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I only once dialed into a BBS that used TE2's graphics ability--a few "CALL CHAR" patterns. Borrowing a copy of the programmer's guide convinced me it was too complicated. And we never used TE2 for dialup anyway. Instead, I went for ASCII terminal effects, like using backspaces to get a spinning cursor. My software, TI-NET BBS interpreted ^ in the STRINGOUT function, so you could embed code control chars in strings: -^H/^H!^H\^H (repeat for spinning cursor) My 15-year old self wasn't aware that ^[ could make the ESC code, 27, so I limited ^ to just A-Z. ONLY NOW, I had an idea that could have made TE2 graphics so much easier back in the day: The Extended BASIC to TE2 compiler! So this hypothetical compiler would have you save your XB program in MERGE format*. It would find any CALLs that TE2 could support, then translate those to the right codes. Output to a text file for your BBS to read. Skip any other BASIC statements. You might have one big sequence, or subroutines to call by line number. For ease of use, the output could have the original BASIC line numbers. Then the BBS or whatever could refer to the file by BASIC line number. Improving on that idea: it would be optimal to require line numbers 1,2,3 to be the entry points. Easiest for a BBS to fetch one line from a RELATIVE file. TINET referred to file-based strings by number--the MESSAGES file was a DF80 file read in at startup. It might have about 70 common strings (prompts, menus, etc) which were sent by CALL M(number). Something like that. I'm not suggesting it ought to tackle more than CALL CHAR, CALL COLOR, CALL HCHAR, PRINT, maybe CALL SOUND. But perhaps it could follow GOSUB and RETURN to compile subroutines. Probably into one big final string. Or, follow a convention that lines 100-199 were String 1, 200-299 were another. They could share GOSUBs from lines 1-99 or 1000+. OK enough imagining for now. Extra challenge: Write a new terminal emulator to emulate Terminal Emulator 2. * We knew about the XB MERGE format from the manual. If the XB manual was too confusing, there was a good 99er article about it. Still hard though.

I DID! For a spilt second I thought…. Nah I’m ripping this right off! Hee hee! It’s a really cool game too! They were meant to be played right?

Beamriders (2-1) at Armada (1-2) starting now!

Wonders what if any people are still experimenting with this.

The ST Link, ICD The Link, tested with Sysquest 144 and Working $75 Shipped Flat Rate Priority Mail.

kaboom - 1969 (improved score): finding that I am much better at bumper bash, which allows me to harness the skill of awaiting an occasional burst of dumb luck!

No luck, unfortunately. I requested a replacement Atarivox and Albert is helping me out with that. Hopefully the replacement will sort it out. I’ll update when I’ve tried it out.

Apple II pictures added

No, that is a design feature of the Intellivison 2 - it was designed to block third-party carts, so that's why it is not working. Then the third-party people simply bypassed it and released carts that do work on Inty2 units.

They won it the last time I actually watched a hockey game. Sounds about right 😁

Battlemorph stopped working for me after upgrading to the latest FW. I tried launching it 7 times - no luck. I erased the file from my card and copied it back over from my hard drive. It works like a charm now.

In my VidGrid folder is created a save with no file type that works, but that Yopaz just created that gibberish ..h H file type. Should I rename the file inside to something or the folder that Yopaz created? It is odd as I've gone through and played levels and hit save and then came back and it still shows level 1.

I decided to try to get z88sdk working so as to write a couple utilities needed to import files stored on Atari disks into the CP/M ecosystem. Since a first, reasonable step, appeared to be to get the write.com source code ported, here's what I came up with. It works. 🙂 #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <cpm.h> unsigned char buffer[128]; int main(int argc, char **argv) { int i; unsigned char buffer[128]; FILE *dest; printf("Opening file\n"); dest = fopen("FOO.BAR","wb"); if(dest == NULL) { printf("Error opening file, file exists?\n"); return 1; } printf("Setting DMA\n"); printf("Filling buffer\n"); for (i=0; i<128; i++) buffer[i] = i; printf("Writing buffer\n"); if(NULL==fwrite(buffer,128,1,dest)) { printf("Error writing to disk\n"); return 1; } printf("Closing file\n"); fclose(dest); printf("Done.\n"); return 0; }

Rip that seal off bro! If you haven't already. 💪🏻😂

Devices... # cd /dev # ls block stdin tty43 bsg stdout tty44 bus tty tty45 char tty0 tty46 console tty1 tty47 cpu_dma_latency tty10 tty48 disk tty11 tty49 dri tty12 tty5 fb0 tty13 tty50 fd tty14 tty51 full tty15 tty52 fuse tty16 tty53 hevc-service tty17 tty54 hwrng tty18 tty55 i2c-2 tty19 tty56 i2c-3 tty2 tty57 input tty20 tty58 kmsg tty21 tty59 log tty22 tty6 mali tty23 tty60 mem tty24 tty61 memory_bandwidth tty25 tty62 mmcblk0 tty26 tty63 mmcblk0p1 tty27 tty7 network_latency tty28 tty8 network_throughput tty29 tty9 null tty3 ttyS0 ptmx tty30 urandom pts tty31 usb-ffs random tty32 usbmon0 rkflash0 tty33 usbmon1 rkflash0p1 tty34 usbmon2 rkflash0p2 tty35 vcs rkflash0p3 tty36 vcs1 rkflash0p4 tty37 vcsa rkflash0p5 tty38 vcsa1 sda tty39 vendor_storage sda1 tty4 vpu-service shm tty40 zero snd tty41 stderr tty42

I will investigate. ..Al

Maybe that's why in the same deck I couldn't run the coleco games, as it says on the box not for use with intellivision 2, but if I jimmied with it a little bit sometimes I could get the venture to work But the UK version of Venture, the pal version, actually does work in that console but the UK version of Carnival does not.

There's an elderly gentleman who is sitting on a bus. He's at least 80 years old. A young lady is standing in front of him. He says: "Miss, I'm am old man and can't stand up, but if you like, you can sit on my lap. It's perfectly safe, I'm too old for anything to happen." She takes him up on the offer, but after sitting on his lap for 5 minutes, he says, "Miss, I'm afraid you will have to stand up. I'm not as old as I thought I was."

I also play Canyon Escape / Kart Tag! and Pacu Pacu. The remaining games are harder and I haven't quite been able to get the grasp of them just yet.... 🥵

Yesterday's (5/7) totals: Android 1) Retro Bowl - 5 minutes PC Modern 1) Balatro - 60 minutes 2) Grindstone (demo) - 15 minutes Sega SG-1000 1) The Castle - 20 minutes

I think Yar's Return would be a good cart - That "Ultimate Yar's" setting would suit the sequel quite well.

Yeah, it is very broken, but I think I've done what the memory track bios must do and have it working now. Basically, if I get a name passed to me which is complete rubbish, I replace it with "NONAME". That way when it tries to open multiple files with different gibberish, it gets the same file. Which is what it's after.