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xzerix

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About xzerix

  • Birthday 09/19/1974

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  1. Hi All, I hope I'm posting on the right forum here, but bear with me. Back in the 80's I remember playing Pacman in a small video arcade on a cross-channel ferry (England to France) - Nothing unusual about that you say. But what I remember is that the screen was horizontal, Blinky was Purple and yes, I was the Atari 8-Bit computer version of pacman housed in a video cabinet. I remember putting money in to pay for a game, rather than for time (unlike a Max-a-Flex Cabinet where you pay for time). I also remember getting killed pretty quickly so I'm sure it was Harder than the home computer version. Has anyone else stumbled across such a version? I'm guessing it was probably a hacked up max-a-flex system with a patched version of Pacman to handle the monetisation of the game, I['d be intrigued to now how wide-spread such hacks/kludges were, and if anyone else had spotted one (so I know I'm not dreaming) -Peter
  2. Try the Atari User Basic toolkit - it's what I used to renumber programs back in the day. http://www.page6.org/pd_lib/standard/pd_277.htm
  3. I seem to remember reading somewhere "back in the day" that the creators of the atari 8-bit version of gauntlet had a setup that transferred data from one atari to another at a massive 17k/second via the joystick ports. Does this ring a bell with anyone?
  4. With a fire and warp button, it sounds like an asteroids clone... Possibly astro blaster?
  5. A hex editor reveals some text in the Dump: "SUPER CHIP! ©1986 COMPUTER SUPPORT (UK) LTD" - There were three versions advertised, one for 400/800, one for XL/XE and one for 130XE. Given that the BB0001 version number is in the ROM, perhaps this is the XL/XE version? (Which, I've just realised may be why it's in an 800XL... D'oh!)
  6. The OS Image dumped in http://atariage.com/forums/topic/246862-more-questions-than-answers/contains the text "SUPER CHIP! ©1986 COMPUTER SUPPORT (UK) LTD" and is an OS hack with a built-in memory dumper.
  7. From my (very) Limited knowledge of the hardware of both systems, apart from speed, the 8-Bit's lack of a way of tripplexing the sprites width-wise (e.g. three planes in "Combat", three logs in "Pitfall!") would be a stumbling block, as well as a straight-forward 40-byte wide "playfield" register. As Keetah says, porting is more obvious (see Phaeron's port of "David's Midnight Magic" from the 2600 - there are others too). And of course if the source code is available, that would be more useful. Perversely, I'd like to see a more 2600-a-like version of Pitfall! for the A8 than the existing version, but I guess that's just because it's the version I grew up with
  8. I have a stock XEGS (PAL): A17A3007055. Lovely machine.
  9. I have a single Atari User Casette Tape (I think it's and October issue with Minerunner on it) if there's no dump available, I can have a go.
  10. I tried creating a patched Rev 3 and Rev 4 ROM using the information above. All works ok (under emulation - Altirra) but crashes when it gets to the extended memory test part if you have Either 320k Compy, 576k Compy or 1088k configurations, so perhaps it's just as well it wasn't "fixed". (Altirra's 320k Rambo and 576k options don't cause a problem, so I'm guessing it's to do with how the Compy versions bank in the extra memory?)
  11. If memory serves, the first version of the 5200 had four ports and was NTSC only, and the second version had two ports and was PAL or NTSC. Which Bios are you using - the four- or two-port one?
  12. On an XL/XE PEEK(65527) returns the OS version, so your case is Rev.2 (Usual for an 800XL). PEEK(65528) - and (65529) are checksum bytes for the second 8k of the ROM. I guess these have been changed to accommodate the new character set (and/or any other changes from the bog standard Rev.2 What does the computer do when turned on without a cartridge? Weird that the Basic chip is missing - is the a chance it was scavenged to fix or upgrade another Atari? A good link for info on the Atari is here: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/faqs/atari-8-bit/faq - Section 7.1 covers the OS.
  13. Doesn't part of the OS - The Self Test - live at 0x5000? Not an issue soft loading say OS-A or OS-B on a machine or say, XLOS-3 on an XLOS-2 machine (as long as you don't want to use the self-test) but Omnimon etc might use this (I've not checked), so it might not be possible to soft load this and then page it in without finding somewhere else for it to go, and then copy into 0x5000 when it's envoked? Firing up the Hex editor on the Atari translator disk (http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-translator-_15937.html) it looks like there is an entire 10k OS from offset 0x3a10. I can cut it out and use it as an OS in altirra - The usual peeks into 0xfff8/0xfff9 suggest it's OS-A/PAL but it's significantly different to the one we have.... Very odd... -Peter
  14. Hi Guys, I've been tinkering with a hex editor on these files... Omnimon [Alt] [5EDB00C6].rom - No CRC match in Atari 8-Bit FAQ This set is identical to OmniMon87 - apart from the copyright line which is © 1984 David Young, making me think this is the original and the '87 version is the hack of this. The other versions all seem to be identical apart from the rare byte of difference (except Omnimon [2B1D6552].rom which has a hacked title "S.O.D. 1991" and otherwise appears identical to the other "OmnimonXE" set. Maybe the FAQ needs updating? Cheers.
  15. D'oh! That's it - of course! Thanks very much Rybags. I'd previously tried your way (wait vbl, then enable interrupts) but I stumbled across the VBI way and then lost the link, so I had a go at doing it for myself. If its not a daft question why DON'T I need to push the X, Y, and A to the stack and then pull them off after the routine - like a DLI - is it that the interrupt handler does it for itself? Cheers!
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