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rdemming

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Posts posted by rdemming

  1. Posted

    Here a small report of the Dutch Atari Day.

     

    While driving to Dordrecht it was snowing. This caused the road to be slippery but we arrived safely. The event was held in the sport hall of a school. Unfortunately this was probably the last time we can use this location. It won’t be allowed anymore to use the school for “private” purposes.

     

    It was not as busy as last year but still more than enough to make the day a success. A few people were selling games for Atari 8bit, 2600, Lynx and Jaguar. Myself picked up some difficult to get 8bit games from Eastern Europe.

     

    It seems that the 8bit users are most active here. Symen (Mr. Atari) showed his MyIDE interface for the 8bit. This makes it possible to play digitized movies on an Atari 8bit. Very impressive.

    Guus demonstrated a prototype of an improved version of the Turbo Freezer for the 8bit. This makes it possible to freeze every game and then saving the state to (ram)disk and disassembling and changing the memory contents to poke unlimited lives for example. Saved states can at a later stage be loaded, continuing the game where you left. On board there is room for, I believe, a 512KB ram chip and a 512KB rom disk. The device can also emulate (bankswitched) cartridges.

    Also Guus had brought his tools to help people upgrade their Atari ST memory and help with repairs.

     

    Also shown was an Atari Panther prototype development system. Unfortunately the owner does not have any software for it, so there was not much to see. If somebody knows where to find software for it. Let me know.

     

    I showed my 7800 with CuttleCart 2, a 7800 cart where you could load and play almost every 2600/7800 from MMCart. At least two people were considering buying one too after my demonstration. Luckily Chad is preparing a second production run now.

     

    Another guy had brought a bunch of 7800 computers to sell. He gave me a broken one (no picture) for spare parts. When I got home it turned out that it was easily fixed so I now have another spare 7800. Thanks.

    And finally there were a few Jaguars to play networked games.

     

    Pictures of the event can be found at: http://www.mr-atari.com/dordrecht2005fotos.htm[/url]

     

    Concluding, it was again a great event and I’m looking forward to next year.

     

    Robert

  2. Posted

    Here a small report of the Dutch Atari Day.

     

    While driving to Dordrecht it was snowing. This caused the road to be slippery but we arrived safely. The event was held in the sport hall of a school. Unfortunately this was probably the last time we can use this location. It won’t be allowed anymore to use the school for “private” purposes.

     

    It was not as busy as last year but still more than enough to make the day a success. A few people were selling games for Atari 8bit, 2600, Lynx and Jaguar. Myself picked up some difficult to get 8bit games from Eastern Europe.

     

    It seems that the 8bit users are most active here. Symen (Mr. Atari) showed his MyIDE interface for the 8bit. This makes it possible to play digitized movies on an Atari 8bit. Very impressive.

    Guus demonstrated a prototype of an improved version of the Turbo Freezer for the 8bit. This makes it possible to freeze every game and then saving the state to (ram)disk and disassembling and changing the memory contents to poke unlimited lives for example. Saved states can at a later stage be loaded, continuing the game where you left. On board there is room for, I believe, a 512KB ram chip and a 512KB rom disk. The device can also emulate (bankswitched) cartridges.

    Also Guus had brought his tools to help people upgrade their Atari ST memory and help with repairs.

     

    Also shown was an Atari Panther prototype development system. Unfortunately the owner does not have any software for it, so there was not much to see. If somebody knows where to find software for it. Let me know.

     

    I showed my 7800 with CuttleCart 2, a 7800 cart where you could load and play almost every 2600/7800 from MMCart. At least two people were considering buying one too after my demonstration. Luckily Chad is preparing a second production run now.

     

    Another guy had brought a bunch of 7800 computers to sell. He gave me a broken one (no picture) for spare parts. When I got home it turned out that it was easily fixed so I now have another spare 7800. Thanks.

    And finally there were a few Jaguars to play networked games.

     

    Pictures of the event can be found at: http://www.mr-atari.com/dordrecht2005fotos.htm[/url]

     

    Concluding, it was again a great event and I’m looking forward to next year.

     

    Robert

  3. Posted

    Here a small report of the Dutch Atari Day.

     

    While driving to Dordrecht it was snowing. This caused the road to be slippery but we arrived safely. The event was held in the sport hall of a school. Unfortunately this was probably the last time we can use this location. It won’t be allowed anymore to use the school for “private” purposes.

     

    It was not as busy as last year but still more than enough to make the day a success. A few people were selling games for Atari 8bit, 2600, Lynx and Jaguar. Myself picked up some difficult to get 8bit games from Eastern Europe.

     

    It seems that the 8bit users are most active here. Symen (Mr. Atari) showed his MyIDE interface for the 8bit. This makes it possible to play digitized movies on an Atari 8bit. Very impressive.

    Guus demonstrated a prototype of an improved version of the Turbo Freezer for the 8bit. This makes it possible to freeze every game and then saving the state to (ram)disk and disassembling and changing the memory contents to poke unlimited lives for example. Saved states can at a later stage be loaded, continuing the game where you left. On board there is room for, I believe, a 512KB ram chip and a 512KB rom disk. The device can also emulate (bankswitched) cartridges.

    Also Guus had brought his tools to help people upgrade their Atari ST memory and help with repairs.

     

    Also shown was an Atari Panther prototype development system. Unfortunately the owner does not have any software for it, so there was not much to see. If somebody knows where to find software for it. Let me know.

     

    I showed my 7800 with CuttleCart 2, a 7800 cart where you could load and play almost every 2600/7800 from MMCart. At least two people were considering buying one too after my demonstration. Luckily Chad is preparing a second production run now.

     

    Another guy had brought a bunch of 7800 computers to sell. He gave me a broken one (no picture) for spare parts. When I got home it turned out that it was easily fixed so I now have another spare 7800. Thanks.

    And finally there were a few Jaguars to play networked games.

     

    Pictures of the event can be found at: http://www.mr-atari.com/dordrecht2005fotos.htm[/url]

     

    Concluding, it was again a great event and I’m looking forward to next year.

     

    Robert

  5. Posted

    A software package for Windows that allows you to do a RAW write to an IDE drive or a CompactFlash card/disk.  This way you could write ATR images and Data to a disk quickly on a PC, then plug it into your Atari.

     

    I was thinking of this aswell. I've been looking in de Microsoft developer documention for functions to directly access sectors on the harddisk but I couldn't find something. But an article on SysInternals has some pointers to the native API were I believe this kind of functionality lives. There must be some documentation in the "Device Driver Development Kit" (DDK) and Windows NT Installable File System Kit (IFS Kit) which is only available after signing a NDA. See also the Book list.

     

    Robert

  6. Posted

    Even my try with the "Drama" tune wasn't that horrible, as the try from Mad Max to convert the "Knucklebusters" tune from SID.

    Rob Hubbard did an experimental on the original gametune, which was not the "nicest" ;) and the YM sounding was the overkill.

    It's not that YM sounds bad at all, but the tune was the outermost horrible thing when it comes together ;)

     

    The original Knucklebusters tune is great. Very strange sounding. Not everbodies cup of tea but I liked it.

     

    Do I understand it correctly that Rob Hubbard did an experimental version for the YM? I never knew that.

    I found the Cuddly Demos version of Knucklebusters quite nice, but that is using samples instead of YM sound.

     

    For a great Knucklebusters remix try the Sidology CD from Marcel Donne. 18 :!: minutes of Knucklebuster heaven :D

     

    Robert

  7. Posted

    I think that some of the later ST music produced by others pushed the little Yamaha chip further and was better. I can't remember any of the demo names now which featured these new techniques? maybe whataheck ? really nice crunchy rezonating synth sounds anyway. I liked that a lot

     

    Try YM-Rockers for some "modern" ym-sound. Especially TAO has perfected YM-Sound with multiple SID sound channels.

     

    Robert[/url]

  9. Posted

    I wonder if things like "Overscan-Scroller" ever would have happen on a standard ST without TEX.  

     

    TEX had certainly a great influence on fancy hardware tricks but they were not the "discoverers" of overscan & sync-scroll. A guy named "Alyssa", discovered the lower border technique. Why the hell he had the idea to switch refresh frequencies at the last scanline is beyond me, but this idea is the bases for all border and sync-scrolling techniques. TEX picked up the idea and applied it in the BIG demo and NeoSlideShow.

    Soon the upper border was opened, which required more effort to sync correctly and I believe TEX was to first to open the right border aswell (Amiga Demo). The first all-border fullscreen was by the TNT-crew (Union Demo).

     

    Sync-scroll, which used the border opening techniques, is invented by TCB, but I believe another swedish demo crew (Omega?) had the same idea at the same time. It was first applied in the Cuddly demos.

     

    Full overscan is a bitch to code since your border opening code has to be synchronised with the electron beam, and your "other" code has to be interleaved with that. So count those clockcycles and discover the errors in Motorola's timing sheets.

     

    More information:

    Atari Demo History

    Opening the borders

     

    Robert

  11. Posted

    Hi Lars & others,

     

    I've done some more testing.

    First I dug out my spare Jaguar + CD and did the same test as in my earlier post. It did have the same results. JagMind worked in 60Hz but not with 50Hz and retail OS. But it worked in 50Hz with other OSes.

    Both Jaguars were K-series.

     

    Next I burned a flash-rom with the M-OS I posted earlier. It had the same results as my retail OS. Thus JagMind was not working at 50Hz.

     

    Then I burned a flash-rom with the K-OS. Now JagMind worked in 50Hz.

     

    This sugests that my K-series Jaguar OS is not the same as the K-OS I posted. Also Serblander wrote that JagMind also didn't work on a M-series 50Hz Jaguar. This leads me to the conclusion that you can't see on the series letter what version OS you have. It may be either one. I should dump my retail OS to see if it is indentical to M-serie OS I posted.

     

    So my conclusion is that JagMind has problems running on PAL Jaguars that have the M-OS I posted. But is runs correctly on PAL Jaguars with all other OSes I tried and on all NTSC Jaguars.

     

    Robert

  12. Posted

    Hi Dutch Atari Fans,

     

    On sunday 13 februari 2005 there will be an Atari day in Dordrecht in The Netherlands. Everbody is welkom, even non Dutch. It will be a general Atari meeting with Atari 8bit, Atari ST and game machines like 2600, 7800, Lynx and Jaguar.

     

    For more information, read the messgages on Yahoo groups (Dutch language):

    - atari-nederland

    - atari-nl

     

     

    The location of the Atari day will be:

     

    Stedelijk Dalton lokatie Titus

    Kapteynweg 3

    3318 EC Dordrecht.

     

     

    The entrance for the Atari day is at the backside of the building. Possibly it will be marked with a blue Atari flag.

    The main entrance of the building is closed.

     

    See you there,

     

    Robert

  13. Posted

    Hi Dutch Atari Fans,

     

    On sunday 13 februari 2005 there will be an Atari day in Dordrecht in The Netherlands. Everbody is welkom, even non Dutch. It will be a general Atari meeting with Atari 8bit, Atari ST and game machines like 2600, 7800, Lynx and Jaguar.

     

    For more information, read the messgages on Yahoo groups (Dutch language):

    - atari-nederland

    - atari-nl

     

     

    The location of the Atari day will be:

     

    Stedelijk Dalton lokatie Titus

    Kapteynweg 3

    3318 EC Dordrecht.

     

     

    The entrance for the Atari day is at the backside of the building. Possibly it will be marked with a blue Atari flag.

    The main entrance of the building is closed.

     

    See you there,

     

    Robert

  14. Posted

    Hi Dutch Atari Fans,

     

    On sunday 13 februari 2005 there will be an Atari day in Dordrecht in The Netherlands. Everbody is welkom, even non Dutch. It will be a general Atari meeting with Atari 8bit, Atari ST and game machines like 2600, 7800, Lynx and Jaguar.

     

    For more information, read the messgages on Yahoo groups (Dutch language):

    - atari-nederland

    - atari-nl

     

     

    The location of the Atari day will be:

     

    Stedelijk Dalton lokatie Titus

    Kapteynweg 3

    3318EC Dordrecht.

     

     

    The entrance for the Atari day is at the backside of the building. Possibly it will be marked with a blue Atari flag.

    The main entrance of the building is closed.

     

    See you there,

     

    Robert

  15. Posted

    Thanks for the input. Do you know what the differences between the retail boot roms are ? (I didn't know there were two versions)

    I originally tested the game on my standard PAL Jag (unmodifed) and it worked. However if there are different versions of the boot rom, maybe that could be the answer. So if we could find out what the differences are, maybe we can make sure, that problems like that don't appear in the future.

     

    Regards, Lars.

     

    Hi Lars,

     

    It appears the the M series Jaguar had a different ROM than the K series.

    I don't know what the differences are but using WinDiff or WinHex compare function, the difference is more than just a few bytes.

    Attached the two ROM dumps I have. When I have time this weekend, I will try them in my Jaguar.

     

    Robert

    jaguarbootroms.zip

  16. Posted

    Hi Lars,

     

    I did some testing on my copy of Ocean Depths because I had some troubles getting to work it as well. JagMind loads and displays the title screen, but starting the game hangs the Jaguar.

    And I don't think it is a CD-R problem for me because I can make JagMind to work.

     

    I have a modulator less Jaguar with 50/60 Hz switch and 5 different OSes.

    Here my findings with JagMind:

    - Works if I put the console in 60Hz with all OSes including the retail OS.

    - Does not work with retail OS and 50Hz.

    - Works with Dev94 OS and 50Hz.

    - Works with BJL and 50Hz

    - Works with JagOS and 50Hz.

     

    So the culprit seems the combination 50Hz and retail OS.

    I tried booting the CD on retail OS/50Hz with Protector SE and BattleSphere Gold but that doesn't help.

     

     

    Maybe there is a connection between the CDR reading problem and JagMind not working, the only other explaination that comes to my mind is, that there are Jaguar units out there that behave differently than others.

     

    Could be. I know of one Jaguar that plays all games except the cartridge version of Iron Soldier II. But it does work with the CD version.

     

    As far as I know there are two versions of the retail OS. Maybe JagMind has only troubles with one of them which would explain that not everone has problems running JagMind.

     

    Hopefully this information is useful to you in determining the cause of this.

     

    Robert

  17. Posted

    Hmm... The above file was downloaded completly as far as I could tell. But I couldn't get it to work. Ended up making two coasters though...  :(

     

    I downloaded the file from the location you gave above and made two perfect working CDs of it.

    So it works for me :)

     

     

    Ok - there's the file named hashtable.cd, but it's in separate directory. Does anyone know if it's necessary to burn it on CD, too?

     

    No, those are the files from the signing process.

    The hashtab.cd file is already padded to 1025 bytes and stored as track05.raw. Thus the files in that directory are not needed to burn the CD correctly.

     

    Robert

  18. Posted

    About cybermorph, actually I would guess, it doesn't use morphing at all.

    Maybe the name and that animated intro sequence got somebody over at the marketing department confused or so ;)  

    Realtime morphing is very hardware intense.  

     

    The morphing in Cybermorph does not stand for the intro annimation but the change of shape in the ship you are flying. If you go forwar or backwar you see the ship change.

    And this effect is just done by interpolating the vectors of the object between the start-position and the end-position and it not very time intensive.

     

    Robert

  19. Posted

    I took a quick look at the cc bootrom and didn't found the original hsc rom code into it. Did chad reprogrammed the hsc stuff?

     

    The hi-score cart rom is a seperate file in the STARTUP directory and not included in the CC bootrom.

    The HSC.ROM file in the STARTUP directory is the same as the rom dump I have of the Hi-score card.

     

    Robert

  20. Posted

    Another problem would be how do I know that the solution I've come up with, is already patented. I don't have the time to browse the descriptions in the patent database to see if something looks like my (in my opinion trivial) solutions.

    So in practice, you wil probably write something and hope that nobody will think that you are doing something that is patented.

     

    Robert

  21. Posted

    Are these commands transferred into the floppy drive as n bit parallel signals or as serial?

     

    Floppy data transfer is a raw serial stream. Thus including marker bytes, gap bytes, and CRC bytes.

     

    Correct me if I'm wrong: it appears to me that the ST would need to be equipped with an extra board that would replace the floppy drive..

     

    Yes, I think that would be the way to go. But the board could also be pluged in the external floppy port. A switch could be made inside the ST to swap the internal and external drives.

    The board should contain all the logic to emulate a floppy and use USB for example to retrieve the data from a PC.

    Not an easy solution.

     

    Robert

  22. Posted

    Any reason why it has to be by serial comms? What about hooking things up through the parallel ports on the two machines?

     

    You can use use almost every port for datatransfer. I believe ghostlink supports serial but PARCP supports parallel connections to a PC.

    The problem with these kind of solutions is that it needs additional software on the ST. And most games/demos don't like that. Besides these programs allows you to access files on the PC harddisk but do not support disk images. And since a lot of games/demos use boot disk (e.g. disks without a file system (no FAT)) they will not work. Thus these solutions are mainly used to transfer files between ST/PC and not directly run programs stored on a PC harddisk.

     

    To load & run ST games/demos from a PC you need a solution that does not need additional software on the ST. Thus you need some hardware/PC software that connects to the floppy connector of a ST.

     

    Robert

  23. Posted

    I've also uploaded new versions of HSC.STR and HSCQUICK.STR that allow the POKEY to work.

     

    You mean the files dated: 1/09/06 12:57

    These are indeed very new :D

     

     

     

    The garbage at the bottom of the screen only appears on the Highscore screens, correct? That's because the HSC.ROM is NTSC

     

    Yes, it does this on all HSC games on PAL. Some/most even crash when entering the hi-score screen. Thus I run all PAL games without HSC.

     

    Robert[/b]

  24. Posted

    I've been wanting such system too for the ST.

    On the 8-bit machines the hardware is quite simple since it is very similar to a standard RS-232. The disk controller logic is in the diskdrive itself and is communicating over a serial connection with the computer.

     

    On the ST this is not so simple since all the logic to access a floppy drive is in the ST. The signals send over to the floppy drive are raw controller signals like "motor on", "side select", "step", "step direction" and raw serial data streams to read and write data.

    So the interface hardware with the PC will be much more complicated. I don't think there is a hardware port on the PC that can handle those signal (signal or speed wise), thus you will probably end up with some hardware with a microcontroller and memory buffer for the floppy data,

     

    Any other solution that bypasses the ST's floppy controller would need additional software on the ST side and would not work with a lot of games and demos.

     

    I think it will be to complicated for a hobby project although I would like to be proven wrong.

     

    Robert

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