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leech

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Posts posted by leech

  2. Posted

    LOL, at the time we barely knew what to look for in a computer, and "Do we have to type a command to load games?" is not something that crossed our minds when buying one :D

     

    There's a chance a Commodore mouse could work since they used the same joystick port Atari did.

     

    But PC serial mice have the same 9-pin connector, but I don't think they could ever be made to work without a proper serial port.

     

    As others have said, Atari 8-bit software that can use a mouse is rare, so not much point in trying :)

    Good point about that! I think my family were just Atari nuts. 2600 to 800XL w/1050 to Mega STe, then I got a Jaguar with CD before finally succumbing to the evil of Packard Bell.

     

    FWIW, some mice came with a switch for Atari/Commodore. If you plug an Amiga mouse into an ST it will go all squirly and in the wrong directions, so they aren't compatible. I can't speak on 8bits though, since as you say, mouse driven things are very rare. Probably rarer than software that uses the Koala pad.

  4. Posted

    This is the sanctuary of the Atari gods. Let's not defile it with talk of the evil "C" word. I'm not a fan of "C: either.

     

    Only an Atarian would understand that last part.

     

    Only infidels would type something as awful as LOAD "*",8,1. What sacrilege.

     

    :)

    Haha, I remember seeing my buddy's C64 for the first time and had to ask him what that loading nonsense was. I never understood how the Commie could out sell the Atari 8bits.

    • Like 2

  5. Posted

    Man...that game really turned me on... icon_rolleyes.gif

    I even 'hacked' the game by renaming the image filenames so I could finally see the naked chick icon_wink.gif

     

    Regards

    Since someone already necrobumped this thread, which by the way when we are talking 30+ year old machines seems not all that terrible....

     

    I just wanted to say that my copy of Strip Poker on the 8bit was already 'hacked' when we got it so that they put clothes on when we won... I fixed it and gave a copy to a friend of mine at the time... who's mother had found out he had it, and wouldn't let him play past the panties and bra... so I showed him the trick so he could see naked 8bit goodness... ah, the silliness of being of middle school age and corupting other kids my age.

    • Like 3

  6. Posted

    For the above issue, the Best Electronics stiff silicone cups do wonders. I installed that mod on both of my 130XEs and my 1040ST. I prefer that keyboard to my 1200XL, and 800. I'm a lifelong mechanical PC keyboard user, who grew up using mechanical typewriters too.

    Agreed, I bought them for both my Falcon and my 1040STe, I use Roccat Ryos MK keyboards on my more modern systems. No more mushy keyboards for me.

  7. Posted

    One thing I found out recently, is that not even all of the same model have the same innards. Best Electronics sells an upgraded mylar keyboard for the 130XEs that came with a crappy one that tends to die more. I lucked out and found a 130XE at the DI (for those not from Utah and the surrounding States... the Deseret Industries is a place that people donate things to and they resell them for cheap) many years ago for like 10 bucks (along with a bunch of other 8bit stuff) that has that keyboard already.

     

    Apparently some of the 130XEs have mushier keyboards that are more similar to a 1040 ST.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted · Edited by leech

    Hey now! I love the Nintendo Nintendo Entertainment System.

    Ha, I love it how acronyms have become words, and then people use those words and make redundant statements. Like saying ATM Machine.

     

    I wonder how hard it'd be to convert over something like Dungeon Master, Knightmare, etc and use the control scheme that Towers II used. Hell for that matter, convert over Towers I.

     

    P.S. Not actually requesting, since I know you've already got a list of stuff you're working on. Just wondering more from the perspective of someone who may eventually want to look into doing it themselves!

  9. Posted

    Hell, I think porting ANY game to the Jag at this point is a great idea. I just wish I had time to play all of them. Or any of them for that matter.

     

    Don't know why some people just have to be dicks and ruin it for everyone else. If he's not porting your favorite game, there have been discussions on how to do it, my suggestion would be to learn and do it yourself. For those of us who simply don't have the time due to other things, we can just encourage him and say a huge THANKS for all the work he's done!

    • Like 4

  11. Posted

    I have seen this now a couple times about TOS 4.92.

     

    Give me the cliff-note version about this. I had never heard of it.

     

    Guessing the last Atari TOS before they went belly-up that was never installed on any systems?

     

    What benefits over the last TOS would it have brought?

     

    TJ

    An image of TOS 4.92 was leaked at some point, you can use it directly in Hatari. There was a nice post with the summary of differences, I think the main useful oe was support for TT video modes under the Comparibility video modes button. Other changes were adding color to dialog boxes, etc

    https://atariage.com/forums/topic/42720-tos-492/

  12. Posted

     

    Same here. Sure I get nostalgic sometimes, I've booted up aranym with emutos, which would simulate a newer more modern Atari system that never existed, but then I get I bored with the whole thing with after 10 minutes, because:

     

    1) The OS feels archaic

    ​2) There aren't a whole lot of great applications to run on it that don't have better alternatives on the host OS.

     

    Why run mint when you can have Linux? why stick to GEM in 2017 when you could have MacOS, Windows or any of the UI's that Linux provides with an ST emulator to run your old software?

    You know what I find funny is that TOS, being a single tasking operating system, would probably be a LOT better for people with ADHD. Like me, I can't concentrate on doing one single thing on my computer at a time, hell I usually browse the Internet while I'm watching something on Netflix. But if I were to sit down and write out short stories on Atari Works on a ST/TT/Falcon, I'd be able to concentrate on it a lot more.

     

    Not to mention the UI simplicity of GEM programs being desirable in this day and age of tabs and no 'file/edit' menu unless you hit 'Alt'.

     

    While yes, it'd be nice if some of more modern ideas of TOS 4.92 were implemented and we got a maintained TOS 5.x with some multitasking built in, you'd still have a more focused environment to work in because you wouldn't have any of that worthless ads that are pushed onto us through flash or javascript.

     

    While most of us stick around with the Atari computers out of nostalgia, there are some applications that simply aren't as good out there (like some of the extremely tight timing with MIDI). While they may have no features, that integrated hardware still is hard to beat from everything I've read about it.

  13. Posted

    Sad thing is, the ST line more or less died out before it could make any jump away from the 68k. The Amiga only jumped to PPC, because of OS3.9 support, which then turned into pure PPC for OS4. But even 3.9 wasn't made by Commodore. Would Motorola have continued the 68k line of processors if Atari and Commodore hadn't died out? Who knows, seems to me they had already decided to go with PPC with IBM at that stage, so the next ST potentially would have ended up in the same semi-PPC/68k setup that the last Accelerated Amigas did.

     

    With that in mind, I do have an old iMac PPC G5 that is pretty much worthless to me unless I put an alt OS on there (I hate Mac OSX, and it's stuck at Snow Leopard or whatever that one is, and unfortunately has an nVidia, so MorphOS isn't supported).

     

    Speaking of Mac, they went 68k -> PPC -> x86. So even they finally gave up having a unique architecture. Granted, FreeMiNT ported to a Power8 would be fantastic! Not that us normal folk could ever afford such a machine.

  14. Posted

    I would think an upgraded MiST capable of handling a Falcon core with [email protected] and SuperVIDEL would potentially fit this bill the best. That would give us a high end, reconfigurable system. Does TOS/multiTOS/MiNT, etc need multi ghz to do things? Granted, I haven't tried browsimg the internet on my mostly stock Falcon yet, but most other things are fairly fast because MiNT+Teradesk is so light weight.

  15. Posted

    I think reviving a platform while dealing with non-commodity hardware is an excuse to fail. I wish people would cobble together a distro based on EMUTOS and FreeMINT and get it to work on cheap, generic ARM boxes. Heck, maybe even a cut down version for Raspberri Pis.

     

    Being able to run RISCOS on Raspberry Pis is a good example of what I'm talking about.

    There is this;https://sites.google.com/site/emaappsarch/news/beekeyandbeepibeta9areavailable

  16. Posted

    I think for this to happen we would need the OS to catch up more. But on the upside we do have EmuTOS and FreeMiNT which is still being worked on. The thing is though, even in mew Amiga land, it is the software support that counts, and with few exceptions, the only software being made for OS4 is the same software I can install in a Linux machine on a ridiculously fast and cheap x86 system.

     

    I personally would love it if someone could fins and release the source code for TOS 4.92 and get TOS 5.0 out the door.

     

    There is a thread over on atari-forum.com about building expansion ports/graphics adapters to get all of the STs out there to be at the same level of features, but if we could push out a Vampire based stand alone with upgraded TOS and SuperVidel included, we could have a Modern ST clone.

     

    We are already partially there wint MiNT running on WinUAE and a fVDI driver to support it.

     

    When you have such small gropus of people though, it takes years to get things out there.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    Well you'll bemissing out on perhaps the coolest feature, preview screenshots

    Definitely a cool feature. It takes some getting used to flipping through the games, kind of a timing thing, 'cause if you pause for a second, it'll start to load the screenshot, and then it takes a few seconds to try to go to the next game, but as long as you're flipping through fast enough you can get your game, program it in and away you go.

     

    Bro and I played quite a bit of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure the other night... and then got stuck (pretty sure due to a bug). Good times!

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    I remember the advertisements for the 7800 to be on sale ate 49.99, though that may have been a year or two after release. Seriously fun times either way, when there were more competition and some truly inmovative hardware was coming out... theses days, wven the consoles are just some x86 hardware crammed into poorly cooled boxes. Wasn't it great when you didn't have to hear your computer / game console? I actually hate playing bloodborne because the PS4 fan howls every time I do.

  20. Posted

    Why? I think only Battlesphere supports analog controls and only the earlier Jaguars support analog input. Seems like kind of a useless mod.

    Weird, didn't know only the original ones supported analog, I thought they all did.

     

    Regardless, the reasoning would be A) for the STe/Falcon that I have. B) because I could actually use it on my computer. Unlike some, I actually like the Jaguar controller, would love to use it in place of keyboard/mouse on some computer games.

  21. Posted

    Haha, glad I bought a pro controller back when Atari was first selling them. I don't think that many games actually took direct advantage of them, did they? They essentially just add buttons that are remapped from the number pad...

     

    I would love a modded Jag controller that has an analog stick rather than a directional pad though. I also bought an adapter off some Amazon seller that will allowe me to hook the Jag controller up to a computer via USB, so I could use it for various emulators. I was tempted to buy one of the white/blue ST Pads, but they also are a bit more than I would like to pay.

  23. Posted

     

    Be warned of two things you will notice if you go with s-video on the jaguar. At least this is what I observed when I ran mine through s-vid:

     

    First is that it appears that the chroma out on the jaguar's multi AV out port is in fact just filtered composite. I say this because red's and purples or pretty much anything that has red hues to it, had an obvious checkerboard pattern on those colors and I really didn't like the way it looked.

     

    Second issue was that several games make use of the CRT artifacting to produce fake transparencies. Pinball Fantasies is the first game that comes to mind that is affected quite a bit by this. The ramp on the left side of the playfield on Stones n Bones uses a white dithered affect on the ramp. On CRTs with composite, this will appear to have a nice transparent plastic ramp look as it should. But on s-vid, it looks like a cheese grater.. Anyway, the s-video on the jaguar simply didn't impress me nearly as much as it has with my other consoles so I went back to using composite output for it.

     

    Sorry to take this off topic, but I saw mention of this and just wanted to give a heads up.

    Yeah, sorry for going off topic as well, but thanks for the info! And now I have to check if I have Pinball Fantasies or not... I know I have Ruiner Pinball, and I'm thinking I always figured I have Pinball Fantasies on the Amiga.

     

    Not that I have a CRT to connect it to, all my TVs have long since been LCD/LED. Though at least my main TV is still old enough to have S-Video, I haven't ever tried using it (the 8-bit was connected to a Dell that I bought for the STs.)

     

    Back on Topic. I got the Lynx SD cartridges and damn, they are AWESOME, can't wait to get the Jag one. Silly me, I played the hell out of Power Drive Rally, and now the cartridge has to be in the slot just right for it to work.

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