_The Doctor__
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Content Count
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Joined
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Days Won
3
Posts posted by _The Doctor__
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This is for the XE computers.
It is best not to rub the mylar's traces, that oxidation protects what is left of the traces, if you clean them all it exposes fresh
materials to oxidize causing the whole thing to repeat. As was evidenced, new old stock mylar did not correct the problem.
The amount of resistance to decrease in this case looks to be quite minimal as the keys are at the borderline.
A target combination equal to 220 ohm should be safe.
Do not disturb the 47k resistor (yellowvioletorange) or the diode above it.
1.2k ohm (brownredorange) in parallel with the existing 270 ohm resistor should get you down to 220 ohms.
1.1k and you get 216. You can nudge it down to 1k and get 212 and so on. only use what gets the job done...
if you cleaned the mylar off go one step below what first gets the keyboard working, that will ensure that it keeps working
after the next round of oxidation is complete.
There you have it.
some formulas for calculating resistance in parallel are
Combined resistance of two resistors in parallel: R=[u]R1×R2[/u] R1+R2 For more than two resistors connected in parallel a more difficult equation must be used. Add up the reciprocal(one-over) of each resistance to give the reciprocal of the combined resistance Rtotal:[u] [/u] [u]1[/u] = [u]1 + 1 + 1 + [/u]... R R1 R2 R3 ... The simpler equation for two resistors in parallel is much easier to use! -
I all use to reside on the Parallel Dimension, Starship, Starfleet, ACUTE, and closer to home, and CSS BBS's.
Now it is only coming from what is left of my memory. I use to Doctor quite a few eight bits for free back in the days of plenty, it kept us very busy. I recently had contact with GTO 'The Tyrant' about the old boards, he has assured me some of it is still in boxes but his life is about the kids, wife, job, and cars now. My3.5 inch backups failed. The full height seacrate ate itself.....
The resistor value if you piggy back/parallel them needs to be somewhat high to prevent taking the resistance to low. Only take it as low as it needs to function. I used a decade resistance box to custom tailor each one. But a one size fits almost all value was in the dox at the time. I simply do not recall the value and apologize for my failing grey matter.
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I have hope...
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it is worth the effort, I have discovered on all of my XL's that the r58 to c55 mod should NOT be done, the rest of the mod is awesome with the full set of tweaks. I suggest the modification of c53 to make the correct artifact colors when using composite cable or rf for games like choplifter or jingledisk etc. this also makes for an even clearer image when using composite and or luma chroma as well. I soldered the cap in parallel with c53 using a preset value of my own choosing. Others had told me they are using a variable capacitor here to dial in the artifact color more precisely and keep from adding the XE like lines to the screen.
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Your not the only ones, so at least 3 people have experienced this 'feature' give v61 a heads up. Maybe they can fix the 'feature' and make this cartridge game the same price as xenophobe. That would be fair.
Hi.Today I was playing the game again, from the beginning.
For some reason I was not doing a very well job, so at one point I only had one life left.
Then I entered bonus game... succeeded, and played the level I entered after the bonus game.
Suddenly I had 66 lifes left.
I can not reproduce what happened, but this is strange eh?
Marius
Same happend to me, I can not determine exactly when it happend, but same result - 66 lifes left...
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The mylar on some keyboards simply have to high resistance thru the traces, there is a bank of resistors above j8 attached to the keyboard connector, you can use 'slightly' lower value resistors in this bank and your 130XE will not be troubled by this again. I can't believe the number of wasted keyboards and mylars that have occurred over the years as this fix was implemented and published in the user group bbs forums shortly after the XE line was introduced. dirt cheap and works forever.
Hi all,I've been getting my 8bits back in operation and run into some troubles with keyboards. I first dug out my 130XE and hooked it up, both 1050's work fine but the keyboard was getting flakey some keys weren't working like 1, 2, Q and some others that were not grouped together. I replaced the mylar with one I got from best and it improved marginally, more keys are working except HELP, SELECT, START, OPTION aren't working so well, SELECT & OPTION being the worst off. Suddenly this week a 65XE I found at a flea market started doing the same thing, at the exact same time! well I tried cleaning the contacts where the mylars connect to the mainboard on the 65XE and the 600XL with no difference. I've spent hours on the 130XE with the new keyboard mylar also with no luck there. The new mylar is not scratched up and has no damage to the traces, that for one seems like a mystery. I can't think of any logical reason for it not to work. Btw, I have tried connecting some of the pins on the keyboard connector with a short while (after following which connected together for certain keys) and I did determine the computer itself (130XE as its my main 8bit) so I know the problem is in the keyboard itself. Is there any advice from the hardware people here I might try?
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yep, here it is
http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...t&id=117330
Does anyone here have an Express cart? -
Glad you got it, it uses a slight electrical field to detect the pen. A superior product. It was available before 1980. As I no longer have an 800 it is nice to see the old device back in use. It put all other products to shame at the time it was new. Nothing touched this tablet for detailed work. Superdraw is a real product as well. This was a commercial product, as many like to brand things as prototypes or vaporware or products accidentally listed for the Atari. When you look at some of the 1982 Mack truck products including tracked vehicle transport trailers, the Atari and this device helped get the job done. In fact one of the designers got me hooked on the Atari. His name was Dale, this fellow went out of his way to show me what a computer user group was. Sadly the division eventually got moved to Mexico. But that is another story. Also be aware that the Atari also used paper tape and card readers at one time. Those items went unsold on ebay about 3 years ago. To see you actually using it and not sticking it on the shelf or trying to roll it over for huge profits restores my faith and happiness in people. I refuse to deal with 'collectors only or resellers like ss4u' This stuff is meant to be enjoyed. Now let em know how incredibly cheap you got it for!
I am thinking of letting a Falcon030 go soon. Is there any interest in the old bird of prey these days? also look around on the disks you got with it, you should be able to use them to get the tablet to work with software of your own design.
I just purchased one of these on eBay - amazing device! As long as you draw fairly slowly, it reproduces your image quite faithfully.The package (which appears to be brand new) came with the tablet, attached pen, power supply and a cable that connects to 3 of the 800's joystick ports. As well several manuals (which go into the inner workings of the device in great detail) It also comes with a disk labeled "Kurta Demo Disk" which contains two BASIC programs - they appear to provide the same functionality, but one is obviously an earlier, less capable version. Applications include a simple drawing program (pictured), a positional tracking system, a tone generator and an area calculator. Interestingly enough the manual is dated December 1980 - quite a sophisticated device for that early in the Atari's life.
As you can see, the tablet surface takes an 8.5 x 11 inch page and the stylus itself is tipped with a ball point pen. The tablet recognizes hover, tap and draw actions.
The manual makes mention of an application called "Superdraw" - Does anyone have a copy?
It really puts all other tablets for the Atari to shame!
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Whenever Atari coders make something good or better than what was available on the c=64 the statement is ... you can't compare what people code today vs what they coded then.... I submit you can since it is still the same hardware. It is simply being used more to it's potential. If a person can not handle that then it is their character flaw or failing. The fact is that Atari based computers , coders, and hackers continue to produce better products than what was available for the commodore then and in an increasing number what is available for them now. The most venerable line of computers from the 8 bit era is has and always will be the Jay Miner associated machines.
That being said, it would seem that when the Atari platform starts seeing better software, hardware, and disk operating systems in development, the whole commodore campaign begins again. The onslaught of complaints and discouragement flood the forums and developers mailboxes in an effort to end the projects. This had played out time and time again. I suggest that we spend our time on our projects and set our efforts to make a better version of anything the C crowd has been going on about. That puts an end to it. I for one know that the Atari's flexibility is why it was used in the Movie and television industry firsthand. Never saw a C= 8 bit machine doing any work horse tasks save being a prop. The later on Amiga was a Jay Miner machine, is it's own entity, it continued on after Commodore was long since dead. I love the pokey Amiga mod. showing off the pokey hardware driven by the AMI, it shows the 8 bit hardware being pumped!
Time and time again I am seeing new devices and new software that puts anything I had on my old commodore to shame.
I recently dug out my old commodore equipment to view some of the cited posting on real equipment on both machines. Guess which machines are back in boxes? In fact I kinda am glad for one thing. My son and daughter BOTH are now using the old 8-bit Atari machines. Seems the commodore did not get their interest. The kids had full access to lemon64 etc. and fandal etc. Which machine was my son able to get his honors science project done on? The Atari helped him to an A+ and to be inducted into the National Junior Honor Society of Secondary Schools. My daughter did the same thing. Both of them felt the Atari was better. Both were able to use the machines to a good purpose.
You can speak of ambiguous, non tangible debates all you want. In the real world I can observe the results on the screen, from speakers, and on paper.
The Atari's flexible i/o structure and architecture is making it a viable platform even today.
The Atari was used to do real time monitoring of 64 precisely calculated saline solutions providing graphic as well as hard data to define temperature gradients within fluids over time. We were unable to get the commodore to do this. We were able to get the Atari to do it.
As far as games go, again. during the last two parties had at our house, everyone was at the Atari 8-bits, one or two messed with the c64 and soon joined all the others at the Atari. Which do you think I believe is better?
Quibble for an Eternity, but the current Atari software and devices are leaps and bounds beyond what I am seeing for the C64/128. My hats off to the Atari, Sparta Dos project, Atarimax, sio2sd, and the myriad of coders who are taking this machine one step further!. I asked for advice from the commodore crowd and all I got was, we're better! It can do it! This or that machine is a poor choice. When I asked Atari users they gave help, suggestions, and software/hardware solutions that simply worked.
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Hey!
Why discourage? The fact that someone was/is learning is wonderful. Many of the greats as you call them had stuff much like this when they started out. When you read what they wrote in their personal blogs, you see the one day I finally saw/got/discovered this and this is what happened ever since. Insert immortal title here, I the result blah blah blah.
I am happy to receive the NTSC version of your game and thank you for your efforts!
_The Doc__
This time I present a version of a game by Crake soft cloth, The Domain of the Undead. The Domain is the famous nickname of the Undead cemetery, for which it was best known by. The modification was to increase soft lint make the lives of 5 to 10 and change the frequency of PAL to NTSC. This version is slightly improved
I hope you enjoy this game ... ... I forgot to thank the colleague Fekero to facilitate the 5 ¼ floppy disk with this game.
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lol, I was looking for where these things are addressed to or at dragos specifically, and could not find it... seems he must feel as though things are directed squarely at him, I wonder why that is?
I think it is quite clear that the nay Sayers were wrong, end of story. I do find the continued name calling after having lost the whole conspiracy/crook/scam arguments quite entertaining though as my children do that sort of thing after they end a board game and the one who lost goes on while adding what they feel are qualifying conditions to continue their arguments. Since we can't send them to their rooms I think simply ignoring them will suffice. Eventually they'll go away.
I can assume one of two things from your post regarding the alleged "flame-fest".1. you are a moron on not worthy of anyone considering your ponderous remarks
or
2. your reading comprehension is around 2nd grade level.
First, everything I posted was a valid question to be asking 6 months after the fact.
I get that it is a small operation, I get that Curt has real health issues. I get that this is a niche product.
What I do not get is the rampant campaign to keep the nasty side of this thread alive. Almost all of the posters here have such blinders on when it comes to discussing this, that there is no discussion. Do I have a reputation for stirring the pot, you bet, morons bring out the worst in me.
Curt and I had civilized private messages regarding the status, and that was posted as satisfactory. Still the attacks come.
For the record I am involved in "niche hardware project" much more complicated than a Joystick (no offense Curt) I'll be happy to post the pics of the boards here once we receive them from the fab. I know what it takes to get this kind of a project from start to finish. I know what a hassle it is to have to plan for every contingency. The only difference besides time frame, is that I communicate with our customers on a regular basis. I understand there were extenuating circumstances this time, but, and I have said this a million times, trusting the word of some random peoples assurances on a message board is foolhardy to say the least.
For the record, I could not possibly be one of these people you found out about on message boards, as I am primarily a Mac user, promote BSD based firewalls and make a hell of a living supporting customers "wintel" systems (apparently if you use windows, somehow, in your mind, that makes you opinions less valid)
Perhaps you should start a fortune telling site, you seem to have a knack for processing the truth into fantasy...
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I took it upon myself to try and figure out what the actual cause of this never ending flame fest is... The fellows that are so unhappy are primarily commodore, win/tel only fans(with one exception that likes *nix). As evidenced by their heavy presence on related sites. It would appear that the whole thing is fueled by more than one agenda. As such perhaps they should send the joysticks to some one who wants and will be happy with them. Then they should go back to their favorite sites pat each other on the back and see who in their community can supply them with the same equipment. Everyone will be happy. It makes one mindful that the core tenants of Atari users helping one another and making viable products available to the community is still here. I always will be an Atari 8, Falcon/TT, Amiga supporter. The C=64/win/tel only crowd has always IMHO been very judgmental and hard on anything not geared towards their preference specifically. Thank God for open source, open minds, the Atari community, and the people who make it all happen!
Curt don't let anyone get you upset, you know your doing more of the right things these days and that is all that matters! May others become so fortunate!
The Doc
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Every attempt to satisfy you has been met with more aggression, you were told why things happened and you clearly expressed disbelief and had a tantrum. Then you got friends to come and do the same.
You cried scam and crook and were advised what was true and told how to verify it... you did neither and continued to argue and complain and eluded to all manner of impropriety.
When you keep committing the same actions expecting a different result it is by definition insanity so we told you about a different method of communication (telephone) so that you might get a different result.
also not received well....
It would seem that whatever form of info is given there is a flame like response....
I have no doubt had you received the detachable version and inadvertently yanked it out you would be screaming about it and going on and on and on and on.
No matter what you will be unhappy. No matter how you are told you take offense. No matter what you receive you are discontent. It has always been simple... cancle or return... but you couldn't do that either. It is obvious to all you are not here to do anything but cause dissension and dismay....
moderator please take action, anyone wish to second this motion?
I was only trying to say that flaming them on this thread is not a good way to make friends or handle customer service concerns.Might I inquire as to what it is that I said that you consider "flaming"? It appears that expressing any form of dissent is interpreted as flaming in what is beginning to appear to be a cult of personality.
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If it were detailed in the sales pitch at metalguy just stated I think a heck of alot more of these would have sold!
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ik+ always dies on my ntsc 130XE
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You just made my child very very happy,
You have also earned the gratitude of a father!
Can I inquire if this is from you personal collection or if there is some repository I could go to and find such images in the future?
Well,here is the disk... -Andreas Koch.
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The color mask and phosphor doesn't have anything to do with how RGB color is derived within a television circuit. The TV generates an analog signal for the 3 color guns. It doesn't care about where the phosphors are or what their resolution is. That is all handled by the mask in the picture tube. It would be just about impossible to aim the guns accurately enough to hit any particular phosphor dot reliably.Artifacting works because alternating on-off pixels on the NTSC Atari creates a waveform with the same frequency as the color carrier. The TV will then interpret this as color by examining the phase and level of the signal in relation to the colorburst. The 7800 has a feature where the colorburst can be disabled so high-resolution graphics won't produce anything but black & while.
The artifact colors produced on various models is determined by the relative propagation delays of the luma and chroma circuits because the colorburst comes from chroma, and our 'fake' artifact color signal comes from luma. If you look at the schematics, the luma circuit is very similar from model to model but the chroma circuit was revised several times.
That is kinda the point. On the crt so long as the guns hit 3 phosphors of different color we get what we want, the grouping, alignment and size of the three guns are the same no matter what, the order of the phospor must repeat sequence but so long as alignment of the gun group remain constant it does not matter if it hits an exact spot on the screen, since three different colored phosphors are always hit. Controlling color on an lcd is an entirely different can of worms. It allows pixel specific control down to the element(phospor) level.
All the circuitry is pretty much variations on the same theme, but truly digital control at some point is occurring on lcd or similar output matrices. That distinction was made in the former post. maybe I needed to state crt vs lcd/digital more clearly.
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I like how people watermark scans and images as if they own the rights to the stuff in the first place. I can't even go on with this one. But typical. If it appeared on televison in the newspaper, or other open forum displays in public.... I can't do it... Just look up fair use and the like please. It is all fine until someone lays claim to the work, tries to make money off it, or watermarks it.... then your in trouble and it all begins. Share and share alike... claim it and you pay. I suggest sharing....
Rhod,Atari Explorer will be back on 17th - I'd appreciate if you credit the caption graphics on your website, as they are from Atari Explorer! (It's only courtesy to ask
)Karl
I find it ironic that the caretaker of an offline website that is conspicuously barren of attribution would complain that another might have used an image or images without showing the courtesy of asking for permission or crediting the original pilferer. Does Alan Alda know you are using his image? If you really want to protect your images the images on your site, you should watermark them yourself like these guys did (yeah, i linked to a site that cached your offline site without permission without permission).
If everyone in the atari community protected their property, there would be no atari community.
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Still, the resultant is because of the luma changes generating high frequencies though. If the same tie had something like thin blue/green stripes of roughly equal luma, you wouldn't get the same effect.In order to artifact color you have to have a lack at least one of the phosphers lit and one at least one phosper signifigantly lacking intensity or off, this is the whole principle for producing color on any tv, that is why they all use red green and blue. all on is white all off is black. vary the intensity of any one gun and you get colors and tints. they all rely on the distance from the phosphers to give the illusion all the other colors are there. None have bothered to us optics to combine all 3 into a single point save some experimental projection tv's. In order for single point color to work the picture would have to be digitally encoded an pixel point perfect. This is only now starting to be possible with matrixed screens. Old tv relied on the human eye blending the colors at a distance and in a sense we correct the colors we see when the grouping shifts slightly
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almost all of the original Atari protos and games were paid directly and the Idea of a royalty for games did not really exist.... in fact any attemp at such thing usually failed. It was simpler game back then, You made it you got paid. I bought it I did what I wanted with it. Almost anything that got licensed was a fixed amount as well, with clauses for sequels or renewal. The idea that anyone is loosing anything at all is a farce. And anyone I ever contacted about this has always said the same thing. I got paid for what I did. End of story do what you want with it. Or conversely, I never got a dime cause they went out of business, wow can I get a copy it work, I can't believe someone actually had this. Or sometimes, I have this more complete version. Not once had anybody ever said I am going to sue you, take every thing you own. Burn everything that software touched. The only people who seem to have a problem are those trying to make money off the protos or those who infringe on the name of some movie or game and then go on vendetta and spout off about the money they might loose on the non licensed possibly permission given port copy version of the original game or namesake as if the entire concept coding look feel marketing and original works as well as copyright were done themselves.
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yes and no, artifacts can be produced on a color tv without any color clock in the signal at all, a true black and white signal received by the color tv was proven produce a pseudo rainbow when actors wore checkered/striped shirts, ties and jackets. It was annoying enough that the industry avoided those patterns in the wardrobe for quite some time. While all signals affect each other to some degree, some are more pronounced than others. I did the rainbow color effect experiment in technical school. Not as much fun as charging up capacitors and wiring up locker handles, but interesting none the less.
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so I guess we do it the hard way and burn the prom to different ID's ourselves. Just to share the hard drive and leave them connected make this worth it. I can look into the multiplexer. It seems to have a master card and master computer to play traffic cops so 3 computers equal two, at least the way it's being described. My tower of icd carts can get daunting.... and adding another cart or plugging and unplugging another cart could prove difficult. I still don't see what the opposition to letting a person set the ID could possibly be. it's a config just like all the others. some equipment expects to be a certain id and others expect to see another not that anyone cares too greatly, most like 7 or 15 to be the init but I have had some scsi cd drives insist on seeing 6 as the init while others insisted nothing be id 6 as they wanted that all to themselves.
as far as talking to and from the adapters as well as reading/writing to and from devices.... that is what the Small Computers System Interface was invented for.... flexibility is always good, and using little space if any to implement.
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it's not so much the the dot pitch, I used 6 different televisions and 3 different monitors, the results were all the same, and thank god for that! I suspect the television have got things pretty well aligned, and they tolerate disturbances well. How else can you watch something from antennae, cable, dish, macrovision encoding, vcr, dvd, computer and kids toys and they are have good color, the guns are align to hit the proper phosper locations. shift when it get triggered and be off by anywhere near 33% and you get a color shift. so 15% 30% 45% 60% 75% of the color clock might be attempted to experiment with, try shifting a single red, single blue, and single green pixel, then try shifting a single white pixel. see what you get with each! strange stuff. tints and colors.
Those tiny televisions with the large lcd pixels use to interlace the frames to get a pictue, that is why they so low def. and were never mega sellers. I can imagine using one for anything... I get a better picture on my cell phone!
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Oh great! My last 1050 just bit the dust!
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted
Not on the Atarimania or Fandal Sites? oh my! How about VAPI in this day and age we really need multiple locations to preserve digital data. Lord knows what I lost and how much the Atari community is missing out on because of it. Yes, that is guilt coming through.... you never know what will happen to a house, garage, facility or even oneself. I can only hope one day the sound tools, bbs pro compatible/sparta config menu(it never required a reboot in two years nothing lost no errors) will turn up.
Open plea time "David"(you know who you are) could we find the original percom quads with the dang info on it please! We beg you! If it was sold can you contact or give us the name of the individual who now posses these gems. Trust me, there is a reason for the desperation.... a good sum of money was sunk into the software and only two copy locations existed... one on my hard drive and xf3.5, and one location with Dave at his house on a set of percom quads.... and original disks from the programmer. I kept the hard drive in the house and the backups in the garage. The house, garage, and equipment are gone forever(what a disaster). Maybe I should have spread the stuff around but I was young and foolish, now no one has it. Sad really sad...