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A comment on Atari 65XE. Parent comment

Re:Atari 65XE by protomyth on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @12:39AM (#26486607)
If you know something about wiring you can get photocells and wire them to the paddle ports (pin 9 and 5) then move by how much light gets to the photocell. I put two in a piece of wood so I could use my hand to allow or restrict light reaching the photocell. Also fun to write a basic program to take the value and use it for the sound command. Makes some weird noise.
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Re:Atari 65XE by ddingus on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @10:13AM (#26491494)
That seems fun. I have a kid who might love to play with one or two hooked up to the sound registers.

Edit: I know what I am going to do. My granddaughter is 5.

I am going to write a little basic program that reads these cells wired to a couple paddle ports. I have one set I can take apart for this bit of fun. We have two hands, which makes for a perfect pairing.

https://www.atariarchives.org/ecp/chapter_5.php

Press a key, and something happens on screen. Maybe the color changes with the sound, or it says, "Hello Kiddo", whatever.

And the registers, math, change.

A couple hours on this should lead to interesting time watching her interact with it all.

Thanks for the inspiration. Should be fun. Now all I have to do is get a program into that Atari. Might finally be time to get one of those SD card devices for my Atari, or a FujiNet. Something.

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