Adventures with the Car Marty (no pics yet)

[Ed Oscuro]

My Car Marty arrived yesterday, courtesy of Japan Games off eBay. This is an interesting model of personal computer that looks a bit like a cross between a CD player and an armrest; you feed CDs into the front and it pulls them inward. Quite different from the consolized top-loading Marty units.

When you turn it on without a disc in, stars rush past (like the classic screensaver), and then a globe made of little colored spheres shows up. You can push it about the screen and make it temporarily get bigger or disappear with a controller pad - quite similar to the loading minigames in Phantasy Star Online.

The first game I played was Viewpoint, ported by Ving (later Xing, the same people who did Elevator Action Returns on the Saturn, Night Striker, and Wolf Fang on the Saturn/PlayStation; on the Towns they ported Splatterhouse and some Toaplan shooters, amongst other things). It's a great port although the use of CD-ROM tracks for audio seems a bit wasteful, but the game doesn't seem to stretch the system's capabilities.

Galaxy Force II, by CSK, is a different matter. The first half of the first level has only the barest resemblance to the arcade game, although the second one is much better. Music is remixed, and while I like it, I miss the original style music. The main problem is that it seems to be too much for the Marty, even running in a small window (probably using about 50% of the screen; the active window extends about 75% of the way to the edges of the screen, or maybe a bit less) there is often slowdown. This one is a big disappointment.

The Marty came on a plastic sled with straps; I removed this for the moment to allow easier access to parts of the system. There's plenty of ports on the thing; one for adding a floppy drive, another for keyboard (I assume the mouse plugs into the keyboard, Mac-style), and a PCMCIA card slot on the front of the unit. I haven't plugged in the GPS system yet, but am vaguely interested to see what happens when I do.

Hopefully I'll be able to find a torrent with some more games on it so I don't end up deathly bored with the thing. Viewpoint has limited replay value for me, and Galaxy Force II on this system basically sucks.

[Ed Oscuro]

I just played a bit of Flying Shark, port of the famous shooter. Hmm, a bit depressing. There are a variety of different graphics modes, but unfortunately they don't seem to fit a television well and furthermore the game seems to have changed a bit to accomodate this (you can't let the red planes at the beginning fly around in front of you, as they'll crash into you instead). Two modes are called Video/Low Res, and they just don't work well; there's a bit of flickering in the background as it scrolls by. There's a high res mode which is a bit blurry (even in S-Video), and finally a high-res wide mode which seems to be fine, probably the same as the original arcade game's resolution (or close), but it stretches off the bottom of the screen.

There are four different levels of autofire, but the shot delay means that even the lowest level will give you intermittent fire at best (unless you point-blank something).

The music has been remixed rather badly, as well, with exceedingly boring MIDI instrumentation and a little bit of static audible at the beginning of each track...

Well, I'm bound to find a game that works well sooner or later! Maybe that was Viewpoint after all.

[blue lander]

Nice find! I have one, but it only works half the time. It doesn't recognize that there's a CD inserted for some reason.

[Ed Oscuro]

I haven't figured out how to open up the thing (and I don't want to end up with a pile of parts spilled all over), so I wouldn't have a clue about that aside to ask whether it's grabbing the CD. Could also be the cheap motor failing.

[blue lander]

I pulled the thing apart completely. Everything worked mechanically and the little sensor that is tripped when a CD's put in seems to work fine too. I messed around with it for weeks before giving up.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm, since you've pulled it apart - could you tell me a few things?

Namely:

- Is the CPU surface mount?
- Is there a spot for a math FPU?
- Is the RAM, or anything else, expandable (not that I would be able to do much here without breaking compatibility)

Construction-wise, I can't make heads or tails of the thing; I've loosened two screws on the bottom of the unit which didn't seem to let anything come apart, and that made me concerned that those might be holding a board inside, and so I retightened them. I also removed the four screws on the top outside of the case, but the case wouldn't come off, just slide upwards a bit at the back.

[blue lander]

I don't recall seeing the CPU, but I'm pretty sure they never made through-hole versions of the 386 or 486 or whatever the Towns uses, so it must be surface mount. Can't say I recall seeing an FPU slot, but depending on the model of the CPU it might be built in. And no, there were no RAM expansion slots sadly.

As I recall, the screws to open the thing are on the bottom. You've also got to remove the face plate before the rest of the thing comes apart, and I think the screws holding that in are in the bottom as well.

[Ed Oscuro]

through-hole versions of the 386 or 486 or whatever the Towns uses
As I understand it, "through-hole" means that the leads are placed through the board and then soldered in place with the traces on the other side (whereas surface mount means the traces are connected on the front). Anyway, what I wanted to know is whether it uses a socket or not (you could mount the socket itself through-hole or surface but that doesn't really matter to me)...but maybe I'd better take a look.

[idrougge]

I don't recall seeing the CPU, but I'm pretty sure they never made through-hole versions of the 386 or 486 or whatever the Towns uses, so it must be surface mount.

Most 386 and 486 PCs used PGA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_grid_array) packages, usually mounted in sockets.