machf

Yes, feel free to ask me about any terms you don't understand...

Hi, Hias. Thanks for the input. Unfortunately, it will take me a whole day to download the Knoppix CD... how old are the fdutils? I still have a Redhat Linux 5.2 partition on the HDD of the Celeron computer where I was going to test the drive, don't know if they were included in the distribution or if they would work under it either... I wonder if your WriteAtr tool could be used for some tests, too... hmmm...

Atari Creativo #0 in 1988, then Informática Creativa #0, 1 and 2 between 1989-1990.

That would help, too! There is nothing better than a truly interesting piece of bilingual learning material. Hmmm... as I already said, given the style in which the magazines were written, it's likely several things will get lost in translation, I'm afraid. I spoke with IAQ on the phone last night, he still has problems regarding his domain which are preventing the server from being online again, and he's looking for a new location for his store, I suggested him a couple of places I know. Speaking about the magazines, he told me back then he'd diagram it in Signum! 2 on his ST, then print it on Canson paper using a laser printer and take that to the print shop... so, no PostScript filew whatever. He still has the diskettes with the Signum! 2 files for the magazine on a metal shelf in his office, though, so if there's a way to use a "virtual printer" on an ST or TT, maybe something could be done with those files. Don't expect that to happen too soon, anyway.

I've noticed that the old 5.25" DD diskettes tend to preserve data better than the current 3.5" HD ones... going through my own 20 year old disks, I haven't noticed problems with them yet.

Added scans from a photocopy of the issue #0 of Atari Creativo. Not much difference, since that one was only Green&White instead of Black&White... B&W may even be better readable. ZIPped file with the JPEGs is here and PDF version is here, if anyone cares... filesizes are smaller for this one, as it has only 24 pages, it's 10MB for the PDF and 11.5MB for the ZIP. And here are the translated tables of contents for the four issues: Atari Creativo #0 Volume I, Issue 1 January 1988 Contents: 01 Editorial 03 ¡Charge! 04 Leaving the Cartesians behind 07 Your magazine at home 09 Royal Comments 12 With a little help from my friends 13 How to discard Descartes, part 2 16 In order not to go to the racetrack 20 Towers of Hanoi 22 Bits, Bytes and Nibbles 23 Even in the quietest of moments... Informática Creativa #0 Volume I, Issue 0 March/April 1989 Contents: Editorial 01 P.O. Box 02 The best computer in the world 04 Draw with your text-only printer 06 Bits, bytes and Nibbles 08 The recursion technique 10 Print Shop for everyone 14 Plague 1989: a different future 16 Introduction tp PC-DOS and MS-DOS 18 Stay online with TVS-BBS 20 Protection count 24 With a little help from my friends 26 Intimacies of the LaserWriter+ 27 1, DOS, Three 28 Royal Comments 30 Get rich with a mule 34 Leaving the Cartesians behind 38 Even in the quietest of moments... 40 Informática Creativa #1 Volume I, Issue 1 October 1989 Contents: Editorial 01 P.O. Box 02 ProPrint: from screen to paper 04 For the love of the game 08 Directory meeting 17 GEOS corner 20 Coldly calculated 22 I'm in love with my car 25 Not again! 31 Murphylogies 35 Happiness is a warm rifle 37 Royal Comments 39 Mirror, mirror 42 With a little help from my friends 44 Up that spirit! 45 Even in the quietest of moments... 47 Informática Creativa #2 Volume I, Issue 2 August 1990 Contents: Editorial 01 P.O. Box 02 Bits, Bytes and Nybbles 08 TurboPaint XL: from idea to screen 14 About commands and hierarchy 17 Virus: the dark side of the Moon 20 No first without a second 33 LaserWriter, second call 35 The backside of a friendly card 36 Royal Comments 40 To the last bit 42 With a little help from my friends 46 Do you allow me to interrupt? 47 Though several things get lost in translation, given the style in which the magazines were written...

OK, forget it - I was only saying that a software implementation had to take all that into account, not that it wasn't possible.

??? I don't get it. What's so difficult about it then? I don't see the problem. So, please explain yourself. maybe this link here clears some things up: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...p;#entry1431677 please read somewhere in the middle of the post. Perry_m wrote that PWM is as easy as resampling. Sawtooth effect on real machine is nothing more than a PWM-alike effect, caused by the retardation of capacitors which are functioning like windowed integrators. In analog form (electronics circuitry with use of capacitors) it's easy to perform. But digitally, an integration will be using a discrete approach - essentially, it's the same thing with all A/D and D/A conversions: there's a "rounding error" that will give you a stairstep rather than a true sawtooth, in the first place. Ideally, the emulator should use steps that are the best that the sound hardware on the PC can offer. And you need to make sure that the sample frequency used is > twice the wave's maximum frequency. Fourier or not, it's going to have the same constraint. Can the software+hardware reach the needed frequencies for the whole spectrum the POKEY sound generation covers?

Why not save the listing to a file, then load it as a disk drive unit? That used to work with the old XFormer emulator, it would show the file as a disk with just that file if you did it that way, then you could copy it to another (blank) disk image. Or set the H: drive to the folder where you're saving the listing, it would work similarly. It may be just a case of 0s and Os... IIRC, ERROR- 8 means "bad input data" or "data type mismatch"

Sawtooth has quite a lot of 'harmonics', which don't fall-off that rapidly as f.e. triangle waveform. Yes, I know, that's why I said it would depend on the number of coefficients. Don't know what the emulator is actually using, but a sawtooth function definitely isn't easy to simulate... Possibly several. A sawtooth is still hard to emulate, even by other means than Fourier... you may end up with something only vaguely resembling it.

Yeah, possible FTP'ing would be an use better suited for the A8s... Now that you mention it, I also thought of something like that some years ago... in fact, I may have even made the A8 print to file, transfered the file to a PC via diskette, and then using a global replace to convert the Epson codes in the document to HTML tags. Or maybe I didn't print to file and instead what I converted to HTML were XLEnt codes... anyway, it should be possible to do it in near-real-time with an emulator. Good idea.

I think I have 3 410s lying around in the closet, they all have the same problem - no, not the belt, that one was easy to fix - they kept getting a plastic pin broken. Now I have an XG-12 (similar to the XC-12, but not manufactured by Atari).

Well, if the sawtooth is being approximated in software using a Fourier series, it depends on how many coefficients are being used, I guess.

I think what he gave you is a blank (formatted?) disk, don't load it into D1:, load a SpartaDOS or MyDOS disk into D1: and that other one into D2: or another unit.

In order to access the Internet, you need TCP/IP - that's the quid of it. The actual browser is the easy part, I guess a port of Lynx would do.

I believe a friend of mine still has some old edition of Norton Utilities lying around, I'll ask him... and I still have a really old PC Tools version on a diskette somewhere, wonder if that one has such a tool. Even though I know 80x86 assembly programming, I never got into PC BIOS stuff - I kept using my 800XL as my main computer until 1996 or so... The usual commands issued to the drive to read a sector... and I get that error when I attempt ro read the disk directory from DOS. Well, last week I was searching for "software oscilloscopes" for that purpose. Haven't fully tried the ones I found yet, though. I'll take a look at that thread... Thank you both for the input.

Couldn't upload issue #1 earlier because for some reason, the transfer kept getting interrupted around 45%, but now I've uploaded both the PDF version and the ZIPped file containing the JPEG images. I've also finished scanning issue #2 and am uploading the corresponding ZIPped file with the JPEG iamges right now, meanwhile I'm preparing the PDF version and will upload it too after the other file is done. UPDATE: ZIPped file with the JPEGs from issue #2 already uploaded, get it here. Uploading the PDF of #2 right now. Filesizes are similar to the issue #0 ones, in case you're wondering... UPDATE 2: PDF version of issue #2 is now available here, too. Now it's time for me to say good night...

Any which you can recommend? The error code it gives (163) is the same the working XF551 returns for an unformatted disk - so I think it possibly assumes that if it can't read the first sectors. Only thing I've checked on it was that the ribbon cable connected to it had no broken traces... What can I do to check it? Well, I don't have money but I have plenty of time, as I'm currently unemployed (technically, I'm self-employed, but business has been very bad these past months).

No, at first I thought it could read the first sector(s), but it turned out that it was getting garbage, not the actual contents of the sector - and the read buffer would contain the same garbage for each sector I attempted to access. And why would it have to be displaced inwards? I'm thinking it might be displaced outwards by 1 or maybe 2 tracks... the stepper is going practically all the way, I may try listening and counting the steps to make sure. After it goes through all the tracks and attempts to write data to the boot sectors, it fails and retries the formatting... and fails again (and retries and fails again... what was the default retry count?).

Uh-uh - it takes up very little space, loads really quick, and suits 99% (maybe more) of my needs, so I'm keeping it. For the things it doesn't cover, I've got some other programs installed, but none of them can fully replace it. Windows 2000.

That particular bit is a PITA when the pages weren't printed properly. And when the program I'm using will only allow integer values for the angles and it's 0.5 degrees, well... I've cleaned some of them, but doing so for all would take me even longer... I usually use a large atlas for that. Also covers an area larger than the scanner's cover. Particularly useful to put it in place of the lid when it's something too thick for it, too. I tend to do that, but here I had placed some tape on the back to prevent it from breaking... I can still take the pages out, but the staples are possibly going to show in the inner back/front covers.

Hmmm... I had thought of that, but I don't have any DD PC diskettes. I guess I could format a new one, but would that be useful? No, I couldn't even format a disk with it when I tried... I'm thinking maybe it's looking for track 0 outside the writeable area of the disk.

I'll keep that in mind, but I don't have a laser printer, to begin with. And as I said, I'll talk to IAQ to see if he has the originals in PostScript (he must have had them, in order to take them to the press for printing) and use those for a "definitive" release. In the meantime, I finished scanning issue#1, I'm uploading the ZIPped scans right now, with the PDF following immediately thereafter. I'm taking a break for lunch now, will deal with issue #2 in the afternoon. BTW... this issue (#1) had some issues when it was printed, so the scans are going to reflect those - that's another reason for trying to get a better digital release from the masters at a later point, it would be just too much work to attempt to correct that in the scans to be worth it...

And as I said later:

Well, I don't use Photoshop, for various reasons, so you don't need to worry about that. I have the JPEGs already zipped and was considering uploading them too, in case anybody wanted to display them as HTML (using thumbnails linking to each JPEG image), or something like that. I'll upload them in a while, then... right now, I'm 25% through issue #1. EDIT: uploaded the JPEGs from issue #0, get them here. Issue #1 is between 40-50% right now.