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FifthPlayer

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  1. Excellent news. That should do well for the non-banked language carts like Assembler/Editor, Altirra BASIC, and Pilot. Could you try one of the OSS language carts like BASIC XE, Action! or MAC/65 to see if it supports booting them along with a disk image?
  2. Yes, and it should also be pointed out this is one the good things that has come out of Atari's acquisition of AtariAge. I'm surprised Atari didn't negotiate to rename the game "Warlords" since they own the rights to it.
  3. I wasn't aware the ROM was available, but thank you for bringing up this excellent point about licensing revenue for the developer.
  4. Castle Crisis is a game sold here on Atari Age ($30), so its inclusion on The400 is some real value.
  5. Thanks for the clarification. I watched the GenXGrownup review, and there he showed you could save BASIC programs, but that there was no way to access them outside of the machine. It sounded as if The400 makes a private disk image that you can't access from a PC. The review also didn't cover if you could boot from a language cart like ASM/Editor and also have Atari DOS available, like it does for the built-in BASIC. I'd love to see some more experiments like this, once more units get in people's hands. The ability to have a programming environment on or near-par to original hardware, but with a) smaller desk footprint, b) modern connections for power and HDMI video, and c) modern, high-quality keyboards would make The400 a compelling alternative for hobby hacking directly on the device.
  6. It does not. The FAST keyword precalculates the branch points, so it does not have to search for the destination of a branch the way Atari Basic does.
  7. I'd like to see improvements to the BASIC support, so that you can mount an ATR of your own for saving program files, as well as use other language carts like Assembler/Editor, Altirra BASiC, or the OSS language carts. Ability to boot into a DOS besides Atari DOS would be great as well.
  8. Have to say the beige USB and video cables are a nice touch.
  9. I don't want to be misunderstood - I think it's great that AtariAge casts such a wide net. I remember advocating for the creation of the Commodore 8-bit and Amiga groups, even though dedicated communities exist for them on the Internet, because AtariAge is big enough to support discussion forums around other retro platforms, but from a slightly different fan perspective. And I completely agree about the utility of subforums - the The400 forum makes a ton of sense.
  10. This Atari-centric Board has forums for Commodore 64, Intellivision, Apple II, and plenty of other non-Atari systems. So a forum for an emulated Atari 400 sounds OK to me.
  11. My definition of "Classic Mac" is everything before OS X, but yes, System 7.5-9.x exactly describes what I was thinking of. Anyway, MagiC OS, being a slavish copy of the Mac GUI, doesn't appear to break any new ground in its use of proportional vs. monospace type, regardless of what other merits it may have.
  12. Just about everything from that particular GUI (MagiC OS) is an almost-verbatim copy of late-stage Classic Mac. I'm not sure it has any historical value in terms of innovation in user interface typography.
  13. Skip to 6:10 for some actual information (mostly speculation) on the Mirai. I've never heard of this one either!
  14. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't think of Crownland as much more than a tech demo. The game is really short, and the control scheme is so unlike that of NES-style platformers I find it really hard to get into. The A8 does have several well-known platformers - Miner 2049er, Jumpman, and Henry's House come to mind - but they're all single-screen rather than scrolling. Scrolling platformers didn't become a big thing until the NES, and by then software houses had largely given up on the A8. Not sure why more homebrew developers haven't jumped on the opportunity since then - maybe the level design is too much work?
  15. Certainly not, but a USB card has the potential to open doors to modern computing, in much the same way as recent hardware projects like Fujinet have done. It could be a "killer app" for the 1090. Whereas a serial/parallel card will let you connect a vintage printer, and ??? (The big use case for a serial port that comes to mind is a modem, which isn't much feasible nowadays and gets lets so with each passing day). Agree.
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