Super Missile Attack!

bit_slicer

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A few things I'm currently working on for a customer: :)

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Nice work. Good to see a few more SMA boards being brought back to life.

The board in the second picture looks different to the others. Can you explain what the differences are (if any) in how the board operates? I ask as I have one just like it that needs a repair.
 
Nice work. Good to see a few more SMA boards being brought back to life.

The board in the second picture looks different to the others. Can you explain what the differences are (if any) in how the board operates? I ask as I have one just like it that needs a repair.

I'm hoping to be able to answer that question soon! I only had a chance to unpack them yesterday - will actually start working on them this week. I did make a couple of initial observations. First thing was how cheap-ass these things are, even by 1980's standards. Hand-drawn, double-sided, no solder mask. They look like hand-made breadboards. The manufacture looks very cut-rate with uneven solder leveling, some of the via platings are too tall for their through-holes. The components they used are garbage. Maybe it was just what was available that era, but they used the same crappy single-wipe DIP sockets that Atari used. Everything hand-soldered, badly.

Second was that the board uses the six original mask ROMs from Missile Command along with two new EPROMs, presumably code patches to get from MC to SMA. That's interesting that they didn't burn completely new ROMs. Maybe it was a cost thing.

I can't wait to dig into these further! My main goal is to document the 'encryption' scheme (in quotes because now I'm wondering if it really is encryption and not something else) and generate a schematic for the board. Stay tuned for updates! :)
 
As to the build quality, you have to remember that these were sold by some MIT students out of their home. This was not a professional-grade operation...
 
The piss poor build quality probably explains we so few of these things are to be found working today!!

Very interested to learn more about these boards (and how the 2 versions of the GCC boards differ). Schems would be terrific.

I really do need to get one of my SMA boards up and running - makes a nice occassional alternative to MC and helps sharpen up my MC play.

I'm down to one working MC board at the moment, but my spare is due back from repair in a couple of days - I'll probably drop my SMA ROMs into the spare when it returns. The other thing I am interested in is how MC plays on the GCC SMA board. It clearly doesn't run the stock Atari ROMs (as GCC displays at the bottom of the screen) and I find playing MC on the SMA ROMs to be more difficult. There are no visible differences in the game, but subtle differences must be there - as on a good day I can bang in regular 500k TGTS MC scores on Atari ROMS, but I have never got above 300k playing MC on SMA ROMs (socketed in an Atari MC board) - so ... any differences that come to light about SMA MC and `ordinary' MC would be very interesting.

I'm hoping to be able to answer that question soon! I only had a chance to unpack them yesterday - will actually start working on them this week. I did make a couple of initial observations. First thing was how cheap-ass these things are, even by 1980's standards. Hand-drawn, double-sided, no solder mask. They look like hand-made breadboards. The manufacture looks very cut-rate with uneven solder leveling, some of the via platings are too tall for their through-holes. The components they used are garbage. Maybe it was just what was available that era, but they used the same crappy single-wipe DIP sockets that Atari used. Everything hand-soldered, badly.

Second was that the board uses the six original mask ROMs from Missile Command along with two new EPROMs, presumably code patches to get from MC to SMA. That's interesting that they didn't burn completely new ROMs. Maybe it was a cost thing.

I can't wait to dig into these further! My main goal is to document the 'encryption' scheme (in quotes because now I'm wondering if it really is encryption and not something else) and generate a schematic for the board. Stay tuned for updates! :)
 
Hey all - been lurking for months, thought it about time I chimed in.

Super Missile Attack's version of normal Missile Command does do one thing, and that's correct the bonus city bug at 810,000 points that you see on the regular Atari version of Missile Command (this is the bug that causes Bill Carlton so many problems trying to beat the marathon world record in the "High Score" documentary.

I just played a game through on "SMA Missile Command" - 6 city start with bonus cities every 10,000 points.

I've attached two screenshots (poor quality - quickly done on iphone). The red screen shows we've passed 810,000 but still only retaining two cities including the bonus just given.

And just to make sure I went over 820,000 on the same game, and still the game handed over 1 bonus city. You can see this on the second screenshot (black screen).

So they corrected that bug for sure.

As for making the game more difficult - I can't see the difference myself, but then I rarely play marathon mode with bonus cities. I might give TGTS a go and see if I can spot any differences.

Cheers


Tony Temple
 

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Alright Tony?

So, there's at least one difference then, as they've corrected the bug. Weird that they took the time to figure out which part of the code was to blame and then make the fix - but they clearly have.

There's at least 3 ways to play SMA MC. On the Braze kit;, on the proper GCC board; and by slotting unencrypted SMA ROMs directly into an MC board. I'm doing the latter, and I'm convinced it's a tougher game than ordinary MC. I'll have to try it on the proper GCC board and see if the same applies.
 
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