rdemming

Indeed many thanks for the Harmony Cart. De Deluxe version looks very good. Nice manual and label. And I like the Harmony Cart label on the SD-cart as well. Robert

What is the difference between the pal/ntsc version? Robert

You are not the only one. I like the self-test too to quickly test the video and audio when I'm reconnecting the computer. It would be nice replace the internal self-test with something that combines X-Ram test & MacGuiver tester & stereo sound test (plus Covox & VBXE tester) in one Robert

Great! Hopefully the mailman is not delayed because of the snowy weather here Robert

Hi Gorf, It seems you found your place in the 7800 scene after all those woes in the Jaguar scene. Great to see you enjoy working on a 7800 title. Of course I will buy a cart when it is ready. I like the personalized carts. I think it can (partly) prevent the E-bay whoring that you dislike. I too dislikes it to see that home-brew releases fetch high prices on E-bay while the original author gets nothing from it. Robert

I've got the Blitz cable right now, and I can say its amazing. A very high percentage of all my protected floppy disk based games have been backed up this way, and its F A S T. Be careful with the Blitz cable. To make it correctly work you need to have identical drives as poobah already mentioned. If the drives are not close matching, you will get a faulty/unreadable copy and you will only notice that when testing the copy. You won't get an error message while copying. With my drives, the copies it made were very unreliable and I returned quite a few unreadable PD disks to the PD library who used the Blitz cable to quickly make copies. So in the end it took them longer to make a copy. So in my opinion, the Blitz cable should only be used to copy disks that can not be copied by other means. Or you should be 100% sure the two drives are matching and you need to verify the copy.

Hi Candle, Did you already finish the last VBXE2 boards? Robert

I loaded the XEGS rom in Atari800Win and with 128KB it tests the 4 XE bank of memory. But if I select 320KB(compy) or 1088KB the emulator crashes when checking extended memory. So maybe that is why you don't see the extended memory test. Robert

Yes, no self-test is no big lost but I like it for nostalgic reasons . The internal MyIDE OS rom replaces the self-test with the MyIDE F-Disk utility so you will loose that too as MyIDE user. But the F-Disk utility can be loaded from disk too so that is a mood point as well. But indeed a modified self-test could not test all banks with this modification by default. But then, it could not test the RAM under the self-test rom too by default. So it should copy the test routines to RAM, disable the self-test ROM and then it can test all RAM including the extended RAM. B.T.W. The self-test of the rev. 3 OS found in 800XE machines tests the 64KB extended XE memory as well. (and doesn't display the 1200XL function keys anymore in the keyboard test) Robert

You can use the self-test bit for bank-switching without loosing the self-test. You only need a little extra logic. When CPU access or ANTIC access is on, you use the self-test bit to select the bank. When CPU and ANTIC access are both off, you use the self-test bit to enable the self-test rom as normal. In self-test mode you don't need the extra memory banks anyway. Robert

I just tried to upload an .ATR file and it didn't work. So please also add the .ATR extension as well. Robert

For those interested, attached my tape-2-disk conversion that also loads and saves the mazes to/from disk instead of tape. Other disk versions I saw still load/save the mazes from tape. Robert Molecule Man + Maze Editor.zip

According to the links that you gave, the person has written: "Thus, while I'm sure of my conclusions, I don't take any responsibility if some hardware hacker damages his ST by trusting this article." He's either unsure or knows it can cause problems. I didn't see any deductive logic in his article that it wouldn't cause damage although he's claiming it's deductive logic. Here's one link: http://www.codercorn...om/fullscrn.txt which states: "Being in 71 Hz for a long time can damage your monitor (allthough I've never seen such damages)." Of course, I don't care if some particular person's limited experience has shown damage or not, but whether it's possible to cause damage. Of course they put in the disclaimer. It is a strange technique so they put in the warning in case someone uses it incorrectly. Like that of course you never should be for a long time in 71 Hz on a color monitor of course. That will set the output sync signals to 71 Hz which are not correct for a color monitor. I was only saying the switching for a short time (a few clock cycles) during the display of a line does not change the output frequency/sync. Read this topic on Atari Forum. Here a guy called Ijor examined the video hardware of a ST in detail. He states that techniques that change the SYNC are not save to be used because the result will be depending on the monitor. And the only overscan/hardwarescroll technique he says that changes the sync is one form of a 0-byte line (a display line without graphics) which was barely used (as far as I know there are only two examples). But all other techniques don't change the output sync. Edit: Indeed, I think you explained it better than me :-) Robert

Do you actually have any evidence for this for Sync scrolling? - as none of the sync scrolling techniques I've seen change monitor frequencies or garble memory ( no memory seems to be changed at all - the shifter doesn't write after all ) Yes. I combined both of those unreliable hacks into one sentence. One uses frequency toggling the other causes memory issues. I have read about both and thus avoided both. Read these articles about ST overscan: http://alive.atari.org/alive9/ovrscn1.php http://alive.atari.org/alive11/oscan2a.php Then you will see that the quick toggling of the frequency (as used with overscan or sync scroll) during the display of a line won't change the output frequency. The very short change of the frequency registers only makes that the display enable signal to the shifter is starting earlier or stopping later. The VSYNC and HSYNC output signals are not changed. Robert

It is available here: http://www.mmj.pl/~lotharek/atari/ One of the reasons that its installation is more complex than SIO2PC/USB is that you need to replace the internal floppy with HxC floppy emulator. You could connect the HxC to the external floppy port (similar to SIO2PC) but then it only works as drive B and lots of floppy software assumes it is started from drive A and won't work. But if you use the 520ST without the build-in floppy, you would not have this problem. Then the external floppy is drive A by default. As mentioned, the UltraSatan is a great device too. The UltraSatan appears like a harddisk so software you want to run from it must work from harddisk. Most commercial games can't be run from harddisk and must be patched to work from harddisk. D-Bug did already a lot of harddisk patches. The advantage of HxC is that it appears as a normal floppy and games don't have to be patched (except for removing the floppy copy protection that is done for nearly every game already). But the UltraSatan has much faster loading times. Robert

Hi all, I fully understand the Atari "business" is a hobby and that it is all done in spare time. And as Atari fan I want to support the people that still produce quality products for the Atari. And as Marius already said I don't mind to wait for a long time as long as I know what the status is. I even have pre-ordered and paid in advance for several products in the past that only shipped after months. I don't expect a quick answer from GR8 Software. I fully understand things take time. I was just wondering if there was some problem when you don't get a reply after now three weeks. I thought the problem with Bomb Jake not running on NTSC would not affect PAL users like me as there would be different PAL and NTSC versions. Seems that for PAL users no change is needed. But a quick message on the status (even here on AtariAge instead of a personal one) would be greatly appreciated. Robert

I didn't received it as well. So you are not alone

Two weeks ago and last week I sent an e-mail to GR8 Software that I wanted to order Bomb Jake. But till now no reply with the payment details. Does someone know if they are "out of office" or if there are e-mail problems? Robert

The programmer arrived already some time ago but I promised to write my finding on it. The shipment was fast and I didn't need to pay import taxes so that was great. The programmer hardware feels good and sturdy. I plugged it in and the USB drivers find it with no problems. The manual and software is available in English but the translation is terrible. They even misspelled their webpage at one point But it was understandable to me. Some error message are not translated and are displayed in some strange character. I think I should install Chinese fonts to be able to read it One bug in the software is that the picture of the socket is not on the right place on the screen. It looks strange but does not influence the usability of the program. But this was only on Windows XP. On Windows Vista it displayed fine. The last version of their software (v5.20) is on their website and seems to be from December 2009! The program has the normal options to read and write chips and accepts binary, Motorola/Intel hex files, EMC CDS and JEDEC files. The data can be load in several modes like only odd or even bytes or 2 bytes out of 4. So you can program odd/even chip pairs without first splitting the file yourself. Also parts of the file can be skipped. Further it can write an ID at some location when programming multiple chips. It even can encrypt data but how the data is encrypted is not clear to me. But it seems only applicable to certain devices like PICs. Further there is simple hex viewer where you can check/edit the data read or the be programmed. Unfortunately this window is not re-sizable so you only see 256 bytes at once. For ICs it supports eprom, flash rom, eeprom, MCU/MPU, PLD, serial eproms. Further it can test some ram chips and TTL/CMOS logic chips. Then I took out my box with 8bit eprom and flash chips. I could read all the eprom and flash chips. And all the flash chips I tried to program, were correctly programmed. I don't have any PAL/GAL components so I could try that. On little problem was that sometimes, the software couldn't find the programmer anymore. But restarting the programmer and/or software solved that. I also tried to test several 74xx chips I had in my old chip box. Some tested fine but quite a few where indicated as bad. They could be indeed bad although it wouldn't surprise me if the test was not good. Conclusion: The hardware feels good. The software is not so good but good enough for my programming tasks. This is not a high quality product but for the 46 euro (including shipping) I paid for it, I'm very happy with it. For the few chips I program its functionality is more than enough and it provides good value for money. Robert

For a CD with multiple programs, you need a menu program that is run on the Jaguar. The menu program is the first program track on the CD (the boot track) and is booted by the Jaguar CD BIOS. The menu program must then load and run one of the other programs on the CD. The currently included menu programs are two (buggy) programs from Atari which I found on the AtariHQ CD. One of the (many) limitations of those menu programs is that they can only load programs in cartridge space. That means you need an Atari Alpine or Atari FlashCard. Obviously the SkunkBoard is not supported because the Atari menu programs are many years older than the SkunkBoard. Those menus don't accept a load address in RAM. That is why RAM based BJL programs, that are included in the menu, are loaded to the Alpine with a special header that copies the contents to RAM. Unfortunately many RAM based programs don't like the state the Jaguar is in after being load by the Atari menu so success varies. To make a Jaguar CD possible with multiple RAM based programs, someone has to write a new Jaguar menu program that loads RAM based programs directly into RAM and leaves the Jaguar in a state similar to the state the BJL rom does. And that might not always be possible if the RAM based program overwrites the loader. But if the loader is placed high in memory, I think all current BJL programs can be loaded as they are all loaded low in memory and are much smaller than 2MB. Without a suitable menu program, there can be only one program on the CD and that is the boot track. Robert

OK, I've updated the Jaguar CD Creator. The setup includes the latest version of "cdrecord.exe" and the CD creator was changed to work with that version. Also added is the "dummy mode". This goes through the whole burning process without actually writing anything. Handy for testing without wasting an empty CD. When browsing through the code I noticed many things than can now be better because of new features in .NET like user settings files. When I have time I will make that better. You can download the latest version here. Please note that for people without an Alpine or Atari Flash card, you can only make CDs with a single BJL program. Also some form of CD bypass is required since currently it is not possible to encrypt Jaguar CDs with a PC only. I just successfully burned a CD with JagMania from Matthias Domin. Please let me know if it works for you. Robert

Another lesson learned, never assume newer versions work the same as older versions. When I replaced the cdrecord.exe with the latest version under Windows Vista, it did show the available CD-ROM drives while the old cdrecord version did not. So I assumed CD burning would work also. But it seems the new version of cdrecord.exe changed the format of the command-line arguments. When burning a CD you get the error that no write mode was given due to the changes in the cdrecord.exe command-line. That means I have to update the "Jaguar CD Creator" to work with the new version of cdrecord.exe. So stayed tuned. I'm on it. Robert

Hi, I already answered Jericho in a private mail but I think this could be useful for others as well. The Jaguar CD-Creator uses an open-source program called “cdrecord.exe” for the actual writing of CD’s. The one included in the setup packages is a very old version. Remember, the software was already written in 2003. I know for example that the version included doesn’t work on Windows Vista. The solution is to replace “cdrecord.exe” and “cygwin1.dll” with the latest versions. So go to the “Jaguar CD Creator” installation directory (by default “C:\Program Files\Robert Demming\Atari Jaguar CD Creator”) and replace the mentioned files with the ones from the attached .zip file. Then the "Jaguar CD Creator" runs also from Windows Vista. Hopefully it also solves the problems with the laptop CD-drive. Please note that you need a CD bypass cart or modified Jaguar + CD player to boot the unencrypted CDs that are created with the program. And take note of the restrictions mentioned on the Jaguar CD Creator page. Not all BJL programs like to be loaded from CD and for loading ROM images you need to have an Alpine. When I have time I will update the setup package with the latest version of cdrecord. Robert Atari Jaguar CD Creator.zip

See here more information about LadyBug. This guy has been selling it before (plus other protos). Read this to see one of the author's reaction. Robert

Try www.booking.com. That site has in my experience the best deals and don't calculate administration costs. They won't charge your credit card but you pay at the hotel. Currently there are still a few hotels for 60 euro a night. I think that is about the cheapest price for a regular hotel. If you really are on a budget you can try www.hostelworld.com. I saw a dorm room for 22 euro I got a 3* hotel there in the center of Dusseldorf for 60 euro a night for a double including breakfast. I'm going with my brother and the girls. Saturday we drop the girls in Dusseldorf so they can go sightseeing and we can attend €JagFest Then Sunday we have one day for sightseeing Dusseldorf. Robert