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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/14/2019 in Posts

  1. That's an understatement. Peter continues to create fake accounts on Facebook (while claiming multiple times he's no longer going to do that), and still sends unsolicited emails to me and to others. The last one I received a month ago started threatening and ended with (paraphrasing), "Hey, we can still work together! Just don't tell Lance!" Seriously. ..Al
    9 points
  2. Hi everyone, We've been talking about the new backgrounds coming in the next release - thought I'd give you a sneak peek at each. Super happy with how they have turned out (personally love the red/grey one) and they add so much to the game over the single colored ones. Once again big shout-out to @Defender_2600 for finding a way to set aside a whole palette for each. Apologies for no new release as yet - coding is still progressing and testing of my multi-frame processing (ie. slowdowns) is showing good results so far.
    9 points
  3. Oh, it starts with the 125. Next thing you know you're buying your 15th copy of Auto Racing because the manual is stapled in a different place.
    9 points
  4. All we need now is for the dev to get some scruples and then everyone will be happy.
    8 points
  5. I realized that I just had to update my SIDE2 cartridge to be able to test myself! What I did ... and in fact the crash was caused by the protection routines ... so I desactived them. @flashjazzcat Thank you very much! @Faicuai Thank you very much! I'll try to fix the NTSC color problem. @Others Thank you very much for testing. We need you! Bruce Lee RC 10.xex
    7 points
  6. The mini black & silver speakers for my black & silver TI arrived today. Now my "Mini-TI" is complete. ?
    6 points
  7. Secret Croatia. 72 colors. SecretCroatia.xex
    6 points
  8. Last attempt at a PM to me on Facebook: What an asset to the community.
    6 points
  9. Hi! Thanks, and thank you foro the bug report. The problem was that the parser was not consuming the ':' between statements on errors, so it kept trying to parse the line over and over. Bug fixed and test case added, current BETA version attached - source is on github as always: https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic Please, try this version as I could not test this parser change a lot. Have Fun! fastbasic.atr
    6 points
  10. £140 UKP + postage. Hope it's not too steep for people, there's been rather a lot of work gone into this, and the SLS shell alone is reassuringly expensive! I may offer a board only option at £120 UKP if people are interested, although not for this first batch. If you have any interesting old hardware, I'd be up for trading... Atari PC1, ABC, Falcon case & shielding -- I'm sure there's more I'm looking for! For the PC1/ABC you could have a few cartridges.
    5 points
  11. OK, I'm not supposed to be talking about this yet, but I've been working on porting Galactopus to the VCS! It's not an exact port, but it's as close as I could get on the new hardware. Here's a screenshot:
    5 points
  12. This wonderful project has really inspired the art community. There's poetry, And there's prose.
    5 points
  13. MIDI ports didn't turn out too bad:
    5 points
  14. They should do that for incontinence/overactive bladder products as well. (BTW...the ATARIASS Logo Flo made is at 788 if anyone is still looking for it.)
    5 points
  15. Just for fun I made two version of a wallpaper desktop of the ships poster for 1080 size
    5 points
  16. Got it. Fuji sticker on the laptop. Look, I don't know who you've been talking to, but I've never had any problems in that department. And even if I did, I can order pills for that online and have them shipped discreetly to my door. I'm not really an NES guy. Pretty sure I'm way beyond the point of getting my money back for the laptop, and the PS4 and Switch were both gifts.
    5 points
  17. for those of you who doesn't have possibility to run it otherwise
    5 points
  18. Hard to outscrew up Atari. Hahaha! I LOL'd on that one. Out of the 17 exclusive games we are showing in our trailer next Monday... 3 of them will be Atari games and I think you will all be pleasantly surprised at how they look as well as the ability to play both co-op or versus modes (and of course single player as well). 6 days away!
    5 points
  19. I want to offer you a chance to probably save some money for shipping and transportation if you want to buy stuff from Germany, for example from tf_hh or the ABBUC shop (only available online for members). I´ll travel to the US on Sep 11 and could bring a few pieces with me. Shouldn´t be a probem with customs. Once in the US, I can send it with local mail service to you. Or you pick it up when meeting me in Dayton, OH (Sep 11-14), Salt Lake City, UT (Sep 15 - Oct 16) and finally Hamilton, NY (October 16 - 20). If that is an option for someone, shout out here or send me a pm. First come, first serve.
    4 points
  20. Yep, still PayPal atm, will see how it goes! The cost of the shell is what tips it over for me, but as has been said, it’s not out of line with other good quality flash devices. And buying from me, you’ll know you’re getting quality kit which will be supported!
    4 points
  21. I think the intentions have always been to deliver, but life and unexpected problems just continued to get in the way for Curt. And based on the pre-order fees that were collected, the project costs were in my opinion way under estimated, with money only sufficient to cover the manufacturing cost of the enclosures (Curt feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this). So in other words the rest of the cost will likely get eaten by Curt due to this unfortunate oversight. Still that is not the fault of anyone who pre-ordered, and they will obviously expect to receive what was promised... a complete working XM. Anyway this is the way things go sometimes in a hobby based market, good intentions or not. It's also best to remember that this isn't being manufactured and sold by a big corporate entity like the original Warner/Atari or Tramiel/Atari, whereas this project is definitely being executed on a shoestring budget with a considerably smaller staff. This all kind of takes me back to FTE (Fine Tooned Engineering) and Mike Hohman with the MARS8 project for the Atari 800XL. Mike also took pre-orders, although no where near the amount that the XM has experienced, and he failed to deliver this on the schedule he had anticipated, due in large part to unexpected operating costs and problems encountered during development. it was very ambitious in nature, truly reaching for the moon in what was possible in early to mid 90's technology. I also had a pony in that race, but when things started to look bad for the future of FTE, Mike made good and we did a fair trade of other products to make up for it. Last time I spoke with Mike was about 2 years ago, and he said that other than myself he had taken very few pre-orders BITD, unlike the rumors that had spread over the years of him owing thousands upon thousands of $$$. As to whether that is true??? I feel what he told me was probably more accurate, but you know how rumors get a life of their own. Mike did eventually complete a working MARS8, but by this time his reputation in the Atari community deserved or not was so bad that it was hardly worth producing it. And Mike had really gotten all of the ambition to do so beaten out of him over the years. Also other technology such as the U1MB had surpassed it many years ago, with the U1MB allowing OS and Languages to be flash programmed, whereas the MARS8 was based on EPROMS. Here is a picture of the MARS8 that Mike finally got into a completed form (it's the large board to the right of the cartridge port). FTE 1995 Newsletter (I think this was the last one he published): FTE_Newsletter_Vol_1_No_2.pdf Unlike the ill fated MARS8, the XM still has tremendous momentum and a genuine desire by Curt to see it through. I truly believe that Curt will make sure that happens no matter what. Getting pissed off at him or spreading negative feedback will likely do absolutely nothing to make this happen any quicker. Because we're all getting to be old farts, and we just don't move any faster even when other people want us to . Edit: LOL I just realized the board hanging off the ribbon cable over on the left side of that picture is one of my original 1990 era TransKey boards. Mike must have been using it so that he didn't have to keep dealing with the original keyboard and its fragile connection to the motherboard while conducting experiments on his MARS8.
    4 points
  22. I believe he ordered the wrong one, as it sounded similar.
    4 points
  23. Wow, those new backgrounds are beautiful, thank you for sharing! ..Al
    4 points
  24. I guess I am the camp of those born in the early 70's that actually realized that the Ewoks were vicious cannibals that were set on eating the heroes before Luke convinced them C3P0 was something powerful to be worshiped. Also the Ewoks were using stormtrooper helmets as drums and I don't want to know what they did with the bodies. Yeh, I could appreciate that.
    4 points
  25. For those interested, a short read on Atari's current debt outlook. CLICK HERE. More writings from the Gospel of John. I think I'll say a prayer for him. ... make that many prayers. My god!!
    4 points
  26. Sounds like you got most of it, but just to clarify my parts: Almost all utilities meant to load into GRAM expect that you have a GRAM Kracker or a GRAMUlator or other device which may or may not offer additional facilities. Since I don't have any of those nor did I have programming documentation for them, all I added to Classic99 was the ability to make the GROM writable, thus, GRAM but without any extra hardware support. My comment in the manual was just disclaiming any support for GRAM-Kracker (etc) specific software. It turns out the loaders worked anyway, as far as I know, but I had no interest in deeper support. The GROM memory map is similar to the main memory map, in that it's a 64k address space. For every 8k block (ie: starting at >0000, >2000, >4000, >6000, >8000, >A000, >C000 and >E000), original TI GROMs only provided 6k of data. However, it appears there is no requirement for this to be true, and nearly all GRAM and GROM emulation devices provide the full 8k space. The range from >0000 to >1FFF is reserved for the TI operating system - it boots the console, gives you the color bars page, enumerates and starts cartridges, etc. From >2000 to >5FFF contains TI BASIC in the stock console. From >6000 to >FFFF is reserved for plug-in cartridges. Of course, it can get more complicated, as there is a method to provide pages of GROM by accessing through different CPU addresses, or 'bases'. The standard console actually searches 16 bases, and the memory map allows for a potential of 256 bases. However, the base console also doesn't decode the base (so the OS and TI BASIC appear to be present in all of them), and cartridges likewise need extra hardware to recognize the concept. Some of the GRAM devices do. They don't make it easy, do they?! There's memory directly attached to the CPU, or CPU memory. This is a 64k address space with a lot of it pre-reserved in 8k chunks: >0000->1FFF is the boot OS (mostly an interpreter for the GPL code stored in GROM), >2000->3FFF is RAM space in the 32k expansion, >4000->5FFF is reserved for peripheral cards to map in their DSR ROM while they are being used, >6000->7FFF is reserved for plug in cartridges, >8000->9FFF is reserved for interfacing to the various pieces of hardware and other memories in the system, and the last 24k at >A000->FFFF is the rest of the 32k RAM expansion. Assembly code can only be executed from CPU memory. Cartridges can of course bank-switch their 8k memory block, and the largest ROM carts so far are up to 128MB. The largest commonly available ROM carts are 2MB, though. Cartridges can also contain GROM or GRAM, and I believe the largest so far are up to 120KB, with 40K being the stock, un-paged size. The two memories can exist side by side. SAMS (and other versions of AMS) is a replacement for the 32k card that allows you to map more than 32k memory into the console (though still a maximum of 32k at a time). It's very flexible with a 4k resolution on pages, and allows megabytes of total RAM. Unlike most systems, the TI CPU doesn't actually have a hardware stack, so any discussion about a stack is a software concept specific to whatever you're talking about. VDP RAM is the 16k of memory attached to the Video Display Processor. It can only be accessed a byte at a time through the video chip. Replacement video chips have the ability to add more video RAM, depending on their capabilities, but are reasonably uncommon. Just to confuse a little further, there's also the CRU memory space. This isn't actually data memory, but a 4k-bit virtualized I/O space that the CPU recognizes and the 9901 chip provides (some of). It's used to interface with the keyboard, joysticks and cassette, manage the video interrupts, and interact with peripheral expansion cards (in most cases only to turn them on and off, but many cards use additional bits). This space is also pre-allocated to specific functions, with a few reserved slots that user-designed cards usually fit into.
    4 points
  27. 4 points
  28. My Antenna went up and I sensed I had work to do. Sure thing Bob, shoot me an email and give me the skinny on what needs doing. And my 2 cents is - start with the NES, and then we will tackle the 7800. I guess I need to start watching this show and do my research. illya
    4 points
  29. Today I finished the kernel for the title screen. Here's what it looks like.... (Oh, and I've decided on an actual name for the game. "Bomb Game" isn't exactly the most appealing title.)
    4 points
  30. That really is the rub of it. Once you have your Atari 2600 looking SteamLinux machine, then what? So far it looks like the store is going to be very barebones, with little to no promise of it going anywhere after that. You'll probably find some 2600 ROMs on there, maybe some arcade ones too, but if you've spent $300-$400 on this, you probably already can play 2600 games on a bunch of other things you own. At the moment, the launch library of the Jaguar is more interesting than the VCS. It had two original games (Cybermorph and Trevor McFur). For the VCS, we've got Atari Vault and Tempest 4000. More rehashing, woohoo. Might as well include Super Breakout as the pack-in game and make the shape of the VCS like the 5200. There's the promise of the sandbox mode, but if you're just going to use it for Steam and games through there, you probably have a computer that is far more capable to play the games you'd download there. And you'll need to buy and connect an external hard-drive since you've got a whopping 32GB of storage on there. New versions of Atari classics though? Nothing that they've bothered to tell us about yet. They supposedly have new versions of Ninja Golf, Asteroids and Fatal Run in the works, but they haven't confirmed those for the VCS. They haven't even said that they'll bring Rollercoaster Tycoon, one of the last modern IPs they've got in their catalog that still makes money, to the VCS. It's telling to me that they wouldn't have been touting a flagship IP on the VCS from the get-go(well, you'd have to have solid confidence in your product to be able to do that). Ok, we have Tempest 4000, but apart from that already being available on PS4/PC, it's a niche shooter that only a small handful of fans are into. It's not exactly a system seller like T2k or T3k were for their platforms. OR if someone is really wanting a nostalgia console, they could wait a little longer and put their money into the woodgrain version of the Intellivision Amico. No, it won't have the Atari logo slapped on it, but it will have unique and exclusive Atari games created for it that INTV has licensed and is working on. Sadly, Atari hasn't provided any evidence that they've got quality control for that stuff - look up the recent reboots of Night Driver, Asteroids, and Haunted House...they've all been disasters. So by that, I have much more confidence that INTV will treat the IP properly and give us great games (verdict still out on all of that of course, they could screw it up, but it's hard to outscrew up Atari SA at this point).
    4 points
  31. There are two kinds of new accounts: 1. The "Hey, ET isn't actually that bad" type 2. The "Hey, Chenais & Co aren't much different than the old Atari(s), this could be interesting, nothing makes you guys happy" type One of these is groan-worthy but probably legitimate, the other, frankly, is immediately suspect.
    4 points
  32. Atari used to be all about "Power without the Price!" but now it's just "Price without the Power."
    4 points
  33. Has the original order form that was used to purchase this game from Johnson & Johnson ever been discovered? I found several newspaper ads from August of 1983 advertising the game's availability through a mail-in offer with a purchase of three J&J products. There must've been a display in the health and beauty section with order forms you had to send in. Does anyone actually have one? https://www.newspapers.com/image/399332090/
    3 points
  34. And don't forget about Irata Jigsaw Puzzles, full of definitely-not-stolen art from all your favorites, programmed by Biff! Like and Subscribe!
    3 points
  35. Update: 18 holes have been designed! I didn't think I could do it. I originally was going to have just 9. The game has at least 5,526 lines long, not include the graphics data and other stuff. So it's a big game, 8k. Just like Pac-Man.
    3 points
  36. Great! Have a new desktop background to inspire me ? One suggestion - move your text up a little to appear above the taskbar ?
    3 points
  37. I recently joined the Facebook group, Intellivision Retro Game buy and sell. After making my first purchase today, I scrolled through the history of posts and came across this post from Feb 2018: It's blurry, but that box at the top is definitely the same white Carnival box that I found. This seller is in Saskatchewan, Canada. So, it appears as though this was some kind of limited, but real release of Carnival in Canada. I didn't have the guts to message the guy and ask if he ever sold this lot from 1.5 years ago....
    3 points
  38. Got the regulators soldered in place, installed the boards and cables, turned on the drive and inserted a disk. Turned on the computer and it booted on the first try! The Doctor said it well...the Grass Valley upgrade is the debug Now the only thing wrong is the power LED—it doesn’t light up. I followed the debug flowchart and it led me to CR107. On closer inspection, there’s a capacitor there when it’s supposed to be a 5V zener diode. Makes me wonder if there are other errors on the side board, but I guess if the drive reads disks ok it must be fine. I’ll put the correct part in and if the LED starts working, I’ll call it good. Now I have two working 810s—no more swapping when I want to duplicate disks
    3 points
  39. 3 points
  40. Interesting ideas. I've just studied how you use the multiple of 15 and IRQ to introduce the phase shift. That's exactly what insight into the underlying principles allows you to do. Perfect ! I didn't test anything more yet. I'm more and more convinced the click is not really an issue in most of the cases. There is another thing which I want to try though. With one sync you can make all multiples of 3 to generate 10000 sequence. That is what all music players can do, and it is imho the most useful achievement. If we go for sync at every note, using method 2 to avoid much worse STIMER clicks, I think we could achieve any desired sequence (of those possible) for any frequency. We would just need table of starting offsets for every frequency, and code which will be able to do it. It's of course much more complicated, but hey, that's the fun part. There are some better sounding ones I think. And we could actually get like 5 different stable timbres ? That would be cool. Still I see many limitations. It's just 8 bit bass. It can do PWM, but with IRQ and extra channel. And if we go for IRQ, we can go all the way and use IRQ to generate the bass directly, see this recent thread: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/292342-new-bass-approach-rediscovered-in-old-song Or going the Hard-bass way of constant-sample-frequency soft-synth. I'm not giving up on this though, it certainly makes C bass better.
    3 points
  41. Things I'm not in the market for: 1. A console to play modern games. I have a PS4 and a Switch, so I'm in pretty good shape there for now. 2. A console to play old Atari games. I've got a 6-switcher, a collection of nearly 400 carts and a Flashback Portable, so I've got that pretty well covered. 3. A computer. My laptop is getting a little old, but it still does what I need it to do (which includes running Stella, making it another option for playing old Atari games) 4. A way to stream video. The PS4 and laptop take care of that. One's connected to the TV at home and one I can take with me. Things the VCS may or may not be, depending on who's running the social media account that day: 1. A console to play modern games 2. A console to play old Atari games 3. A computer 4. A video streaming device
    3 points
  42. You cannot GOTO a DATA statement. 20 READ A$ :: IF A$="" THEN 100 :: CALL LINK("CWRITE",A$) :: GOTO 20 100 DATA -3,16,2,-2,15,6,-1,16,2,0,6,2,1,15,2,2,2,5,3,6,5,4,16,2 130 DATA 21,15,2,22,15,2,23,15,2,24,15,2,25,2,15 2490 CALL LINK("SCRN2") Line 20 should be IF A$="" THEN 2490 With that change the XB256 and compiled versions behave the same.
    3 points
  43. PWM in the FPGA, low-pass filter on the output pin; done it a few times, works good. This would let you have audio out without having to use the DIN-5 cable. Although, the internal audio-in connection would still be required, and the audio would go through two unnecessary conversions (analog to digital, and back to analog).
    3 points
  44. This is from over a year ago. If anyone thinks the noisemakers in the Facebook group are out of line for asking about partners and games, this is why. Also, remember that the early birdies were promised special perks. These are all paraphrased or directly quoted from stupid things that "Atari VCS" PR people have said. And let's never forget "the bomb-diggety one that will be super valuable one day." They were also promising more video from their board "as soon as we have all the clips shot and all the right permissions in place." Not only have these failed to appear, they've redacted what little press video (Ackerman's CNET video) was already released.
    3 points
  45. Are you new here? Go back a few hundred pages and read all about their great hope, Rob Wyatt, and his goofy non-updates to the IndieGogo funders, or to his company web page. Or the many ways that their "for illustration only" demonstrations were not fully truthful. For example: the first look at Tempest 4000 was played on a hidden, offscreen PC and they haven't shown it since. If you find these shenanigans "interesting," you're playing right into their game. They want people to think they're the heirs to the old legacy, that they're trying something bold and different, and that if you only wait a little bit longer, good things are right around the corner. It's not that we're unable to be happy. Atari Flashback in hardware and software form is delightful. Tempest 4000 is worth your time and attention. It's just that this "Atari VCS" project is a terrible concept, poorly communicated, and gracelessly executed. It's using other peoples' money, it's late, they can't articulate a good reason for it to exist, and no one who put in any good faith money can get a refund. All of this is in plain sight but if you need a refresher, this thread is a good place to bone up on the facts. Are you a backer, @mrentropy?
    3 points
  46. The obvious difference, of course, is that those previous Atari incarnations were active companies of programmers, artists, and engineers generally defending product they were currently (or recently) producing, and not a small group of vampires attempting to squeeze more blood from forty year old turnips.
    3 points
  47. Im a 70s, 80s scifi kid from Star Wars, Star Trek even The Black Hole.
    3 points
  48. Done on this poster not I need to know how to fit in a 10 x 14 size for me to sent them
    3 points
  49. Not just the "golden days". Some of us still do this as it's the right and sensible thing to do when creating new hardware. We had multiple "real" prototype Amico machines and controllers along with 22 games working at E3 (June) this year and our launch was still 15 months away at that point (10/10 2020). We continue to focus test and refine everything as our big INTERNAL full-time, full benefits, on-staff team of experienced mechanical, firmware, production, design, OS and hardware engineers find ways to make things better. For a real video game system retail launch to happen a company needs to be in manufacturing and mass production at least 6 or 7 months before launch (ours is the end of March for an October release). Next Monday we'll be releasing a new trailer showing 17 games. So not just the golden days... but modern days as well.
    3 points
  50. Warning: long rambling post, made at 4AM... I seem to remember reading about old-style terminals and why their numbers/punctuation were laid out the way they were, but it was ages ago. Wikipedia mentions it but doesn't go into detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#History Early terminal keyboards were bit-shifting ASCII types. The keyboard (or the keyboard decoder in the terminal) would send ASCII codes 49 through 57 for the unshifted number keys, and the shift key would cause it to send the same codes with bit 4 cleared, which gave the punctuation in ASCII order. So the layout would look like: ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 For upper/lowercase, the shift key would clear bit 5 instead of bit 4, giving lowercase a-z in place of capital A-Z. All this stuff was probably done with logic gates, not in software. Very simple design. Of course the ASCII codes were chosen to match (or at least be similar to) the standard layout of mechanical typewriters, back when ASCII was first invented. I haven't used a mechanical typewriter in close to 40 years so I'm not sure how standardized the layout really was. I do remember using one that lacked the 1 key, had to type a lowercase L instead. Later on, because the technology kept getting smaller/faster/cheaper, the ASCII decode could be more or less arbitrary. There was no reason to tie the keyboard layout to the ASCII codes so strictly. So the old-style punctuation layout could be changed... Atari mostly stuck with the old standard, except they moved the parentheses over one key (so they're on 9 and 0) and put the @ above the 8. To me, switching between PC and Atari keyboard layouts is almost seamless. If I go a really long time without typing on an Atari, it takes a few minutes to adjust to it. But if I'm switching between PC and Atari keyboards several times a day, my brain & fingers automatically hit the right keys without conscious thought. Sort of like switching between guitar and ukulele. As for UK keyboard layouts, the modern one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_keyboard_layout shows the double-quote over the 2, but the rest of it matches the US PC layout (except the pound in place of #), not the Atari. Maybe the switch to @ over 2 just never caught on in the UK?
    3 points
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