Jump to content

potatohead

Members
  • Posts

    4,888
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    16

potatohead last won the day on April 26 2013

potatohead had the most liked content!

Contact / Social Media

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Portland, Oregon
  • Interests
    If it has bits, I'm up for it!

Recent Profile Visitors

38,978 profile views

potatohead's Achievements

River Patroller

River Patroller (8/9)

1.6k

Reputation

  1. Getting back to what an Apple 1 might be good for: (Not that any of the chatter here is a big deal) People would do computing back then. And by that I mean structured computation. I myself did a lot of that on one of those Tandy pocket computers. It had a couple Kb of RAM and a single line, 20 character display. That little machine could hold a lot of routines that could take input and then save a guy a lot of time with answers. An Apple I would be good for that kind of thing, even with Integer BASIC. Costs, materials, sizes of things. Some of the earliest programs I ran and wrote were about antennas, for example. What size given an intended frequency, and where to point them, given a time of year. Doing that stuff on the Apple 1 would mean living with a small amount of RAM and 16bit integer numbers. Painful. But, possible. Whether it made sense would depend on what the computations were worth. Aside from that, most of the value had to be just experiencing what computing would look like.
  2. Understandable, but also sad day. Your adapter works great! I use mine all the time.
  3. 640x400 would require either an interlaced display (no way Apple would do that), or a VGA type horizontal sweep. Neither are in the GS. The raster is 640x200
  4. I like the great little sounds most games had because the default sound is a single click speaker. Many of the sounds come from various loops in the games. Others are generated by the CPU flogging the speaker. That combination is compelling to me. Rock on! Glad you are enjoying your retro Apple.
  5. Bummer! That monitor will not work with this board. The sweep frequency requirement is too high. 35 and the board is 15...
  6. I bet it will. The output is analog RGB and works with analog arcade, PVM, BVM, TV with RGB input that I have tested so far. The qualifiers are: 15khz horizontal sweep capable Sync (and you may need to combine that or add it to green) Analog RGB. Is that M monitor 15khz capable? If so, this board should work.
  7. I am very happy you added that one. One selection on that switch looks really good, the other one doesn't. Maybe it varies by machine, but I had to actually use the switch to get the best display. (Pictures above.) So far I have used this card with a pvm that takes a direct RGB input, and one of those arcade to VGA devices, and it works great on both. The other thing I did which ended up working a lot nicer than I thought it would, it's just set the black and white switch to Black and white, then unplug the blue for a nice Amber display.
  8. I have one for my Atari too. On the Atari, one can park disks on an SD card. No problem. I am going to try the Grappler plus card with changed ROM approach to drive a FujiNET for my Apple. I am hoping it works the same way.
  9. Potentially both. It really depends on what got torched and that depends on the cable alignment used. I rarely use mine these days. Getting a CFFA 3000 card completely changed how I use the machine. Other disk emulation systems are very similar.
  10. I believe the same. Many people have popped a card with improperly fitted cables. If the computer still works, chances are you can either repair your card, or just get another one. You can use Slot 7, same as 6.
  11. Al, this is GREAT! And thanks for filling us all in. I had worries when I saw the store blow out, but now that makes perfect sense. You are right about seeing ones work in physical form. [Looks over at VCS OOZE! cart ] That was a childhood dream made real. I enjoyed it immensely, as many others have here. For a while now, my interests took a turn toward other machines, and the Apple 2 in general. Then, along comes FujiNET, and suddenly I plug one into my 800XL and it is fantastic! For now, I only have a few thoughts to share: Atari MiniGame and Demo Composition. Maybe Atari can do something along these lines. Participating in those kinds of events was some of the best and productive, in terms of authoring something new, fun I have had. VCS --Native --Harmony enhanced 7800 --Native --etc... 8 bit obviously, with appropriate categories, and for sure done in a way that people on FUJINET can see and download, interact with. Bring back the APX Truth is, the AA store has been that sort of thing, and for many systems too. But there is probably something cool Atari can do there. Non-Emulation Hardware I know it is cost effective. And maybe with some real, additional polish, OK to continue... There is a nicely growing retro hardware scene out there. Some people, like myself, use original machines as well as microcontroller to get that real metal feel. And sometimes all that translates into useful, professional skills. It has for me. An Atari computer that can run existing programs and able to do new things is something I would love to own. However, emulation on a PC OR Pi type computer is not desirable. Maybe the crew can do something new. Al, thanks for what you have done. I have been around since near the beginning and found AA to be an exemplary community. Nice work, hope to see you at the Portland show.
  12. Nope. I pull mine out from time to time and use it for notes and small programs. I found a 64 character driver online a while back. Need to run it on the real hardware one day.
  13. In the 90's I was doing a lot with SGI computers and serial was how they did many distinctive controllers. I was surprised to see 9600 baud serial as the default for most of these devices. 9600 baud is about 1kbyte / second, give or take. If you want a response every frame, you get about 16 bytes, again give or take. This is more than enough to do a handful of analog joysticks, with buttons. There were a couple ways it was done: One was a simple, full read of everything, looped into RAM over and over, and the other was a call and response, where you send over an identifier and get values back, and that seemed to favor the more complex interfaces. Serial gaming controllers could work pretty great, given a system has fairly low overhead serial comms. The experiences I had were great. Edit: LOL, saw my older post where I basically said all this. Ah well. Carry on peeps!
×
×
  • Create New...