim properly and still are “treated” with poor response times, makes it more aggravating than something useful. The implementation of the idea in 1984 is not good and actually more of a gimmick. Wireless controllers have only become commonplace with the fifth generation of consoles in 2005-2006. Anyway, would I really like to use this thing? The idea of having a wireless game controller in 1984, it is way ahead of its time. In my case, it is the receiver that makes it special, because it can probably be used on all machines with an 8 pin joystick port (Commodore, Atari), instead of the specific ZX spectrum plug-in module. There are eight specific positions that the joypad recognizes and transmits to the receiver. The joypad is of course not analogous like a “real” joystick. For operation, you need two hands because you operate the fire button with one thumb and use the other thumb for the joypad. The remote control gets its energy from a 9V block battery and has two IR transmitters on the front. This remote control is identical to the one shown in the “Spectrum Show” episode. The controller as shown in episode 34 of Paul Jenkinson’s Youtube channel “The Spectrum Show” So I went digging in the box to see if I could find a remote control and yes it was. It consists of an IR receiver in the form of a plug-in module for the ZX spectrum (which did not have a joystick port) and instead of a joystick, a remote control with a joypad and fire button designed as membrane buttons. But in the end, I also found an episode (#34) of Paul Jenkison’s “Spectrum Show” on Youtube where this device is revealed. The different articles only referred to the version for the ZX spectrum and mostly to dated photos of what that thing had looked like. But via the name Cheetah, actually Cheetah Marketing, a British manufacturer of peripheral devices, mostly joysticks for the 8-bit computer generation and also sound and music-related peripherals, I came across the Remote Action Transmitter (R.A.T.). The beige box in Questionīecause I thought it was a wireless, IR-controlled peripheral, I started Googling with catchwords such as “infrared” “joystick” “c64” “cheetah” with images, but I didn’t see the box that I had before me. At first instance, I even doubted if this was a genuine sold product or someone’s DIY project. On the bottom were 3 rubber feet, but no label with a model number of sorts. The box had only a label on the top reading “Cheetah”. A beige box with a black cable having an 9 pin joystick connect attached and one clear led, or at closer inspection an IR receiver.

Max2play what is needed to make jivelite work software#

Besides a collection of cassette tapes with software and a collection of EPROMs, the previous own programmed custom kernals, this box also held a strange peripheral that I had not seen before. I also came with an extra box, with random computer stuff. It’s a C64 complete with a datasette player, floppy drive everything had still its original box.

One of the machines I have was a great secondhand deal. The C64 was the computer that I wanted as a 12-year-old but did not get… I am only discovering it now. A part of my retro-computer collection consists of several Commodore-64s.