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TwiliteZoner

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Posts posted by TwiliteZoner

  2. Posted

    We received our 27,000th call this month and have over 30,000 messages

    posted at the DarkForce! BBS during our multiple years of operation.

     

    Are we a semi-permanent, quasi-mythical, sort of recognized institution

    of the renowned Atari community yet? :)

     

    Congratulations DarkLord.

  6. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    TwiliteZoner: If you have it, can you send me a copy? I'll pay for the postage and disk. I don't have a way to transfer files from my PC to the ST. Any suggestions?

     

    PM your address and I'll send it out to you. Does your computer have a floppy drive? Do you have DC Utilities for your ST? There are several ST programs that will write an MS-DOS boot sector on your disk that will enable your PC to read it.

     

    Let me know.

  8. Posted

    Most of them work fine, try another three. Or you might consider actually providing some details of your problem. Like: which files did you try, what is a "default Atari screen", or what do you actually mean by "trying a file".

     

    Remember to turn off the SIO-patch option. That will cause the files not to load.

  12. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    I think that if there was a ST home console like the Atari XEGS, but with better design, marketing and joypad rather then a joystick, It would have outsold both the SNES and Mega Drive. For the record the ST is 16 bit, so do the math before anyone says the Jag was 16 bit and the ST 8.

     

    Too many hypotheticals there. The main problem Atari had in the console space post crash was always third party support. With Sega and Nintendo receiving the vast majority of third party support - you know, the titles people actually buy consoles for - not to mention untouchable first party stuff - there's no reasonable scenario where Atari could have succeeded, period, let alone somehow getting a reduced cost, consolized ST computer to market. The consolized ST would have arguably needed a better sound chip, among other things like better controller support and resythesized software to take advantage of TV resolutions (a la Commodore's failed CD32), to be truly competitive with the Genesis/Mega Drive and SNES.

     

    Well by the time of the SNES it would have been Falcon based as opposed to ST. The Falcon had more than enough horsepower to compete with the Sega and Nintendo consoles. But as Bill points out, it is the 3rd party support, or lack there of, that would have killed the unit.

  13. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    At $1500.00 for a base A1000 unit, the Amiga and its "thunder" would never have sat on a shelf of mine.

     

    The Atari ST was affordable enough even for this poor white boy. :)

     

     

    Certainly the ST was a better initial value, but once Commodore got the 2000 and 500 out there to replace the 1000, the picture changed dramatically. It was actually smart on Commodore's part to have a slot card friendly expandable high end system and a more closed low end system. The ST line never really got the former. Ultimately, I think the two monitor thing kind of hurt the ST as well. You factor that in and the Amiga's better game capabilities (graphics/sound) and it's pretty clear why once the 500/2000 hit the momentum was all Commodore's.

     

    Ironically the downfall of both companies is basically the same story. Too bad Atari didn't have enough cash of their own to buy Commodore.

  14. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    Hello everyone,

     

    I'm really trying not to draw these releases out any further than absolutely necessary. But, the bug that was reported in the last release kept bothering me. I can't advertise great game play quality when the program just "ain't" working right! I hope that this will be the last release of Txtris(1c) so that we can move on to the Color version. Have fun!

     

    Bug fixed: "There is a little bug when rotating a piece as it lands, it sometimes overwrites a block that is already in [place]"

     

    Feature added: Display the number of lines to get to the next level.

     

    Very nice and addictive. Thanks. That music is perfect Cybernoid. :thumbsup:

  15. Posted

    There is a huge difference in the people that would buy a computer vs people that would buy a video game system. Even more so in the 80s as compared to today. When you factor that in with a lack of 3rd party support it's a recipe for disaster.

     

    Personally, I think they should have housed the XEGS in a mini ST style case with a built in floppy drive like the Apple IIc. I am sure Jack would have been able to keep the price point low enough to be a viable option for people. That way it would have been able to play the thousands of games available right out of the box.

     

     

    Jack was not some manufacturing genius. You need to separate the capabilities of Jack Tramiel from the capabilities of Commodore. Commodore was able to achieve the economies of scale they did in such an aggressive and sweeping manner because they controlled multiple stages of the manufacturing process/bill of goods. That was Commodore's advantage over other companies and the reason why the C-64 was able to get so cheap so fast and box out the competition. It seems to me that the failure of Tramiel with Atari was trying to apply the same techniques he used at Commodore at Atari, without the same type of manufacturing advantage. It just didn't work. Of course, eventually with the shift beyond 8-bit computing, Commodore lost that advantage themselves.

     

    Bill, I understand (C= owning MOS was a huge benefit) what you are saying, but remember, if Warner had come out with the 520ST I can guarantee you that it would not have sold for $499. That is the "Jack" factor that I was referring to.

  16. Posted

    There is a huge difference in the people that would buy a computer vs people that would buy a video game system. Even more so in the 80s as compared to today. When you factor that in with a lack of 3rd party support it's a recipe for disaster.

     

    Personally, I think they should have housed the XEGS in a mini ST style case with a built in floppy drive like the Apple IIc. I am sure Jack would have been able to keep the price point low enough to be a viable option for people. That way it would have been able to play the thousands of games available right out of the box.

  17. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    This was during the 32X fiasco. I say "fiasco," because customers were so incredibly confused by the process of hooking up a 32X to a Genesis. I don't recall which specific games we got to play, but I do remember there being 32X units in the break room. They were housed inside these big, arcade-cabinet-like enclosures, naturally, so we could play the games, but wouldn't be able to steal them.

     

    We were also trained on how to do tech support for something called the Sega Pico, if I'm remembering correctly. It was some type of learning computer for children or something. I'm not sure if I ever got a call about it, but I don't think I even thought of it until just now. Talk about rare and obscure consoles! I'm gonna have to Google "Sega Pico" and see what comes up...

    I still don't think I know how to hook up the 32X. I just plug all the available cables into the holes until it works. I've never seen such a kludge device in my life...

     

    The Pico was indeed an educational system put out by Sega. In the US I think it only had 6 or 8 games, but there was a ton of stuff released in Japan. Here it was all Disney and other kiddie licenses, but in Japan they had cool robot sets that remind me of ROB in some ways.

     

    Tempest

     

    My friend bought one for his daughter back when they came out and if I remember correctly it was a lot like what Leapfrog did a couple of years ago.

  19. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    If you want to be playing these games in the future odds are you are going to be doing it through some sort of emulation strictly because the hardware is not going to last forever.

     

    My beloved Atari 800 that I bought from B&C in the early 80s is finally showing signs of failure. :( I think they may be getting a call from me very soon. Do you still get a pen with every order? Do you guys remember the B&C pens that you would get when you ordered something? I must have like 30 of those things...

  20. Posted

    You should have told the person who enquired about 'Donkey kong' that they dialled the wrong 0800 number, and you should have given them a 0800 sex line number and said....this is the free phone no. for nintendo of america's customer support

     

    True story..

     

    Once upon a time I worked for Stapels in the "Business machines" department, where we sold printers, fax machines, and of course, computers. To combat the rash of calls we got of people calling the store asking for tech support, we were given a list of phone numbers to give out to the customers.

     

    One day a guy called and wanted support for his PAckard Bell PC. I looked down the list and gave him the 800 number. Something didnt look right about the number though -- it had nothing in common with all thier other support numbers. I called it.

     

    It was a phone sex line.

     

     

    It's funny you mention that because one of the IBM numbers was exactly the same as a sex line except for the 800 vs 888 area code.

  22. Posted

    I was somewhere in the middle of testing some equipment and just generally playing with things and eventually wound up with an ST 'super setup' on the desk. :) Run ST, Mac and MS-DOS all in one setup. Even switch between TOS/DOS by simply hitting Alt-Ctrl-Backspace. Figured I'd post a pic as there are probably a lot of folks who have never heard of the Supercharger, let alone seen one.

     

    post-5887-1240613287_thumb.jpg

     

    Monitor master / LCD not shown. Excuse the slightly yellow 1040, its a test unit. ;)

     

     

    Greetings, can you talk a little about how it works with various software? games? music? et al? Do you get full sound with the Mac and DOS environments and is it fast enough to run games?

     

    I had very little trouble running the old Mac games on the GCR. I even had Prodigy up and running on my Mega.

  23. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    Years ago I worked at IBM doing tech support for the Thinkpad. My boss was one of the original techincians on the IBM PC. We often had talks about how stressful the job could be. I worked with a guy that literally had to spend a half hour outside of the building psyching himself up to go inside to work.

  24. Posted

    Remo w....I think i have seen a supercharger, if you are referring to that recepticle standing ontop of what looks like a supra...I can't remember who marketed or manufactured it (Talon does not come to mind)

    Yes, its the box on top of the Supra. It's very likely that if you had seen one it probably did not say Talon. As far as I can tell Talon Technology Inc, was the US distributor. In the UK it looks like it was sold by Condor Trading Ltd. The unit itself looks to be manufactured by Siemens for Beta Systems Computer in Germany.

     

    I've got to say I'm very impressed by the units performance - given the time it was released of course, and given that all I/O and all video from the unit is passed over the DMA port. A unique way of doing things for sure.

     

    It even manages to play Artic Fox on the IBM. :)

     

    Did Talon ever release the mini-vga board? How well does Artic Fox run? I would imagine that is CGA?

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