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tzok

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  1. The ones who claim to be Atari were formerly known as Infogrames... and I don't know how and why they claim the right to all the Atari heritage.
  2. I'm more afraid they will reclaim their copyright to whatever is possible, and what for the last 30 years was considered abandoned = free. They figured out, that they could make money on old stuff, by doing nothing more than PR. This Atari is not Atari from '80, and should not have any claims to classic ROMs. After 25+ years off the market, they should be irreversibly "copylefted", so no one would ever try to claim any financial rights. I don't like it at all. Of course congratulations on a good deal. If you wouldn't agree they'd probably force this site down forcefully. So I see this as "sometimes the only option to survive is to join our enemy". Atari platform was actually the last abandoned (=free) platform, without any company claiming rights to the vast share of the released software. Cloanto practically killed the Amiga retro community, or maybe rather took it hostage.
  3. PORT B bit 7 is used by most (all over 256kB) memory expansions, but in conjunction with bit 4.
  4. Good and inexpensive DIY high speed SIO device, which is really worth to have is SDriveMax.
  5. Hiasoft's High-Speed SIO patch is de-facto standard, and using XL OS without it is non-acceptable for many people. This was the main reason for popularity of the QMEG OS. So if I can suggest something, please prioritize including that highspeed-sio routines.
  6. I think, he meant C300717 (ROM XL OS, ver. BB 1 rev. 3).
  7. RAM test will also crash with Compy Shop 576kB expansion.
  8. Basically there were 2 popular memory expansions for XL/XE series - ICD RAMBO (aka Wizztronics), and Compy Shop (aka Newell). There were also some exotic expansions based on old Axlon from the original 400/800 series with 16kB banks. http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-types-of-memory-upgrades-are-there-for-the-atari_68.html
  9. There will be as many opinions, as many users there are here... everyone would like to have something personal. I would like to maintain maximum compatibility, yet I don't care about maintaining the extended RAM. I quite like your new startup sequence, but I also like the build in self-test (at least keyboard and RAM). For the updated RAM test you may be able to use some parts of this tester: https://www.jammarcade.net/shoestrings-atari-8bit-ram-tester/ Possibly you could include some features of this binary patch: https://github.com/HiassofT/highspeed-sio
  10. I think no one was really shocked by the idea of charging, but rather by the idea of offering disk images with games. In the "western world", even the idea of patching code to which you don't have rights to it is questionable, but making compilations and selling modified (or not) code is seen as unacceptable breach in the western vision of copyrights. Western world went so far in this theory, that I'm afraid, they will likely consider learning as stealing intellectual properties... or wait, they already consider it as so - see NDAs, where you had to consent that everything you will learn and create during a project belongs to the company, and you cannot use neither tools you have created, nor knowledge have possessed, for any other company. So in short - it is illegal to use anything you have learned in the company, outside this company. Connect this with paid high schools, where barely anyone is able to afford it, and has to get credit either from a bank or from a corporation, and after finishing school effectively becomes a slave of a corporation which credited his or her studies. If you'd be offering just the patches itself, probable no one would have any objections (but barely anyone would be interested in buying them). Another oddity is that when you steal and give it for free - it is ok, but when you steal and request some money for it - it is wrong. But when you forget about money, "stealing" intellectual property is not really anything. By the definition, when you steal something, the owner looses it, so you can't steal the knowledge.
  11. I think the problem is with the "cultural clash". For me, and probably for Peter also, it was natural, that crackers were selling "modified" games, and for many years they were the only source of computer games and programs at all. You could go to the computer market and buy any game, program or a compilation disk. They were inexpensive, mostly media and recording costs. We could never ever allow ourselves to buy a game for its western price, as it was probably comparable with our yearly income in USD. The consciousness of ownership was also different in Eastern Europe, as almost everything was a kind of common/shared property. You barely could own physical things, not to mention some abstract rights to art. It was natural, that you got your education from the country (it was all free!), so when you have created or invented something it was also a property of the whole nation. You could produce and sell it and, of course, get some money from each sold piece. You could paint a picture and sell it, you could sing a song in a club, and take money for it. Basically you could get money for everything you did, but only once you did it. On the other hand you could record a song from a radio broadcast or at a concert, and sell the tapes (the singer already got his money for giving a concert)... so judge by yourself if it was really so unfair, as in western world it was recognized P.S. Peter, please remember that your ACSI-CF, which you have mentioned here, finally works reliably on the PCB, thanks to someone else's work, who found a bug in your GAL equations/signal timings from the original project...
  12. Windows 10 (at lest since few builds) can see multiple partitions on removable drives. I've tried also a trick of using SD to IDE board with IDE to USB bridge, and even Windows 7 could see multiple partitions on SD card them.
  13. In the quoted topic on exxos forum: https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=544&start=40
  14. You may always install my hardware fix. It will work until 2059, and you'd also get a battery backed-up RTC for free
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