idavis

Since you mention WINE, have you tried "renice"-ing the process to give it a higher priority? Not sure how well that would work without mucking up the rest of the pc but it might be worth a try.

Just watched someone pick up a copy of Synassembler for $50. Wonder if they will actually use it?

I am running Ubuntu 12.04 I think, and wine 1.4 and it's working on my machine. Was sitting there playing a copy of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. I did run into a problem where Synassembler won't output to P: but if I go to DOS and copy a file to P: that does work. Not really sure if I even want to spend time trying to see if it can be fixed. Might just be easier to plug back in my Windows machine. I am totally thrilled that it's working with Wine though! Awesome job.

You might want to read up on its history. The Mona Lisa has seen quite a bit of touching up and vandalism over its 500+ year history. Facepalm!! Ok, let me revise. To me it's like wanting to spruce up the Mona Lisa, you know, getting a new model to pose and photoshopping her in.

I am still confused why you would want to even touch this. To me it's like wanting to spruce up the Mona Lisa, you know, just a few light touches here and there. Or maybe do a couple little tweaks to a P-51 Mustang. Anyone got a hankering to do some remodeling over at the Taj Mahal? I know that sounds extreme, but in my opinion the only people that would suggest this weren't around when that game came out. I would venture a guess that it fueled quite a few careers. What you are calling bugs and quirks, are just parts of the gameplay. To me it's inspiration. Lets just leave it alone, there's no fixing that needs to be done here.

Disk drives recordings: http://www.atariage....l__1050%20sound Thanks!

I have to agree on the SIO beeps. About 4 in a row would make an awesome incoming text beep.. Kalwren, thanks for the file!!

I really hate work now!! I wish I could have attended and would have gladly made the drive from Austin. Maybe next year I can block out my calendar. Looks like you guys had a great time.

That screenshot just really brings back a flood of memories. Sitting down for hours typing and typing and then pouring through the same lines over and over to find your typo. Then eventually the magic of all that work (not including the author's blood sweat and tears) coming to life. It really was an amazing time and I am glad I was there to experience it. My kids will never know that feeling. Being a part of the game in a sense. They have been accustomed to clicking an icon on a touch screen, and expecting the game to download and be running within seconds. There was one in an Analog or Antic magazine that I typed in, and just loved. I need to get everything set back up from my move so I can pop in the floppys and find it.

Just wanted to say thanks!!

Mathy, Try this out: 10 Minute Email

I said it before and I will say it again. While the internet is a wonderful tool, my kids are going to miss out on something that I held dear to my heart. Sitting around going over the latest magazine with a fine tooth comb. It was our internet in that it was at most times my only source for information on our beloved computers. I had four magazines before my Atari 800 was shipped, and I had started teaching myself to program before I even had the computer. I remember writing programs in a notepad and just dying to see if they would work while waiting for my new computer to show up. It's a different world we live in, and I do have to give it credit though. Being able to carry every book made for the Atari 8bit, and every magazine published in a hard drive smaller than a pack of cigarettes does have some appeal. Thanks to ThumpNugget and all who have sacrificed their magazines and books for this effort!

Late to the game here, but shouldn't your Eprom burner software be able to split this file? All of mine is packed, but my eprom burner runs off an isa bus pc. You feed it a file, and if it's too large for the eprom you are burning it asks for an offset, and will only burn as many bytes as the eprom can handle. It was easy to split files into two eproms. Now everyone is correct that you can't just use a non-eprom cart for this. There are eprom ready cart blanks available. I would also like to pose another solution that would help the Atari Community. Steve over at AtariMax (http://www.atarimax.com) can put your program on a MaxFlash cart, and have a number of them built for you with your software pre-loaded. No need for eproms or a burner.

You might also want to check the back of the drive and make sure it's set to Drive 1. There are some toggles on the back (a black and white slider) that you use to set which drive it responds as. If it's set to any drive other than one, that could be causing it to not respond. Wow, I am 41, and remember the day my 1050 drive came in. I stayed home from high school that day. I was a freshman. Ahhh the memories..

I think probably most of the hurdle so far has been figuring out how to "save" what we need to save. I know the 1027 I had the printhead is gone. So I don't have one to measure/mold/photograph. It does sound like you know quite a bit about the process. I guess the first part would be identifying who has a printhead that while might still be very fragile, hasn't disintegrated to the point of where we could use it to measure/mold/photograph. Then the next step is what do we do to get something that we can make the steel molds made? For me, it's just a lack of knowledge in the process. I know someone who runs a machine shop and will see if I can call and ask him his opinion. He might not even have the right type of machines or shop but it's worth a try. Also, should we splinter this off to a new thread? One that people can ignore if they really don't want to hear about 1027's?

So please clarify something for me, and I am not trying to be antagonistic I just really want to know. Were you an Atari user back in the early 80's? The reason I ask is that because for me and my family, the 1027 was the solution to our problem. Sure there may have been better letter quality equipment out there, but turnkey the 1027 was the solution. It fit our budget, and we didn't have to go out and buy a 850 interface, or one of the aftermarket Centronics interfaces. Just because better technology existed, doesn't mean it was within reach of everyone. I lived in the middle of nowhere technology wise, so you didn't just go down and purchase your items either. It had to be purchased by sending a check to the merchant, waiting for it to clear, and then waiting for the item to arrive. That could be a month down the road, and there wasn't any "testing" things out. Regardless, I found the 1027, to be a pretty cool piece of equipment, and even if you don't feel that it was "not something that you are gonna print entire pages of text (let alone hundreds of pages) on a regular basis..", that is exactly what we did with it, and it worked every time. I printed school papers, and my parents both used it for work all the time. I am sure my little 1027 printed thousands of pages. You are trying to compare apples to oranges here, and frankly it doesn't work. Why isn't there the same fervor for our Atari compatible only single side single density drives. I am sure Commodore had a much better design, hell I would venture to say if you asked a c64 person, ours "don't compare". God forbid the belts were made of some material that wasn't holding up today. Would be just bury all of the 810's and 1050's? Besides, decent floppy and magnetic storage existed long before the atari drives came out. It's a piece of atari history, and just because you aren't fond of it doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to save it just like all these other piles of sh!t I have laying around my house with a fuji logo. It's obviously so bad you made it a point to single it out. Jaybird states "They may be "nifty," or they may have been useful to you in their own way when they were new. That doesn't necessarily mean they were good." Well, that applies to every old piece of computer equipment I own, and includes the standup video games I have in my gameroom. Really guys, I am willing to bet that if the print heads on the 1027 weren't dissolving at this day and age, we wouldn't even be having this conversation as people would still be using them. I know I would have no problem cranking out school papers and such for the kids, etc. All we are asking about is if someone can use today's technology to come up with new print heads. It's not like we are asking to have them converted to laser or print out the contents of the library of congress. We just want to save a piece of history which regardless of whether you deem it worthy or not, we do.

MEtalGuy66, with all due respect, maybe it's a nostalgia issue. I for one got in trouble in High School for turning in a paper printed on a dot matrix printer. I was told that I could not do reports on a "computer". We ended up purchasing a 1027 printer, and I spent a lot of time feeding pages into it, and turning in papers that my teachers thought I typed up. It was a success for technology back when people were still very afraid of it. Why is it so bad that I would like to keep my 1027 up and running, just like all my other Atari equipment? I would love to show my kids exactly what it was like printing on something that wasn't laser driven. I fail to see the disdain for the 1027, but maybe because for me, at the time, it was a wonderful piece of equipment that saved me from hours of mistake riddled typing on our IBM Selectric, and also the wrath of stone age teachers afraid of the coming electronic revolution. I find your statement highly ironic on a board devoted to decades old computer equipment. Let's update your quote: Don't take offense, but some of us love that little piece of sh!t.

I know this has been discussed to death, already, but has anyone actually ever tried to take a mold in plaster or plastic of the typeface at least so we can get a rough facsimile. Not as good as a injection mold, true, but from there one could piece the other parts together into a final mold of the entire piece. Maybe pretty rough in the final product..but modern synthetics would seem to be more durable.. Maybe discussed to death, but has someone done this? Or how about those 3d scans? Jeez, even some pictures with the dimensions. I find it hard to believe that this can't get reproduced with normal modern materials. Anyone?

Wow Tom Hudson and Lee Pappas. This is awesome. I would love to volunteer to help out, but I don't think I have the spare time. On another note, I would like to thank you guys immensely for the work you did on the magazines back in the day. I had a subscription to Analog and other Atari related magazines. Back then, it was different. We didn't have the internet, and dialing up a bbs often entailed a long distance charge and at 300 baud, wasn't too productive. Magazines were a lifeline for people like me who grew up in the middle of nowhere. And you guys never failed to deliver. I still enjoy looking through the old magazines, although I realize that sadly todays generation will never have this same feeling. But hey, they have really cool things like the people I grew up reading and looking up to making games for them on the new platforms. I am off to find your game for my Ipod Touch. Thanks guys!

You could have either A. better resolution (0-90 in 1 degree steps) or B. a smaller table (only 16 records) if you just went from 0 to 90 degrees and calculated reference angles, then adding the + or - based on quadrant.

I know I am going to catch it for this, but I still use Synassembler. Like it too.

That was my exact experience as well. No dot matrix, but we turned in a load of 'typed' papers printed off the old 1027. My kids can't even fathom being told that you can't use a computer to do schoolwork.

I didn't see mine on the list, but I might as well update here. I am still working on the Sudoku game. I have it working properly. My main goal has been accomplished, which was to have an Atari generate a valid sudoku puzzle and allow you to play it in under 8k. Right now, it's just some tweaks to the joystick routines, adding in some extra input, and maybe some more flash when you complete the puzzle. I have some easier classes this semester so I might spend more time on the weekends. Right now it's been some late night coding sessions getting the work done. But I am happier with the results now more than ever.

Don't forget about Envision: http://www.user.dccnet.com/dschebek/envision.htm I am using it with my Sudoku game. The nice part is my game is being written with Synassembler, and Envision has the option to output the charset to Synassembler format.

Here's my cool setup. And yes, I realize this isn't really running under linux per se, but it qualifies as cool in my opinion. I am running Slackware 12.1 and a little older version of VMware (1.0.4 I think). I have an XP machine set up with a USB APE/SIO2PC, running under a VMware instance. I had tried the serial SIO2PC interface, but just couldn't get the timing to work right with linux and the serial ports. Switching to USB has cured the problems and it works fine. Atari 800-> USB SIO2PC/APE interface -> Slackware Machine running VMWare -> XP machine running ProSystem.