Atari rapid fire kits

classicgamr

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Hey guys,
I was wondering if someone could point
Me in the right direction...Like the title says
I'm looking for the rapid fire kits for Atari games
Like asteroids, asteroids deluxe and space duel.
The cocktail machine I have has one each side
But one doesn't work (yes, I swapped them :))

Thanks, Chris
 
Interested to know more about these, as I was not aware such a thing existed.

Can you post a pic of what you have? I'm sure they aren't that complicated, so you could probably repair the broken one.
 
Looks like they goo-ed over the circuit so you couldn't see how they built it.

You can build your own "rapid fire kit" pretty easy. I couldn't find one in 5 seconds of searching.

But, I got the directions and parts list either from here or build your own arcade controls.
 
Yeah, that's some kind of generic bootleg aftermarket kit. It wasn't an Atari-specific product, and was probably sold for many games. That's the first one I've seen though.

Whoever made it dipped it in plasti-dip or some other potting compound, to hide what the circuit is. But it's pretty simple, whatever it is. You can probably remove the coating with a heat gun or hair dryer (carefully), and replace the chip, which is the most likely thing to have blown (though it could be one of the other components too, I suppose.) But the chip is most likely, I'd say.

There are different possibilities for what it could be, as there are probably multiple ways of implementing a rapid fire signal with one 16-pin chip. But peeling off the coating would tell you pretty easily.

You might also try desoldering the pot and checking it first, as you may get lucky, if it's just a bad pot. Probably not, but you never know.
 
That's a 74HC14 with an R-C relaxation oscillator. The pot makes R variable for an adjustable shot rate.

How'd I do? :)

Seems to have extra components though....hmmm.....
 
Pretty cool I'd be interested in this for my AD subscribed


Would be cooler if it was a ROM hack/mod. AD already auto-fires if you hold the button down, but it's very slow. It's probably just a matter of finding where the timer is in the code, and changing it.

Then again, it's not that hard to bounce your finger on the button rapidly, to get the shots closer together (which is one technique I use), so it might not be much of an improvement. You're still limited to four bullets on the screen at a time (though there is a hack for that for Asteroids, but nobody's done it for AD).
 
Though I prefer Asteroids and Deluxe the way they were designed, Space Duel would be much improved with "more bullets and faster bullets".
ROM Hacks make more sense ...
 
Agreeeeeeeeeeed +1


Would be cooler if it was a ROM hack/mod. AD already auto-fires if you hold the button down, but it's very slow. It's probably just a matter of finding where the timer is in the code, and changing it.

Then again, it's not that hard to bounce your finger on the button rapidly, to get the shots closer together (which is one technique I use), so it might not be much of an improvement. You're still limited to four bullets on the screen at a time (though there is a hack for that for Asteroids, but nobody's done it for AD).
 
That's a 74HC14 with an R-C relaxation oscillator. The pot makes R variable for an adjustable shot rate.

How'd I do? :)

Seems to have extra components though....hmmm.....

I was thinking an LM556 with one half used as the oscillator and the other half used to gate the oscillation under control of the fire button...

I don't know if you could get a 74HC14 to oscillate slowly enough to be useful, since the interrupts read at 60Hz, and you need to reliably see 'not pressed' for the next cycle's pressed to work.
 
Yeah, that was the other choice. Since it's a timing application you're probably right. Because "all timers have to be 555's" and the 556 gives you 2 of them. I also think the HC line wasn't yet really popular back then. . I don't know anything about the details of what this thing does game wise or how Asteroids samples the inputs. I don't see a BFC (big fat capacitor) which would probably be needed to get that slow, but the bunch of discretes lying around makes it possible that they were playing games with the trip points. Actually, that big thing could be a 1uF cap which gets you into the right range so I guess that's not that fat....

I've changed my mind....if it's a logic IC it's a 74HC132. That makes the gating trivial with no startup delays. But more likely the LM556.
 
I pulled a few out of cabs over the years. but of the 2 or 3 that I found, They all looked the same. they said rapid fire kit on a hard plastic case.

I found one of them. but after a close look, it looks like it might be epoxy inside with 5 pieces of formed plastic pushed together to make it look like a case. this one says made In Taiwan. on the bottom it has instructions saying what each wire is for.

if you guys need a pic, let me know.
 
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