Mr.Amiga500

I have the same problem. I bought an 800XL off eBay and the description said that it "powered on", but they didn't have the cable to connect to TV and fully test it. I thought as long as it "powered on", it'd be fine. I plugged it in and nothing happened. So I bought a second 800XL and tried the power supply from that one in the first 800XL. The light came on, but the screen stayed black with vertical interference bars. So that means that the seller lied. The power supply and the computer were dead and it couldn't possibly have "powered on". It's a pity because the 800XL is in excellent shape. Maybe it's in excellent shape because a dead computer doesn't get much wear from use. I opened it, checked that all the chips were seated and so on. I guess the only way to find out what's wrong is to swap chips with my working 800XL, but I'm too scared of breaking the pins. Chips usually come out with a jerk which bends the pins and when you bend them back, they break. My "working" 800XL has a weird tint problem where I have to turn the TV's tint way down to get the right colours.

What about the CTIA/GTIA difference? Aren't there games that would look weird if trying to run something designed with 256-colour GTIA palette with 128-colour CTIA in the 800? I can understand not getting into the 130XE's look, but the 800XL is a thing of beauty. I think it's the best looking 8-bit computer ever made (or maybe the 1200XL). The 800 looks like an old electric typewriter. The fact that it's solid metal is nice, but it's not sleek enough for me. (...sleek computers with aerodynamic shape cut down on that dreaded wind drag when typing at over 200km/h )

@dwhyte It looks like you've got a disk shortage yourself, so don't worry about it. Thanks for the thought though. @walter_J64bit Thanks for the link. Yes, I know about myatari.com, but as I said, I was trying to avoid buying from the US because of customs, exchange, etc.. @gtkakega Excellent. See PM.

That's it! It was BASIC! The character was the cursor and the flashing was when I turned off the computer. (uh...now I just need to remember if it was standard BASIC or BASIC XL.) No, I still can't find it. I think I'll give up now before somebody suggests that the game I remember wasn't actually an Atari game, but drug-induced hallucination of a big-headed midget jumping around with a flashlight.

Crumble's Crisis and Domain of the Undead are 1986 and UK. It's not Drol, Polar Pierre, Bristles, Captain Cosmo or Countdown. (all those games have screen flashing?) It's not Biffdrop, Gateway to Apshai or Caverns of Khafka. My memory is not that bad. Even if I was semi-insane (...and now that I think of it, I might be...) I still own all the Amiga games I ever played so it's not possible to forget them.

No, it's definitely not Montezuma's Revenge. That's my all-time favourite 8-bit platformer, so I certainly remember that one. I think I already checked out Mr. Robot, but I'll check it again. Edit: No, it's definitely not Mr. Robot. It might not be a "pure" platform game. I don't know if the character had to stand on platforms. For some reason I have a vague idea that it's something like Cloak & Dagger in the movie, where the character can move anywhere on the screen. Maybe my memory is screwed up. I don't think so though because I found a couple other obscure games like Zwark and Sinistar with extremely limited information. This is the last one I have to find and it's driving me crazy.

Nope, it's not Whirlynurd and it's certainly not Boulderdash or Spelunker. Spelunker does have flashing, but as I said, the flashing is on the actual play screen, not a title or text screen. The character does look a bit like the one in "Journey to the planets", but with shorter legs and longer "torso". Yeah, I forgot all about atarimania.com for some reason. I just found that site a few weeks ago. It's a great site. (...except I have to disable custom colours in my browser because background is black and so is some text) Thanks for the help guys and keep those suggestions coming.

Thanks, but I think I need more than just a screenshot to help me find it. I was hoping somebody would remember the screen flashing at completion of each screen. @Rybags I can't even find a screenshot of Whirlynurd. There are plenty of hits in Google, but they're all those annoying "fake hits". I've visited about 30 sites that claim to have "Whirlynurd cheats, info, screenshots", then when I get there, it says "game not found" or "become a member to view this game" (...and I bet if I became a member, it would say "game not found"!). Those crap sites are the curse of the internet! Have you got a link?

I have identified every single Atari game I ever played except one. This is a tricky one because I don't remember many details. I saw this game in Canada in early 1985, so it was probably made in the US in 1984 or earlier. It was a commercial game on disk (probably pirated) and ran on the 800XL. I vaguely remember the main character was sort of a "bubble-headed" thing with a blocky body - like a circle on top of a square (size was slightly smaller than the Miner 2049er character). I can't remember what the goal was, but I remember the screen flashed (colour cycling of current screen, not new screen) when the mission was completed. New mission was a different screen. Does anybody have any ideas? I know it's not much to go on.

How could anyone not be pleased? The 800XL is beautiful. Are you sure this girl is right for you?

Here's my problem: Background: A few years ago I bid on a 1050 drive and 800XL on eBay (same seller, separate auctions). I won the 1050, but lost the 800XL in the final seconds (d'oh!!). So, for years I just had the 1050. I finally got an 800XL last month. I naturally wanted some disks to go with my 1050, so I started bidding on eBay auctions that had disks. I lost them all. The one I most wanted I thought I won, but lost in the final 7 seconds! Proposal: I'm tired of eBay. I could buy some disk software from a store in the US, but I still don't even know if my 1050 works and don't want to waste money on exchange & customs. I just want to throw a bit of Canadian cash in an envelope and get a few 5 1/4" disks with interesting Atari stuff on them so I can test my 1050. OR, if you've got an Amiga, I can also trade Amiga 3 1/2" disks with interesting stuff on them. Is there anybody in Canada who can do this?

Ooooh, I love the 800XL and this does remind me of it. I wish it could run OSX. It would be an abomination to run Windows on an XL-look computer. (Linux is not much of a thrill, either) I was thinking of making a custom XL-look case for my Amiga 500. I was going to call it the 500XL.

I totally agree that modern electronics, computer hardware and media are crap compared to the 1980's. I use a 20-year-old Amiga 500 as my primary computer and have used it just about every single day for an average of 4 hours/day for the last 5 years (previous 10 years in storage, first 5 years average 2 hours/day). The only thing that ever went wrong was a broken plastic floppy eject button in 1992. I replaced it with a broccoli tab and had no problems since. The Windows notebook computer I was forced to used at work completely died and had to be replaced after only 2 months! The replacement computer had to have the harddrive replaced three times because of failures. In 2002 I briefly owned a Windows sub-notebook, but it also died within one month and had to be returned. I use a 1989 Commodore 1084 monitor with my Amiga (so it's also used every single day) and have had no problems. I bought a new TV in 2005 and after only one month it started screwing up and became totally unfocused and blurry. Of my many original DD 3.5" (880K) Amiga floppies, I think only one has a read error in one block (affecting one file). The rest of the data can still be read. Of my 20 or so CD-ROMs, I get read errors about 20% of the time - and it's totally inconsistent. Some discs aren't even recognized. My DVD player constantly gets read errors and I have the torture of watching a corrupted movie with the painful knowledge that it will only get worse. The DVD player eventually crashes and I have to unplug it to "reboot" because it won't respond when you try to turn it off. Yes, modern technology sucks.

Oh, AmigaBasic was utter crap! I went through hell trying to write code for that piece of garbage. That was by far the buggiest, slowest, most tedius to use BASIC I ever used. It was written by Microsoft. That ended my BASIC coding days forever. (...and started my Microsoft hatred)

I remember writing a BASIC program on the C64 (...for a highschool computer project) and I ran out of memory at around 38K. I only needed about 45K. I remember being disgusted because it was supposed to be a 64K computer. The way I managed to get around that limitation was to have a "load" and "run" statement in "invisible text" (same colour as background) and tell the user to "press return" so that it would load and run the next part of the program.

The Spectrum palette looks like the old EGA(CGA?) palette - 8 (ugly) colours with another 8 of the same hue but half luminance. Oh God, how I hate that palette. I remember when I first started MS-DOS assembler and those were the only colours available. That was many years after I already knew of the glory of 4096 Amiga colours. You can still see that sick palette today in many Windows programs. I remember in 2005 being disgusted when I tried to select a label colour, the Office program (can't remember which) still only allowed selection from that disgusting 16-colour palette.

I think Canada was a bit different from the US. I never saw an Atari ST anywhere and only saw a single Apple II once in a clearance sale. I'd say for Canada, it goes like this: Commodore 64/128 Atari 400/800/XL (XE was not popular) TRS-80/CoCo series Amiga series (mainly pre-AGA) TI-99 Apple II+,IIe Timex Sinclair Atari ST series It's shocking I know, but I think TRS-80/CoCo sold more than the later Amiga - probably because of the TRS-80's low price and the fact that Radio Shack stores were everywhere.

I think this article is saying that it started a "revolution" in the UK computer industry, not the whole world. Being in Canada, I never even heard of a Spectrum until around 2002 when I stared reading UK forum posters going on about their "Speccies". I then did lots of research on Spectrums and even played with Spectum emulators. I wasn't impressed. (...only 8 colours and damn ugly ones too)

I'm currently collecting every single bit of Atari XL hardware and software I remember my friend owned in 1984. Back then, his 800XL's vast superiority over my pathetic CoCo2 left me with a kind of psychological damage - an empty "cartridge slot" in my brain. I desperately wanted an Atari, but couldn't afford one. "Well who's laughing now, eh 1984 friend?? I've got everything you've got, so there! That'll teach ya!" Of course, I have to taunt the imaginary 1984 version of that guy because in 2007, he's probably fat and old and concerned with more important things in life, like mortgage payments, a nagging wife and many ugly children.

There's a pretty good Apple II emulator for Amiga, called Apple2000e. I even emulate MacOS 8.1 on my Amiga 500 (using ShapeShifter) and play Mac games.

BurgerTime is better on the Apple II. Of course, I'm comparing emulations of it (on Amiga) and I don't even know if I found all available versions to compare properly. That's actually the only reason I use the Apple II emulator.

Yes, I know an 8-bit file for the 5200 Centipede exists. I played it on the Amiga ACE emulator. I was wondering if any physical carts were made so I could use it in a real 800XL. Maybe it doesn't matter as long as it will run from MyIDE CF.

Am I the only Canadian here? I'm in my mid 30's somewhere. (didn't bother to count ) I saw the 800XL first in 1984, but only just got one last month. My computer history goes: 1983 Colour Computer 2 1987 Colour Computer 3 (...only because it was dirt cheap) 1989 Amiga 500 1997-1997 *cough* crap Windows 95 computer (quickly disposed of) 2007 Atari 800XL ... and that's it.

Awesome. Thanks Urchlay! It's very satisfying and strange to finally see those couple rooms properly after all these years. That thread you linked also helped clear up the confusing "Montezuma history". I always thought the Utopia version was the released disk version. I didn't know that the Utopia version was never released and that the released disk version was basically identical to the unreleased cartridge. I never liked the Utopia version anyway. I don't like the time limits (bat, burning ropes) and the delays when gaining/losing men or entering rooms. You say you made this binary load from the "released cartridge"? Do you mean 5200 cartridge? If 5200 cartridge games work on 8-bits, I wish somebody would make an 8-bit cart of 5200 centipede.

I've just been doing some "hangar bombings" and it looks like it's different each time. One time, I had severe graphical corruption and lockup and had to reboot. Another time, the background just went black, but planes are still visible, the score was at the top of the screen and I could keep playing (sort of). Another time, while I was refueling, the enemy plane bombed my hangar and it just "turned to dust" like regular buildings with no "weirdness" happening. So it's inconsistent.