Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

ivop

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    2,271

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

Posts posted by ivop

  1. Posted

    I have considered designing a new motherboard, too. Could be a fun hobby project. I decided against doing it all at once though, mainly because of the cost and the increased possibility of failure. I have never designed such a huge project. Instead I decided to replace parts piece by piece until nothing original is left, except for Sally/Pokey/Antic/GTIA and perhaps PIA. This will let me design small confined parts at a time and I get to learn the various tools. Currently I am designing a completely new video-out circuit from scratch. Revision 1 worked remarkably well and I am currently testing revision 2 (basically less parts, simpler design). The last step will be adding proper delay lines to center the image better and possibly luma scaled chroma, i.e. lower chroma amplitude for darker colors and $x0 is almost black. This will be switchable though, so one can choose to have old-style colors too. Maybe I'll make it software selectable, too, so one can mix both modes. I'll blog about this whole effort shortly.

  3. Posted

    Btw... my first reaction was: OH MY G*D ... The Gatekeeper is Alive!

     

    :) Yes, I used to go by that moniker. About six months ago I started using my Atari again. I even started a blog here on AtariAge. I did some programming again, although have not released anything yet and currently I am experimenting with some hardware modifications.

     

    BTW to stay on topic (sort of), I recently bought a 600 XL on a retro-fair (I always wanted one back in the day because of the small footprint) and when I got home and opened it up, I was pleasantly surprised it was already fitted with 64 kB :)

  4. Posted

    One word of advice: if you're doing the mod that involves removing the RF modulator, you'll probably need desoldering braid *and* a vacuum pump... and lots of patience. The RFM acts like a giant heatsink, so it takes forever to get the solder joints hot enough to actually melt the giant blobs of solder.

     

    There's a trick I use to desolder such blobs of solder. First, resolder the joint with fresh solder and flux. The new and old solder will mix and after that it's a piece of cake to remove with some solder wick.

  7. Posted

    I received this one today and both my stock PAL 600XL and stock PAL 800XL do not work properly (the 600XL a little better though, it sometimes gives a static image). The device is working though, because I get a very clear picture when I connect it to my DVD-player. Not sure what the problem is yet. I think the signal coming from the Atari is too strong. If I pull the CVBS signal down through a small resistor, I get an image everytime I dis/reconnect it. Perhaps I'm going to try running it through an old VCR first and if that works, I'll try the SuperVideo upgrade.

     

    The above post was not editable anymore. Update: I tried the VCR method and that did not work either. Switching to the VCR's menu gives a nice sharp image, but when I switch back to the Atari signal, it shows a static picture with a ghost image through it. It probably tries to deinterlace the signal but fails to sync on the second field. After that, it completely gives up and doesn't update the output anymore. BTW My stock PAL SNES doesn't work either.

  8. Posted

    I just picked up one of these:

     

    http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.17894

     

    and have no complaints to date. Tried a few 800xls and an 800; looking at the 800xls reminds me that I need to do the SVideo upgrade...

     

    I received this one today and both my stock PAL 600XL and stock PAL 800XL do not work properly (the 600XL a little better though, it sometimes gives a static image). The device is working though, because I get a very clear picture when I connect it to my DVD-player. Not sure what the problem is yet. I think the signal coming from the Atari is too strong. If I pull the CVBS signal down through a small resistor, I get an image everytime I dis/reconnect it. Perhaps I'm going to try running it through an old VCR first and if that works, I'll try the SuperVideo upgrade.

  9. Posted · Edited by ivop

    I know what you mean but I don't think you can actually say that generally speaking of the SID as I doubt very much most of you have heard all tunes from say the 5 most successful SID composers as ALL their music sounds like it is coming from a completely different sound chip. Like Martin Galway and his early 80s electronica and even his perfect reproduction of an electric guitar without samples, to the trip-hop break beat style tunes of Hubbard percussion sounds to the dance-trance style of Matt Grey.

     

    Pokey does however sound almost identical on pretty much every game I have played. It has that annoying steel drum being hit by chewing gum main waveform that get's boring being prevalent on EVERY tune's harmony I listen to.

     

    This to me indicates a lack of diversity anything like the theoretical assumptions without any aural proof I am being asked to accept.

     

    I wanted to stay out of this thread, but anyway, IMHO each chip has its charms and limitations. 9 out of 10 Sid tunes have the same whining synth sound, 9 out of 10 Pokey songs sound partly out of tune, et cetera. If I listen to one of the chiptune radiostations online, I turn it into a game to guess what chip I'm hearing. 90% of the time I'm right. Pokey, Sid, 2A03, YM2149. There are good tunes for each of them.

  10. Posted

    I'd like to finish my own version of Tetris, called Quatrix. I used both P/M and ANTIC 4 text mode together to obtain enought colors and a nice 3D effect (shines and shadows).

     

    Funny you say this. I was just thinking about how I would do it if I were to make my own version of Tetris and it would be just that. Two rows of two layers of quad size players on top of Antic mode 4. This also allows more detailed graphics at the left and right sides of the 'bin'.

     

    --Ivo

  11. Posted

    Stackpole keyboard (type 2)

     

    SCCO C061983 REV 3A

    3048340

     

    post-3606-1240174230_thumb.jpg

     

    Comments: Like above but with untextured keys.

     

    Did you notice that this is the only keyboard that has the white part of the inverse key in the lower right corner? Only one of my 800XL's has that too. I always thought I had just put it back wrongly after cleaning the keyboard. Perhaps the same happened here?

  13. Posted

    I recently backed up about 600 double sided floppies that were bought and written to between 1987 and 1994. Of those ~1200 sides, 38 had one or more bad sectors. Unexpectedly the older ones bought in 1987/1988 (the lower numbers of my collection, which were all brand names) had less bad sectors than those bought more recently (mostly el-cheapo floppies).

     

    --Ivo

  14. Posted

    http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com/Vint...ce%20Manual.pdf

     

    Not too bad. This is something is just happened to stumble upon a while back. For some reason it's protected so you'll have to do a little work to print it out, if that's what you want.

     

    http://web.archive.org/web/20021001191411/....8bit.Homepage/

     

    I probably should get my old site back online somewhere again and update it a little ;) Mosaic. Lol, those were the days!

     

    --Ivo

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...