There is a big banker box about ¾ full of floppy disks for the Atari8bit sitting next to my hobby bench. They are from several systems that were purchased just before putting my 8bit equipment into storage. I’m starting on a quest to see if their content is of any interest.
I was waiting to get an SIO2SD but the label glue is drying out and the labels don’t always fall into the sleeves with the disk. I guess that is part of what’s going to make this interesting.
Disk #001 was an unla
I didn't have a watt meter the first time I heard that the power cubes draw power even when the computer is turned off. After all how much could it be? The electric company will tell you that its not that much.
I got a “KILL A WATT” meter for Christmas a few years back. By the time I was done playing with it I could tell you how many extra watts were used to burn my toast in the morning. We were able to change some habits and reduce our electric usage. And I learned that not everyone appreci
Summer is coming to a close and soon it will be too cold to ride the bicycle. I’m running out of old programs to post and look forward to writing new ones.
When I wrote this one back in 1990 I had a lot of hiRes pictures that were produced using Graphics Master and Map Ware (APX). Both these programs (and a lot more) save pictures in a 62 sector format. It is saved screen memory without compression.
The HiRez is also used for the Diamond Desktop. So knowing how to load ba
I was waiting for the Diamond GOS APP store to open before I posted this game. I finally figured it wasn't going to happen - soon. So here is the Tiles game that will give you something to play while we wait.
As you can see, I got out the old Zenith Data System monitor and removed the Windows NT computer from my desk. I like the color green. It may have been a better monitor for programing then the color TV but I get a better photo off the LED screen. I took a movie of a game. The speed
A couple of months ago I found my ABC BASIC compiler disk and wondered if a BASIC program written for Diamond could be compiled. Then I said, “I'm going to try that as soon as I get disk drive 2 up and running.”
Disk drive 2 is up and running and I can say that an Atari BASIC program, demoing the Icon commands, compiled and ran on a 130XE with Diamond 3.0 . It took me longer to format an Atari DOS 2.0 disk then it did to compile the program.
A BASIC COMPILER (ABC)
Well, I finished inventorying my collection of 265 periodicals and disk publications. Besides reviews and overviews there is very little in the way of information on how to program the Diamond environment. Most was penned by myself between 1991 and 1994. A series of nine articles under the title “Diamond Watch” was published in the WNYAUG Newsletter disks(1991-1993). Current Notes printed three articles between 1993 – 1994.
An internet search yielded very little information on program
While waiting for the arrival of parts for the dTALK project I am going to upload and archive some of the programs from the past. Most of these programs saw the light of day but how much light is questionable.
sdump.zip
SDUMP.ZIP contains SDUMP11.ACC and SDUMP11.M65
SDUMP11.ACC – is an accessory program that will print the screen display to a printer capable of printing graphics. Its origin is from the “The 49 Second Screen Dump” in Compute!'s Second Book of A
Imagine you're doing some top secret work with a Diamond application program and someone walks into the room. What are you going to do, reach for the power switch and loose all your work?
Not if you have SCREENBL.ACC active. When you hear the foot steps coming, you can move the mouse up to the drop down menu and select SCREEN OFF. The screen will go blank and wait until an event(mouse button or keyboard click)is detected.
Even if you're not working on top secret stuff, the accessory c
I haven't abandoned the Diamond - NTS-1 patch editor project(yet). A Test of a display concept looked reasonable and thought if a set of random numbers for the CC# were created and placed on the screen they could be sent to the NTS-1 without much effort. All worthwhile routines to work out the bugs. I now have a platform to develop a method of adjusting the CC data before getting back to the official patch editor.
So plug in your Korg NTS-1 into your MIDI interface, put your Diamond
I recently activated this accessory to see if I could get one of my 410 tape machines to work. I can hear the motors running but the tape no move. I hope you have better luck.
The Atari Program Recorder is a stereo recorder/player. The right channel is used for program storage and the left can hold audio information. This audio channel can hold music or speech and is sent to the TV or monitor speaker. Of course you can control this from the computer, which makes for some interesting opt
I seem to remember that setting up radio buttons using Visual BASIC 4 was a point, click and fill in the properties table procedure. Not so easy with Diamond GOS. Programming Diamond is a lot like the early days of the Atari programing, when the only way to know if an algorithm would work was to try it, rather than searching the internet for an error free method. Add up the frustration from (what I don't know about the (Atari hardware + MAC-65 + assembly language + Diamond GOS)) and you get t
Getting Started:
Been thinking long and hard about programming a patch editor for the Korg NTS-1 synth. There are patch editors out there, but none will output the Continuous Controllers (CC#) as program change commands used in the MIDI MUSIC SYSTEM (MMS) voice file format.
Since I'm aware that I may be the only person to use this program, I have decided to write the program in assembly (MAC65) to run using the Diamond GOS 3. I should be able to write the code in stages
It's been 2 months since my last entry and I want to reassure those interested that progress is being made. But slowly.
The display has been designed, the info dialog can be viewed, the event program has been debugged and the keyboard can be used to play notes.
Note: audio was recorded from the NTS-1. Silence - until the keyboard icon is clicked.
Already, the ability to change the MIDI channel from the dropdown menu has been tested and debugg
After the MIDI Keyboard started working, the change channel, Radio buttons and adjusting the control values quickly followed. These were assembled into TEST15.APP and the video was recorded.
The NTS-1 arpeggiator was turned on and the controls were adjusted. The control values were sent by moving the mouse pointer into the slide area. While the mouse was over the area, the value was displayed above the slide. While the button was pressed, the value was sent to the NTS-1 and dis
I think my son starts worrying about me when I get out the old Atari Computer. This time he’s trying to lure me away from the “Atari side” with a Windows 8 tablet computer. Making the jump from NT to Windows 8 and getting use to the new USB keyboard would make anyone miss the good old days. I do long for the day when a system restore was a matter of turning off the computer and reinserting the cartridge.
Just yesterday I had 41 updates. Remember the days when you had to get it done right
I’m not sure why anyone would need to change the default mouse shape on the desktop but if you can do it in Windows maybe an attempt should be made for Diamond GOS. I choose this project because it has been 20 years since the last accessory was written. This was the first idea that came to mind and then I stopped thinking. Plus, I’ll be 80 if I wait 20 years for my next one. This documentation should help.
The Diamond Develop User Manual-Third Printing (DDUM3) contains most of the informati
At some point during the writing of the last blog entry it dawned on me that accessories could be written to toggle the logic output for the joystick port from within any Diamond application that uses the drop down menu. Six machine language programs were developed to do just that.
JSP1OUT.APP Application to set the joystick port 1(JSP1) to output.
JSP1IN.APP Application to set JSP1 for input.
JSP1P1.ACC – JSP1P4.ACC Accessories to toggle the pins on and off when loaded during boot up.
I have worked long and hard on a NTS-1 Patch Editor to make it operate with the Diamond GOS. But I fear that it will never work on my system. Strange things started happening as the last of the routines were being worked on. It's taken me a couple of months to realize that the drive to continue working with Diamond was at an end.
Over time there were bugs showing up in this compiled program in an ever-increasing frequency. These were problems with code that had already been debug
I haven’t found the program I’ve been searching for but I did find a disk with my favorite Atari font editor and the Diamond Font Editor. This was a mystery. I never found Diamond’s font editor to be very useful but there it was among the *.FNT, *.DFT and FONT.BAS.
A *.FNT file is likely to be files containing the data for the Atari 8X8 screen font. The FONT.BAS turned out to be the Create-A-Font editor by Vince Erceg. It was copyrighted 8/2/83 and first appeared in Analog #16, February
Every computer needs a metronome program but only a few Atari8 owners have the Diamond GOS to run this one and even fewer would want to build the simple hardware to hear it.
{video removed}
It may have been easier to write this one in BASIC but I wanted to get back into Assembly and thought a metronome based on the software timer example in De Re Atari would be a good place to start. The original idea involved pulsing the Cassette Motor Control(CMC) pin on the SIO, then
This is the last accessory from the ones written pre-2000. I was hoping that by this time I would have remembered how they had been created. Looks like the learning curve will start from the beginning again. It should take me about 10 min. to go over vast amount of literature about programming Diamond accessories.
The zip file contains DIRPRINT.ACC and DIRPINT.M65
DIRPRN.zip
Diamond DIRECTORY ACCESSORY
Ever want to print a disk directory while your at the Diamond deskto
I started life as a very young child.......... (is there really any other way to start a blog?)
I purchased my first 800 in 1982. I packed it up with the other 5 Atari computers and all things Atari for safe keeping in 1996. I would have never put it away except there seemed to be no shared enthusiasm for the Diamond GOS. For me, the lack of software was one of its strongest attractions. The Diamond GOS made the Atari almost a new computer. It took me 10 years to get to the point where I wan
A funny thing happened on the way to Diamond enlightenment. It all started because I re-read the manual and examined each of the files on the Diamond GOS Utilities and Diamond Develop disks.
The Diamond GOS Utilities disk has the support files that work with the Desktop, Diamond Paint, and Diamond Write. You can read the manuals to find out how to configure your system. Configuring your system will improve Diamonds performance. I was able to identify most of the files. I'm not clear on t
The MULTIPLY function for Diamond GOS is stated as: MULTIPLY (39) - Word sized multiply(please note overflow error are not detected) Receives: W5 - Multiplicand 1 W6 - Multiplicand 2 Returns: W7 - Result As with the DIVIDE macro, the original macro received the numbers when calling it. It was changed to accept an address of the numbers and the numbers are then copied into W5 and W6. Original macro 8500 ; 8510 .MACRO MULTIPLY 8520 LDA # <%1 ;MULTIPLICAND
After playing with RND(NTS-1), it became apparent that the patch editor is going to need some way of sending MIDI NOTEON and NOTEOFF commands from the computer. I tried to use characters to draw a horizontal keyboard, 2 keys per character. I was not happy with the visual results.
Eventually the characters were rotated and used to create a keyboard Icon where the keys were orientated vertically. The improvement was due more to its orientation then it was due to it being displayed a
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