Tyrop

I did not know a lot of these newer games existed. Were games like Artefakt Przodkow intended to be played on real hardware with artifacting? It almost seems that Artefakt Przodkow was meant for an emulator or monitor with chroma-luma connectors so that there would be no artifacting.

Thanks for the responses. I forgot about Ultima and the pinball games. THe isometric games look amazing. I definitely would have wanted to show those to my Apple friends back in the day. I will want to play those!

We got an Atari 800 in 1981 with a casette player only. We initially had Star Raiders and Atari Chess. Later on we got Missile Command and Asteroids carts, and an adventure (Colossal Cave) on tape. One day, I was in the computer lab at school where they had Apple II's with small monochrome monitors. A kid popped in a disk with Apple Panic and a Defender-like side scroller, and I could not believe my eyes - these games seemed to have detailed high resolution graphics and were much better looking than anything I had. All the games I saw on the Atari had blocky, solid shapes. Later on, when more Atari games were written in Antic E or text mode equivalent (Graphics 7 plus as we called it), at the time, I still thought Apple had better graphics and I was always trying to compare games on both computers. I don't know that much about the Apple's specs, but I think Antic F might even be a little higher resolution than Apple's hi res mode. At the time, games written in Antic F impressed me the most because of the more intricate shapes it could make. I only know of a few: Choplifter, Threshhold, Hard Hat Mack, Drol, Spare Change. Where there any others?

It is a BBS I wrote when I was in high school in the 1980's just for fun. It is not AMIS, I wrote it from scratch. Recently, just for fun, I loaded it up and spruced it up a little, just so I could see it work again. When I took the photos, I wanted to show a Basic program listing with lines wide enough so I could show what 80 columns looks like in Basic on an XEP80. It is written in Basic (with a recent addition of some machine language), and it is definitely not of a professional quality. It was easy to use, and the users at the time (mostly other kids) liked it.

I have a Commodore 1802 monitor and I was able to fix the image (after I took the photos) by opening the monitor case and playing with some of the screws on the circuit board. There are a few of them that you can turn with your fingers (though 1 or 2 were hard to reach). One of them fixed the vertical image size and I was able to center the entire XEP80 image in the screen. However, when I went back to Atari regular image, it was squished.

I occasionally see posts about the XEP 80. I bought one to see what it looks like on real hardware. If anyone is interested to see what it looks like, here are some pics using a Commodore monitor.

Interestingly, using Atari800Win PLus 4.0 with a SDX cartidge, I can run my BBS and it sees the telnet attempt by checking location 747 (which goes from 0 to 12 when it receives the incoming telnet). I modified my BBS to "answer the phone" when location 747 goes to 12, but weird things happen: even though the R: device is open for input and output (OPEN #1,13,0,"R:"), doing a GET #1,A gives me an error 131 (trying to read from a device set to "write only"). If I PUT #1,65, I can see the "A" correclty come accross to my telnet client. Also, I have my main input/output routine in machine language using standard CIO "puts" and "gets" to device #1 (which should be no different than a Basic put or get). It works fine using a real Atari with APE's internet modem but I get nothing at all coming across to my telnet client with Atari800Win Plus. And, if I hit a key at the telnet client, I get an error 131 on the emulator. I am guesing its R: patch is not fully implemented for hosting incoming telnet protocol. Oh well, I was hoping it would just work.

Thank you for the reply. I downloaded BBS on a Stick with Carina and I am still going through the documentation on how to use it. I recently rewrote part of my BBS to use Spartados X's time and date variables. I am hoping to use SDX with my BBSl, but when I tried to load SDX as a catridge in Atari800Win 2.5 (using SDX442_SDX128.ROM) it says unknown rom image (bad size). I guess I cannot use SDX?

I wrote a BBS in the early 80's and I would like to put it up so it can be telnetted into. I can do it using a real Atari with APE using APE's internet modem server capabilities. But can it be done with Atari800Win or any other emulator? I see that Atari800Win has an R: patch which I think is for TCP/IP but I cannot find documentation with details of how to use it.

That's a great idea. I would have to take it to a TV repair center to do that.

Kjmann, you have a great memory! I took off the back and that pot adjusts the vertical centering. I found another pot in front of the tint that actualy adjusts the size vertically, which was just what I needed. I was able to squish the top and bottom to get a full display! The only problem is that when you turn off the XEP80 and go back to the regular display, it is very squished. I guess the best solution is to buy a monchrome monitor and use 2 monitors.

Here are some pics to show what the XEP-80 looks like. Note the top and bottom are cut off.

I don't see a version, but here are some pics.

I have a Commodore 1802 monitor and the picture is not centered vertically. Does anyone know how to adjust it? None of the knobs on the back adjust the vertical position. I got an XEP-80 and the last line of text is cut off.

THanks for the responses. Does SDX 4.42 have to be flashed, or can it be booted from an ATR file with APE? Can I then use a disk version of Mac65?

I have been using a Mac/65 cartridge with an original SpartaDOS X cartridge via the pass-through at the top of the Sparta cartridge. I see that you can flash the new 4.42 into an Atarimax flash cartridge. I have never used an Atarimax flash cartridge, so I don't really know what you can do with them, but if I install SDX 4.42 in a flash cartridge, is there a way to use it with a Mac/65 cartridge? Or, is there some other easy way of using SDX 4.42 with Mac/65?

Thanks for the fast replies. I will look at the emulator source code. Unless I am missing something, the page on the Atari Museum only contains pin assignments and a basic listing to load the handler.

I am interested in a more detailed description of how to communicate with the 850 R: handler than what is in the manual that came with the 850 interface module. Does anyone know if there is a commented source code lisitng of the handler that gets loaded from the 850, or a flow chart of it, or something that describes how it works?

THanks for all the posts. That answers my questions about Bounty Bob! The idea of ORing has me intrigued. I guess nobody really thought of it back in the early 80's.

Thanks for the responses. Using 2 players seems real simple. Very interesting, so basically, I would create a shape table in the playfield that always stays underneath the player and travels with it?

For instance, how is Bounty Bob (from Miner 2049'er) made? I know you can use DLI's with player-missile graphics to make different bands of colors vertically, but you can't have more than one color on a line (without critical timing). I also know that in Antic mode E, you can have 5 colors in the playfield, so do most games with multi-colored sprites simply copy shape tables to the playfield?

Thanks Thomas and Rybags. Thomas, your web page is very informative. I do have concurrent mode on (it was turned on in BASIC). Do I set up the buffer address for the interrupt routines during the IOCB setup for a GET? I would think that the interrupt routines of the R: handler would have set up the buffer for me, no? In other words, where do the 850 interrupt routines put incoming bytes if I don't do a GET?

If the CIO standard is the same, then I guess that answers my question, and I will try to figure out what I am doing wrong. The Break does not work. THe computer just locks up. SYstem Reset does work. I am using CIO through a USR routine in BASIC. Trouble with debugging is that I am doing this on a real Atari and I need to have R: open while in my debugger, which I cannot use while in BASIC. BTW, I am using Jim Dunion's EXDDT to debug but I don't think I can access it while in my BASIC program. (If you know a good debugger, I'd love to know, but EXDDT makes it real easy). I am loading the IOCB with 0's for the buffer address and 0 for the buffer length. I read in the Technical Reference Notes that this allows a simple single-byte PUT and GET using just the accumulator as the buffer. My machine language routine takes a string (passed to it from BASIC) and PUTs each character, byte by byte, to both R: and E:, using CIO standard single-byte PUTs. This works without a problem. However, I then added code to check for characters received by the modem. To do this, after each byte that is PUT, I do a CIO STATUS command on the channel and then check location 747 decimal. If 747 is non-zero, then there is a character in the 850's buffer, and I do a GET to bring the character into the accumulator. Somwhere between the STATUS and the GET is where I think it is crashing.

Does anyone have any documentation on how to access the R: handler in machine language (such as Put's and Get's) on an open channel to the 850 interface module (R:)? Is it exactly the same as doing a Put or Get command to the S:, K: or E: handlers via JSR's to $E456 (CIO)? I am trying to speed up a BBS I wrote in Basic in the 1980's by doing the I/O in machine language. I know how to load up the IOCB's and I can Put to R: and E:, but the computer hangs when I do a status command, and then I check location 747, and then do a Get (if there is a non-zero in 747). De Re Atari and the Technical Reference Notes don't have any documentation on the R: handler. The Atari 850 manual has no information regarding machine lanuage access to the handler. I am using SpartaDos X with its RS232 handler which I belive is used exactly like Atari's 850 handler.

I guess I'm not following, Heaven. There will be times when a centipede segment will have to move between 2, 3 or 4 characters. Rough illustration of a segment moving through the center of 4 characters: OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOXX XXOOOOOO OOOXXXXX XXXOOOOO OOOOXXXX XXXOOOOO OOOOXXXX XXXOOOOO OOOOXXXX XXXOOOOO OOOOXXXX XXXXOOOO OOOOOXXX XXOOOOOO OOOOOOOX XOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO