Laemeur

Hmm. Maybe I'm crazy, but I actually really enjoy Atari's Galaxian port. Nice work on the conversion, xxl. This version's definitely got more bite than the Atari version.

Clicked the link, looked at the picture, said (without thinking) to myself "man, that's a sharp-lookin' system!"... ...then rolled my eyes at my own crappy pun.

Holy smokes, I didn't know such a thing existed. That beats the pants off the ol' Atari Touch Tablet. Needs three ports, though? Gah! No hi-res tablet for the XL crowd, then.

Thanks for the replies, guys. Shortly after I posted this I found Matthias Jaap's site which has a fairly comprehensive list of paint apps, and they're even sorted into color, monochrome, and color/mono. Very handy! The only problem now is locating some of these apps.

Does anyone know of any paint apps besides Degas and PrismPaint that ran in the ST's monochrome mode? I think I checked all the programs at the Dead Hackers Society page, but their focus is clearly on color paint apps, so I guessed there might be one or two that they haven't listed.

Very cool demo. I get a good result with delay around 2F, and duration around 14. That's on an NTSC XL hooked-up to a Commodore 1702. There are a lot of tunings where the vertical gradation is good, but the horizontal and vertical spaces in the line segments look best (so far) around that area.

Hmm. That's what I was starting to suspect. Thanks very much for the comprehensive answer. I really appreciate it.

Is it possible to get the RESET key on the XL series computers to do anything other than reset the system? Trying to change the interrupt routine vectors at $E474 and $E477 with POKEs is apparently not possible. Can I get around that with ML, or am I just approaching this from the wrong direction entirely?

Wow, thanks so much for this thread, guys! I knew there had to be a bunch of good shooters on the A8, but it was becoming a bit of a chore locating them the hard way. This helps immensely!

That's a great little machine you've spec'd out, there. Totally irrelevant to the thread, but it's a great little machine.

I decided to go ahead and spring for a Commodore 1702 from the 'Bay. For those of you who are interested, the vendor from which I'm buying mine still has two for sale, and they're letting them go for a $59.99 ButItNow with free shipping. Seemed like a darned good deal to me. Linkage: Monitor #1 Monitor #2

Yeah, there's one world, I think in the fourth set of planets, where your scanner is jammed the entire time. It's probably not that bad if you rush in, get the required pods, and leave, but I was trying to totally wipe out everything on the planets, so I was hanging around that place for a quarter hour or something, with her telling me my scanner was jammed every 45 seconds.

Thank you, sir. Y'know, I never finished the game when I was a kid, and I probably wouldn't have revisited it in any serious way without this little competition. It makes me glad this site exists, and, even though I liked Cybermorph when it came out, I now have an even greater appreciation for the game. It's been said before in this thread and others, but I think it's a very good thing that somebody is appreciating this stuff, especially since the sun was allowed so set on the Jag and it's library so early, and with so little ceremony in its prime years. But, if I have to heard that broad say "your scanner is jammed" one more time... Ugh. To the moon, Alice!

You can find many overlays here on AtariAge. Check it out Yup, I found that on here last night, just before I started my second attempt. I didn't even finish the game. I had, I think, four planets left. Got to the one that's basically a loooong canyon, got sloppy, and lost my last three ships on spike traps in the space of about eight seconds. Oh well.

Ugh. I'm a moron. I played for a couple of hours last night, paused the game, and went to bed. Today, I got back at it and after a few more hours I was on the third set of planets with a score somewhere around 650,000. I say to myself, "gosh, I don't remember which key on the keypad triggers the Thunderquake (I lost the overlay for Cybermorph back in, like, 1996) -- is it THIS?" At which time my thumbs, acting entirely of their own accord, reach down and press # and * simultaneously and reset the system. I'll try this again in another day or two.

Funny you should mention that. I was just watching the Jackie Chan classic, Police Story, and noticed this in the scene when the crime boss is having his "computer data" stolen: Is that an 800XL I see?

I was just looking at pictures of that thing yesterday, and thinking there ought to be more wood sides in computerdom. The analog synth guys can't have all the fun.

Some of Sony's MSX computers are pure eye-candy for me: Sony HB-101 Sony HB-F1XD I'll also tip my hat to the TI-99/4a for being so gorgeous. My neighbor had one when I was a kid and I thought it looked way snazzier than my 400.

Latest thing I've received is an Atari Touch Tablet, NIB. It works pretty well but has a few, uh, dead pixels, I guess you'd call them, where it doesn't track. In AtariArtist it's not a huge problem, you just don't get that pixel painted, but in Technicolor Dream, when you hit a dead spot in the pad with the button pressed, the software thinks you just rocketed the stylus to the upper-right corner and it plots a straight line from there to the last tracked location. Severely irritating, that. And a couple nights ago, I purchased a 1050 disk drive, but that hasn't arrived yet.

Oh, wow; that mod is a piece of cake (the 100k resistor off R67,R68, to the monitor cable port, right?). I'll do that, then, and start looking for a monitor with either S-Video, or Y/C connectors. I'd prefer to get a monitor that is of roughly the same vintage as the computer. Anybody have suggestions regarding which brands seem to have weathered the years best?

I've got my 800XL going through sort-of a crummy old Sylvania TV at the moment and I've decided an upgrade is in order. I want to get a small CRT monitor for it, and I've been looking around eBay at composite monitors, trying to decide which way to go. Is a composite monitor aimed at the computer market, like an old Commodore monitor, going to perform more favorably with the Atari than, say, a Sony PVM-something, which was aimed primarily at the broadcast market? Or is a good composite monitor just a good composite monitor, regardless of its target consumer?

Nice work! It looks, and sounds awesome.

Can anyone recommend a good electronics DIY-type message board where I could maybe get some help with not-necessarily-gaming-related hardware modifications and things of that nature. For example, I'm currently trying to see if I can get a composite input added into an old Sony Watchman, and having limited success. Thanks.

That's my optimistic assessment as well. I knew that playing with the chips while the power was on was a stupid idea, and I really couldn't tell you what possessed me to do it. At least as far as static goes, I'm pretty mindful of that sort of thing (I used to build PCs for a couple of years). Thanks for the input. It's much appreciated.

She boots! I was just monkeying around, popping chips in and out of their sockets, and to my delight, BASIC finally came up when I threw on the power. On top of that, I realize that the whole chip-seating fiasco was probably totally unnecessary since the rather obvious presence of a variable resistor right below the memory chips finally made itself known to me. A few tweaks with the screwdriver and the video color seems to have stabilized. I'm guessing there's still something not-quite-right about the whole situation, though, since that varistor certainly isn't what kept the system from booting. I suspect that one of those memory chips may be a bit dicey. Any second opinions?