Messages

Hi Astro,

Sorry you're having trouble with the Vectrex32. Send it back to me; I'll upgrade it and return it to you. My shipping address is:
   Robert Alexander
   6 Robinson Drive
   Bedford, MA 01730
   United States of America

- Bob

I am offering US$500 bounties for games to be written for the Vectrex32. See the details at http://vectrex32.com/the-v-prize.

- Bob

Vectrex32s are back in stock. I have 19 available (I had 20 made, but one was DOA). You can order one here.

I have ten Vectrex32s available for purchase. If you'd like one, you can buy it here.

The is a new revision of the hardware that supports all Vectrexes, both the original and the late model "no-buzz" Vectrexes! BASIC programs written on the older Vectrex32s will run on this new hardware and vice-versa (assuming the old Vectrex32s have been upgraded to firmware version 1.15).

- Bob

Version 1.15 has been released. It consists of bug fixes and a very minor new feature. If you already own Vectrex 1.10 or newer, you can download the firmware here. If you still have version 1.00, please read this.

Many thanks to "Astrosynthesist" who found and reported many of the bugs.

No, controller 2 doesn't exhibit the same behavior.

- Bob

Any luck with the weird Controller 1 Y axis behaviour?

You mean where the terrain shrinks? The short answer is "beats me".

I played with it a little.  If I draw the same LEM regardless of the joystick (i.e. the same amount of thrust coming out the rocket bell), the problem still occurs, so it's not that the LEM drawing is affecting the terrain drawing. If I read the joystick as digital instead of analog, the terrain problem doesn't happen.

There's only one digital-to-analog converter in the Vectrex and it's shared between the joystick and the vector drawing. So my hypothesis is that reading an analog joystick affects the D/A converter which affects the screen. I asked Malban about it and he didn't have any experience with it. He said he'd look into it, but he might not be able to get to it immediately.

- Bob

I have found these bugs and fixed them for version 1.15.

- Bob

There are other people who know more about this stuff than I do. But I think you want a fixed frame rate throughout the game. Otherwise, the brightness of the lines on the screen will vary and, in the case of the Vectrex, the rhythm and the volume of the buzzing would change!

- Bob

I've found and fixed these problems (having to hit Enter after Ctrl+C, and crashing when trying to execute a command). The fixes will be in version 1.15.

Thank you, Astrosynthesist, for all the great work you're doing!

- Bob

I've been told that drawing text takes a long time on the Vectrex. That may be why it decreases the maximum frame rate so much.

- Bob

I found the bug in my code that prevented the V32 from reading the Y axis of controller 2's joystick. It will be fixed in the next firmware release.

- Bob

I've seen that too, and investigated it a fair amount. What's happening is that the Vectrex/V32 system seems to have a maximum frame rate somewhere around 60 or 80. I don't know if the limiting factor is the Vectrex or the Vectrex32. When you jack the frame rate up to 120, the screen refreshes at around 60 to 80 fps, but since the V32 is using 120 as its time base, the timing of the game is thrown off.

- Bob

I'm wondering that too. I don't have an answer yet; I'll have to investigate.

- Bob

I can confirm that Controller 2 doesn't seem to be working right.