Curt Vendel
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Posts posted by Curt Vendel
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On 3/14/2020 at 2:38 PM, jamm said:Have you seen these? They're excellent, but it's only the schematics, not the entire manual. Looks like it's from the May 1983 revision, so I'm hoping that's the level of quality I just bought.
He said he'd post the whole thing on Atarimania, but I don't see this version there?
Those look great! Nice and crystal clear.
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On 3/14/2020 at 2:33 PM, DrVenkman said:I wonder if @Curt Vendel has a clean copy of the schematics, separate from the size-reduced version in the FSM, that he might post?
Actually I have the full E Sized sheets of them which would give everyone crystal clear images. I will make a point to have them all scanned...
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On 3/13/2020 at 3:16 PM, slx said:Look for Rainbow on the 8-bit forum. Curt Vendel just posted a lot of docs or at least a preview.
Gesendet von iPhone mit TapatalkThere are some chip files and other technical docs. I'm trying to see if any tape outs were done, possibly chip plots. I'm working on reading the GDS II's from the Silver chip tapes now that are part of Rainbow (Silver & Gold)
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On 3/13/2020 at 2:09 PM, darryl1970 said:I recall an article about Maria's creation. There was a piece that stated some Atari engineers had started work on their own enhancement of the GTIA/Antic (I don't recall specifics). They stated that Atari management didn't even want to see their solution, and they chose to go with Maria.
I am not trying to fuel which would have, could have, might have been better or worse. I just want to find that article and information. I have scoured the Internet, and I cannot find it. I am curious if there's any information on what the engineers were working on. Just curious about what might have been. WHERE did I see that? I didn't dream it. lol.
Thanks.
Yes... but that was actually what they did - they put a TIA and and GTIA on the same board and were getting them to work together. It was a kludge but it was to show something could be done. The reason it was shot down was that management was tired to recycling the same old 4-7 year old technology. The GCC design was a fresh new device and it worked. Part of the issue was the Sunnyvale engineers didn't like that they had to work with an outside company. This was a problem with a lot of project, they didn't want things from the WCI/NY Atari lab either and that was Atari itself and it was headed by Steve Mayer who was one of the founders of Cyan Engineering - Atari Grass Valley, where the TIA and the Colleen were created. WCI/NY was where the designs for Janice (later renamed Jan) - the all in one combo 2600 chip, were started. The original design for Elizabeth - (NY-LIZ) which was originally a 600 XL computer that would be able to more easily port 2600 games to it and enhance them... again, these all got rejected from Atari Sunnyvale... if it wasn't done there, they felt it was beneath them. Bad way to work.
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9 minutes ago, grips03 said:Sounds like ground noise, is there an inductor between XM ground and 7800 ground?
Could be... checking that.
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4 hours ago, Shawn said:I'm near positive he means the next batch of units that go to those that have pre-ordered. You still have close to 200 people in front of the line before new orders are being taken. It's gonna be a long time before that happens.
Exactly.. there are almost 178 (Several of the Dev's are also pre-orders so the count has gone down) people who are in front of the line with pre-orders, until everyone is taken care of first, none of the XM's being made are being sold for new orders.
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So, getting some video's and feedback from the developers, they are hitting the RAM pretty hard and looks like they are getting some random pixels on the screen, seems to be thermally related. We are looking at the issue and trying to isolate the cause. This is very helpful that the dev's have the XM's only so that they can really push them hard and anything still lurking can be resolved. Mark is busily working on the End User BIOS and I also found a missing ground to a PAD for the SIO, so these tiny things are being sorted out. Nothing is going to be a show stopper, so this is just getting any final issues out of the way so that we can make sure that the user versions are as bug free as possible.
Something I'm going to say. The XM's are going to come with a disclaimer on them. There is a lot of hardware in these units and we all have to remember that our 7800's are 28-35 years old. I had to replace PacManPlus' 7805 and one of his caps on his 7800 because it wouldn't power up with the XM installed. Once those were replaced, the 7800 with the XM powered up fine. So there is the possibility that a persons 7800 may need repairs if they don't work with a XM installed. I might have to consider given it, its own P/S to power it to reduce the pull the 7800's.
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5 hours ago, Randolph Laterca said:So... can i start to dream about that 3200 clone that you promised? 😁
I don’t recall making a promise. It’s something I threw out there. Maybe it can be looked at later on, let’s just get everyone their XMs first.
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23 hours ago, Giles N said:Probably in 2 weeks, I still have 3 more here I am preparing. Waiting on the final end user BIOS and we just need to complete the signature sense for the Versa boards.
I need to make sure this is all locked down, its important to support CPU's boards as many people have them and I don't want them to not be able to use them.
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Finally compiled everything and finally got all of the data put into a menu menu'ing hierarchy I've wanted to implement for a long time. RAINBOW page will be updated soon. Waiting for some documents to come from Kevin Savetz and I have a bunch of chip tape outs and other materials I'll add in. The AMY stuff is already up in the RAINBOW page.
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/aed/OMNI/
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9 hours ago, DurradonXylles said:See here's a thing about trademark and patent law: they aren't interchangeable. If there's anything I've learned from watching Lawful Masses recently, it's that you cannot trademark anything tangible. Atari's case is already shaky because they are entering the case trying to say that Hyperkin is ripping off logos or motiffs from the 2600 and the clone consoles AtGames are producing under license. On top of the fact that this is a hard case to prove under normal circumstances, it's nearly impossible when you look at it and compare to the 2600:
I am going to state right now, I'm not a copyright, trademark or patent lawyer, and all of what I just said are simply what I've picked up from actual lawyers on YouTube. But I've come to understand quite clearly from multiple cases where entities tried to exploit such laws that trademark cannot be interchangeably used with copyright or patents since they cannot be legally used on anything tangible or physical. In my opinion: the intended course Atari wants the lawsuit to take is for there to be an opening to use the long dead patents of the Atari 2600 as a means to prolong the case and hope Hyperkin will eventually want to settle, or to signify that stating compatibility with Atari 2600/Atari VCS games are not legal to state on the console or in a manual (again, to string the case out and force Hyperkin to settle). This is likely because several trademarks surrounding the 2600 are probably going to expire within the coming months, and Atari needs to prove that they're still using them in order to not lose them or be forced to release something that would utilize said trademarks.
The issue with them attempting to do this is that hardware is not trademarkable, the patents for the 2600 are long dead, and the logos and mentions of hardware compatibility and usage of the Atari name to demonstrate as such is considered fair use as multiple other cases (including the big one about emulation: Sony Computer Entertainment v. bleem Software) have shown. Atari cannot even pull Sony's BS by claiming unfair competition since they haven't produced a physical cartridge since 1995 (1990 for the 2600), Hyperkin isn't offering software with the Retron 77, and the hardware produced with Atari's license are only plug-n-plays that cannot play carts. Even with the assumption that this suit is about enforcing trademarks as to not lose them to expiring, this case is deeply flawed by the fact that Atari's going in on bad faith and/or anything they could try to use for their case is more than likely covered by fair use.
Yes, however even after a patent expires, you have what’s called Trade Dress (the look of a product) however just like trademarks, trade dress has a 3 year non-use abandonment clause. Atari stopped making the classic 77/78 joysticks in 92 and by 94 the patents had expired. 96 Atari ceased to exist and was merged into JTS which ran a division called Atari Interactive. In 98 Hasbro buys all the game copyrights & IP from JTS, Infogrames buys Habros gaming assets - Atari Interactive among them. So from 96 through 2001 Atari is a software only company. No hardware has been produced. Their last know hardware - the Jaguar is the only thing people remember of Atari and the only controller is the Jaguar controller. Atari has abandoned its trade dress on its joysticks, it can’t argue Residual goodwill because everyone in mainstream culture has forgotten about Atari, it’s been a software company for 5 years straight until the Jakks Pacific 10in1 license.
On their console, that’s a lost cause... Atari back in 1984-1992 abandoned the entire trade dress of the 77-83 VCS design, in 83 Atari itself abandoned its wood grain usage. Most of the mainstream public only knows the 2600 as the wedged shaped 2600jr design.
Atari has ZERO standing on that. This case is a no win for them.
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On 3/7/2020 at 6:52 AM, Flojomojo said:The Atari Vs. Hyperkin case is the nut of the debate over whether Atari can prevent someone else from making a console or joystick controller with a similar look and feel as the 1977 oldies.
Atari sends cease and desist letters and brings lawsuits against others for making t-shirts and stickers with pictures of joysticks and consoles, but to my knowledge, Atari doesn't make much official gear of their own with these images. I suppose there's that $30 box of junky trinkets sold at Target during the holidays. Far more often, they use their holdings offensively, acting as trademark trolls to collect damages from accused infringers.
Their stockholder information lists losing trademarks as risks. It seems likely that they know they're on shaky legal ground.
Hyperkin, like Target, doesn't seem to be taking this lying down.
Like the rest of the market, Atari stock isn't doing much lately. They're posting near-record lows again.
Atari has ZERO rights of ownership of the old joystick design.
I can tell you this for a fact. I’ve been selling my USB Classic Controllers for 12 years and Atari has known about this since day one and I even had their head of legal confront my in 2008 and said there was nothing Atari could do. The patents expired, they haven’t used the design in over 13 years 92-05 so they can’t claim trade dress either. Atari has knowingly allowed the sale of joysticks that are similar to the old 78 design and their actions (or lack of) remove any form of argument for them to use.
Furthermore, Hasbro bought IP rights, no patents, no designs, no holdings. Atari owns game copyrights & trademarks, therefor Infogrames has no position of enforcement of product trade dress.
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19 hours ago, Marius said:Unless the 800XE mentioned in the Happy Computer magazines are not Atari 800XE computers, but a memory upgrade that was also called 800XE ... I found an Antic Magazine where the 800XE is offered and it seems that that is a memory expansion.
https://archive.org/details/1986-08-anticmagazine/page/n107/mode/2up/search/800XE?q=800XE
Hmm... this is worth the investigation. (that is on page 107; screenshot comes from that page)
Those were upgrades for 800XL's and they were just called 800XE's, those are not the Atari released 800XEs
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On 3/5/2020 at 11:13 AM, Downland1983 said:These have to have been blows to New Atari's ego:
THIRTEENTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE (Not Famous) Plaintiff’s claims are barred, in whole or in part, because Plaintiff’s alleged Joystick Designation of Origin and Console Designation of Origin are not famous.
EIGHTEENTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE (Plaintiff is Not the Owner of the Asserted Rights) Plaintiff claims are barred, in whole or in part, because Plaintiff is not the owner and/or did not acquire any right, title or interest in the asserted Joystick Designation of Origin or Console Designation of Origin.
Oh, just wait, its gonna be getting a LOT worse for Atari on that case. {insert evil laugh here} The fun is only just beginning....
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On 2/29/2020 at 8:48 PM, The Usotsuki said:It would need to use SIO disk drives, for what it's worth. Whether it would be filesystem-compatible, though...
I would recommend trying to make it SIO2PC compatible so you have something that is a well established protocol & system.
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On 3/2/2020 at 10:14 PM, Synthpopalooza said:Now the only thing I need is a developer's cart or some means of transferring binaries to the actual hardware.
You should ask CPUWIZ if his Devcart is still available.
does this serial communicate through joystick port #2 from a PC to load a game into memory and run, that’s what Perry Demo’d with when he did the XMYM Tracker.
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16 hours ago, Rybags said:PMSL.
I can just imaging Curt opening a triple garage door and revealing stacked too the roof and to the back, the entire Atari surplus of 7800s that they couldn't sell.
I have a lot but almost all are May-June 84’s and a couple of April 84 protos
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Dev Unit #6 shipping out of Mike (Rev Eng) this morning. Synthpopalooza
#7 is going out to Synthpopalooza and Mitch Orman has XM #8 and a box of 7800's he loaned me heading to him Weds.
Shawn... stay tuned.
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On 2/23/2020 at 7:36 PM, Stevaside said:Looks like Video 61 has made this for 5200/Atari 8 Bit & is now working on a version for the 7800. If this is old news, forgive me. Don't think it's exactly my dream game or anything personally, but I haven't noticed anything 7800 specific mentioned here so figured I'd share this video I just saw in my Youtube feed. Happy to see Lance working on new titles regardless & lots of respect to him for keeping at it for so long. I get nostalgic hearing his voice, it reminds me of my very 1st days of collecting, calling the store at my parent's house to order some games back in 1998-1999 haha
Looks neat.
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On 2/24/2020 at 11:23 PM, Mitch said:If we are counting 7800 consoles, I currently own 26 of them. 4 of them are PAL and 3 are protos.
Can anyone top that?
Mitch
Here, hold my beer...
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12 hours ago, Tidus79001 said:These are shipping to fill pre-orders now or are these more dev boards shipments?
Only shipping to Devs at this point... not much sense for everyone to have XMs when there are only a few games that use just some of its features.
Now the coders can work on XM specific games now that the real hardware is ready
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34 minutes ago, RevEng said:Thanks for the kind words, and for taking that video, Perry! It's great to hear it running on real hardware.
Wholly crap Mike!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait to see what kind stuff you're gonna do once you get your XM Dev unit next week!!! That was such an incredible demo on the XM.
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Boards arrived and I'm building all 5 at the same time. I will be shipping these out on Monday and will post up where they are going to.
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4 hours ago, tep392 said:I'm thinking of switching from D2K to Donkey Kong Remix. I'm just finding D2K to be too difficult to play and not very fun. Only problem is I'm having trouble getting in touch with the programmer to ask for his approval.
Your graphics will of course still be used and very much appreciated.
I was never a big fan of DK2... Now Popeye, I played the heck out of that game, loved it!
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3D printed no cut video mods
in Atari 7800
Posted
That is a superb implementation, 2 thumbs up on the nice planning and design.