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Hi Community! As many of you have surely noticed, there have been massive problems with the shipping of packages to the USA for about 3 months. But not only shipments from outside are affected, there are also many complaints from US citizens I know that their Christmas parcels - dispatched at the beginning of December – still have not arrived. And we're talking about shipping within the USA here. Shipping from Europe to the USA is also problematic. Several forums in Germany and elsewhere in Europe report on countless shipments that have been on the road for months and where the tracking status has not changed. I currently have 17 packages on their way to the USA, the oldest one has been posted at November 23, 2020. I have informed all recipients of the situation by email. Now an AtariAge user has accused me of unfaithfulness, of fraud and claimed that I had not even sent the goods. He's planning on filing a dispute with PayPal, which can seriously harm me. I'm appalled by that, as I've been serving the community for many years and - as far as I know - no one has any reason to complain. I can understand that one or the other is getting impatient and wants the goods they have ordered. For me the situation is just as uncomfortable - but unfortunately it is not in my hands to change anything. Of course, I will take care of an investigation after the waiting period has expired, but this investigation also takes several weeks. Only then, after a final check, the transport insurance will provide compensation. As a private citizen, I cannot simply send out new goods (which I also haven't finished at the moment) at my own expense. While it looks a bit like "fingerpointing," it isn't really what it means, but: the fact is, the persistent problems appear to only be with USPS. Myself sent 7 parcels to non-American and non-European countries in early and mid-January, even as far as Australia and New Zealand. They all arrived at their recipients long ago, the fastest package was there in 10 days. Although all carrier states issues due to Covid-19. Therefor I ask everyone who is waiting for a shipment from me to be patient. There is no point in filing a dispute with PayPal, because PayPal is also waiting for the result of the investigation. But it does me harm my reputation, and that wouldn't be fair. Thank you for your time. Best regards, Jurgen

This is similar to a CF7, but use SD card and has nothing to do with CF7. It allows a TI-99/4a to use disk image volumes on SD card as floppies. I started this a couple years ago and have decided to share it in case someone else wants to build one. https://github.com/dennishatton/TI-99-4a_SD_Disk_Project

Hi folks, glad you asked, here is a short(ish) report on my progress on building F18A's from the design files on CircuitMaker.com. TLDR; I'm about to test my first DY F18A in a TI-99/4A, but I need to get into the mood. Getting the PCBs made was the easy part, and I have ordered 10 just for good measure. When the boards arrived, I found that a track was missing in the layout, visibly. The track was to one of the enable pins of a voltage regulator and the schematics called for it to be there, so I went for a patch: Sourcing the chips was a bit more challenging. The F18A uses the venerable Spartan-3E FPGA XC3S250E, which is pretty old and EOLed by Xilinx. Some dealers still have stock, but prices are going up - This is one of the reasons why Matthew Haggerty does not produce the original F18A anymore, so I hear. Anyway, I got three chips from Mouser at €16.70 apiece, and another five from Aliexpress at €7.20 each. When the Mouser chips arrived in early January, I built the first board, but I realised that I needed a 2mm pitch connector for the JTAG programming. I ordered from Arrow, which is usually fast, but this time, the parts went on an Odyssey through the USA and Europe before they finally arrived 2 weeks ago. With the JTAG connector soldered in, I went to programming the Flash chip that holds the FPGA configuration. This went smoothly, albeit the Xilinx FPGA ISE design software that is required to program these ancient chips does not run in Windows 10, and requires the installation of a virtual machine with ISE running under Linux. For some reason, access to the USB programming cable is very slow from the VM, but eventually I succeeded to get the Flash programmed. Unfortunately, the first board that I built drew way too much power after I had programmed it - I don't really know how much current an idle and out-of-circuit F18A needs, but 600 mA seemed way too much to me. As I made some mistake orienting the Flash chip, I suspected that I might have damaged the FPGA, put the first board to the side and built a second one. Other projects came up and I did not make progress after putting on the initial parts, but a few days ago, the Aliexpress chips arrived and that put me under pressure to test them in order to get a refund if they don't work. Thus, I built a second board last weekend - Programming the Flash went slowly but smoothly, power consumption is much more reasonable at 150 mA, and now the board is sitting on my bench waiting to be tested in a TI-99/4A. Before I can go ahead, I will have to solder a VGA cable, but I have everything in stock for that. Thus, I will be able to report whether this whole effort actually leads anywhere this weekend, and I'll report. If it does, I have parts to build another 5 boards which I'll then gladly pass on. I tried getting in touch with Matthew to gather his input on the futility of this, but he did not respond, and I'm at the bottom of the rabbit hole now anyway Cheers, Hans

OK, here is the latest source, programs, and source code for MyBasic for the Geneve 9640. Manual is available in Microsoft Word format as well as PDF format. Geneve ABasic.pdfGeneve ABasic.docx ABASIC-V406.zip

It does not look too bad! I'm going to put the machine together and try out whether it does more than display the title screen

Here's my beefed-up PlusCart running with a SD-card reader. Working title, I think, "PlusCart Duo". Design/programming by the brilliant @Al_Nafuur. We're currently discussing what actual need/use there is for a SD card on a PlusCart, because most/all use-cases appear to be covered by the Offline ROMs functionality. I happen to think having a SD card also is pretty cool, but there does not seem to be much justification for one. Anyway, this is one of only two currently in existence - the other belonging to @Fierodoug5. Running the merged UnoCart/PlusCart code, so it's a rare beast. This prototype is currently not going to be supported/produced, but I thought it worth sharing the idea.

Vexed is a puzzle game in which the goal is to move similar blocks together, which causes them to disappear. To finish the level, remove all the blocks. Move blocks by putting the select target on them and pressing the fire button then moving to the left or right. If an empty space is encountered when moved, the blocks will fall towards the bottom. Scoring is based on a golf-like par concept. If the level is solved in the same number of moves as the target, a score of 0, or par, is given for that level. Note that the target may not be the most efficient one, is it is possible to beat "par" and have a negative score. Click the right button to restart the level. The moves counter is reset to zero. The level can be restarted as often as needed. Vexed-COL-1.00.zip

OK, I am attaching a zip file of all the modules I had back in the 90's for use with the GPL Interpreter and use on the Geneve 9640. There are 7 directories under the primary folder. Beery MODULES.zip

Two years ago when @Igor released Eggsavie's Cackberry Rescue, @karri proposed a coding competition with the theme of LCD games and created in few hours the alpha version of Find a way to my heart. Just after the proposal I sketched this game, but then @Igor, starting from Karri's idea, organized the first Atarigamer Coding competion and I decided to present another kind of game. After all this time I found the sources of the first demo of the game on my PC and decided to complete it. At the moment the game is completed at 75%, has no sound/sfx but it is playable. The story behind the game is about a war of all the races of a classical fantasy world against an evil wizard (yes I read all theTolkien books in my youth), but when all the armies of the world are going to destroy the wizard left without magick powers after a long fight, it uses a dark power to drain all the vital energy and magic powers from it's enemies. Only the three stronger kings of the world can resist to the attack, but they remain weak like young apprentices: a weak mage, an archer without his weapons, and a strong but slow warrior with only a sword. Could they suvive without their magic weapons and all the experience gained in years of adventures? The wizard will use the drained energy to summon creatures and attack the three survivors, but he needs time to control the new power so it can use it just a little at the beginning, but his ability will increase with time. On the other hand killing the attacking creatures will make return some of the energy to the three fighters. The combat style is inspired to the FF battle mode, killing an enemy makes gain experience and sometime a new weapon, or an items like potions or scrolls (in hard mode the characters can't recognize their kind at beginning and have to try them to learn again their use - this is not implemented yet). When the experience bar is full the character gains one point of HP, or the max amount of MANA or SPEED (selected at random). There is a rare scroll that can increase the speed of a character and a healing potions. Other Scrolls and potions (black ones) are for attacking. Using magic will consume MANA that can be recovered passing the turn without an action (MANA can be recovered to the max value reached by a character). There are four magic spells, each one requiring a different amount of MANA, but only FIRE attack and CURE are implemented so far. CURE makes recover a character all the HP, reviving it if dead. Here is screenshot of all the video elements in the game, all the enemies are implemented but the big dragon and the evil wizard (the last and most powerful enemy) will have magic powers that aren't implemented yet. I'll make simple beeping sfx and musics using ABC music, but this is not my priority at moment. Here is a video of the game so far:

The Asteroite update for February 2021. Some new enemies, and a vertical level, enjoy. Note that the video capturing tool does not capture blinking sprites very well (e.g. when you are hit, or when the enemies disappear) Either you see them all the time, or they just disappear. I does not look like this on the real Jaguar.

.... and no one has seen him since, officer....

Berzerk: 12770 I've posted my game play for both this game and my Venture score of 34400 on YouTube... Berserk: Venture:

Hi Atari 8-bitters Just a small update - Excel #6 will definitely be out soon - probably next month. Meanwhile, the first 5 issues are now free to download from the website... www.excel-retro-mag.co.uk Robert

We (very wisely) aren't allowed to discuss politics on these forums so we can't talk about why the USPS is such a mess right now. Hopefully someone new will do something to release the stranglehold previous people have put on the service. These sorts of things are the part of the standard political playbook. Want to privatise or close down a service that everyone loves? Defund it and enforce bureaucracy upon it until it no longer functions and everyone is criticizing it, then sell it or close it because it wasn't performing. I have two parcels on route from Germany which have been in transit in excess of 80 days now and one from Serbia which is more recent, I've even received a refund for one of them. When my stuff arrives (I do expect stuff will arrive eventually) I'll give the guy who refunded my money his money back again, it's not his fault. Whoever it was who accused Jurgen of fraud, you should probably (privately) apologise for doing that, things are weird right now but the people (like Jurgan) who make stuff for the community, wouldn't have been doing it for as long as they have if they were dishonest.

I have a parcel of 3 keyboard connectors from tt_hh that has been on it's way since Nov 16. I have not even considered any issues with him being unfaithful with the transaction. I knew when I ordered it that it could be months before I would receive the package. This is the new normal.

That's so sad to read, Jurgen has been a stalwart on here and is also incredibly helpful to his customers. I and all the people that I know on here have never had the slightest problem with delivery or shipping in any way shape or form, he's quick and the products are great. If the person who complained is reading this then cut the poor man some slack, shipping point blank is a nightmare at the moment, I sent a camera to Italy before december and it took over a month to arrive. Shipping and delivery is simply a lottery at the moment, the situation with Brexxit has had knock on effects and not just to the UK. Lets not start attacking our wonderful suppliers, there's not many of them and its a hard time for them all at the moment, take a step back, look at the global situation and see that both customers and suppliers are both having it hard to no fault of either one. Paul... All the best to all our suppliers, lets have some sanity here..

@clth - my playthrough of the demo, so far part 1. - The game is great! Very much like Dungeon Master, I love the atmosphere. - After a while the control of UI isn't bad, bad definitely there is big space for improvement. Small proposal to improve - in TAB screen give ability to "wrap" moving left and right (between STAT and GAME). - Just as in Dungeon Master items have no stats ? You do not know if it's better to replace Club with Dagger. If you do not want to add it, then maybe showing in the console damage done to the enemy to estimate which one is better? This still wouldn't help with defense e.g. to estimate which shield is better. - Auto-mapping works strange. Sometimes it adds a field in front of you to the map, sometimes only the one you are standing on. Would be good to always add one in front, because you can miss e.g. some corridor or door. - I had issue with the copper key. Wasn't sure how to use it, when the first met locked door did not open with found key. A message like "no proper key" instead of "locked" would be good (pointing that you tried to use key but you had no proper one). I was running around to find a proper key hole for a while (especially considering issues with the auto-mapping). - Nice boss fight with the Spider Queen - Columns are nice touch. - Considering font limits, graphics is great! You did great job with all the elements! - Sounds are OK - That's all so far, definitely will play the demo further!

Do you know that I'm french ? If someone says the name is not accurate for english people, I will change it in order to get a name not accurate for everybody More seriously, it will be an editor choice. I think they like Ynxa, but if they want to change, there is no problem for me. Oh, did I show you the new Fire sprites ? The flames are from Ansimuz torch asset. The problem to keep them would be to have other characters in the same vein.

128340

Hi all, almost there, the circuit boards are en route to me, taking a little longer than expected, as soon as in hand, shipping is ASAP. Will be well worth the wait, thanks to all! Feel free to PM me any time.

I was shocked to learn today that Fraggle Rock (which I watched on HBO during its original run) might have had a fifth or even sixth season! HBO cancelled the show due to costs and disputes with Jim Henson; the show's ratings were still going strong!

It's great when you get a quick answer to your questions that only takes 17 years!

I like the layout and the dual windows. The ability to navigate the structure and perform operations with the keyboard (without requiring a mouse) is icing on the cake.

FEDEX, UPS, DHL et al are the people lobbying for the USPS's demise, every time there is an administration that will take their bribes the service gets worse. The USPS are the only organisation that will still allow you to post a letter for less than a dollar. and a 4oz package for $4. The private carriers have been lobbying for the ridiculous regulations and funding cuts to the USPS for far longer than 11 years, that was just when you started feeling it. It says a lot about how important it is as a service that it's still going despite the death of a thousand cuts. The private carriers are doing a better job because they can afford to and they have made it their mission to make sure the USPS cannot afford to compete. In the UK I've watched the same thing happen to British Gas, British Rail, British Telecom, The Post Office, The NHS, The Libraries, The BBC and on and on. It's only once it's been gone for a few years that we realize what we lost.

You sneaky guys. If CMART gets it I call shenanigans!!!!!!

Okay 1 last file for tonight. This is a dump of one of the Z80 sustem disk, using anadisk 2.07. I don't know if this can be converted to disk image yet. I don't know how at this moment, but maybe one of you do. I had to cut the sleeve open and remove it from the casing and place it into another casing that would let the disk rotate. It seems to have usable data. CPMZ802

I am supposedly working on a port of a game from ti99 to atari. my wife asked me today why I hadnt finished it yet. Wow! She may not really have any idea what an atari is but damn she’s good at faking it. I was impressed. she can surprise me still.

I used what appears to be a very good teac drive and was able to image the disk, that needs to be run from the ti to communicate with the Z80 card. Am loading that disk to Atariage now. The cpm disks will hopefully be posted in the next day or two. I have placed it in track image, sector image, and in image. It would be the initial disk, I believe. FMASTER Z80 .dtk FMASTER Z80.dsk FMASTER Z80.hfe

Past few weeks have left me convinced that there is a secret contest going on, for the biggest necro-bump. I think this one wins. I have "only" been here for 19.5 years.

Thanks for sharing the source code. I learned a few things from it that I didn't previously know about xas99.py: By the way, you could use the 'stri' directive to automatically prepend the length byte in the cartridge header: The quotes are taken from the XDT99 documentation.

(originally posted in programming subforum) It was suppossed to be christmas present but it end up as very late one Vaults of Nhyrmeth Demo featuring: - Cliche fantasy plot - One level with several enemy types - Inventory, stats and automapping system - State save/load anytime - Sounds - 48K Atari with floppy(or emulation) required I tried to balance things but beginning can be bit challenging. However when you get some equipment and increase health with constitution stat, it becomes rather easy soon. Any feedback is always welcome. nhyrdemo.atr

Mike, Give TIDIR time. It is THE PREDOMINANT tool I use on a Windows PC to support the TI and Geneve. It has a lot of capability and flexibility. I've been using it to setup things for a GitHub repository for the "crucial" Geneve software. Between it and the PI to TIPI, things are so much easier now than they were a few years ago. About three years ago, I pretty much had to download software through a WIFI modem to get things moved around or use a Lotharek drive. Beery

Alright, it seems that the board just works: I've prepared this form to collect your interest in getting one of the few boards that I can build: https://forms.gle/4mf8oDwQdvX7REQR8 Cheers, Hans

I have no intention to make this into a business. I want a card or two for myself, and I'm willing to make a few more as I have parts, enjoy building stuff and like making people happy.

Hello everybody Once everyone has received their game, we will hold small contests. There is one with an item in the box

Well, last try to upload this. If I uploaded the right version, this has less of a delay in it, the poison bottle is now the same size as the aspirin. The computer logic is improved. But I thought that last time, and uploaded a buggy version. Oh well - it's mostly the idea. time to sleep. poison.atr

1 last one for tonight, the same disk using TeleDisk. CPMZ802T.TD0

Don't assume that screenshots of emulated games are 100% accurate. They're probably fine, and generally OK for reference, but taking them as empirical evidence of how a game should look in terms of colour can be misleading. Different versions of even the same emulator can have huge differences in video output. And how a screenshot appears on one computer's display will be different to some extent compared to another display; your CRT may not even be able to match those colour ranges. What I'm saying is that if things look acceptable to you, then great, go with it. But because this can easily become a case of better being the enemy of good enough, don't knock yourself out trying to get a perfect match for a screenshot. With that out of the way: is there a particular issue you're trying to solve? I'm running my 7800 on the same CRT all of my RF-based systems attach to, and I've made zero changes to the picture settings. They're probably not optimal, but everything looks fine by me.

Love this thing and thought it would just be decent only. Really great product. I cannot say enough about it. Cute looking. Amazing.

Just a bit of an update from the research side of things: First, I received a Hagley research grant last year and spent a week in Delaware going over their paper archives. I didn't finish getting through all the folders and boxes that I wanted, but it was an informative visit - I found some previously unknown and unscanned 1802-based newsletters (featuring some VIP programs), the source code to Studio IV's version of BASIC that has since been implemented into Emma02, the source code to a LINC Pong game from the 60s, and a bunch of other stuff. Ended up doing a twitter thread of some highlights: Secondly, Hagley digitized some of the materials I asked about while I was up there and the folks were inspired to set up a Hagley Computing Collection digital page to collate them. Highlights include test footage of a VideoDisc adventure game demonstration, the VIP Game Manual II, photos of RCA's 1967 pool computer game and some cool stuff on the Spectra 70 (also a breakdown of Joe Weisbecker's Tic-Tac-Toe playing computer he build in the mid-50s): https://digital.hagley.org/islandora/object/islandora:2632679 And third, I just received an oral history grant through Hagley to interview folks involved with RCA's computer and video game work! Currently reaching out to folks I'd talked to previously by email to see if they'd like to do an oral interview, and to folks I'd spoken to over the phone to see if they'd be willing to have those interviews sent along to Hagley to add to their RCA archive. With luck, maybe this'll shake loose some of the folks who seem to have stubbornly kept a low profile. I should add that there is also renewed interest in game preservation circles to get type-in programs for all kinds of platforms input and saved so they can be ran on actual hardware or emulators; I may give a shot at doing so for some VIP stuff myself but I think it's a worthy effort all-round for RCA's games. There's some type-in code listings for FRED and VIP at Hagley even beyond what's in the game manuals and newsletters...

Berzerk - 3,020

Well, these have finally arrived. Shipping was very slow. I'm sure some of you have seen the same issues with things you've ordered. Anyway, next step is to test some of them. I'm busy for a couple of days, so likely I'll start sending PMs with instructions on the weekend.

Hello gilsaluki Tell her it'll happen the day she gets rid of most of her shoes, coats, etc. Sincerely Mathy

Finally Got some time to play: Venture: 10500 Really like this in the arcade. The 2600 is a good challenge. Berzerk: 9890 One of my favorites on Game 9. Love the challenge! I know I can get higher!

This is my fault. Since I haven't been able to appear/call-in for the past 2 years into the show due to work, I asked James for an extra week for the award show. My boss completely forgot I requested Saturday off this year and as brought it up twice in our manager meetings at the store, that I will be off next year (along with it being rescheuled to the following weekend helps too). See you all on Feb. 12, 2022!

I have to say that I'm starting to admire your ability to derive an entirely nonexistent message from things people write. The consistency with which you do it is impressive, too!

Funnily enough, we had exactly that opportunity due to one of our cars (a Jetta) being a dieselgate vehicle. The best way I can describe how things looked was that, at the start of it all, people fell into three main categories: The professionally-outraged, for whom this was the single greatest injustice in the history of mankind, and they were gonna sue, sue, sue. Those who were going to return their cars to VW ASAP. Many of these people were underwater on finance or just didn't like the car for <insert reason here>, so were going to use this as an easy way out. Some were actually genuinely unhappy with being deceived and wanted out on those grounds, to be sure, but they seemed to be more of a minority within this category. Everyone else who was going to wait and see what happened. They might not have been happy with VW's dishonesty, but they had no reason to return and replace their vehicle(s) either, so would hang on and see what shook out. Similar to the VCS, this was something that took a period of a couple of years to reach resolution - at least, for those who didn't immediately call their lawyer or return their vehicle. But there was one huge difference between VW and Fauxtari during this time: VW kept in touch with its customers and took responsibility for their actions. They didn't just go dark for weeks or months at a time, and didn't make promises that couldn't be kept. They also delivered on promises that they did make, and extended significant amounts of goodwill to owners keeping their vehicles. While I'm not defending VW's actions in allowing emissions-defying software to be placed into its vehicles, I will say that their actions once they had to deal with the public were, IMHO, extremely good from the standpoints of taking responsibility for their actions and not trying to offload blame onto others. This is in stark contrast to the VCS' development cycle, which was more or less the polar opposite in many respects.

SuperMON is a post market mod. Your computer should have a metal switch. The advantages of SuperMON is when it is turned on, you don't need a Translator disk to run Atari 800/400 software. Also it has a built in Screen Dump feature too (like a print screen), but I can't remember how to activate that. Its been like 30 years. SuperRAM is also another option that may come with the computer which included a 256k ram upgrade.

The resolution is 159x96 pixels ordered as 20x12 cards in the so-called BACKTAB which all are 8x8 pixels (rightmost pixel column not visible IIRC). That means it is not fully bitmapped, but based on a character set that consists of up to 256 fixed GROM symbols (including alphanumerical characters, punctuation and some executable code that looks like random garbage but can be used for explosions) and 64 dynamic GRAM symbols. You can reload the GRAM on vertical blank, limited number of cards you can redefine per frame. The palette is fixed, 16 colours which you can find elsewhere exactly what those are supposed to look like. There is one colour that sometimes is considered forest green, sometimes brown depending on the surrounding graphics. Basically there are three major graphics modes: Color Stack which lets you define four background colours to cycle through, and use all 16 foreground colours (primary 8 for GROM, all 16 for GRAM). In this mode you can use all 256 GROM symbols plus all 64 GRAM symbols. Foreground/Background which lets you freely choose background among all 16 colours for each card, but you may only use the 8 primary foreground colours, plus that GROM is limited to the first 64 symbols (numbers, punctuation and upper case letters) on top of the 64 GRAM symbols. Colored Squares mode which is a variant of Color Stack that cuts the resolution down to 40x24 blocky pixels, and you can use all four colours defined freely. You can have a maximum of 8 sprites on screen. These have a resolution of 8x8 pixels, or alternatively 8x16 pixels. Those are defined as part of GRAM so the same area is used for foreground objects and sprites. Sprites can expanded to twice the width and between 0.5x and 4x vertically, making them very tall. Each sprite only has one colour, if you need more you have to use multiple sprites on top of eachother. Sound: It has an AY-3-8914 which has three square wave voices, of which you can make some channels generate white noise instead. The frequency resolution is 12 bits (4096 steps). I can't recall the exact frequency range, but generally the resolution between each audible note is more important than how many bats and dogs you can scare. Memory: The base system has 240 bytes of 8-bit Scratch RAM, 352 words of 16-bit System RAM (of which BACKTAB uses 240 words), 512 bytes of GRAM (64 cards * 8 bytes). Modern games can map out ROM up to 42 kilodecles (that is 84 kilobytes) without getting into bank switching. Not sure if you have use of this information if you're simply going to mimic the look and feel of the Intellivision. Generally I agree with the above posters, you might find that using IntyBASIC isn't that much harder than make accurate imitations in HTML5, in particular if you try hard to not bend the rules.

Thanks Eric!! I am just beginning the enterprise of studying ASM on the TI (with a 40- years delay!), my dream would be to become a real developer for the machine and to create some nice game. The existence of this community, consisting of extremely competent and very generous people in making their knowledge available to everyone, gives me great confidence and encourages me to be successful!