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x=usr(1536)

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Posts posted by x=usr(1536)

  1. Posted

    2 hours ago, CharChar2001 said:

    I'm using hbios .94, copied over the Harmony software, which seem to rename it to hbios.bin 

    Definitely upgrade to 0.95; it fixes a number of issues and also updates the bootloader.  See this post for details.

    2 hours ago, CharChar2001 said:

    Anyone have any thoughts? Do I need to open the cart and maybe remove a chip and reinsert it? 

    It's been a while since I had mine open, but my recollection is that the only thing in there that's removable is POKEY, if you've installed one.

  2. Posted

    5 minutes ago, HyperDriver said:

    HF Developments had no connection with Chaos! computers. When demand for the drives slowed down, one of our customers bought up our remaining stock. He used the name Chaos! computers & advertised in an Atari magazine (as shown in a previous post).

     

    In that case, I apologise unreservedly for the confusion, as well as the ire aimed in your direction.  I was unaware that the two entities were entirely unrelated and was completely off-base with my earlier comments.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted · Edited by x=usr(1536)

    On 3/24/2021 at 6:52 AM, HyperDriver said:

    I still have all my Atari stuff up in my loft somewhere, which should include all the Hyper Drive stuff. When (if) I get time, I'll hunt around for it.

    Would you be kind enough to see if the refund for the upgrade kit that was never sent to me is also in that pile?  I realise that it's been 30-odd years at this point, but I would like to receive it if it's knocking around.

     

    And yes, I did attempt to order an upgrade kit from Chaos back in the day.  Sent a Sterling postal order (which were not cheap to get in Ireland) and heard nothing back after almost 4 weeks.  Called the number (an international call) to see if the postal order had been received and was told that it had been and that my order would be shipping out shortly.  Another four weeks went by, with nothing arriving.  Another international call, but this time I was told to (and this is a direct quote), "fuck off," before being hung up on.

     

    After playing a game of we're-not-answering-the-phone for a couple of days, I eventually got back through and demanded a refund.  This time, I was told that I could go fuck myself.  It was an interesting variation on the previous suggestion, that's for sure.

     

    So, in the end, I was out of pocket for the kit, postal order, and international calls.  Customer service at its finest.  Fortunately, I was able to source a US Doubler from another retailer who knew how to not swindle their customers outside of the UK.  They also ended up getting the group order from our Users' Group, which was good for about 15 units in one shot.

    • Sad 1

  4. Posted · Edited by x=usr(1536)

    3 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

    Eventually I'll fit Sophia 2, this is just me testing and making sure everything works as it should. I'm sure I can find a cheap LCD TV that syncs, most of the cheapies do for some bizarre reason.

    I've also found that many of the el cheapo units also handle multiple analogue TV standards - so PAL-, SECAM-, and NTSC-region machines may be possibilities.  Could help with future acquisitions ;)

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    1 hour ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

    I would 100% do it but I'm already neglecting many projects I should be doing as it is. 🙂

     

    - James

    Ditto.  That and I have utterly appalling graphic design skills.  I'm lucky that I can even write with a pen, let alone make anything that looks visually-appealing.

  8. Posted

    9 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

    OMG arguing over the definition of "hit" with randos on the Internet is absolutely the dumbest thing I could be spending my time doing

    And yet you still do it.  That's dedication!

    10 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

    I mean it more in the context of "cultural hit" than "worldwide retail success".

    It's neither.

    10 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

    The VCS is way better than most folks thought it would be, plain and simple, and it has more people into it than most here thought as well.

    If people are easily-impressed by low-end AMD hardware, well, all I can say is good for them.  Not my money, not my purchasing decision.

    10 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

    Whether it ends up being 10,000 sold or 500,000 is interesting kind of but not really in informing whether Atari made a good console that hit with a core group of people who spent several years playing it and giving Atari money and Atari Gamebox LLC made enough money for a solid foundation of their business and enough to position them for future growth and everyone had a good time except for the unhappy people online who wouldn't like it anyway. Good enough?

    Lol.

    • Thanks 2
    • Haha 2

  10. Posted

    1 minute ago, leech said:

    Ha, when our support tries to do engineering work, Very Bad Things happen.

    Yeah, about that.

     

    Used to work at a place where someone got the bright idea that support was the same as engineering, just with smaller salaries.  'Cos, y'know, it's all just computers and whatnot, right?

     

    After I spent 19 hours on a call with Microsoft recovering an Exchange DB that Sparky the Wonder Supportgineer had hosed doing God-knows-what followed by a visit to the CEO and CFO, that changed.  Fortunately, I was only the IT Manager they hadn't listened to.  My boss (the director) was the one who had pushed the whole idea of having the entire department do the same work.  She was demoted from that position back into support, from whence she came.

     

    So glad I've left tech.  That's a thin edge of the wedge story from years ago, and it only keeps getting dumber.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 2

  13. Posted

    OK... It appears as though this might be largely-doable by using the right software stack. I'll start building out a prototype system this weekend, time permitting.

     

    Hardware will be a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running whatever current Raspbian (or Raspberry OS, or whatever they're calling it this week) is.  This is likely to move over to Debian under an x64 VM if things go well.  I'll need to do some cleanup on the VMware server to make that happen, which is something I really don't want to get into right now so am going with the RasPi.

     

    Software stack:

    The basic idea is that OpenLDAP runs on <instance> and provides the LDAP tree describing the public-facing tnfs servers.  FUSE lets that tree be presented as a standard mounted filesystem courtesy of ldapfuse.  Finally, tnfsd points to that LDAP mount for the server data it provides to the public.

     

    Getting the four installed is a no-brainer; configuration may be interesting.  ldapfuse hasn't been updated in a long time, and there's no telling how well (if at all) it'll work with a current version of FUSE.

     

    First goal is to get tnfsd to present the data to a client.  If that's successful, there needs to be a way for tnfsd to tell the #FujiNet that it's providing server addresses, not executables or media images; this is one change I can see being needed on the #FujiNet side.

     

    Second goal is to be able to replicate the LDAP data from the local server to another.  This is to be tested locally first, but with the intention of ultimately making it something that happens across the Internet.  The idea is that this will ultimately allow for geographically-distributed root servers.

     

    Final goal is to allow for individual tnfsd instances to register as public-facing with the root servers, thereby putting them in the public directory.  That whole end of things is very much TBD.

     

    Any and all assistance with this is appreciated.  I'm perfectly happy to not be flying solo on this if there are better ideas out there :-D

  14. Posted

    17 minutes ago, MASTER260 said:

    Lol, like the support guys have anything to do with the engineers.

    Hey, now - there's nothing that says support can't do a little moonlighting if they want to.

  15. Posted

    43 minutes ago, Trebor said:

    No need for apologies, Bob.  If the biggest lost here is a 2 player simultaneous mode, for what is shaping up to be a most outstanding port of Galaxian, the sacrifice is well worth the reward.

    This might even be the port of Galaxian.  It really is that good.

     

    Simultaneous play would be neat, but it's not a must-have by any means.  The end result is still going to be exceptionally good.

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

  18. Posted

    Giving this more thought, it may be possible to implement this with minimal changes to the @FujiNet side of things.  tnfsd is where the effort should be concentrated.

     

    If tnfsd can be built with the ability to query DNS / LDAP / whatever directory service, it can present that info to the #FujiNet in lieu of disk images, executables, etc.  This should also allow existing search functionality to work.

     

    At that point, <insert directory service here> inbound to the root directory server would only be needed to register a given public tnfs instance.

     

    That would rule out using the #FujiNet as a tnfs server, at least until tnfsd could be ported to it.  But that's a discussion for another day.

  19. Posted

    15 minutes ago, mozzwald said:

    A quick search and I found this https://github.com/chrisridd/LDAPClient which is for esp32 Arduino. Would need some modification to make it work on PlatformIO.

    Thanks for that.  Added to the list of things to look into.

    15 minutes ago, mozzwald said:

    Whatever you decide to use, make sure it works cross platform. Something like OpenLDAP instead of Active Directory. Maybe they are compatible with each other, I don't know.

    LDAP can query AD, so that's not a problem.  Either way, anything I may do is going to be done under either macOS or Linux, so someone else would have to pick up the Windows side.

  20. Posted

    20 minutes ago, DjayBee said:

    Why not use DNS and service records for this? Since @x=usr(1536) plans with some central "distribution point" anyway, this could as well be Thom's fujinet.online DNS zone.

     

    This way you only need to do some DNS lookups.

    I've given this consideration as well (actually, a combination of SRV and TXT records) and agree that it may work.  It's not out of the running, but may not be as flexible as using LDAP.

     

    One of the things I'd like to see is the ability to tag a record type as being more than just the equivalent of a DNS A record.  In other words, being able to specify that it's a URL to a remote TNFS server, file type, located in a particular country, etc. within the structure of the entry itself brings up the possibility of having a lot of flexibility on the backend of how to display the data.

     

    I'm not certain that DNS can do this as well as LDAP might be able to, given the structure of DNS records.  But I'm definitely not opposed to the idea, and if there's a way for it to be workable then I'm all ears.

     

    FWIW, if it starts looking like this may need to be a blend of LDAP and DNS, it may be easier to just spin up an Azure instance and run AD since that's pretty much what AD is at its core.

  21. Posted

    3 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

    Yes, that's sitting on the new head for my Mazdaspeed 3/MPS forged engine...Anyone that thinks retro computing is expensive needs to get into cars. Up to almost 10k in engine parts and machining so far.

    This.  And let's not forget what it costs to build out a 4x4.  Never, EVER look at past receipts unless you need to return an item.  Just don't do it.

     

    And glad you finally got the 600XL :-D

    • Haha 1

  22. Posted

    1 hour ago, ACML said:

    I have upgraded many 1200XLs with the ClearPic2002 mod and the S-video is great.  I just don't see much if any improvement in composite.  The ClearPic2002 makes the RF out no longer operative and I believe the UAV still allows RF out.  I've put the UAV in a couple 400's and the picture quality on the S-video is very sharp.  Didn't notice the composite.  If you're only interested in composite, the ClearPic2002 may not improve the picture much, but the S-video is amazing!

    Interesting re: the ClearPic not helping composite.  The UAV does also allow keeping the RF modulator, so that's also a point in its favour.

     

    Funnily enough, I have been buying S-Video-capable monitor cables even though it's doubtful I'll ever use it.  For the extra $2, I figured that there was no reason not to get them and at least have the option at some point in the future.

    1 hour ago, Stephen said:

    Paging @flashjazzcat - he just did a UAV in an NTSC 1200XL (well, I guess all 1200XLs are NTSC).  He did not get the expected results from it.  I have had nothing but good luck with the UAVs, but I cannot comment on the 1200XL as I have not yet modded mine.

    IIRC, that was the 1200XL from his recent Italian Job videos.  My recollection is that there was no solid reason found for why it was having issues, though video output was still improved.  Either way, I'm willing to take a shot at it on mine when it gets here and see what happens.

    29 minutes ago, gollumer said:

    I did the UAV mod in my 1200XL, and it works great. I used composite temporarily until my new (old) monitor arrived with an s-video input, which I'm now using.

    I put together a little annotated write-up here: 

     

    Yep, ran across that one.  Was planning on using it :-D

     

    Good to know that composite worked well enough for you.  That's basically what I'm aiming for: a massive improvement over how it is now, but it doesn't need to be the most ultimately perfect video output.

  24. Posted

    The video output on my 1200XL is every bit as awful as it is on everyone else's stock machine.

     

    Somewhere in the bowels of the United States Postal Service is a UAV headed my way.  It was intended for another machine that doesn't desperately need it, but I'm OK with living with that machine as it is and diverting this one to the 1200XL.  However, as Clearpic 2002 is also an option for the 1200XL, I'm fine with doing that and just using the UAV as originally intended.

     

    It is highly unlikely that this 1200XL will ever use anything other than composite for the video output, so RGB / S-Video / Component video really don't play into the equation.  Having the option to use them is fine, but they're not the focus for improved video quality.

     

    So, on to the highly-subjective question: for a machine that's going to see mainly composite video output, does the UAV or Clearpic 2002 make more sense?

  25. Posted

    20 minutes ago, tschak909 said:

    COOL! Build something. :) 

    -Thom

    OK, lemme chew it over :-D

     

    I have banged on other folks' network code before, so do have a *little* experience in that department.  Time is the killer, though - right now I'm juggling work, school, and a career change.

     

    Gonna think on it some more and see if there isn't something that could be adapted rather than starting from scratch if at all possible, but am open to suggestions 🤠

    • Like 1
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