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SmileyDude

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Posts posted by SmileyDude

  1. Posted

    Has anyone tried to make a PALM/WinCE PDA version of SIO2PC cable,

    now that maybe an easier way to go.

     

    I was giving some thought to a GBA version -- but, my hardware knowledge is pretty limited :) The standard flash carts on the GBA can hold up to 64megs (512mbit), so that would be enough to hold a good collection of Atari games :)

     

    There are already cables to go from PC Serial to the GBA, so it might be feasable to modify one of those to use SIO...

  2. Posted

    No Nintendo stuff at Sears.  I checked yesterday.  I guess Gamecube really is dying...

     

    No, I think it was the fact that 6 months after the GCN launch, they still had mounds of N64 gear. Add to that the mounds of GB/GBC games that they had, and you get a recipe for disaster.

     

    To top it off, the local Sears (Burlington Mall, MA), is right next to a EB and KB-Toys in the mall. So, Sears was fighting a loosing battle here at least.

     

    And besides, I think the Cube is doing fine... if I owned an XBox, I'd reallly be worried :)

  3. Posted

    Never got an Atari system on launch date -- the only systems I did get on launch day were the GBA and GBA SP. I got the N64 the day after launch day.

     

    And speaking of Sears, that's were I purchased my PS1 back when FF7 came out. Down in the Bellevue Mall in NE -- nobody ever thinks of going there :D But, it appears that Sears is only carrying Sony and Microsoft now -- I have no idea what happened to the Nintendo gear, but it seems pretty stupid to me. Why would anyone want to sell the XBox and not the GBA and GCN? Maybe if it was a choice between XBox and GCN, but I'm assuming that it was an all or nothing deal...

     

    Or maybe Nintendo just realised that nobody buys games at Sears... :)

  4. Posted

    I can't wait for Apple II freaks to show up and tell us how that's obviously the best way to generate graphics.

     

    Nice -- I will admit that I have used an Apple II once or twice... ok a lot. But, honestly, I don't know how someone could say that the graphics capabilities of the Apple II are better than the Atari or the C-64 (as much as I despise that machine, I have to give it credit where its due).

     

    The Apple II's advantages were expandability and durability. There was very little you could do to those things that would harm then, and you certainly can't beat having direct access to the CPU bus for expandability. Once Apple started invading the schools, it's collection of educational software became another advantage.

     

    Now, on a personal level, I like the Apple IIs, but I don't consider them in the same league as the Atari. They both have their uses -- for example, I don't think that the Atari is as good at tasks like word processing as the Apple II -- the 80 column cards for the Apple II along with those monochrome displays made the Apple II superior for that purpose. But, now that we all have PCs (or Macs) with really high resolution displays, we all use that for our word processing needs. This basically reduces the uses for an Apple II these days.

     

    On the other hand, there is definetly something to be said about hooking up the old Atari 800XL to the TV, and playing some of the old classic games. Sure, you can use an emulator, but it's just not authentic. So, in that regard, the Atari still has some purpose these days.

     

    So, even though I used both back in my younger days, and I enjoyed both, it's the Atari that still gets used, while the Apple IIs sit, gathering dust. Maybe it's because the Apple II is the logical parent to the PC, and we've all moved on to better PCs... while the Atari 8-bit lead to the Amiga which died a horrible death. There is no real equivalent to that style of hardware design these days, unless you count some of the consoles (the GBA comes close, IMO... but still not as flexible as the Atari gear).

     

    It's sad, but powerful hardware lost out to commodity hardware, and we're all stuck with it today.

  8. Posted

    It could do voice w/out hardware too - ever see SAM(Software Automatic Mouth)?  check here

     

    Our beloved Atari 8-bits have SAM for them as well... my first introduction to SAM was at school -- we had a lab of Atari 800s with 810s, and one of the activities dealt with playing a game using SAM. This was before I understood much about the Atari, and I ended up spending that night trying to get my little Atari 400 to talk :D But, hey, it isn't as bad as it sounds -- we had a TI-99/4A with the speech module, so I didn't think it was out of the ordinary that the much better Atari could talk without anything extra. Of course, I figured out quickly what happened :)

  11. Posted

    All those structure changes are real killers and I don't think the structure changes are possible without an Extra RAM cartridge.

     

    Yeah -- those are causing me a serious headache... :) I'll have to spend some serious thought on those...

     

    And I don't think the ladders are doable with sprites as the screenshot indicates. You'd need one sprite for Jumpman, the other for multiplexing all enemies, the missiles for multiplexing the up/down ropes and the ball for multiplexing the bombs. That is already causing *enough* flicker I think, so the ladders should better be done with the PF...

     

    Enemies? The only "enemy" that I recall was the missiles that randomly got fired at Jumpman... at least in the early levels... gonna have to spend some more time with the Atari 800XL and my Jumpman Jr cart tonight :D

     

    I was actually thinking of doing the up ropes with the playfield, and using the missiles for the down ropes... well, multiplexing one missile for the down ropes, and the other for, well, the missiles :)

     

    And, the ball is pretty much a given for the bombs... I can't see getting around that one :)

     

    I am definetly going to have sit down and figure out how to setup the kernel for this one... very tight timing requirements here. I'm just hoping that I don't have to write a custom kernel for each level :D

     

    Hm... hope that doesn't sound too disencouraging and rather challenging... :)

     

    Heh -- I'm not discouraged yet -- if anything was gonna do it, it would've been the lowly specs of the 2600... but, since that didn't do it, this could prove very interesting.

  12. Posted

    Good luck on Jumpman! (or Jumpman Jr. from the screenshot  :?: )

     

    Yes -- it's Jumpman Jr. -- ironically, I've never played the original Jumpman... must've had something to do with the fact that I had an Atari 400 with 410... so, I stuck to playing cart games mostly :D

     

    Later on, when I upgraded to a 1200XL with 1050, I didn't get a chance to play the original... I finally got to try out the original in an emulator, but since I'm really familiar with Jr., that's what I'm gonna work on :)

  14. Posted

    Cool! I've been waiting for years that someone finally does that! Count me in if you need any help for that.

    Best. 2600. project. ever! :D

     

    I'll definetly keep you in mind -- I know I'll have a few technical hurdles, and having someone to help out will be great :)

     

    BTW: I talked with Randy Glover some time ago about a 2600 version of Jumpman and he said it's Ok for him. So you don't need to do a clone, you can do the real thing - with the official permission from the copyright holder!!!

     

    I actually hadn't thought of that, but now that I know, that makes it that much better :)

     

    BTW²: Can I already post a news item and project coverage on the Epyx Shrine or would that be too early yet? :)

     

    LOL -- too early :) Let me get the complete board up on the screen first :) I've got to re-write the kernel before that can happen -- I've been spending the last 6 hours of sleep and showering thinking about how to implement this. I'm sure before this project is over, I'll be writing the kernel code in my sleep too :D

  15. Posted

    Ok, so I just spent tonight trying out an idea -- I still don't know if it's gonna pan out, but I've only just started :)

     

    For those who are curious as to what I have choosen to persue, I've attached a screenshot -- I'm sure someone will be able to guess as to what game it's supposed to be :)

     

    As for the other ideas, I'm gonna hold onto them. Especially considering that I don't know how well this idea is gonna pan out.

     

    One sad thing -- if I continue along with this game, it's definetly gonna blow out the 4k limit I set for myself :(

    post-1550-1057556294_thumb.jpg

  17. Posted

    A Cuttle cart for the 8-bits would be kinda nice, but I think that something that plugged into the SIO port would be better. Or maybe the expansion port on the XL or XE. Using today's hardware, you could easily have a small device that could simulate a 810/1050 and allow you to play disc based games. It would basically be a mini-hard drive for the Atari. The good thing is that it would probably be about the size of a cart, and there wouldn't be any incompatibility issues -- i.e, if the game plays off a disc, it should play off this device.

     

    For the truely ambitious, it could be made to emulate a 410 as well -- for those classic tape based games :) I still remember the music that played when loading "States and Capitals"... so 70's :D

  18. Posted

    Well..... Nintendo is not customer friendly company,

    they're a profit friendly company.  Look how they charged gamers $25 or $30 for the  

    N64 expansion pack.  That could have been placed on the motherboard for what,

    2-3 bucks?

     

    I got mine with DK64 -- didn't seem to add anything to the price of the game, so for all intents and purposes, I got my expansion pack for free.

     

    Remember, the N64 uses Rambus, not normal SDRAM -- so, at the time the N64 was hitting the market, it might've caused the system to cost another $50 or so (I dunno -- just tossing a figure out). And now they're just charging more for the expansion pack due to supply and demand.

     

    I think I'd have to disagree with the statement that Nintendo is not customer friendly -- while it is true that they have to earn a profit, they seem more customer friendly than Microsoft or Sony in some ways... I'd be surprised if you can somehow order a replacement battery cover for a Sony Walkman that was sold back in 1989. On the other hand, I can easily purchase a replacement battery cover for the original GB (and if I'm not mistaken, you can also get the link port cover that used to come standard on the original). Same goes for Microsoft -- try ordering the manual for Windows 3.0 from them sometime... but, on the other hand, you can get the manuals for old GB games from Nintendo -- as long as they made the game.

     

    I still think Nintendo takes waaaay too much flak for all that they have done. I'm not trying to say that they are perfect, but I think people tend to have zero tollerance with Nintendo when they are willing to take any turd that comes out of Sony or Microsoft and call it gold

     

    Sorry for the rant :D I'm gonna go back to playing Advance Wars 2 again... :)

  20. Posted

    wow -- they really crank these releases out :)

     

    I think I'll just settle for .70 for right now :) especially since I picked up one of the 3 DVD sets from the MAME burners group :D

  21. Posted

    (the ST's were thrown together in record time when the Tramiel/Amiga deal fell through). The ST's sound wasn't even as good as Pokey.

     

    I bet they could've pulled off a 16-bit version of the XLs just as fast, and had a better product -- similar to the Apple IIgs. They might've had a good chance at surviving if they had concentrated on upgrading their existing customers to newer, backwards compatible gear, but the insisted with breaking away from the past.

     

    I imagine part of the reason why they did this was because of Apple -- the Atari 8-bit -> 16-bit transition looks alot like the Apple 8-bit -> 16-bit transistion. But I think what Atari didnt see is that it was only going to be a 2 horse race, and Apple already had the jump on the second horse. Another factor is that due to the price difference between an Apple II and the Atari 8-bits, the existing Atari customers probably didn't have the money to upgrade to an entirely new system (I know I didn't :) ), so they stuck with what they had, or traded it for something else (C-64, NES, etc). Meanwhile, the ST was stuck with trying to get new customers.

     

    BTW, it's pretty easy to blame the Trammels for all of Atari's problems in the 80's and 90s, but to be fair, some of the blame has to go to Warner. If they would've been more aggressive with moving Atari forward, they wouldn't have fire saled Atari to the Trammels. There is absolutely no reason why the 400/800 line couldn't have had some more impressive upgrades over the years... 3 case changes and more RAM about sums it up (sadly enough) -- oh, and progressively making the keyboard worse :) Yet, years later, people are upgrading their machines with dual-POKEYs for stereo sound -- why didn't Atari do something like this? That would've been a good marketing point -- 8-channels of stereo sound -- take that, C-64 fanboys ;)

     

    Oh well, it's too late now to fix that... but it is frustrating to see now what Atari could've been after living through what it became.

  22. Posted

    So, in my attempt at Atari brand loyalty, I ended up rooting for the founders of Commodore, and against the machine designed by the inventors of the 400/800.

     

    Ironic, huh?

     

    As far as my recolection goes, I honestly wasn't aware of the crash until a few years after it happened. But, then again, we weren't exactly contributing to the crash -- we bought the 2600, 5200, 7800, and Vectrex when they were new :) In fact, because of the 2600 adaptor for the 5200, we bought both a 2 port and 4 port 5200. On the computer side, we had a couple of 400s, a 1200XL, and finally a 65XE. Some were new, some were pass me downs, but we kept buying software for all of the machines.

     

    Sadly, we sold off most of the 2600 stuff and the 1200XL... but, between myself and my dad, we still have most of everything else -- he has the Vectrex, the 7800, and at least one of the 5200s... most of the games are with him, but some are scattered about at my house. I have most of the computer stuff.

     

    I think the only way the crash effected me was that we didn't get an NES -- 7800 games were just too cheap to pass up at the time, and by the time we had moved on, the GameBoy had just came out, and I moved to the GB for my new gaming needs.

     

    So, the irony in my story is that the crash probably hurt Nintendo more than Atari in my house :D

  23. Posted

    Goodness, what a discussion for what is supposed to be a beginner tutorial.

     

    That's to be expected... IMO, by the time you get to lesson 19, you're no longer a beginner... anybody that can get the 2600 to display anything is not a beginner anymore. They're not experts or anything remotely approaching the talent of people like yourself or Andrew, but definetly worthy of having discussions such as this :)

     

    Hiding complexity doesn't do any good, especially in a subject such as this -- eventually, they have to learn it anyway.

  24. Posted

    While I'm thinking of it, I thought I might explain a bit of the magic :)

     

    I'm only using two colors per line -- the background color and the playfield color. I have a table of colors stored in RAM (eek :!: ) that I use in the kernel to set the registers. I cheat a bit, and set the background color with the low bit set -- since the TIA only displays 128 colors, it ignores this bit. But, I can simply do an INX and get the next luminance for the playfield color :)

     

    So, after it sets the colors, it simply sets the PFx registers. I was extremely lazy on this point, so for each line, I have the values for each of the PFx registers in the table. For the text that I'm displaying, this is extremely wasteful. But, someone could use the extra vertical resolution if they wanted to with no code modifications.

     

    Offscreen, I simply update the positions of all the bars and 'redraw' the bars by setting the colors in the RAM table. I sort the bars first, so that the bar that's on top get's 'drawn' last.

     

    There are two tables for the rotation -- a depth table that says how big each bar will be drawn -- and a position table that has the top line of the bar. These are both indexed off the angle, and for simplicity, I made the index go from 0-255. Makes it really easy to rotate, since all I have to do is keep doing a INC for the angle on each bar :)

     

    I wanted to use the other parts of the screen for something else, but considering that I've used up most of the RAM right now, I would have to seriously think about how to reduce some of that usage.

     

    I still might try my hand at putting some music in there... :)

     

    Now that I've explained it, the mystique will probably be gone -- but I did put the source in there, so it's not like I was trying to hide it :) I would love to see someone take this and make something really cool with it -- I just don't have the time to work on a full-blown 2600 project at this time. I would love to do it, but as we all know, 2600 programming doesn't put food on the table :D

  25. Posted

    Can the program be easily adapted to display other text behind the rotating color bars besides Atari?

     

    Besides Atari??? :o Heh, yes -- it's fairly easy to replace the graphics. There are 6 tables at the end of the cart that contain the values for PF0, PF1, and PF2 for both the left and right side of the screen. All that would need to be done is to generate some new values for the tables :)

     

    Can you get the bars to go in front of and behind the text, as appropriate?

     

    Should be possible, but it would require a big kernel redesign. It would also likely require some changes to the way I calculate bar-colors and positions as well... I have some ideas on how to change this, but I'll have to play with it to see if I can pull them off :)

     

    Your demo is producing 259 scan lines. This is okay and will show on the TV fine. To get 262 scan lines...

     

    Thank you for the suggestions... as soon as I get the chance, I'll implement the changes :)

     

    Speaking of showing on the TV, did anyone try this on a real 2600? I don't have the necessary equipment, so everything was done with Stella (and later tested with z26)... I'd be real interested in seeing in on the real thing :)

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