bobkat2769

When I want a GUI or hi-res graphics I use the PC. That's what it's good for. I really don't care about any of that on the 8-bit Atari. The built-in and programmable modes it already has are all want or expect from it. For a lot of things I actually find a GUI to be too restrictive or slow. Then again, there are a lot of other things, like graphics or video editing work I also do, that are much easier in a GUI. I like the Atari just fine the way it is, limitations and all for what little I still use it for. Mostly I use it for light programming and typing in software for the Atari Archives web site. And most of that I actually do on my PC with the emulator. I use my 800XLs mostly for testing on real hardware. Especially when I do ML programming. Every so often I'll find something that may not work quite the same on one or the other. When I'm trying to learn some kind of low or medium level programming I actually prefer the simplicity of an 8-bit Atari or an older PC with MS-DOS. I find it a lot easier to deal with. And if I screw up and manage to crash the machine I just hit the reset button and I'm back to work in seconds (versus minutes with Windoze). As to 80 columns, after I upgraded the video, that mode (without needing any special hardware other than a BIOS load) looks great on my 27" Sony Trinitron TV hooked up with an S-video cable. But someday the CRT in that TV may die and I'll need to hook up my Atari 800XLs to a modern TV. None of which have S-video inputs. If you're even a little like me, once you've gotten used to the sharpness and improved color you get from a good S-video output you notice just how washed out and blurry the composite output is. And it really would be nice to be able to hook up my second 800XL to the big Sony in the living room and get a decent picture from it. Which I can't get with the RF or composite outputs. I'm not what you'd call a big Atari fanatic. I have a lot of very fond memories of using and programming the 8-bit and early ST series Atari computers. Mostly the 8-bit models. Part of it for me is a nostalgia thing. I sometimes go for several months of not using the Atari computers, and then I'll go for several months of using them a lot. I've never really been into gaming much on the Atari computers. Not that I didn't used to spend plenty of time playing arcade games on my 5200 or 800 computer. But I spent a lot more time programming or editing documents. Mostly I've used it for programming and learning and figuring out things. It's still a great platform for that and a lot of what I learn on the Atari easily translates to programming on both older and modern PCs. Now that I'm retired I finally have the time to learn all the things I wanted to learn but couldn't back in the day. Every so often I'll break out a new programming book for the Atari or for MS-DOS and read the book cover to cover and do all the programming projects in it. I'll also mess around with stuff to test ideas I get from what I'm learning or to figure out how things work. =^.^= But, as I'm retired on disability, I often don't have a lot of money available to spend on my hobbies. Keeping myself and my kitties fed, keeping a roof over our heads and the the car running definitely takes priority. So spending $100 on a VBXE is just out of the question for me, and probably for a lot of other casual or part-time users like me. 90% of what it does is just overkill for us and we'd never use all the fancy modes it has. Now, if someone made something that took the output of ANTIC/GTIA and converted it to a modern digital format like a VGA or DVI and priced it around $20-$30 I suspect a lot of folks would be interested in that. Even it if was as much as $50-$60 I would probably buy at least one. BobKat =^.^=

Um, yeah... =^.^=;; I just can't seem to justify spending as much as or more than I paid for two 800XLs and a 1050 drive (about $100) just to get component output. Now, I could see myself buying something that cost about $10 to $20. At the most $30 to get component out on an 8-bit Atari. Well, as long as my ancient 27" sony keeps working it's not really a problem. I've used it for an Atari display since the day I got it. =^.^=;; BobKat

You really need an Onkyo NR808 Eeeeepppp! That's way out of my price range! =o.O=;; Not that anyone probably cares, but since you seem interested... =^.^= I'm actually considering the TX-SR707. It's THX certified, and has plenty of S-video and HDMI inputs. And it's a lot more affordable. For now I'm just using a cheap HDMI auto-switch for the two disc players and that's working out just fine. =^.^= But whichever one I do upgrade to it might not matter too much. I recently found a device that converts both S-video and component to HDMI for about $42. I don't know how good it is though as I haven't tried it yet. If anyone here is interested in the video converter let me know and I'll post the info about it. I'd been hoping that someone here would come up with a way to cheaply mod an 800XL to output component video, but I guess it's either too difficult or nobody wants to bother with it. Considering that S-video inputs seem to be going the way of the dodo I'd think that someone beside me would be interested in this. BobKat

If you've done your S-video mod properly you won't have any artifacting at all. That's actually the whole point of going from composite to S-video. =^.^= As to S-video not being any good for HD, that's absolutely correct. So far as I know it was only designed to work with SD video. And it always seemed to me like it was a low-cost compromise for the consumer market. It is certainly far cheaper, and easier to hookup, an S-video connection than it is to implement the (then) current RGB/BNC cabling scheme available back in the 80's and 90's for professional monitors. I'm pretty sure that was one of the major reasons why the component cabling scheme was created as it could handle higher resolutions and still use the much less expensive RCA audio/video cables. Feel free to correct any of the gaps in my knowledge regarding the RBG/BNC scheme. I'm sure there are points I'm forgetting. I never did have much use for that setup. I've always used either S-video, component, or VGA connections when I ran into the RGB/BNC connectors on various equipment. =^.^=;; BobKat

This would be good to see. No-one can afford to put VBXE in all their machines: a cheap RGB board is a great idea, I feel. Something like that would be great. For now, I can use the S-video inputs on my Onkyo AV receiver and it will convert to component for me. But in the fairly near future I want to upgrade to a newer Onkyo model. The only problem is that most of the AV receivers I looked at no longer have S-video. They have plenty of different input types, but it seems like S-video is being phased out by nearly all of the manufacturers. For that matter, none of the TVs I looked at had any S-video inputs either. =o.O=;; Anyway, for those who want to know, I am currently using an Onkyo TX-SR604 that I've been very happy with for the past few years. Its a very nice unit but it doesn't support a lot of the newer sound codecs all that well and it definitely doesn't have enough HDMI inputs (only 2) and they're at 1.1. It also won't convert any of the the analog inputs to HDMI. The one I'm considering replacing it with is the Onkyo TX-SR608. It has all the features my current unit has and plenty of HDMI inputs and outputs. It even has THX certification and at about $450 it won't take me too long to save up for it. The only bad point is that it has no S-video at all. I just can't afford to spend $800+ on a decent receiver just to get S-video. I was hoping that someone here might know of a way to modify the 800XL to output component video or know of some kind of adapter unit that translates S-video to component. I don't need it to upscale or anything like that. My current AV receiver, as well as the TV, can do that job just fine. I just don't want to have to go back down to NTSC composite video after getting used to the beautiful output I get with the current S-video. While I'm fairly good with electronics, I'm not good enough to do design work or figure out how to do this on my own. I'm only a fair-to-middling repair tech and a lot of the newer stuff that's come out for consumer electronics in the last 20 years I just don't understand well enough to fix without service data. I do much better fixing PCs and stuff like that. =^.^=;; Anyway, if anyone here can figure out some kind of a basic mod to go from S-video to component I'd be willing to try wiring something up and giving it a try. BobKat =^.^=

I've got a question related to this topic that I sure could use some help with. There are probably a number of other people with the same problem. I installed the super video upgrade to my two 800XLs a couple of years ago and they look great with an S-video cable I got on ebay. I recently replaced my primary TV from a 10 year old Sony 37" CRT TV to a Sony Bravia KDL-46EX500 after the old one died a few weeks ago. The new TV has no S-video inputs but it does have everything else. That is, it has RF, composite, component, VGA, and HDMI inputs. My problem is as follows: Is there anyway I can cheaply convert the S-video output of my 800XL to component or HDMI for use on the new TV? Thanks much in advance, BobKat =^.^=

Here are revised instructions for unzipping the multipart archives I uploaded to this topic two years ago. =^.^=;; On the multipart archives, the file that has NO number in the filename is the primary zip file that has the directory info in it. This one is NOT double-zipped so leave it alone at first. Somewhere along the line the BBS/forum software changed all the base names of the files. The base name of the first part of each set of files no longer matches the other parts. Which will make most archivers unable to find the other parts to extract. *sigh* =o.O=;; All of the files with a number in the filename are double-zipped because of the funky attachement restrictions being used here. I had tried renaming them to something like file.partXX.zip but that wouldn't work at all when I tested extracting them. So to extract the multipart archives do the following. 1) Unzip all of the files that have numbers in the file names into a work directory. 2) Move/copy the file that has no number in the filename into the work directory you just used in step 1. 3) Rename the file you just moved in step 2 to match all the other parts. 800XL___Sam__s_ComputerFacts.zip should be renamed to: "800XL - Sam's ComputerFacts.zip" and... Atari_1050_Disk_Drive___Sam__s_ComputerFacts.zip should be renamed to: "Atari 1050 Disk Drive - Sam's ComputerFacts.zip" 4) Unzip from the file you renamed in step 3 and everything should extract just fine into a single PDF file. BobKat =^.^=

Valerie, Read post #31 first. It's on page 2 of this topic. That post has my corrected instructions for the files I ULed. The instructions I had with the original posting had a typo or error of some kind in them... =^.^=;; Lastly, make sure that you have DLed all the parts and that you unzipped all of the numbered parts into a separate working directory. If you are still having problems after that, send me a PM and I'll see what I can do to help you. BobKat =^.^=

I don't know why I didn't think of that. =^.^= That sounds like a good solution for me as I tend to use the emulator most of the time anyway. Especially if I'm typing in a lot as the Atari 8-bit keyboard layout has always driven me nuts with it's eccentricities in keyboard layout. I've never been able to get used to the offset return key and " on the 2 key... =o.O=;; I had read somewhere else (can't find the thread again) that the disk versions of Mac/65 don't play nice with other versions of DOS unless patched or something like that. Do the disk versions use more memory compared to the cart version or have other drawbacks? Just wondering as I know next to nothing about them. Thanks again. BobKat

I don't know if you are still looking for any answer on this but I went to take a look at it and noticed the kernel.m65 file I found had many, many control codes embedded inside it. My editor even thought it was a binary file. Printing it to the screen within the atari emulator showed the same thing. I couldn't find any other versions on the web. If this is a good copy I am guessing the editor included with mac/65 used/uses this format and the mac/65 assembler is able to parse it? This wouldn't go over well on any pc based cross-assembler. I suppose the file could be converted, but I didn't even like looking at it, so it wouldn't be an undertaking I would embark on any time soon. I don't know if any of the original posters are looking for an answer to this, but I figure it might be a good idea to post the answer to this for anyone that comes across this thread later on like I did. =^.^= The kernel.m65 file really is a binary file. In fact, all of the *.M65 files are binary. The Mac/65 assembler tokenizes its listings both in memory as well as on disk to save memory just like Atari BASIC does. To use those files with ATasm, I would think that you would first have to "LIST" the Kernel.m65 file to disk as Kernel.asm and then convert it from ATASCII to ASCII text. BobKat =^.^=

That explains it. =^.^= Thanks for the informative reply. Until the past few years I never even knew that there was a disk based version of Mac/65. All I'd ever seen was the cart versions. Do you think you might be able to tell me the pros and cons of using the different versions of Mac/65? I'd like to educate myself on this subject so any info would be helpful. If I ever seriously get into assembler programming I think that I'll probably be using ATasm. But for now, while I'm learning this subject properly (vs picking up bits and pieces here and there as in the past) I think it would be better for me to use a native Atari assembler like Mac/65 until I have a better understanding of what I'm doing. =^.^=;; Thanks again, BobKat =^.^=

You should have scrolled down the forum lists further. Look here. No, contrary to what you might think, I did scroll down. And I read the descriptions of the forums. But what I didn't do is drill deeper. =^.^= It's good to know that there is a general Atari 8-bit programming forum hidden in "Game Programming | Programming | Atari 5200 | 8-bit Programming." I'll try to remember that it's there for the future. I would have expected that should have been at either "Programming | Atari 8-bit" or at least "Game Programming | Atari 8-bit" so that one could easily find it. Thanks for the info. BobKat

Hi there, =^.^= I hope this is the right place to post this. If not please let me know. Since there doesn't seem to be a general progamming forum for 8-bit Ataris this seemed to be the best place rather than the "game programming" forums which seem to be for consoles only. Anyway, this is possibly a stupid question. I'm finally getting around to learning assembly language properly and before getting to the "Machine Language for Beginners" book I'm reading through the Mac/65 manual as I plan to use both it and ATasm for my asm coding. Now here's the question, in the Mac/65 manual it has entries for the display and change memory commands. Which, according to the manual, work pretty much the same as in the Atari Asm/Ed cart. These commands are listed in the manual as "D" and "C" respectively. Well, when I tried using them, no matter how I did the syntax, it acted like it didn't understand these commands at all. So, here's my question: Are these commands implemented in the cartridge version (Mac/65 + DDT) or only in the disk version? Or do I maybe have a bad version of the cart image? Any help/info would be greatly appreciated. BobKat =^.^=