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TwiliteZoner

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Posts posted by TwiliteZoner

  1. Posted

    You really do need an external disk drive

    Is that a recommendation or a fact? I have two drives on my system, one is the internal MSTE drive and the over is the SS drive in my PS3000 monitor (why they put a single sided drive in there I'll never know, but I'd love to crack it open and put a double in).

     

    Does that Best Electronics device do all the ST resolutions on an LCD monitor? I wonder how well that works? I have a scanline doubler for my Amiga (for using a VGA monitor) that looks just like that, I wonder if I could just use it or are they different things? I'd still need that special cable though (damn non-standard Atari ports).

     

    Tempest

     

    A strong recommendation. ;)

  2. Posted

    I just got my hands on a Magic Sac+ and a Spectre GCR (for a VERY good price). Both of them are complete with boxes/binders, disks, and all the documentation (Magic Sac actually came with a brown paper sack!). It even came with a Spectre GCR pin and several newsletters. From what I can tell Magic Sac+ came first and Spectre GCR was the later version. I know that they're Macintosh emulators, but what do I need to make them work? I have a monochrome monitor (SM124), but I do I need a a separate disk drive and if so will a single sided one work? Anything else I should know about them? How compatible is it with Macintohs games?

     

    Tempest

    Hi Tempest, you will need an sf-314 dbl sided drive for sure,or compatible 3rd party. Did either of them include the mac roms? I would assume they would unless they were new. I do remeber running games on it when we demoed it in the store.

     

    You really do need an external disk drive, but irregardless of that you also need to get a copy of RamDisk+ that will load the system files onto the ram disk and free up the 2 floppy drives. Has anyone here setup an Atari hard drive for using Spectre?

  3. Posted

    As far as Amiga games go, those sound effects and music are shit... even the Atari 800 version beats it.

     

    In fact, the 2600 version almost beats it.

     

    Yeah the sound effects are not going to blow you away. I was just pointing out the alternatives for the Amiga. All things considered they are pretty good.

  4. Posted

    Any game in mind?

    Rainbow Islands is a good one for C64 -> Atari ST/Amiga , I guess - ( Arkanoid for all 4 platforms maybe? )

     

    I don't have same games for all 4 platforms (if they even exist) but here's the ones I like still:

     

    Star Leaguge Baseball (Atari 8-bit)-- blocky players but very good playability and control.

    Arkanoid (Amiga)

    Pac-Man (Atari 8-bit)

    Donkey Kong (Atari 8-bit)

    Space Invaders (Atari 8-bit 4K version)

    Joust (Atari 8-bit)

    ChessMaster (Amiga)

    Emerald Mine (Amiga)

    Pole Position II and Ms. Pac-man (Atari 7800)-- any better versions of these for the 4 systems mentioned?

     

    I think Donkey Kong is better on C64 . There is (at least) 2 official port of Donkey Kong , one done by Atari Soft and the other by OCEAN. Both are very good, but i have a little preference for the OCEAN version that keeps the aspect/ratio of the arcade.

     

    Concerning JOUST , the Atari ST version was really good!!

     

    Pole Position II is also on the C64 on Youtube (I put it there) if you want to compare.

    Arkanoid on the C64 is a really nice piece of coding, and the music is amazing due to the sample playback on the virtual 4th sound channel.

     

    Ocean's Donkey Kong for the C64 plays pretty much the same as the arcade and for me is the best version of all 4 (don't know if the 24th screen bug happens on any home version though...the mythical kill screen)

     

    I didn't think there was a Donkey Kong for Amiga. What's link to Pole Pos. II, Arkanoid, and Donkey Kong for c64?

     

    I had a Donkey Kong version on Atari St (i don't remember the name it was not donkey kong) , it was a public domain and it was really excellent. If i remember well there was not Mario but a guy with yellow hairs. Except that it was the same.

     

    You are thinking of Dave Munsie's excellent Kid Kong. There is another thread over in the ST forum on the various Donkey Kong games for the ST. All 2 of them. :) Well, 3 if you count the Monochrome version of Monkey Business.

     

    There are actually 2 versions of Kid Kong. One with a Mario character and the other with the Rainbow Islands Kid character. The full version of the Mario version is nowhere to be found on the internet. I emailed Dave and he said when he gets the time he thinks its on his MegaSTE hard drive. I hope at some point he posts it.

  6. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    Any game in mind?

    Rainbow Islands is a good one for C64 -> Atari ST/Amiga , I guess - ( Arkanoid for all 4 platforms maybe? )

     

    I don't have same games for all 4 platforms (if they even exist) but here's the ones I like still:

     

    Star Leaguge Baseball (Atari 8-bit)-- blocky players but very good playability and control.

    Arkanoid (Amiga)

    Pac-Man (Atari 8-bit)

    Donkey Kong (Atari 8-bit)

    Space Invaders (Atari 8-bit 4K version)

    Joust (Atari 8-bit)

    ChessMaster (Amiga)

    Emerald Mine (Amiga)

    Pole Position II and Ms. Pac-man (Atari 7800)-- any better versions of these for the 4 systems mentioned?

     

    I think Donkey Kong is better on C64 . There is (at least) 2 official port of Donkey Kong , one done by Atari Soft and the other by OCEAN. Both are very good, but i have a little preference for the OCEAN version that keeps the aspect/ratio of the arcade.

     

    Concerning JOUST , the Atari ST version was really good!!

     

    Pole Position II is also on the C64 on Youtube (I put it there) if you want to compare.

    Arkanoid on the C64 is a really nice piece of coding, and the music is amazing due to the sample playback on the virtual 4th sound channel.

     

    Ocean's Donkey Kong for the C64 plays pretty much the same as the arcade and for me is the best version of all 4 (don't know if the 24th screen bug happens on any home version though...the mythical kill screen)

     

    I didn't think there was a Donkey Kong for Amiga. What's link to Pole Pos. II, Arkanoid, and Donkey Kong for c64?

     

     

    Bignononia "ported" the Atari C64 version over to the Amiga. It's actually pretty good and has an additional screen if you grab all of Pauline's items. Actually check out all of their conversions. They released Zaxxon and Popeye among others.

  7. Posted

    It's hard to say exactly what is "today's PCs" since hardware varies with various systems. If you go by standard hardware (present in >95% of PCs), they can't fully emulate the Amiga nor Atari nor some other machines brute force or otherwise.

     

    My old Thinkpad T23 runs Atari 800 WinPLus 4.0 (and STEem), my desktop PC runs UAE, both without slowdowns. Could you be precise and tell me wich part of the hardware of these computers modern PCs can't emulate by sheer brute force?

     

     

    Thorsten

     

    You need about 850mhz Pentium III laptop to run Amiga 32bit AGA games on UAE and around 650mhz for the older 16bit Amiga 500. However, the games do not scroll as smoothly or frame accurately as a real Amiga (and they still don't on a Dual Core Laptop/PC). Emulation is one thing, coding games on a machine designed to be programmed for 2D graphics with specific raster line accurate controls like the Copper chip on a fixed hardware platform are NOT the same thing at all.

     

    So they can be emulated but you will never duplicate it because a PC running Windows NEVER gives you 100% control of the machine, unlike a real Amiga running machine code. So it depends what the OP is referring to.

     

    That's true that Amiga games usually go directly to hardware registers (since they are standard) and thus give you a more efficient product. However, even if your emulator went directly to standard hardware on PCs, you'll have a hard time getting the same effects of many Amiga games since standard PC hardware wasn't designed for scrolling, sprites, timing video beam, dynamically manipulating audio registers, etc. Newer hardware has some of this stuff but it's non-standard so you have to resort to API calls which then restrict the useage.

     

    Dave Haney and Bil Herd have both mentioned in some of their online talks that modern day video cards all by themselves could easily emulate the Amiga OS and hardware.

  8. Posted

    Any game in mind?

    Rainbow Islands is a good one for C64 -> Atari ST/Amiga , I guess - ( Arkanoid for all 4 platforms maybe? )

     

    I don't have same games for all 4 platforms (if they even exist) but here's the ones I like still:

     

    Star Leaguge Baseball (Atari 8-bit)-- blocky players but very good playability and control.

    Arkanoid (Amiga)

    Pac-Man (Atari 8-bit)

    Donkey Kong (Atari 8-bit)

    Space Invaders (Atari 8-bit 4K version)

    Joust (Atari 8-bit)

    ChessMaster (Amiga)

    Emerald Mine (Amiga)

    Pole Position II and Ms. Pac-man (Atari 7800)-- any better versions of these for the 4 systems mentioned?

     

    I think Donkey Kong is better on C64 . There is (at least) 2 official port of Donkey Kong , one done by Atari Soft and the other by OCEAN. Both are very good, but i have a little preference for the OCEAN version that keeps the aspect/ratio of the arcade.

     

    Concerning JOUST , the Atari ST version was really good!!

     

    The thing that kills Donkey Kong on the C64 is the speed. That also applies to the Colecovision version as well. Not only does the 8-bit version look great, it's fast and incredibly challenging at the later levels.

  11. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    Okay, I just took another look at it with steem. It worked on every case I tried except with 512k ram. I even tried a US TOS. It still worked here.

     

    Can you try a clean boot? (ie no auto folder programs or accs/cpxs)

     

    If it still doesn't work, do you mind stating your configuration? (machine, tos version, ram, auto folder programs, accs, any extras)

    OK I've just did a clean boot it runs! It looks like I need more RAM so I run it form a Hard Drive! :roll:

     

    Here is the mono version of Monkey Business.

     

    What the hell? It's better than the col version!!!

     

    lol. Does anyone know if there is an ST equivalent to the game Stunt Copter on the Mac?

     

    Closest I can think right now (after reading the wikipedia entry) is ripcord :)

     

    Thanks. I will try it on the real deal at home. It appears steem is having issues with this game.

     

    Edit: It does however work with Hatari.

  12. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    Okay, I just took another look at it with steem. It worked on every case I tried except with 512k ram. I even tried a US TOS. It still worked here.

     

    Can you try a clean boot? (ie no auto folder programs or accs/cpxs)

     

    If it still doesn't work, do you mind stating your configuration? (machine, tos version, ram, auto folder programs, accs, any extras)

    OK I've just did a clean boot it runs! It looks like I need more RAM so I run it form a Hard Drive! :roll:

     

    Here is the mono version of Monkey Business.

     

    What the hell? It's better than the col version!!!

     

    lol. Does anyone know if there is an ST equivalent to the game Stunt Copter on the Mac?

  13. Posted

    Okay, I just took another look at it with steem. It worked on every case I tried except with 512k ram. I even tried a US TOS. It still worked here.

     

    Can you try a clean boot? (ie no auto folder programs or accs/cpxs)

     

    If it still doesn't work, do you mind stating your configuration? (machine, tos version, ram, auto folder programs, accs, any extras)

    OK I've just did a clean boot it runs! It looks like I need more RAM so I run it form a Hard Drive! :roll:

     

    Here is the mono version of Monkey Business.

    monkey_business_mono.zip

  14. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    Did Donkey Kong make to the ST? Is so anyone got a link?

     

    Dunno about an official version, but there's a sweet conversion called "Kid Kong".

     

    From what I saw, this is available on Superior 140a/b/c/d which you can get here:

     

    http://archive.dbug-automation.co.uk/Superior/SUP_140A.MSA

    http://archive.dbug-automation.co.uk/Superior/SUP_140B.MSA

    http://archive.dbug-automation.co.uk/Superior/SUP_140C.MSA

    http://archive.dbug-automation.co.uk/Superior/SUP_140D.MSA

    WOW, the Conversion is Awesome! Now the next thing can the game pulled off that dbug-automation disk? Did Nintendo go affter this guy for making a unofficial version of the game?

     

    Firstly, it's a superior menu!

     

    Secondly, I guess that if you can find the .prg and copy it on another disk (or hard drive) it should just work.

     

     

     

     

    Oh what the heck, I did it for you :)

     

    Thanks! :D

     

     

    Kid Kong is one of Dave Munsie's great arcade translations. There was also a DK clone called Monkey Business that had a color and mono version. I will upload them when I get home later today.

     

    In regards to Nintendo, he originally had a Mario graphic used in the game, but changed it. I have the shareware "Mario" version, but I have never found the full release version.

  15. Posted

    Hi All,

     

    For anyone trying to reach me, if I don't get back to you immediately, please be patient. I'm am a guest at the hotel "NYU Medical Center" once again. For those who are not aware I've been having an on-going battle with issues with my heart. I've already had 2 open heart surgeries this past summer. Unfortunately I've been re-admitted back to the hospital once again with some minor complications and possibly another surgery this coming weekend. Thank God for free wireless in the hospital. I'm in the Tisch wing over on 34th & 1st if anyone wants to visit ;-)

     

     

     

    Regards,

    Curt

     

     

    Take care Curt. We'll keep you in our thoughts.

  18. Posted

    Maxhall, that was awesome!

     

    Please smash some more ST/TT/FALCON stuff..

     

    I have a Falcon I was going to smash soon, but if you promise to smash it really good in your next video, I'll send it to you..

     

    I want to see it smashed REALLY good though.. And the video has to clearly show that it is a fully functional machine.. I dont know if they let you have guns over there in your country, but I was seriously considering using a 12ga shotgun to blow it to pieces.. If you want, I could destroy it really good, and then just send you the footage for use in your next video.. That would probably be alot cheaper/easier than overseas shipping..

     

    I really did like your video and your music too.. Do youhave a website where we can check out more of your stuff?

     

    :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: Typical diluted Amiga fanboy troll talk... :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

     

    your mom's a "fanboy"...

     

    I'll smash a rare amiga too, if I get my hands on one cheap..

     

    Ive already owned all this crap in the past, and sold it off... And that goes for most AMIGA, ST, C=64, and ATARI 8-bit models, including the falcon.. But heres a few facts for you.. First, the stuff is next to useless in this day & age when you compare it to modern PCs.. Second, the bulk of the useful/cool software out there will run on the less "rare & collectable" models, and lastly, I have next to nothing invested in this falcon.. Id love to see it smashed just for the sake of smashing it.. And if someone wants to donate an A3000T or whatever else to be smashed, I'm all for it..

     

    I run a Falcon rescue site and would gladly take it off your hands.

  22. Posted

    Imagine that.. A guy in an atari magazine pumping people up on ATARI capabilities.. You think that review may be a little preferential? Theres also many professional musicians who, due to personal preference, wouldnt touch an ATARI...

     

    Im not debating that the MIDI worked well on the ST... What Im saying is that if it does excel above other platforms in the respect of timing, its due to the software being used, not the machine. Again, I can't comment on this area, because I couldnt "find my ass with both hands" in a MIDI sequencer appication... I can however comment on the hardware end of it because as a communications standard, Im well aware of the hardware/resource requirements involved. And to say that one 16bit machine has "better midi timing" than another is like saying that one brand of chainsaw can cut a toothpick better than another.

     

    I understand what you are saying. I just wanted to point out that there were several articles related to the ST and timing compared to other platforms regarding MIDI that's all. The one I happened to find was from an Atari magazine. There were others like Electronic Musician that did not have an Atari bias.

  23. Posted · Edited by TwiliteZoner

    Just like I know quite a few people using STs for Desktop Video. I'm sure there were a few Amiga MIDI musicians too, but they were far and few in between.

    there was quite a huge market/user base for it.. Check out the MIDI section on Aminet.

     

    That must have been painstaking to convert a MIDI file to a tracker. They must have had tons of samples to sample each chord. They must have been very simple songs in order to make it worthwhile.

    Can't comment.. I didnt do it.. I do know it was quite popular to have a variety of major/minor chord samples of various instruments in songs that employed those type of arrangements.

    The ST always had the rock solid timing that the Amiga, Mac, PCs never had at the time. That and the built-in MIDI ports is what made it THE music machine at the time.

     

    Thats a total farce... And having never heard that claim before, I find it UTTERLY HILARIOUS.. Midi iis a 31.25Kbps ring-topography SERIAL transmission standard. Timing for things like disk interfaces, arbitration of various high speed data buses, DRAM control circuits, etc. are literally THOUSANDS of times more timing-critical than MIDI and all of these machines employ these features quite well. The "MIDI timing" would be 100% software dependant on any personal computer. You sir have allowed ATARI ST worshipers to absolutely "blow smoke up your ass" if you actually believe that the ATARI hardware was more precisely "timed" than any other computer platform. I can in fact SHOW you on a logic analyzer that this is not the case, but even if it was, it wouldnt matter. Digital circuits in microcomputers are timed in terms of nanoseconds (billionths of a second), and the smallest relevant timing interval in MIDI is in terms of miliseconds (thousandths of seconds) and amounts to an eternity in terms of machine cycles for even the slowest processors.

     

    Like I said.. I didnt use the software.. So its quite possible that CUBASE(or whatever you used) shits all over BARS&PIPES on the Amiga.. I dont know.. But I do know there was a TON of people using AMIGAs and MACS for MIDI, and alot of the ones I knew had tried STs, or even OWNED STs and preferred the other platform. And some of these people make their living in the music industry to this day..

     

    Whether it is actually a "farce" or not I cannot say, but I do remember reading in various Atari and MIDI specific magazines the timing issues and the Atari being the better MIDI platform. I know that the local music shops only carried STs and didn't even have Macs, let alone Amigas.

     

    I will see if I can find those articles and scan them and post them in here.

     

     

    Edit: Found one online.

     

     

    Here is a link to atarimagazines.com where Jimmy Hotz mentions the timing of the MIDI.

     

    http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv2n4/rockandroll.html

     

    But, of the Atari ST. Hotz is unequivocal in his praise. He's used the Macintosh. He's used the IBM. In fact, he's tried every computer available. Compared to these other machines, Hotz says "the Atari is cheaper and works faster. Of all the computers I've used, Atari seems to react the fastest and have the best MIDI timing to make it sound the most natural with what you put in there."

  25. Posted

    If you watch the Computer Chronicles ST episode from 89. They demo Spectre GCR and it is clearly stated that it is indeed 20% faster than a Mac Plus.

     

    Wasn't there a story back in the day that stated that Apple themselves actually used ST's equiped with GCR's for debugging due to Dave Smalls utilities? I know I read that in an ST mag back then.

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