almightytodd

Star Trek TOS / Atari VCS heavy sixer...

NPR did a story on Crowd Funding over the weekend that featured Ouya...

I had a Vectrex emulator installed on one of my computers many computers ago, but I see that there are many to choose from now. Any consensus as to which is best? For Windows? For Linux? Or one for both?

I kinda feel like at the birth of the home computer and videogame age the question was, "How can we use new technologies to improve the quality of life for human beings all around the world"? Now, it seems that the only question that is being paid attention is, "How can we use technology to return a higher share price to our share-holders when we make our next quarterly report"? That does make me a little sad...

Not quite right. The dream had nothing to do with television monitors, that came later. The dream with Spacewar! was in somehow putting a coin slot on a mainframe computer. The ones running Spacewar! were all vector monitor driven. There's also some question as to whether it actually occured in Utah, or if that's simply more of trying to claim an earlier start to things. According to Ted, Nolan had no such visions when he started at Ampex, and hadn't seen Spacewar! until he took some grad courses at Standford. Previous to that his vision was animatronic dancing bears and pizza, which is probably why he originally applied to Disney to be an imagineer before going to Ampex. Thanks for the corrections, Marty. As always, you and Curt are the source for the most accurate telling of these stories.

A quick test to determine whether you've been scammed by Apple: Did you buy an Apple product? You've been scammed. You don't become the most profitable corporation on the planet by selling products for close to what it takes to develop and produce them...

I think the important thing to remember is that this site is called, "Atari AGE". I don't think that naming choice is accidental. Atari the company, helped define an important turning point in history when digital computing devices left the confines of corporate operations and university laboratories and came into the homes and lives of ordinary people. "Atari!" works very well on several levels to represent this concept. In the game of "GO", the announcement of "Atari!" means things are about to change; a move is about to be made that will shift the balance of power and strengthen the position that one of the players is "winning". The "Age of Atari" - the "Atari Age", suggests that point in time, at first in the U.S., and then the world. While Nolan Bushnell may have claimed undue credit for many of the things that made up Atari's early successes, (...much like Walt Disney took credit for Mickey Mouse, which was the creation of Ub Iwerks) he did have the vision and the belief that the entertainment and fun that he'd experienced in the computer labs at the University of Utah could be brought to the masses in specialized electrical circuits connected to television monitors. There is a whole list of companies and personalities that helped create the future we're experiencing now; MOS Technologies, Zilog, Tandy, Apple, Commodore, Coleco, Mattel, even Magnavox... ...just to name a few. But whether it's right or wrong that it does, "Atari" defines the start of the digital consumer age better than any other. So let's not get bogged down with the idea of needing to be faithfully devoted to any one company or personality that has provided electronic entertainment products that bring smiles to our faces to the exclusion of all others. Let's be happy that we have a great website here to gather and share the common joy we find in the magical entertainment technologies that were born during the time of the Atari Age.

I don't actually put a lot of hours in each week playing classic games, but I do enjoy following the discussions here and trying out the new homebrews while they're in development. As someone who went through my teenage years in the 1970s, the arrival of videogames and computers that you could actually own and have in your house has had a major influence in my life and shaped decisions that have led to a 20 year career as a software developer. In this 1969 Disney production the opening scene (...after you get through the credits and the groovy theme song a minute and 51 seconds in...) has the Dean of Medfield College exclaiming, "Professor Quigly I'm sure that we all appreciate your interest in progress... ...but a computer! ...well that is a luxury that we just cannot afford..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbRD7qmZJY It was only 3 years later that Computer Space became the first commercially produced coin-operated video game. Another five years or so and there were microprocessors like the MOS 6502 and the Zilog Z80 that were becoming inexpensive enough that people could actually have their very own home computer or microprocessor-based home game system. It was a pivotal moment in history. For those who are younger - who grew up in a time when videogames had always "just been there", I think it's difficult to understand how much the world seemed to change in those 10 years from 1969 to 1979.

I viewed his "other items" and found this cool joystick mug... http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=4&pub=5574883395&toolid=10001&campid=5336500554&customid=&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fitm%2FCLASSIC-ATARI-JOYSTICK-RETRO-MUG-CAN-BE-PERSONALISED-%2F190680411065%3Fpt%3DLH_DefaultDomain_3%26hash%3Ditem2c65702bb9%23ht_1757wt_1058

I'm somewhat surprised at myself for being so late to make an entry in this topic, as I really like nostalgic threads like this. Anyway, my first computer was a Timex/Sinclair 1000 with the 16K expansion pack. It was really a rather remarkable little machine. You can download or play with an online emulator here. While the keyboard was a membrane type like the one found on the Atari 400, they had designed it in a clever way such that all of the BASIC language key-words could be entered with one button-press. This helped teach you the language elements, prevented typo-errors, and made programming less of a chore than would be expected with a membrane keyboard. The programs available on cassette tape loaded in a reasonably short time and were entertaining.

It's interesting to me how E.T. is so polarizing. It seems you either love it or hate it. I'm okay with it. I think I enjoy it now more than I did when it came out, as I've taken more time to understand it. RT's site has been very helpful for that. Thanks Duane! I think it definitely gets a lot more grief than it deserves. I think HSW did a phenomenal job designing it and programming it in the amount of time he had. The concept is interesting and the spinning cube environment is clever. I think there is room for improvement in the execution and game play... ...maybe the size of the pits or the controls when E.T. falls into a pit. There's a problem with the way the hardest game is game one, and game three is the easiest. Maybe it could have been modified where neither the Agent nor the Scientist shows up until E.T. has already found a few of the phone pieces. Or maybe Eliot could have been designed to protect E.T. from the Agent better; I don't know... ...the whole thing was thrown together in six weeks! Who does that? Anyway, once you really understand the game play and the strategy for winning, it is definitely a very playable game. Just look at a few of RT's YouTube videos where he completes a full round in just a few minutes! And it's not like he cheats; the locations of all of the game elements are randomized each game, so it's a new hunt each time you play. I'm sounding pretty enthusiastic in my defense of the game, but the fact of the matter is that I don't play it very often, and I think I've only "won" the game 1 version (with the Agent and the Scientist) a couple of times. I do like to play it on game 3 every now and then just for the fun of finding the pieces and then getting E.T. back on his ship, but I think many people would find that boring. I just don't have the patience to become really good at evading the Agent and the Scientist and getting in and out of the pits. As I said before, RT's videos prove that it can be done, but it requires practice and skill. But hey, isn't that what gaming is all about?

I agree. I'd love to see some kind of Flashback unit with a built-in B&W screen (either real CRT or simulated with LED/LCD) and a bunch of built-in 70's era B&W coin-op titles.

I like Skylight...

Not a huge collection, but there it is...

So I used apt-get to successfully install MAME (...well, MAMESDL). When I search the etc directory I find the mame (executable?). If I type "mame" from the command line while in the etc directory, the text-based MAME user interface starts up and gives me the following message: No games found. Please check the rompath specified in the mame.ini file. If this is your first time using MAME, please see the config.txt file in the docs directory for information on configuring MAME The thing is, I can't find the mame.ini file. If I type "mame.ini" in the search box off the Zorin start menu (...it's trying to look like Windows) it says, "No items matched your search criteria". This site says I should be able to find the /doc directory as a sub-directory of the /usr directory. But it's not there. I also tried to install the Loemu front end according to the instructions here. It says, "Download the deb package loemu_0.3.1_i386.deb and install it as root: # dpkg -i loemu_0.3.1_i386.deb Typing that into the command line doesn't work. I'm probably in the wrong directory. I have all of my MAME ROMs on the Windows share (it's dual boot) and doing it this way works just fine for Stella. I just have to mount the Windows partition (...the path is /media/ACER/_Emulation); that way I can boot into either Windows or Linux and share the same set of ROMs. It's frustrating that a Google search on "MAME Ubuntu" brings up many sites, but many of them are four or five years old, so it's questionable when they say things like, "The stable version of Gxmame doesn’t work with the last version of MAME, so to make all work, we’re going to install the CVS version." Well, maybe that was true in 2008 when this entry was made, but what about now, four years later? I really want to start getting more comfortable with Linux. My Windows 7 environment does irritating things like not letting me save text files from Notebook in the public documents folder if I don't launch it as Administrator. It looks like Windows 8 is just going to get worse. I'll have to learn a whole new user interface, and pay hundreds of dollars for the OS, and accept constant anti-piracy scans before being allowed to upgrade any Microsoft products... ...I've just had it. The Zorin user interface is beautiful; the performance is blazing on my Intel Atom based netbook, and I love everything about it except trying to install classic gaming emulators that I have run on Windows XP machines for the past 10 years without any trouble. Well, at least there is no deadline for me to get this stuff done. I can work on it here and there and just hope that eventually I'll get a handle on it. Thanks again to everyone here who offers encouragement and support.

Thanks to both of you for your speedy responses... ...definitely some things to think about. I may try building Stella according to Stephan's instructions as "practice" before I take on MAME. All of this might eventually even help with figuring out Citrix Xenapps for Linux as well...

I struggled with deciding which forum this topic belongs in... ...I thought about putting it in "Computers, Science & Technology", but that is a sub-group of "Off-Topic", which I don't think this is. I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One netbook from a pawn shop. After correcting a problem with the battery not charging (...I had to flash the BIOS), I installed Zorin Linux on it, dual-booting with the Windows XP installation that was already on it. The primary purpose of this device is for personal entertainment (...I'm not quite ready to drink the "Tablet Koolaid" though...) - watching Hulu, web surfing, and classic gaming. However, I can also use it at work by remoting into my desktop computer using Citrix Xenapps. I'm hoping to eventually get Citrix Remote Desktop to work using my Linux OS, but it's a one-click install with Windows XP, so for now, dual-boot fills my needs. Anyway, I wanted to put Stella on it, so I went to the Stella website and downloaded the Debian Linux compatible install and attempted to run it. It complained about some incompatibility or missing library, so then I decided to try the Tarball build approach. Again, I had problems so at that point I gave up. I do hope to eventually build SOME piece of software from source, before I can consider myself a "real" Linux user, but maybe that will be what I do to get MAME up and going... A few days later, I thought to look through the software offerings in the Ubuntu Software application that is found with each Ubuntu-derived Linux distribution (...really, the primary reason for selecting an Ubuntu derivative). At first, I selected the category "Arcade Gaming". I was somewhat astonished at the sheer volume of offerings there, with many "clones of" or "inspired by" video game classics. I'm wondering if anyone here has tried any of these and whether any of them are worth playing. I've played "Super Tux", which is okay, except I'm not a real big Super Mario Brothers player anyway; plus the Tux conversion feels a little too much like a Flash-animation based game and not close enough to a "real" 8-bit game. This is all sort of a distraction from what I'm really trying to do though, which is to get a number of 8 and 16-bit emulators setup for Atari, Coleco Vision, and Nintendo consoles and computers, so I can make this my personal gaming device. I found the Ubuntu installation package for Stella, which installed flawlessly with one click (...and Linux password authentication). Maybe I wasn't looking for it on the Stella website, or maybe it isn't clear that for Linux installations, if you're using an Ubuntu derivative, you should try the Ubuntu Software installation first, but with the popularity of Ubuntu versions of Linux, it would be helpful for that to be more clear. I've seen installations for Nintendo and Commodore emulators, but so far I don't think there's one for MAME, Atari 7800, Atari 8-bit computers, or Atari ST. I'll keep working on it and hopefully find emulators for all of the systems I'm looking for. I'm pretty sure that Linux versions of these exist, as I have a version of Puppy Linux that comes with several of these already installed. Please let me know if you've gone down this road and have any advice for a Linux newbie. Thanks!

I can't remember a new console or microcomputer that came out that I DIDN'T want! I was born in 1960, so I lived the invention of the microprocessor in my teenage years. It was awesome...

SI Deluxe is one of my favorites. Thanks for sharing your artwork, which is very well done and quite fitting for this excellent game.

I haven't seen anyone comment on the mouse in particular as the pointing device. I will grant that the Menu concept and the idea of putting everything you need to know somewhere up on the screen (...whether or not it is immediately visible, or contained in a drop-down or dialog box) is a much more user-friendly approach than, "Read this manual and memorize all of the commands". But there were many CLI programs that did that without a mouse by using the directional keys or supporting tab-key advancing through various fields or screens. For years there have been many ways to push a cursor or screen pointer around a screen other than with a mouse, including touch pads, light pens, track-balls, and even joy sticks. Remember all of the excitement when laptops first started showing up with that little "nub" pointer device? Was the mouse inevitable? Or was it a spark of genius to turn a track-ball upside down and slide the entire unit around on the desktop? I've often wondered if any studies were done regarding the loss in efficiency when one half of your "typing hands" resources has to lift up off of the keyboard and reach for the mouse. How about a touch-typing keyboard that could be operated with just your left hand, leaving your right hand free to stay on the mouse? I do recall some experimentation that was done to put more and more buttons on the mouse. I wonder if anyone ever thought to put the entire keyboard on sliders and have the optical sensor on the bottom in the center so you could keep both hands on the keyboard while sliding it around like a Ouija board pointer? My son had some great stories about PC tech support phone calls when he worked in a call center one summer in the late 90's. There was one woman who complained that her mouse wasn't working when she'd tried so hard to protect it by leaving it inside it's plastic "dust cover". Another caller said that the mouse didn't seem to work right when she put her elbow on the elbow-pad, and then pressed the mouse up against the screen... ...It just goes to show that sometimes things that are designed to be "intuitively obvious" may not be... Once the mechanical mice started being replaced with optical designs, new problems cropped up. Ever try to use an optical mouse on a glossy white surface? We used to have a lenticular 3D Star Wars mouse pad that was fine for a mechanical mouse, but the light from an optical mouse was scattered all over the place causing the screen pointer to jump around. Hey magnusfalkirk, thanks for taking up the suggestion to turn this into a new thread...

Wasn't it just the reverse? I thought the "magic" of Computer Space (...and Pong) was that they were computer-like video games that didn't use a computer. I stand corrected! Details! You're awesome Marty! It's like you and Curt wrote the book... ...literally! And I'm really looking forward to reading it...

That's your trade-off though isn't it, by removing the need to learn even simple commands the GUI opens a machine up to people who wouldn't otherwise have used it - in that context, the loss of productivity speed and even resources is probably considered worthwhile and the money men behind the companies are never going to sneeze at an enlarged customer base. As for the original topic; an "Amiga-ised" C64 is a C64DTV2. =-) On the other hand; put training wheels on a bicycle, and more people can get up on it and ride it sooner, but if you really want to ride a bike and go fast, you have to take the training wheels off. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that ultimately, the GUI is a better way to use a computer. I'm sort of baffled that some Linux purists seem to think that a GUI has no place on a Linux web-server. But I'm suggesting that that the GUI we ended up with; mouse, drop-down menus, folders/directories metaphor - was not necessarily inevitable. There were a lot of ideas floating around at the time including light-pens, touch screens, keyboards with a LOT of buttons, and even speech interface. Remember "Speak-and-Spell"? I think that ultimately, Lisa was a more "complete" computer than Mac. It had an entire suite of office applications. Macintosh came out of the gate with Mac Write and Mac Draw and that was all. What if you wanted to write programs for Macintosh? Guess what? You needed a Lisa to do that. But the Lisa was a $10,000 computer when it was introduced in 1983; almost double what you'd pay for a new Dodge Ram 50 from the same era. By the time Mac came out, a Lisa was only about a 1,000 dollars more expensive but that didn't matter. Steve Jobs was fully behind Macintosh and Lisa was destined for retirement as a failure. Multiple sources claim that a significant number of Lisa computers ended up buried in a landfill in Logan Utah in 1989. I think it is very telling that by then, Woz had already left Apple. You can draw your own conclusions as to the reason, but I would say that the "spirit" of what Jobs and Woz had been originally trying to do, had been lost. This swings back around to the "spirit" of what Nolan Bushnell had originally tried to do - bring the experience of the computer video game to the masses, but without using a $30,000 mini-computer to do it. To me, this is the essence of the early pioneers of the personal technology age. The quest was the answer to the question, "How can we bring the joy and improvement of the human condition based on computing technology to the masses"? Baer, Bushnell and Dabney did it with TTL circuits while the world waited for the microprocessor to be invented. Once the microprocessor was realized in the form of the MOS 6502, Woz and Jobs took the discreet technological pieces that they found, put them together, made them work in a package that didn't require advanced technical skills, and built an entire company around it. Call it the first expression of the "Plug and Play" concept and the baby-steps towards the personal computer as an "appliance". I find it curious now that the same battles of philosophy seem to be ready to be taken on again with Siri technology, the iOS, Android, and Microsoft Windows 8. Does personal computing mean that you have all of your software and data on your personal device? Or is it the same thing if you've licensed access to everything you need through a "cloud"? Ultimately, I want to pick up, or sit down in front of some kind of device and do stuff with it. Whether that means I'm sliding optical disks into a drawer, pushing some kind of a device into a USB port, or accessing everything I need through a cloud; it doesn't really matter.

Take a look at the Xerox 860 dedicated word processor. The keyboard included dedicated keys to select words, lines, and paragraphs. It also had a pointer navigation device called a "Capacitive Activated Transducer" or "CAT" - a "CAT" instead of a "mouse", get it? http://www.old-compu....asp?c=488&st=1 Here's another good link: http://www.digibarn....x860/index.html A particularly interesting feature: Since this was a dedicated word processor, it made sense to rotate the monitor 90 degrees to portrait mode, so that the image you saw on the display looked like the sheet of paper you would end up printing. Wouldn't that make more sense for viewing HTML pages displayed on the Internet? Have you noticed how one major feature of the iPad and similar tablets, is that it automatically changes the orientation from landscape to portrait when you rotate the device? Hmmm...

I think you could start a new thread on this topic: Was the GUI inevitable? I think I could make a pretty good argument that the industry might have gone in the direction of larger and larger keyboards with more and more buttons. Remember those "F-key" templates that they used to have for IBM keyboards when you were using Word Perfect? Proponents of the GUI pointed out that it was user friendly and self-guiding, because all of the possible actions you could take were listed on a menu for you. But this was at the expense of a huge amount of computing power and memory to support it. Recall that the first generation of Mac couldn't really do anything. IBM/DOS users in the early days of Macintosh would argue that by learning a few simple commands and keeping your hands on the keyboard, you could actually get more done in the same amount of time, compared with someone who's right hand was constantly reaching for the mouse, and spending time opening menus and making selections.