mellis
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Posts posted by mellis
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2 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:
Hi,
I'm looking to upgrade my STE. I recently added a Gotek internally and now I'm looking at upgrading the memory. I have a UK STE that has 1mb RAM populated with 4x 256kb SIMMs. It was originally a 520STE and had an additional 512kb added as the SIMMs don't all match.
I'm looking to upgrade to 4mb, I appreciate this is easier on STE's as it's just a case of swapping the modules out.
My question is, what are the parameters of the memory that I need?.
I see a lot of cheap 1mb 30pin 70ns type SIMMs on fleabay. Will regular old PC 70ns 30 Pin SIMM modules work?
I did a search before asking but I didn't see any definitive answers.
Appreciate any guidance !
As I recall, EDO RAM will NOT work, so avoid that.
Going from memory, I believe the ST uses non-parity RAM, but it will work with non-EDO parity RAM (where it ignores the parity bit).
If you buy RAM labeled as Mac RAM (for the 68000-based Macs of the day), it should also work in the ST. I have 4MB of RAM in my Mac Plus that will also work in an ST.
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5 hours ago, Sean39 said:
Oh ok. Well I hope I can get one. I was not all that young when the Atari 7800
came out in 1984. I know people say they did not sell any in 1984 but from what I understand they did.
They just did not sell that many since the project was shut down. Actually it was Atari did not ship that many units out before
the change in Management. I started college in 1985 ,so that give you an ideal how old I was at the time.
Thanks
Hi Peteym!
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7 hours ago, pixelmischief said:
I should have made it clear that I state this with apology and some embarrassment; neither pride, nor demand.
If it’s a fact that you only speak that particular language, I think a person would have to be looking for an excuse to be bothered by what you wrote. There’s no need to apologize that I can see.
Setting that aside, most of the fun you can have as an Atari programmer is the learning process. I would recommend that you read De Re Atari to familiarize yourself with the hardware’s design and capabilities. You can even play with the hardware registers in BASIC to see what they can do first hand. When you are comfortable with the hardware, move on to Machine Language for Beginners from Compute. It will ease you into 6502 assembly language. These books are available online as PDF files. Just do a little Googling.
You’re a programmer already, so this should be fun for you. Good luck.
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25 minutes ago, tajvdz said:
very strange way of doing bussiness if you ask me...
I think you are struggling to realize Brad is aware of the fact that, for many things, he's the only game in town. Therefore, he has the luxury of doing business any way he wants.
I would advise you to be as polite and accommodating as possible if really want your parts. Otherwise, Brad's blacklist is a real thing.
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22 hours ago, tschak909 said:
kind of funny nobody has answered my question, but am inferring that what I am asking is reasonable.
-Thom
I think it's kind of funny you wrote the above instead of "Thanks to everyone for their insights! I might go ahead an give my idea a try."
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On 7/3/2019 at 10:38 AM, atari-dna said:
Hi all, wondering how Atari packaged the reduced size 5200 boxes as pictured here. I came across one years ago but the internal foam was gone. According to the back of the carton a full 5200, two joysticks, power supply, and game were included. The box is a tight fit for just a console, using the foam inserts that you would see in the larger (more common) boxes. Does anyone have one of these reduced size boxes with the packing material? I’m curious to see how they crammed it all in there, presumably there was a styrofoam insert specific to these packages. If anyone can share how it was done I’d be grateful.
The 5200 controllers shipped in the console’s controller storage area (under the hood in the rear of the unit). The Super Breakout pack-in game was included as only the cart and game manual (no game box).
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Digression : I tried this S-Video to HDMI converter from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V2ULHBS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
If you are looking for an alternative to the Ambery unit then try this one. It works great! I am also using the same cable from 8-bit Classics.
I was in the market for a video scaler, and today I received and tested the unit mentioned above. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend it to those with a critical eye. This scaler generates visual artifacts galore. For example, areas that should be solid blue appear instead as a dithered checkerboard. That is but one of the glitches I identified, regardless of the settings I used with it.
This is not to disparage the poster, I just want to save others the bother. Amazon has accepted my refund request.
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Ok, this is probably something simple and I am just not getting it, but I can't seem to get Plato Term to run on my stock 130xe. It gives me a "not enough memory" error when I try to binary load it from the DOS menu. I am using an SIO2SD interface with the ATR downloaded from the platoterm website. I tried pressing option when the ATR booted, but doesn't seem to make a difference. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
Darren
Did you boot with BASIC disabled (hold down the OPTION key during power on)?
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Thank you for your input, but as I stated in my last post I took creative license to produce what I wanted to see, and I am quite satisfied with the end result.
No offense intended - I assumed you were soliciting feedback when you posted those images.
In fact, you are only a few clicks away from realizing an authentic label: https://chrismcmullen.com/2014/04/15/kerning-in-microsoft-word/
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Using a Brother PT-P700 Label Printer.
I created a new trim label.
That's a great first effort, but the text needs to be properly kerned before it will look as though Atari made it.
Specifically: the spacing between "A R I" needs to be tightened as does the spacing between "0 8 8 X L D"
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In your last paragraph you said :
A PC or Mac would be a much better choice for writing and debugging C code at the source level, and there are many free tools to do so.
Are you referring to 8Bit running on a PC emulator like altirra or debugging a C code in general .
If the latter, then I am quite familiar with developing and debugging in such a high language.
As for CC65 and debugging with asm. This is trying I am trying to avoid. What I do now is poking to a free memory location the values I want to debug and breaking the running code watching these values.
It would be great if a symbolized CC65 Code will be available .
Would like to learn more about it
When I wrote "A PC or Mac would be a much better choice for writing and debugging C code at the source level", I was referring to writing PC or Mac software, not Atari software.
When you wrote, "As for CC65 and debugging with asm. This is trying I am trying to avoid", you confirmed my hypothesis that you are writing C code to try to avoid the complexities of learning assembly. The problem is, you really need to understand assembly language to write good software for the Atari. If an understanding of assembly is really a non-starter for you, I suggest you focus your software development efforts on more capable machines such as a PC or Mac. You can reasonably expect to program those in C without an understanding of assembly.
If you really love the idea of writing software for the Atari, but you are steadfast in your decision to not learn any 6502 assembly, I suggest you try any of the excellent BASIC languages. TurboBasic, Basic XE, and even Atari BASIC will deliver results to you much faster than flailing around in C.
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In my experience, the best way to debug CC65 code is the same as debugging any other compiled code: via your program monitor of choice.
Of course, this means that you will be disassembling memory and dumping it to the screen, but that's what targeting the 6502 looks like. If you seek a source-level debugger for CC65, you will be disappointed. These little 8-bit systems don't have the resources keep debug symbols and your C source code in memory, and as far as I know, CC65 does not offer remote debug capabilities.
If you feel assembly language is too difficult to learn, and you are instead attempting to write software using CC65 in order to avoid it, you have chosen the wrong target platform. These little, resource-constrained computers bring a knowledge of assembly language as a prerequisite, as you will encounter it at some point: either while coding, while debugging, or both. I prefer "both", as what you are debugging (the disassembly from RAM) looks very similar to what you wrote in the first place (the assembly source code).
A PC or Mac would be a much better choice for writing and debugging C code at the source level, and there are many free tools to do so.
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A great machine, in retrospect, but too innovative by a long shot for businesses of the time to gamble on. Combine that with the fact that Jobs was damaged goods, having been ousted by Apple, and it is clear how something so excellent essentially dies on the vine. No one was bold enough to pick it.
Perhaps ironically, billions ended up choosing it 20 years later when its direct descendent, the iPhones iOS, took the market by storm. As a NeXT user and developer, I was tickled when Mac OS X (and later iOS) came along.
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The Google machine says it was a whopping $8,495. Remember, however, that this was the state-of-the-art desktop computer from the company that defined business machines; hell, it was their name! Corporate money would have gladly paid four times as much for the IBM against even a competitive machine with the name Atari on it. And it wouldn't have been only the gaming association, although that would certainly have been part of it. The fact is that Atari was not ready to provide the kind of volume, build quality, and day-two support that businesses who could afford to invest in desktop computing would demand.
Lets not forget this beauty for only $6500 dollars back then. I ultimately owned one in the early 1990s. Fantastic machine.
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OK, it's taken me almost 25 years, but I'm officially fed up with having my ST in the attic.
I was always an 8-bit guy. The STs came out when I was in college and, as much as I drooled over them, I just couldn't afford one. I bought a used 1040STFM setup in about '94, but I've never really had a place to put it. These days, if I need my 8-bit or 16-bit Atari fix, I typically play around through emulation. Still, it's killing me knowing I have this classic old machine sitting in a storage bin in the attic. My gaming desktop has a slide out keyboard tray, so there's room on the desk for my 1040. I just don't have room for an extra old CRT monitor.
This leads into the reason for my post. What is the current, best way to hook an ST up to an LCD monitor? I won't be buying a new monitor, so I'm planning to use an extra HDMI input on my current monitor. Naturally, since my monitor is only about three years old, it doesn't recognize the old 15kHz horizontal signal from the ST.
I looked around through the forums, but most of what I'm seeing is 8-10 years old. I've seen several videos and posts about a GBS8220 card to convert the ST signal to VGA. I've also read some about a similar converter, the Ambery AV-1M. From there, it would be easy enough to convert the VGA signal to HDMI. That's a lot of adapting and converting though. I'm wondering if there's a better way to do what I want. I'm only willing to spend about $100 or so to accomplish this, and I realize the results aren't going to be perfect. I'll settle for usable. I'd mostly be using this for gaming, rather than any serious computing or productivity work.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
This question has been asked an answered many times (just search through the forum). Nevertheless, I applaud you for pressing forward and getting that real hardware out of the attic, so here is a summary:
Easy - high quality image:
Use an RGB CRT monitor (an Atari SC1224) or one from a third party that can sync down to 15Khz.
Easy/cheap - high quality monochrome (B&W only) image:
Get an ST->VGA adapter cable. The only ST resolution that will work is B&W high (640x400).
Hard/cheap - Low quality image:
You have an STFM (not an STF), so if you search around, you can find out how to pick a composite video signal (usually a yellow RCA input on your TV) up from the monitor port on the back of your ST. However, composite upscaling on most LCD TVs is crap, and that video signal is a poor way to view ST video even on a real CRT.
Hard/Expensive - High quality image:
Use a dedicated video upscaler and feed it RGB signals from your ST's monitor port. You will need to understand how to build a cable to get the video signals from the ST's monitor port to the upscaler, and then how to configure that device properly.
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My experience is that it's the linker will do it's job and fail where the code/data intended to fit within a segment exceeds the reserved size, so I don't see the using the optimizer of not affects this?
I was simply pointing out that the linker could correctly assemble all of the object files into an executable that extends into RAM area that the program is incorrectly assuming is usable.
Why would the program be addressing this RAM directly? I assume this is a possibility because the author wrote earlier that he is not inclined to learn the linker configuration process. If the linker is unaware that the program is addressing this memory, it cannot do its job of keeping code out of the way.
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i understand what you guys are saying and you are correct.
The intent of this thread was to alert all who use CC65, CL and the "-O" command line.
i wanted to understand if any if the developers here have encountered the same.
i guess the answer is no. and i guess this is only me.
as for what the doctor said above, well, i will try to re-create the issue by creating a small program with my DL and maybe some variables defines.
if i will succeed i will share the code here.
hope i made sense....
Yaron
I think it is more likely that a problem exists with your linker configuration than with the optimizer. If you optimize for speed, grow the executable, but then do not adjust the link strategy you will end up with a situation where smaller code works but speed-optimized larger code (with unrolled loops, etc.) will fail.
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Yes I was looking for something like that....
To use a pragma directive for alignment can be good
It should work exactly as asm .align work.
Well maybe someone from AA will accept the challenge ?
Reading all of this leads me to surmise that you have elected use cc65 because you perceive 6502 assembly language as being too hard to learn. I've also read your comments suggesting the cc65 tools (specifically ld65) are too hard to learn, and you suggest that somebody should change them for you.
If you want to write software, you're going to have to do some learning. I have been writing software for 35 years, and I can assure you that the learning requirement never goes away -- there's always another technique, technology, or tool you will need to study.
If I were you, I would read Compute's Machine Language for Beginners and get started that way. You can easily write C code for any other computer in the word, but the 6502 married to the Atari custom chips is what makes this machine special.
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Thats awesome work! I love how well integrated the PBI port is. Im going to read through your blog now.
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ugh. line numbers
No use complaining - just bang out a regex and get on with it.
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You´re using the 800XLF mainboard. This one has three problematic points:
- Exchange the both 470 uF electrolytic capacitors found on the mainboard. One on the right side near the RAM chips, the other one in the lower left corner of the O.S. ROM. Although most Atari 8-Bit mainboards hasn´t issues with electrolytic caps, THIS mainboard has. For sure.
- The both inductors (upper left corner at your picture, L3 and L4). Remove them and use a little piece of wire each for replacement (or a 0R resistor).
- The missing smoothing cap for Freddie causes a lot of white noise at the CPU´s buss. Check out my mod in this thread.
You might have identified the issue I am having too. I suspect my UAV equipped 800XL also has the 800XLF logic board (and similar image quality issues). I shall investigate.
Thanks!
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Hi,
I have asked it before, but I think it got buried in the main Altirra thread. Well, at least I got no reactions, partly because I did not explain why this would be a nice feature.
The idea is to compile the Altirra source code against winelib, instead of running it with wine. On x86/amd64, this does not gain you much, except for maybe a slight decrease in startup time. But if one can get it to compile this way, you can also target another CPU, for example ARM/ARM64. This would allow us (hopefully) to run it on Android and perhaps even a (jail-broken) iPhone.
I understand this might be a pretty huge undertaking. I wish it was just running winemaker and make, but it's not that simple.
https://wiki.winehq.org/Winelib_User%27s_Guide
Has anyone ever looked into this?
And @phaeron, would you be willing to help people with this? Perhaps some guidance related to the source tree. A lot of those Japanese names mean nothing to me. Or maybe there's already a (short) description of the source tree, what's where and what's it for, et cetera...
Regards,
Ivo
I have looked at precisely this.
The problem I encountered is that WINE's headers are not source-compatible with the Altirra codebase. I am confident that a compatible set of headers can be hand crafted, but it is not something that one can accomplish by sitting down and poking at it for just a few hours.
The deficiency here lies with WINE - their windows headers are a generation or two out-of-date compared to the Visual Studio codebase on which Altirra is based.
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Yo SS..... did you ever really think about that avatar name ? It's not really popular over here in Europe....
It also stands for "Super Sport" on a variety of performance Chevrolets, and it is the name of one specific mode: https://www.caranddriver.com/chevrolet/ss.
@SS, there's nothing wrong with your username.
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I'm in for one also.
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It was a fun weekend...
in Atari ST/TT/Falcon Computers
Posted
When you say "4K 520 STE", do you mean "4MB 520STE"?