Thorsten Günther

June 12, 2016

The Americans even elected a guy for president who spoke English as if it was a foreign language to him... so why bother?

May 5, 2016

I've become interested in programming on the ST, and I'm looking for some recommendations as to what is the best general purpose programming version of BASIC that I can use.

Also, if there are any recommendations around possible alternatives to BASIC, I'd be happy to hear your opinions.

Thanks all.

I am not really a programmer, but I dislike C (and relatives) and learned to enjoy Niklaus Wirth's languages in school, of which Modula-2 gained the most popularity on the ST (Oxyd e.g. was programmed in Modula-2).

Megamax Modula-2 is available for free from Thomas Tempelmann's site.

Here in Germany, GFA BASIC was the most successful and thus best supported version of BASIC, but I always admired the more system compliant approach of HiSoft BASIC.

April 1, 2016

My take is that the Lynx sold worse than the N-Gage .... which was a crappy way to play games

I own one, and they are becoming expensive here as a retro gaming hardware. IMHO the only crappy thing about them is the case design (esp. the need to disassemble the unit and even take out the battery to change the game containing MMC of the retail titles). The D-Pad and buttons all work very reliably (I have played "K-Rally" a lot on this hardware), it has stereo sound and a good (for the time) screen. One could argue that a vertical screen orientation is worse for some games, but then a horizontal one is worse for others (e.g. the "Nebulus" port or the various shmups). And it had downloadable games.

March 29, 2016

I am in for two of these.

March 29, 2016

Personally, I was never that big a fan of Elite. Played it for some hours on the ST, then shelved it - it is a very unbalanced game IMHO - in the beginning you'll have to grind for money to equip your ship with better weapons and the docking computer. Occasionally you'll meet Thargoids in this phase of the game and they'll inevitably kill you, so you'll have to save often. After that phase there's a vast universe to travel, but really not that much to do.

I was a devoted fan of Starglider, but that wouldn't run properly on the A8 except if given huge amounts of memory for precalculated 3D graphics.

March 19, 2016

The most common issue known to me is that someone blasted two 7805 voltage regulators (labelled REG1 and U38) and one capacitor (C134) on the PCB by trying to power it with reversed polarity. I know a guy who regularly revives "dead" Jaguars by replacing these.

February 25, 2016

A more applicable comparison is the C-16 and Plus/4, but of course those platforms were still-born for a variety of reasons, including being unnecessary in a world with the Commodore 64 already in it.

If my memory is correct, both the C16 and Plus/4 were afterthoughts, the original idea was to publish a $99 entry level computer - the C116 (these were quite popular in the first half of the 1980s: Sord M5, Bit 90, Vtech Laser 110/210/310, etc.). After a first batch and the change of management, they chose to wrap the ubiquitous breadbox case around the C116 innards. And then someone came up with the "great" idea of publishing a "professional" computer based on the low-end TED chip, with bad business software in ROM (Sinclair at least shipped their QL with real business software by Psion).

February 23, 2016

Crown of Creation 3D : Does it acutally exist on the Falcon ?

I had a copy (came in a rather ugly b/w printed box), so yes, it does exist. The copy protection was said to be impossible to crack.

February 20, 2016

Dunno why the CoCo survived that long given the C=64 juggernaut. On this side of the pond, the Dragon 32/64 - roughly the same hardware (many software titles did appear on both platforms) - didn't stand a chance against it, so Dragon Data Ltd. folded in 1984. The CoCo is a very rarer beast here (the PAL 400 and 800 are also rare, but not quite to the same extent).

February 16, 2016

I'd love any version of Battlesphere! I just paid $75 for primal rage. All I'm missing is Battle-Sphere, Another World, and Brain dead 13. Only ones I'm missing. If anyone is willing to part with these games please let me know!

(I just need CD only, instructions if possible but not necessary.I utilize dvd cases just need the disk).

Braindead 13 is much more fun to watch than to play, and - additionally - the CDI version is much better than the Jag version thanks to the CDI`s MPEG capabilities (it requires the CDI video cartridge, of course).

February 16, 2016

A copy of the original Battlesphere just sold on eBay for over $650. Good luck finding one, because I've pretty much given up hope of ever owning that or AirCars.

As I sold off my (ICD) AirCars copy some years ago, I'd rather fear than hope owning it again. It really is that bad.

February 12, 2016

The ST was also selling hot in Germany as a SOHO computer since PCs of the era were pure crap in terms of hardware and usability (that's why PC GEM was gaining much popularity when 286/386SX hardware became affordable) and the Mac was ridiculously overpriced. It e.g. won the German "Chip" magazine's "Computer of the Year" award in both 1985 and 1988 and many hardware projects such as the PAK030 were published in the "c't" magazine, both magazine catering to the "serious" users (i.e. the guys doing their word processing, spreadsheets and database stuff rather than playing games).

February 3, 2016

Upon discovering your forum I unboxed my Atari 800 after 20 years.

I connected it to the 13" CRT TV's antenna plug using the Atari's built-in RF cable and a Computer/TV switch box CA010112

The video looks fine but there is no sound.

Depending on where you live, there could be another reason for this problem: many modern TV sets are hardly used for RF anymore and thus are still set to the factory setting for that connection, and PAL I (labelled "UK") and B/G ("PAL") machines have different sound frequency offsets - so if you have a UK 800 and your TV set is still set to PAL B/G or vice versa, you can not hear the sound via RF. I experienced this issue in 1990 when we were sailing off the Welsh coast with our mine sweepers and could not get sound for the free-to-air World Cup broadcasts by the BBC on our CRT TV - we then muted it and turned on the radio instead.

February 2, 2016

I am also interested in the CF version. Not sure which driver, but as all my machines are 1040STfs and up, I gather the normal driver will work for me.

January 24, 2016

On th other hand, you also devloped CATA, and all the ST games will snuggly fit onto a CF card should anyone (finally) be willing to mass produce the CATA.

January 20, 2016

JFTR: these PSUs are ridiculously overpriced on amazon.co.uk. Unless there are cheaper stores in the UK, I recommend purchasing them in Germany at stores that do not only ship to the UK, but also feature a multi-lingual websites for your convenience such as rock-gear.de or schneidermusik.de.

January 20, 2016

I have successfully run a 1050 on a (Euro plug) 2.1A PSU (Rock Power RP NT8), these should also be available with a UK style plug instead. Anything below that will most probably not work.

January 15, 2016

Falcon.

Ballblazer.

Both of those came to mind last night… Both were ported to both the Amiga and the ST.

Re Falcon: you are aware that the Jaguar doesn't have a flightstick nor a keyboard and the game uses approx. 45 different (40 plain keypresses plus 5 control combos) keyboard commands plus the D-Pad? Thunderhawk AH-73M or even F-29 Retaliator would be much easier to shoehorn into the Jaguar.

Re Ballblazer: I doubt Thomas "8bitjunkie" Schulz would be interested in porting his game ("Masterblazer", as his Amiga port was renamed to) to the Jaguar, but of course you may ask him, as he is an active member of this forum IIRC.

January 10, 2016

If anybody can make a proper homebrew or remake of Zaxxon I'd be a hat trick like 'Donky Kong VCS'.

I don't think it will get much better on the VCS than Space Raid - available from the AtariAge Store.

December 21, 2015

But I agree with everyone, the STe should have probably had the TT video modes at the very least. Instead they opted to upgrade the color palette, and add stereo sound. The worse part is, almost all the developers coded for the lowest common denominator, so it is a rarity to find software coded specifically for the STe, TT, Falcon.

And IMHO that was due tot he fact that there was not an obvious advantage of coding specifically for the STE - by the time it was published, most coders had perfected coding for the ST. A 256 colour mode would IMHO have changed that due to the obvious advantages for in-game graphics.

I'd also have liked the overscan capabilities that were available as ST hacks implemented into the STE hardware - overscan with 400x232 in ST low mode (and possibly 400x232 or 200x232 in 256 colours) and 700x480 in ST high without the significant slowdown of software solutions would hav ebeen a plus.

December 20, 2015

I acknowledge that the CPU speed issue was addressed much too late by Atari with the Mega STE - and third party solutions like the one Atari put into that machine were already on the market for the DIL CPUs in regular and Mega ST models when the 1040STE came out.

The 520/1040STE had upgradeable RAM (bog-standard SIMMs), but the fact was never even advertised.

The DD FDD issue was addressed by Atari (again much too late) with the AJAX (which could even be clocked to 32MHz to work with ED FDDs - yet these never became popular), the WD1772 was only capable of HD access if 100% overclocked, and this only worked somewhat reliably when using the -02-02 revision of that FDC. Commodore had a much worse problem, since they couldn't simply upgrade PAULA they had to buy special, expensive FDDs that ran at half the speed in HD mode.

December 19, 2015

The main problem with the STE was that screenshots did not look any different than ST screenshots. And the specs didn't exactly scream "superior to the older model" either (IIRC the SIMM sockets were not even mentioned), so people stuck with the cheaper STFM.

A 256 colour mode could have mended that, even if only in 160x200 to keep the CPU load low.

December 13, 2015

I did not even know anyone besides the AVGN and the VGC considered Attack of the Mutant Penguins to be among the worst games for the system - sure the controls could be a little more precise, but this is a very fun Lemmings style game IMHO (you can see me playing it on the 2015 eJagFest briefly about three and a half minutes into this video - yes, that evil laugh was mine).

Evolution: Dino Dudes is also pretty decent (it's also on the Lynx as "Dinolympics" and on many, many other platforms - known as "The Humans" on most of the latter), and apparently only the VGC thinks this is one of the worst titles (I am pretty sure he also hates "Lost Vikings")

While I consider Bubsy to be hard as nails, I can get a little further whenever I play it.

December 9, 2015

I have watched various videos sourced from the internet on a friend's Soniq TV - and it did seem to crash fairly often - like once a day when I was there - I assumed that it was probably a random glitch in the file, and would not do this for live TV.

The remote control was poorly laid out and I would not recommend this as a TV to buy.

Whereas I have a Samsung TV - but they do not provide any updates etc for it. It's one of the early ones that has internet connection possible with it - but is useless because Samsung doesn't provide any updated firmware for it. But it is a decent TV, and does have more features over the Soniq - which you paid for - naturally.

I have a Goldstar (or LG, as they prefer to call themselves nowadays) - after some updates, it doesn't seem to crash any more (I had it depict an all blurry, non-moving screen after switching on several times with the older firmware and nothing except for removing the power cable was able to fix it. And while it shows a picture after 20 seconds, one cannot run Amazon Instant Video (e.g.) during the first minute of operation. It also had issues recording onto an attached USB hdd with the older firmware, often only recording video without any audio.

In several ways, this IS a step backwards - CRT TVs simply worked.

BTT: I wish there was a way to have a DLI after each scanline in Graphics 0 - that way, we could have an APAC text mode which would be very useful for games.

December 9, 2015

I have watched various videos sourced from the internet on a friend's Soniq TV - and it did seem to crash fairly often - like once a day when I was there - I assumed that it was probably a random glitch in the file, and would not do this for live TV.

The remote control was poorly laid out and I would not recommend this as a TV to buy.

Whereas I have a Samsung TV - but they do not provide any updates etc for it. It's one of the early ones that has internet connection possible with it - but is useless because Samsung doesn't provide any updated firmware for it. But it is a decent TV, and does have more features over the Soniq - which you paid for - naturally.

I have a Goldstar (or LG, as they prefer to call themselves nowadays) - after some updates, it doesn't seem to crash any more (I had it depict an all blurry, non-moving screen after switching on several times with the older firmware and nothing except for removing the power cable was able to fix it. And while it shows a picture after 20 seconds, one cannot run Amazon Instant Video (e.g.) during the first minute of operation. It also had issues recording onto an attached USB hdd with the older firmware, often only recording video without any audio.

In several ways, this IS a step backwards - CRT TVs simply worked.

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