eegad

I was playing around in Altirra yesterday. I wanted to create a disk image with some Basic games on it that I wrote long ago, and had as .BAS files on my PC hard drive. I made a new .atr disk image, I wrote DOS files to it and then.....I went "hmmmmmm". Is there a way in Altirra to import a file into an .atr? If not is there some other utility out there that can do it??? And while on this topic, what options exist to turn atr files into real Atari disks? 15-20 years ago when I still had dial up service, I spent one weekend uploading files and game disk images to my PC to use with this "awesome new atari emulator thing" (I think it was the "rainbow" emulator). Of course now I have no more dial up, my PCs don't have modems anymore, everything is wifi or Ethernet. But I've downloaded a few atr's for the emulators through the years that I wouldn't mind having on my real 800XL. Any way to do that?

I started preparing way back in the late 80's. When I saw some mail order place having a warehouse clearance on XL stuff, I bought a new in box 800XL and 2 new in box 1050's. At the time I already had two 800XL's (1 with RamboXL) and two 1050's (both with USDoublers), and also an original 800 which a friend gave me when he moved to the ST. All the stuff that was being used in the 80's still works fine (and it still surprises me that the drives and old disks all work). And just this year I finally opened the new-in-box 800XL and one of the 1050's...figured I might as well see if they work while I'm still alive. They do. So I think I'm good. At least one system should outlive me.

Had this exchange with the wife... What are you doing, playing with your Atari 800? It's actually an 800XL. Whatever. What's the difference? The XL is a later model with more memory and some extra graphics modes. So what does the XL stand for? Ummmmm......extended.....hmmmmm.....uhhhhh.....I forget exactly. I felt kinda stupid, but here I am still puzzling about it. DID the XL actually stand for something, or is it just some nonsense that marketing made up?

I was just playing the Asteroids emulator on my 800xl and it made me wonder....would it be possible to do a 2600 emulator on the 8-bits? I know someone ported Adventure to the 8-bits a while back. Would a more generic emulator be possible?

In 1993 I broke down and bought a Macintosh IIsi. The Atari stuff got packed away in the closet, after having seen 12 years of daily use (first a 400, then an 800xl in 1984). (and then in 1999 I broke down and switched to WIndows, because there were just so many games I wanted to play )

Full set of Antic and Analog magazines, as well as about 30 games on cart, many non-Atari branded like Jumpman Jr, K-razy Antics, Wizard of Wor, etc etc. After getting dumps of all of them and putting them on a few disks with a little "menu loader" , I thought it was silly to keep them. Got rid of them for like $3 each. These days I wish I still had them.

I'd definitely put Bobterm and SpartaDOS on the list. Also there was a disk sector/file editor that I used to use all the time, but have no idea what it was called at this point.

Been listening to some of these interviews at random...very investing and informative. During the David Crane interview he mentioned something about Alan Miller insisting on having a way to turn off the OS in the 400/800 so that a game programmer could have complete control over the hardware without any overhead. Just wondering....did that really make it into the OS, and if so what is the "Al Miller bit" (memory location).....also are there any games that actually used this method?

Not much nostalgia for me for cassette data tapes. Okay, back in 1981 when I got my first computer (400 and 410, because I couldn't afford a disk drive), they served their purpose, and I filled up many many tapes, and bought several. But even back then I was like "oh come ON already!" when I waited for 10 minutes for Frogger to load from tape (and sometimes it would crap out 75% of the way through!), when just plugging in a PacMan cart was instant. Just recently cleaned out the attic and tossed some old Atari stuff that I'd never use again, including the 410 and all the tape software...as well as the XM-301 modem and some other useless stuff. I was SO glad to finally get a 1050 in '84-ish! Never missed the tapes. ....although I will admit that the SOUND of a loading Atari tape might still bring a smile to my face.

thanks so much for this! after 30 years i can finally play a couple of boards that i never was able to get to way back when! :-)

Were there ever any games released for the Atari 8-bits that were similar in gameplay to Legend of Zelda?

I think it's great that you guys are making some new levels for Jumpman! I LOVED this game back in the day. I think because it was kind of "plain" looking, and didn't have any cool background music playing throughout, that it didn't get the love it deserved. But as far as the old style platforming type games, it was one of the best to play, in my opinion. Mostly because it was somewhat forgiving, and fair....you didn't always have to hit the platform pixel-perfect. If you landed near the edge, Jumpman would just smoothly walk up onto the girder. Great game. Haven't played it lately, but I'd like to throw out one request/suggestion. Any chance you could hack a version where you could select the starting level? From what I recall, you could choose beginner, which starts on level 1, intermediate which starts on level (9?), or expert which starts on level (20-ish?). I always wanted to just be able to select whichever level I wanted to play (and I hang my head in shame if there was always a way to do this, but I never figured it out!).

Cleaning out some stuff in the attic. Since I haven't done any programming on my 800xl in a long long time, I figured I'd get rid of some of my Atari books : De Re Atari Computes First Book of Atari Computes Second Books of Atari The Atari Assembler Atari Basic Basic Reference Manual Disk Operating System II Reference Manual Asking $30 for the lot. Private message if interested. US shipping addresses only please.

Haven't played it in many years, but I recall the 8-bit ET being pretty decent. Kinda forgot about it...might have to sit down and check it out again over the weekend.

Off and on. Will play an assortment of games for a couple hours here and there over the course of a few weeks. Then won't touch it again for many months. Then I start thinking about a game or two, or see a reference in a movie or something, and....back to playing with it for a week or two. Other than my Lionel trains at Christmas, the Atari is the only childhood toy that I still like to play with 30 years later.

I used to have the entire WaterWorld set, but a few years ago I sold the box to one member here, and the t-shirt to another. I've still got the cart, comic, instructions, hint guide and poster thing (which I think used to have the entry form attached, right? that I of course mailed in years ago). All are in good, clean condition...not I assume what a collector would define as "mint", but I'd say "very good". Anyway, if you'd like to make an offer on anything...just the comic by itself, or all of the paper items, or the whole bunch of it along with the cart....send me a private message and let me know. The cart itself is the only thing that I might want to hang on to.

Just stumbled on this Adventure 2600 port today. Truly awesome. Blows my mind how you could do it in such a short period of time. I can see how the bulk of the game logic is fairly straightforward, and mapping locations of control inputs, etc. But I can't even imagine how to convert a 2600 display kernel (I know you gave some explanation, but since I haven't done any 800/xl/xe assembly programming since the late 80's, it just went over my head) Anyway, thanks for the port of my favorite 2600 game! And if you're ever bored one day and would like to port Phoenix 2600...... :-)

Thanks for the info. Back in the 80's I used 2 different 800xl's. An unmodified one that I got in early '85 to replace my 400, and then another in '87 with a 256k upgrade installed. Somewhere around '88 (I think) one of the mail-order places had a "warehouse clearance" where they were selling leftover 800xl's for around $40.....so I bought one and packed it away, unopened. For the past 8-10 years, I occasionally take out the old 800xl, play some games for a few days or weeks, then pack it away again for a year. Recently I got to thinking "hey, I still have that sealed 800xl...maybe I should actually open it and see if it even works!". So that's the one I took out and was playing with this past week. But it seemed to look a little different and the keyboard felt more mushy...thought maybe it was just that it was a "brand new" machine. But no, today I put the 3 machines side by side. The 2 machines that I used heavily from '85 to '91 both have the Type 1 keyboards, and I always liked them. This "new" machine has a Type 4 keyboard. Nope, don't like it as much...the Type 1 has a nicer feel.

My own experience was that myself and a large portion of my friends got computers in the '82, '83 time period. About half of us went Atari 400/800. So when the console crash came around we didn't really much notice or care because by then none of us were using our 2600s, intellivisions, and colecovisions.....we were tinkering with our computers, learning programming and trading games on them.

Just going to add my voice to this topic to say that I'd also love to see a joystick hack for crossbow. Always liked the game a lot and can't play the 8bit version anymore.....not because I don't have a light gun - I still do, but unfortunately light guns do not work with modern day flat screens.

Personally, I'd most like to see a good Galaga clone made for XL/XE. I've always thought it odd that one of the most classic, basic arcade games from the early 80's never got a conversion. (and I'd also really like to see Phoenix and Astro Fighter. Always annoyed me back in the day that the 2600 got Phoenix, but Atari's computers didn't).

Currently have 4. My original light sixer that I got for my birthday back in 1980, a heavy sixer that I won on a bet with a friend in 1986 when the Mets won the World Series, a 2nd heavy sixer that I got off ebay a few years ago, and a 4-switch woody that I also got on ebay because I wanted the cartridge lot that came with it. About 20 years ago I also got a Junior that a co-worker gave away when he was cleaning out his garage.....but I ended up throwing it in the trash when I moved 12 years ago (kinda wish now that I had kept it, but oh well).

Waterworld, and the silver label version of Gravitar. My other carts are pretty much all very common...I never went in search of rarer titles or wanted to spend much money on carts, but via AtariClub back in the day I managed to snag Waterworld and Gravitar. Have the box and manual for Gravitar. Have the manual, comic and entry form for Waterworld (I sold the box and t-shirt to somebody here a few years back).

When it came out, I thought it was great! But in later years, it just ended up being such a repetitive type game that you could just play forever. Bamm-Bammm----Bam! And on and on. Once you go the pattern down, you'd never lose. Cool initially, but no long term play.

Hmmm. Good question. I was in high school then, and had Atari. Friends were split between Atari and Intellivision at that time. BUT.....it was right around that time (1982/1983) that a lot of us started moving towards home computers, and away from the consoles. I went Atari (400...then 800xl). Some friends did too...one or two went C64. So when things started to collapse on the consoles, I think we kind of noticed....in that fewer new games were coming out, and there were lots of $4.99 games in bins at Kay-Bee and other stores. But we didn't actually care about it, because we were all looking forward to the new games being released on the computers. By then, the consoles were an afterthought. Like, yeah I might want this one game, but whatever...I'd rather be playing the next Infocom adventure on the computer.