x=usr(1536)

Looking forward to seeing this when it's finished. Mad Planets was a very underrated game, and you're making what is probably the best possible use of yet another video poker. Nice job on narrowing it, BTW. Since the original used painted sideart, are you planning on going that route or leaving the woodgrain in place?

Interesting... If the people you're speaking of are the ones that I think you are, their pirate copies were also making it into Ireland. We had someone in the Atari Users' Group of Ireland with a connection to people in the UK, and he used to bring back stacks of disks every couple of months that he'd copied from them. Never met any of the people he was dealing with, but he did mention Maplin's as being where he got everything. We just wrote that off as a joke at the time, but it now makes more sense.

Fixed it for you

What about the title? Don't leave us hanging like this, man - the suspense is killer!

From what I recall, the Dragon MSX was essentially a last-ditch effort by Dragon to save the company from going under. The Dragon 32 and 64 were moderately-successful, but never really took the mass market by storm (and even then, were really only known in the UK); the company wanted something that might be able to compete outside of that market, particularly on the Continent. FWIW, I can remember fairly well what the computer market in the UK looked like in that timeframe. It wasn't completely dissimilar to the one in the US: lots of choice in terms of platforms (and arguably too many choices), but with different platforms compared to the US. Homegrown designs generally did well there (Sinclair, Amstrad, the BBC micro and its relatives), though Commodore also found success. The Dragon line and the SAM Coupé are notable exceptions to that, however, along with a few others, but Dragon and SAM did manage to produce about 20,000 or so machines between them. As for Atari, Apple, Tandy, Oric, the MSX, and others... They were there, but never really major players. Having grown up close to that part of the world as an Atari owner, if you had something that wasn't a Spectrum or a Commodore, you were headed for the fringes. That's not to say there weren't other users out there, just that there weren't anywhere near as many.

It's been nearly three months and I loathe the flat keyboard. It's made my typing slower and noticeably less-accurate, and causes me to have a hard time adjusting to other keyboards, such as the one I have at work. Haven't tried any Thunderbolt devices beyond an Ethernet adapter (another gripe: no on-board Ethernet) and the power / HDMI / USB A breakout dongle. They seem to work, but I've noticed that plugging and unplugging them without a power cycle in-between can lead to unpredictable results. Compared to the late-2011 / early-2012 model this replaced (the old one fried its GPU while I was out of town for work, and I needed a laptop NOW), it's a total letdown. Apple, you need to be more like Atariboxcorp, Inc. and wish harder.

Agreed. They're no longer a computer company (and haven't been in quite some time), but rather one that is a mix of consumer electronics and content delivery. This will probably be my last Macbook of any flavour. The problem isn't the OS or the software; it's the inexcusably-shit keyboard and ludicrously-huge trackpad. Oh, and the touch bar needs. To. DIE. It's amazing how aware you become of how often you actually use the escape key when it has no tactile feedback and requires an extra tap just to make it active - like when it's on the touch bar.

Might want to take a look at these threads (chances are they're of varying degrees of usefulness): https://atariage.com/forums/topic/273474-cx10-disassembly-photos/ https://atariage.com/forums/topic/275406-late-heavy-sixer-cx-10-joystick/

Judging from the Macbook Pro I bought in January, they no longer do.

I, for one, am disappointed that Atariboxcorp, Inc. hasn't played to its French roots and announced a retro-styled Minitel terminal. We had one in the late '80s / early '90s. Clever idea for the time, but I'd like a modern version so much better if it could also do Netflix. Getting to Netflix is just so difficult on any of the 27 other devices we have that can handle it, but I'm sure that this is a problem that Atariboxcorp, Inc. is uniquely positioned in the market to solve.

Hah, I had no idea that Weird Stuff Warehouse is in what used to be the Atari Coin-Op Warehouse at 384 W Caribbean Drive. Used to swing by them occasionally and see what I could find when I lived in that part of the world; picked up a couple of STs there as well as a few Mac SE/30 Ethernet cards (amongst other items).

All I know is that I am reminded of this post from November 29th of last year. It pretty much sums up what the GDC Ataribox 'event' has meant for me:

According to The Register, it's the opposite: "Less impressive is the accompanying game controller which looks like an industry-standard controller – the sort of thing you'd see hooked up to an Xbox or Playstation – but which is in reality a solid lump of plastic in the shape of a controller. The buttons don't move, the joysticks are rigid. It has nothing inside. ""The traditional controller works," Arzt told us, pointing to the square-stick box with a red button that, many, many years ago, was the games controller. It's hard not to get a twinge of nostalgia. "The red button goes down and when it does, a circle of red lights on the controller light up. The central stick moves. It appears to have a real USB connector." What I want to know are two things: 1) If anyone actually got to try the modern-day CX40 variant. So far, the only signs of it having any life are coming from the Atari spokesface, but nothing indicates that it was actually connected to a functional device, and; 2) How they manage to make a 'working' CX40 successor from scratch while being completely incapable of making an off-the-shelf knockoff of an Xbox controller not work. Even this sort of ineptitude is beyond what I had predicted of them.

Technically, if you just say it's the product that's not ready, that's only one item...

Yep. But just call it a 'technology demonstrator', only use it to demonstrate a 'prototype' in a hotel room with no resale involved, and you're golden! Dammit, I keep reaching for the tinfoil hat even though it has no speakers. Silly of me, really, because from what we've been led to believe, there has been no 'technology demonstrator' shown to the press or public.

True. There are definitely other options; I just went with the lowest-hanging currants.

I am totally ready to throw money at the IndieKickFundTreon for this product and/or service, can't wait to wear! #atariagelifeyolo

Let's see... What else has four USB ports, an Ethernet port, a slot for an SD card, HDMI output, and a power jack? Nah. That couldn't be it... But if you just needed to power a single LED and had to come up with a way to do that using only +5V over USB, you could make far worse choices. Granted, there are also less-involved ways of doing that - but every relevant port on the RasPi could easily be broken out to the connectors on the back of the case, which would allow for some limited demonstration of functionality if push came to shove. And now I shall put this away, partly because it lacks speakers:

We had one! It was monochrome amber, not cyan, but it had a button on it that would invert the video. Seem to recall that it came with an IBM XT clone that one of my parents bought.

One thing I will mention in relation to this: it's not uncommon for manufacturers to have prototypes moulded in colours that aren't 100% representative of the final product, generally because it's cost-prohibitive to do so in small runs. That could have happened with this unit. Having said that, four USB ports, an Ethernet port, HDMI output, and an SD card slot aren't exactly groundbreaking. Expected to be there, sure, but nothing special. It doesn't reveal (or say) anything about the hardware, or give any impetus to start drooling over it. As for skepticism: well, they certainly showed something - there is a case, at least, and I'll grant that. But what I don't see running to it is power, or AV output. Sure, it could have been disconnected for the photo, but I'd like to see one actually doing something before I'll give them credit for having something that might potentially become a saleable product.

I'd lean towards Computer Entertainer having got it wrong. It would've been in Atari's best interests to report the numbers and titles of games sold both timely and accurately, since those would have had a direct bearing on quarterly and annual earnings.

Even if Atariboxcorp, Inc. shows hardware to the press and/or public, it doesn't matter unless there's a strong value proposition attached to that hardware. Based on what they've announced about it so far, there still doesn't appear to be one.

Cyan on black. I've always found it the easiest to work with for long periods of time, and have used it as my standard colour scheme in terminal windows for decades because of the CRT experience.

I'll just leave this here

The one thing related to this that always seems to amaze me: re-publishers of old games never really seem to understand that it's a very finite market. Everyone who wants to play Combat already has multiple ways of doing that... And once you get everyone sucked in who doesn't yet have a way of doing so, it's not as though there will be tons more customers beating a path to your door (or app store). My guess is that Atariboxcorp, Inc. is using the tacocoin gambling platform / service / application / whatever as a hedge against their device being a one-trick pony, but if that is the case, it's a poor choice: the amount of crossover between people wanting to play old video games and people looking for online gambling has to be pretty small. Beyond the looks of the Ataribox, nothing about it adds up to much that's a compelling reason to buy one.