Bally Alley

Bally Arcade/Astrocade Website Links


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Here are some of the websites that have Bally Astrocade related content.


Adventures of Robby Roto, The

Jay Fenton programmed this Arcade game that used the Astrocade's "commercial" mode. It has been released for use on emulators.

Astrocade Discussion Group

Bally Alley's Astrocade discussion group at Groups.io. This discussion forum was originally hosted at Yahoo Groups. Read what other people in the Astrocade community are doing right now. Back in 2001, the original long-term goal was to create an Astrocade CD, but now BallyAlley.com has negated that idea. This is the most active area to talk with other fans of the Bally Arcade/Astrocade.

Astrocade Patent (1978)

A link to the U.S. patent office regarding Bally's patent #4,301,503 (Nov. 17 1981). The patent is for the "Home Computer and Game Apparatus" and it was filed on May 30, 1978.

Astrocade Patent (1981)

A link to the U.S. patent office regarding Bally's 1981 patent number 4475172 (Audio/visual home computer and game apparatus) - Note: This is a fixed link from the Virtual Astrocade page.

Astrocade Wiki Page

Console5.com has created a short Wiki page that is setup for the Bally Astrocade. It includes information about the Bally hardware. Currently it has data in these categories: Chip Info, Quick Voltage Reference, Schematics, Service Manual, Overheating Chips, and a Capacitor List.

Bally Astrocade Cap Kit

Console5.com sells a "kit [that] contains all parts necessary to replace the electrolytic capacitors in the Bally Astrocade."

Bally Home Library Computer - Early E-Commerce

An article Modern Mechanix's website from June 13, 2006 that covers an Bally Astrocade ad in September 1977 Scientific American. The author's comments are rather amusing and interesting.

Bally/Astrocade FAQ (in HTML format)

Lance F. Squire's site, based on his original Bally/Astrocade FAQ created on June 3, 1995. The URL was updated on August 4, 2019, as the previous address (http://www.glankonian.com/~lance/Ballyfaq.html) is now obsolete.

Dick Ainsworth - Personal Page

Dick Ainsworth wrote the Bally BASIC book and the companion cassette, designed the Easy-Entry Keypad that made the original Arcade programmable and wrote the program for the Bally Demo Cartridge.

Digibarn Computer Museum

Good, clear pictures of the Bally Professional Arcade Box and console.

Digital Press Newsletter

The great paper newsletter's online presence. "Digital Press is dedicated to the 'Pac-rats' among video gamers... those with short attention spans, library-sized collections, and consoles precariously wired in a web-like fashion. Does this sound like you? Check around - we cover just about everything "retro" including Atari, Nintendo, SEGA, Intellivision, ColecoVision, Vectrex, and Odyssey, as well as all of the other consoles, both new and old. Be sure to stop by our forum and check out all of our great articles in the library section!

Electronic Visualization Laboratory

Artists at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory used the Z-GRASS programming language on the UV-1 (a computer that used the custom chips inside of the Bally Arcade/Astrocade home system) to create art at the University of Chicago late-1970s and early-to-mid 1980s. The original link, https://www.evl.uic.edu/application-research, was archived on June 8, 2016 using the Wayback Machine on Archive.org.

Fenton Page

Jamie Fenton (formerly Jay Fenton) lead the group that designed and implemented the Astrocade. Also created Bally BASIC and many Bally arcade games. Check out this bio.

FPGA Bally Arcade / Astrocade

Mike J. uses "Treasure Cove" as the title picture for this website, probably because it is the most colorful game on the system. All of the source for this board is available on the page, so check it out. This site was added on February 4, 2010, but as of 2016, the link at http://www.fpgaarcade.com/bally_main.htm no longer functions. You can download the contents of the Bally page from this local backup on BallyAlley.

GitHub Astrocade Code Repository

Rachel Weil's (aka "hxlnt") GitHub annotated Z80 assembly source code, binaries, and dev tools for the Bally Astrocade.

Kansas City Standard

Ronaldo Goulart, a programmer working on a 300-BAUD digital archiving tool for Bally BASIC, points to this transcription of the original article from Byte, describing the Kansas City Standard. The article is called "BYTE's Audio Cassette Standards Symposium" by Manfred and Virgina Peschke. It appeared in the February 1976 issue of BYTE on pages 72 and 73.

The list of eighteen participants of the symposium includes a well-known name, "Bill Gates, MITS." There is an interesting thing in it: the "official" length of the lead-in is specified as "a minimum of five seconds of marks."

As of February 2, 2021, the link at swtpc.com seems to be offline. The page can be accessed on Archive.org via the Wayback Machine.

MAME Astrocade Emulator

The only Bally Arcade/Astrocade emulator. Not perfect, but getting closer. Support the loading of some tape images into BASIC.

Media Burn - Independent Video Archive - "Fenton" Search

Search results for "Fenton," as in Jay or Jamie Fenton, the person behind Bally BASIC and other software for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade.

Mike Peace YouTube Channel

Mike Peace wrote all of the BASIC games released by WaveMakers for the Astrocade in the early-to-mid 1980s. These games are considered to be the best BASIC games for the Astrocade. These videos feature Mike's (non-Astrocade) music.

Orphaned Computers & Game Systems

OC&GS was a paper newsletter, the title of which is self-explanatory. In 1999, the newsletter first appeared online at GeoCities.com. The site remains for readers who appreciate unique perspectives on old video games. The site hosts the original twelve back issues in PDF format, as well as new articles.

Reflections on John Perkins

Reflections on John Perkins - By Tom Meeks - This September 13, 2010 blog post is about Joh Perkins, who created many Bally Arcade/Astrocade add-ons, such as the Blue Ram memory expansion unit.

'Thomas Edison' of the Arcade Game World

He was the 'Thomas Edison' of the arcade game world - This August 29, 2010 Classic Arcade Game blog post is about Dave Nutting and Jeff Frederiksen.

TI (Z-80) Calculators

Some excellent tutorials on programming the Z-80 with step by step directions for beginners. Check out the TI-83 Assembly Logs Vol. 1-8 in particular. This is aimed at TI calculator programming-- but you will pick up some great information none-the-less.

TI-83 Asm Help File

TI-83 calculator tutorial set up as a Windows Help file. Useful and relevant overviews and code. Very nice.

Videogame Museum

Screenshots for many of the Astrocade cartridge games.

Z80 Homepage

A great resource! A general Z80 site that contains docs, FAQs, source code, cross-assemblers, cross-compilers, utilities, etc on the the Z-80, the CPU used in the Bally Astrocade. Sometimes this link might seem dead (don't know why), if it doesn't work now, try again later.

Z80-Heaven

"A place for all the z80 info you'll want." Has tutorials and other resources.

Zilog.com

The makers of the Z-80 used inside the Bally Astrocade. Check out what the Z-80 is up to nowadays.