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machf

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Posts posted by machf

  3. Posted

    Interesting story and while it is certainly possible, in this instance, it was probably not Gunship only because of the piracy scene and how easily a game that was playable and pirated (as in your friend's case) would have spread quickly. Unreleased and games that were supposed to be European only releases for the Atari 8-bit use to spread like wildfire once it was in the right hands (which meant every other Atari 8-bit owner back then) back in the 80s so unfortunately I am not convinced that it was Gunship that you were playing although anything is possible. However if it did exist, the pirate copy would have turned up by now.

     

    I remember him saying that it was a real bitch to copy, it required two different chips to copy the disk, one was the Happy, and I can't remember what he said the other one was (the name wasn't familiar to me at the time, and later I haven't been able to remember it). He also said that the copy would only be able to run on a disk drive with the same enhancement, and that meant he'd have to keep the copy for himself and give the other disk to whoever was interested in it... and no, I'm not inventing this stuff. Even today I wonder what happened to him after all this years, I've never been able to find any traces of him over the Internet, and I never knew who was it that gave him the game in the first place...

  4. Posted

    I'm not an electronics engineer, although I do know which side of a soldering iron I should hold.

     

    Just read this post while browsing the forums... Hi again, Mathy. Well, if you recall, I *am* an electronics engineer, and I can tell you it's no guarantee against that. I can also tell you that it's the smell of burnt flesh that gives away that you had the wrong side... (happened when I reached out for it without looking and held it like a pen)

  5. Posted

    Well... the power lines (+5V, GND) should all have a common reference (in this case, the GND signal), otherwise you'll have "floating" voltages. But the external +5V line better shouldn't be connected to the +5V line from the SIO port, nor to the PC, either... it isn't a good idea to have different voltage sources connected together. (Well, you usually connect batteries in parallel to get more current, but this is a slightly different case)

  6. Posted

    The one with the yellow cover and the central article about M.U.L.E.? Boy, I wish IAQ would post the story about all that happened for the magazine to end up with that cover... it wasn't the original design, IIRC.

    Haven't seen him this week, and his server ( http://www.sugoi.com.pe/ ) is down, so I can't email him... he said he was using his old hotmail account meanwhile, but I don't remember what that one was after all this time.

  7. Posted

    Just found this one-year old thread... and I must add something to it.

    Back then in 1987, a friend from school had somehow managed to get a copy of an 8-bit version of Gunship... yes, that's right. Don't ask me where it came from, he said he had gotten it from some friend of his. He didn't have any manuals, so he borrowed the C64's ones (I believe) from another friend and photocopied them. Later that year, as he was going to leave for Germany to get into college the next year, he offered to sell me the disk, but back then I didn't have a disk drive... I tried to convince my cousin-in-law, who had a 130XE, to buy it, but he wasn't interested enough. Later, around March 1988, I met another Atari 8-bit user and told him about it, but unfortunately, my schoolfriend had already left for Germany by then and we couldn't get in contact with him anymore...

     

    That day when I had taken my cousin-in-law to my friend's house, he demoed us the game, and I can tell you it wasn't Tomahawk, Super Huey or some other game... it was Gunship. The screen looked like this one from the C64 version, with what appeared to be P/M graphics used for the enemy helicopters...

     

    I've been trying to find anybody else who has seen this game ever since, to prove that I'm not crazy. It was one of the first things I looked for when I got access to the Internet around 1992...

     

    Also, a friend's manual for the ST version of Gunship also features instalaltion instructions for the XL/XE version, I consider that further proof that it existed at some point, maybe as unreleased prototypes only or something...

  9. Posted · Edited by machf

    OK, here's an empty keyboard layout, and a first attempt at labeling keycaps. With this layout there are not enough keys for ALT, `, and tilde.

     

    Point well taken with the Arrow Keys. I think that we may have to have the last wider keyboard, to properly accommodate all of the keys. Too bad, I rather liked the most recent... but we have to make this keyboard really usable.

     

    Next thing is key layout. ALT will be near delete. The Windows keys W1 & W2 will be moved.

     

    Suggestions on key placement?

    The right CTRL next to ALT and delete? That would make it the perfect Windows keyboard... ;)

     

    Wondering which Atari keys you're matching to which PC keys... (aside from the obvious ones, of course)

     

    OPTION, SELECT, START and HELP to the same Fn keys used by most emulators?

    The 1200XL's F1-F4 keys to the arrow keys?

    The Atari Logo/Inverse key to Num Lock? (Maybe not a good idea...)

     

     

    Anyway.. consider something like this to assign the proper character layout afterwards:

    http://www.kbdedit.com/

    http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx

    http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/

    http://www.klm32.com/index.html

     

    Basically, defining "Atari800" as a new "language" for keyboard layout...

  10. Posted

    I remember back then in the mid-80s, a friend from school had his IBM PCjr, which had that original wireless keyboard with calculator-like keys... and then IBM sent a decent keyboard to all the owners of the PCjr, I believe, so he had both. I'd take the old keyboard, point it at his PCjr while he was typing and start pressing random keys... that annoyed the hell out of him. Ah, those days... he sure was a real computer freak. Unfortunately, some years ago I found out through a college friend who worked at the same company that he had committed suicide, I don't know what could have driven him to do that (no silly jokes about me having annoyed him too much, please - that would be in really bad taste).

     

    As for mice, a couple of years ago I casually had connected both a serial mouse and a PS/2 one on a PC, and the pointer would respond to both. Never checked with USB ones, but I don't see why they shouldn't behave in the same way...

     

    Anyway, I think this is going towards turning desktop PCs into a modern version of the old mainframes (which had far less computing power than your average desktop PC from today, I guess) with several terminals attached... it wouldn't really be difficult for an OS to handle that. Linux already has multiple terminals since ages ago, it would be a matter of telling it to get data from a particular input device for each of them. Hmmm, multiplayer games on a single PC...

  11. Posted

    I still think an 83-key keyboard could do it...

     

    83keykbya8.th.png

     

    Even the CTRL key lies on the same place, and the + and - keys on the number pad are the same size as the CX-85's.

     

    About those ALT & WIndows keys... don't forget the right CTRL key too, if you're going with that 101-key-style layout there's still enough space for it next to them.

  14. Posted

    Just been thinking... tha metal tab protruding to the side at the back of the head "carriage" is what's used to determine the position of track 0, right? So if that's not in the right place, it would be a possible cause... however, I haven't touched it until after noticing the drive had those problems.

  18. Posted

    3M, I guess. Still have them after all these years. Also Maxell, and BASF, too, and a few IBM (with a yellow label), Have several Memorex, but those could get scratched easier. Last time I bought several boxes of a brand called Five Star at a ckearance saleseveral years ago, been using those since then (only 1 box so far) to copy things between the A8 and my PCs...

     

    I remember other people using those Precision ones (white slip with blue letters), I personally didn't trust them...

  19. Posted · Edited by machf

    It wasn't actually stored, it was right here on my desk all the time, where it's been for years, only I haven't been using it in the last two years or so. Right on top of the other one, and with an acrylic diskette storage box on top, at the edge of the desk. A 1050, with another storage box and an XG12 cassette rcorder on top next to it to the right, and then the VHS, DVD player and 800XL on top of them, further right in the middle of the desk, a joystick at the far right... the PC keybpard lies in front of the VHS, with a PC joystick to the left (in front of the 1050) and a mouse to the right (almost in front of the Atari joystick). The PC case lies on the floor, further left from the desk, with extension cords for the keyboard, mouse and monitor, so it isn't a likely source of interference or anything.

     

    Weird... I'm not giving up on it yet. Worst case, I can always try hitting it hard, works 99 times out of 100. ;)

     

    What I need now is an RPM checker, to verify that the drive is spinning at full speed. IIRC, there was some DOS with one built-in, I wonder if that would work even if the sectors can't be read...

    UPDATE: SmartDOS 6.1d was it, unfortunately the test didn't work with the drive... any other RPM checkers?

  20. Posted

    Nice. How about matching an 83-key keyboard design? Since even with the CX-85, the Atari is still several keys away from a 101/102-key one...

     

    Anyway, here's the layout of a US 101-key one:

    101keykbid1.th.png

     

    You'll notice that the key matrix actually is designed for 126 (possibly even 130), but not all are used, with some keys taking up the space corresponding to neighboring points in the matrix. As long as you can have a similar matrix with the Atari keyboard(s) regarding the number of rows and columns of the matrix (looks like 8 rows, 16 columns - so that means the matrix was designed for up to 128 keys; the A8s have an 8x8 matrix, plus additional keys), it doesn't really matter where each character is located - you can tell both Windows and DOS what keypresses correspond to which characters as if you were using a keyboard from a different language.

    kbdlogicqr7.th.png

  24. Posted · Edited by machf

    Looks like I spoke too soon... found my sector copiers, from what I can tell, sector 001 is partially read, but then it stops with an ERROR 144 code. I say "partially" because some data is being displayed... I'm trying to locate a program I wrote long ago to examine sectors of a disk.

     

    EDIT: found my program. Looks like it's reading garbage only...

  25. Posted · Edited by machf

    FYI, ERROR 163 is the same one I get when attempting to read a DD disk with the drive stuck in SD... or when I try to read the contents of an unformatted diskette... it's not an uncommon error with the XF551.

     

    The drive is reading the first sectors without problems, it's when it tries to read the VTOC and/or directory (sectors 360-368, halfway across the disk) that it fails. I might try a SpartaDOS disk instead and see what happens...

     

    UPDATE: with SpartaDOS, I get ERROR 139. With DOS XE, ERROR 144.

     

    UPDATE2: tried formatting a blank disk with MyDOS 4.5, kept getting ERROR 144 messages, tried SS/SD, SS/ED, SS/DD and DS/DD, all the same.

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