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  2. Yeah most free emulators were community projects, some where abandoned in their infancy, some get infrequent updates, others have had 30 years of continuous development. So quality is all over the place. Fortunately most of the old systems I care about have at least one high-quality emulator available for it. My understanding is that not all FPGA cores are hardware-perfect either being community developed as well, so it isn't always going to deliver better results.
  3. It's just doing it on the console. When I change to solid colors, only the controller changes.
  4. This is coming out soon, hopefully... The Atari 800XL FPGA! https://revive-machines.com/index-en.html
  5. Maybe this? https://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/headers.htm I have been thinking about writing a RAM disk DSR for the SAMS for years, but I thought the only option would be to put it (or part of it) in a GROM, and that wouldn't work for some implementations of DSRLNK. But it could be different for the p-code card. Anyway, when thinking about a memory manager for SAMS, splitting it into 4096 sectors of 256 bytes (which would be the smallest amount of memory you could allocate) might still be a good idea, even though you wouldn't access the sectors as files. You could use one page as a map of which sectors were allocated, and use other concepts from file systems like file descriptor records.
  6. Buster was quite amused by Thunder Blade. I think she was pondering whether or not she could eat the helicopters flying around... i'm open to whatever the group wants to do. Generally, I'm inclined to say no autofire for HSC games but I mostly play for fun so it's not that big a deal either way.
  7. That's the thing; there really aren't many FPGAs, period. Mister FPGA handles almost all devices and is quite impressive but will run you $500. I know there is an Atari 800 XL FPGA coming out soon and there is also Gideon who builds the Ultimate 64 Elite (c64) FPGA (WHICH IS AMAZING) but after covid he is having issues with parts. That's it. So we are usually stuck with the real thing (a lot of us dont have the room for a CRT) or emulation. Or we can now have worse emulation for $100 with these replicas that have emulators inside them.
  8. Why do people keep responding to these endless crap 'hot take' topic posts...
  9. Easy enough. Yes, I remember hearing that said in the GenX guy's review.
  10. ‘emulation for Atari 2600+, NES, SNES, SMS, Sega Genesis and Intellivision’ being in ‘in a very good state right now.’ is at least a good start. I’m pretty sure most here knows at least the 2600+ still have a way to go to reach 100%, then it needs the extras and then it needs to get to point where it syncs overkill running with its hardware to accomplish ‘lag = 0’, as I understand that s what FPGA offers. Is there any FPGAs here to make a clear-cut comparison …? As to competiton of performance, do we have possibilities to do side by side comparisons? Which one is best as of today?
  11. Tried Action! Wrote my first ever Action! program. (The "Hello World" example from the manual, natch.) Discovered on-screen keyboard has no "Ctrl" key. Plugged in USB keyboard. Pressed Ctrl-Shift-W to "Write". Saved as "BUMS". Rebooted and loaded DOS disk. "BUMS" was safely on the disk. I'd say that's a go. This almost certainly goes without saying, but you will want to use a USB keyboard to do anything vaguely clever/non-gaming with this thing.
  12. While off topic, I'd just like to see an open-source one-for-one Pokey chip replacement. If an Atari can be emulated on an FPGA, it's very clear to me that a Pokey replacement is possible. (I am not talking about Pokey-Max, either.) So, imagine this.... One fine evening I sit down to play a game of MULE, with my beloved Atari 800XL, and discover my Atari isn't working. After a couple of beers, I recover from my panic attack and start to troubleshoot. I find out the Pokey chip died. So, my Bonzoid clearly is not going to retire in Elegant Estates this evening. (Now, it's time for another beer.) After some searching on ebay, I can't find a Pokey chip. This means I either need to buy another Atari to scavenge the Pokey chip or play MULE via an emulator. For whatever reason, I can't get a Pokey chip from Brad, either. While Altirra is fantastic, and is probably the gold standard of emulators, I really want my Atari working. (My Bonzoid would like that too!) I don't need a Pokey-Max, either. (Not that they are currently available.) I want just a one-for-one Pokey chip replacement. I just find it amazing that we have this amazing, super-dooper, phenomenal, magical technology called the FPGA but we don't have a one-for-one Pokey chip? This leaves me with some of the following options: 1. Put my Atari in the Living Room trophy case along with the the jewel encrusted egg, leather bag of coins, huge diamond, jade figurine, and other cool items. 2. Have a proper burial ceremony, for my Atari, with honors, 3 gun salute, etc. (I'd rather go with #1, bit this is an option. 😞 ) 3. Toss my Atari in the trash. (I'd rather go with #1, but this is also an option. 😞 ) 4. Buy another Atari computer to scavenge the Pokey chip and substitute that computer for use with options one through three, above. 5. Buy some FPGA device that replaces the entire Atari but, for some reason, can't be used just to replace my Pokey chip. (I guess my Atari would go with options #1 through #3, above. 😞 ) 6. Sacrifice a Mechtron to the FPGA Gods and pray that it rains Pokey chips. 7. Load up Altirra and use that. (My original Atari gets the treatment of options #1 through #3, above. 😞 ) So, anyhow, rant mode off. I am hoping somebody will please release a one-for-one Pokey chip replacement that uses an FPGA, micro-controllers, or even a spare improbability drive.
  13. @Chrisa850: So, since the composite signal is mixed on the same channel, the signal ratio is much more critical, correct? @Jfcatari: I received the new crystals and it did not work. Interestingly, the frequency was actually correct. There seems to be a typo in the Mouser listing. I tried it and I got the same result. Let me know if you have the same results. I ordered the part that @Chrisa850 referenced from Console 5 to see if that one works.
  14. I think it's actually a pretty small fragment of the community already.
  15. I really appreciate the feedback, thanks for sharing your opinion. At this stage of development it would be very difficult to add that in due to RAM and ROM constraints, as well as how I've balanced the difficulty in the boss battles. At this point the gameplay is set. I'm not going to be making any more changes, I'm just focused on bugfixes now. I mentioned in a previous post that I had relocated the plotsprite4 assembly code and that did in fact cause an issue that I just caught. It only affected the easter egg/hidden game, and it's been fixed. drone_patrol_v82_RC4.a78 drone_patrol_v82_RC4.bin
  16. LOL! I would be quite happy to have the local university pay me to teach a course in Intellivision Programming! Hehehe. I do not know if I would be a good teacher, but it sounds like a dream job — certainly better than my current one. 😄 Good luck! dZ.
  17. 13,425 on Degz I don't know how I missed out on this game until now. Great stuff.
  18. What's funny is that I think the emulation for Atari 2600+, NES, SNES, SMS, Sega Genesis and Intellivision etc are all in a very good state right now. It's the 8-bit computers that have bad emulation, C64 and Atari 8 bit. I would actually say Amiga emulation is better.
  19. Oh, it’s been a while since I loaded my CC3 with news stuff, but I just used to just copy the files to the mounted folder. Honestly, I do not recall if it supports BIN+CFG format. I assumed it did. In any case, ROM format itself does not support the metadata needed for bank-switching. dZ.
  20. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/nmah_1064832
  21. FPGA, as far as I can see, provides the quality of processing things 100% or close to 100% similar to original hardware. Emulation may or may not come in versions which adds more inbuilt extra features, yet it seems that emulation-software almost always have some catching up to do. Even if it’s speculated that ‘in the future’ emulation will eventually become so sophisticated it will take over the worl…no, that was another software, - so efficient it won’t lag on cheap and mediocre devices, then it could also be speculated that FPGA in the future will do ‘marvels previously unthinkable in human history’ (of course not excluding taking over the world).
  22. That's correct, you just set up an .m3u playlist, but you have to do that beforehand on a PC. You can mount up to three on the device itself, which is nice. I'm not super familiar with any of them but I'll have a look. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work, but I'll attempt it and report back.
  23. I liked your ideas, I've came up with a few game variations myself. 1. It's hard to tell a story within the limits of Batari Basic, I've already made a 1-Button runner. Look up Lyra Dash here on the forums. 2. The game operates on Atari's original 2600 Game Standards witch means it never has an ending. It loops levels until you get a game over. 3. I really liked this idea, but it be difficult to make, it would eat up rom space. And I'll have to add additional minikernels (Second Score from @Karl G & 6 Lives Statusbar + Pfscores from @KevKelley Thanks for the suggestions though.
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