x=usr(1536)

It's fun to have hobbies!

My university had a couple of labs that were dedicated to the Archimedes, and I worked the helpdesk when those machines were current. One of the running jokes in Computing Services was that Archimedes users would never experience the raft of problems that PC users did because people actually used the PCs. A shame, too, because there were some really good things about the Archimedes. They just didn't have a good slot to fall into, however. Never saw one of those in person, and I think yours may be the first one I've seen in a setting outside of adverts.

Volkswagen

Pretty much anything made by Acorn in the 8-bit or Archimedes days is going to have most of the interest in it coming from the UK - the machines just weren't terribly significant outside of Britain. ARM is undoubtedly one of the most significant processor architectures to date, but the Acorn name in connection to it means very little today. The company was gone by the late '90s, just in time to miss the start of ARM's ascendancy in the marketplace, and ARM has become as generic a term as Xerox or Coke. That's not to say that the company wasn't significant, but given Acorn's near-exclusiveness to the UK market and their twenty-plus year absence from being in any market at all, the company really has become a footnote. Unfortunate, but not terribly surprising.

Just curious: what were you using prior to receiving your VCS?

I'm just glad that, six words into the description, they described the game as a "holy grail". This has significantly influenced my bidding decisions.

I vote for just proposing ET as the basis for the next GTA game to Rockstar.

One thing I would strongly suggest doing is confirming whether or not the unit on the right is a prototype or not - compared to the other two, it lacks any markings indicating that one way or another. This will have a significant effect on the value of the lot, so best to get it squared away first.

It's how it appears from the external perspective. Note that I am not the first to draw this parallel. I understand the analogies you're making, but I don't believe that they really work in this case. Bear in mind that the scenarios you're describing are ones being carried out after the item in question has become available. The majority of the negative opinion of the VCS (and Atari SA) was formed over time before any units had shipped. Criticism of the actual units has only been possible for about six weeks at this point, because before then there was no way of knowing what, if anything, would actually be delivered. This brings us full-circle to the point I was making, namely that there seems to be a conflation of 'VCS bad' with 'you are a complete and utter failure of a person' in many cases. A great deal of the responses to criticism of the device and/or company display an apparent lack of separation of self and object in those responses, particularly given the reflexive nature of a large number of the responses in question. As I mentioned above: this is the external perspective, at least from where I'm sitting. However, based on commentary in this thread and elsewhere, it appears as though I am not the only one to have picked up on it. Fair questions. Here's my shortlist: Be more Flashback-like (i.e., appliancey), but add the store and other online features. Being able to run new games on it as well as old ones will have more appeal to a broader slice of the market and keep the bundled content (and thus device) from getting stale quickly, which has been an issue with Flashback-type devices. Forget the whole 'it's a console you can use as a PC!' feature. Sony did that with both the PS2 and PS3, and very few people bought one mainly on that basis; the VCS seems to have similarly-low interest in it. Too many other options out there for this to be a standout feature, and, frankly, it recalls the Internet Appliance debacle of roughly 1999 to 2001. Nobody is clamouring for a new version of the 3Com Audrey. Lower the price point. We're all in agreement that the VCS isn't competing with the PS5 or Xbox on the basis of raw computing power, but its price does put it in the same market space as those devices. At $199, its features and spec are much more justifiable, and it ends up in a space with no direct competition. Continue to sell the controllers separately for people who aren't interested in the box itself. This was a good move, controller design issues aside. Atari SA needs to realise that treating both the company and potential customers with the sheer cynicism that they have is not a strategy for long-term success. I don't want to give my money to a company that behaves the way they do towards the people they're asking to purchase their product(s) regardless of how much interest I may have in said product(s). Related to the above point: put some humanity back into the company. Don't outsource every last detail of development. Have in-house staff who design and build things. Improve management so that good staff are attracted to the company and want to work for it. Most importantly, do all of this so that the company can develop a culture beyond, "how can we squeeze another buck out of nostalgia?" That will bring about the biggest inherent improvement to future product(s). There are other items, but most of them are details that would end up with us getting out into the weeds of minutiae.

The problem is that without the CHD format, dealing with the increasingly-larger amounts of data that need to be streamed from disk to the emulator would be next to impossible - at least, in any sort of usable way. I see the point you're making about CD data vs. HDD data, but having a single container for multiple media types cuts down on potential points of failure, the manpower needed to maintain that section of the code, and bloat (everyone's favourite gripe about MAME). Wait until laserdisc redumps with vblank data baked in start appearing: the need for a compressed streaming format that can be decompressed on the fly will show up exactly where the shortcomings in formats such as bin/cue and ISO are. (Note: I'm not married to CHD as a format, but it does solve a number of problems that other formats don't - and for MAME specifically, that's a good thing.)

What amazes me is how desperately there still seems to be a deep-seated need for some to defend their purchase. It's as though even the most minor of criticism against the system is somehow a deep personal attack on them that honour demands a response to, mental health and well-being be damned.

That goes both ways. You've taken your share of swipes at the opposition and held your position just as rabidly as anyone else, as have others. Glass houses, throwing stones, etc.

Sure, but in this specific case: how did that person land on the VCS as their machine of choice? I can understand the RasPi and high-end PC, but putting down what's essentially a 3-year 100% deposit on a machine that doesn't exist in order to end up with a low-end PC in an Atari-alike case seems like an odd choice to me when there are clearly other more expedient alternatives out there.

Genuine question: with all of the other options out there for low-end PCs, how did that person come to choose the VCS as their platform of choice? I really don't have a problem with them choosing it, but it seems like an unusual choice given the prevalence of other hardware pretty much everywhere.

You've just brought up a point that I feel needs to be raised, because I've run into it here as well. There's a shitload of commentary about the VCS taking place. I get that it's hard to keep track of all of it at times, but it would be appreciated if replies were checked against statements before posting them. It would help with accuracy, for one, but would also cut down on animosity between the pro and con sides if both felt like they were being listened (and replied) to accurately.

Right... The 410's rewind and fast-forward aren't functional, but it just loaded Thorn EMI's Darts on the 600XL. FWIW, it's the later model with six buttons. Unfortunately, until I can get to the point where holding down START at boot works on the 1200XL, there's not much I can do. But it should work as an SIO test.

Fair point, and will do. Right now I have zero workspace (see: 46 plastic bins) to do this in, but as soon as I can make the space it'll happen.

Yep. Actually started running into this problem in the late '90s: my 1010 did exactly that. It was a weekend of cleaning to get that up and running again after I'd bought a belt for it. Oh, I know. Been watching the prices of component cassette decks climb in thrift stores and elsewhere over the last year or so because hipsters. Not expecting anything from the 410. I just figured that as long as I can get the 1200XL to do a motor start on the 410, that should be at least a basic indicator of how well (or not) SIO is working. As for the 1050, it looks like most of what I have accessible are commercial disk titles. There are other disks, but right now I have something like 46 plastic bins to go through holding about 25 years of my life. Wherever they are, I have no idea. That said, I'll try to find which bin the 1050 is in and see how well it powers up or not. I remember that switch-on sound *very* well Which is a good point. That said, with a shot keyboard mylar and no paddles, I can't verify those two - but the startup data burst noise tells me that sound is at least working. In any event, I do have a non-working 5200 with a POKEY of unknown condition, but it is at least a swap candidate. The ones in the 600XL and 800XL are good, but I'm kinda reluctant to swap those out since both of those machines are working.

In that regard, I have the 410 and a 1050. Condition of both is currently-unknown; the 410 was a freebie pickup from a year or two ago, and the last time the 1050 saw any use was probably in 2004 or 2005. I'm not expecting either one to work, but can test assuming that I can find power supplies for them. Correct. It boots as expected on the 800XL, and does not boot (also as expected) on the 600XL. The thing that gets me, though, is that Star Raiders works just fine on the 1200XL. Granted, that does bypass the OS - but it's the one A8 cartridge that I have. There is both 5.25" and cassette software floating around; I'll see if I can't get the 1200XL to boot (or not) some of those titles. I just hope the disks / cassettes are still good.

Very cool! Has this been tested on non-2600 Ataris?

Ah, got it. The following was taken from FujiNet powerup (power switch was flipped after laptop was connected to USB) followed by booting the 1200XL.

Weird - I tried running the version I downloaded with the Jan. 24th firmware, and it didn't do that. I'll re-check when a new version is available.

I'd like to make a feature request for Fujinet Flasher: the ability for it to download the current firmware directly from <insert location here> without having to redownload the flasher every time there is an update. This is being requested due to macOS' code signing requirements. Every time a new firmware version is made available, a new build of the flasher needs to be downloaded due to the .app bundle including the firmware statically. However, when attempting to launch the .app, the permissions to allow execution for the previous version do not carry over to the new one - at least in Big Sur. Under these circumstances, the order of operations involves running the .app bundle, dismissing the 'you can't run this' dialogue, opening System Preferences, going into the Security & Privacy settings, clicking on 'Run Anyway' under the 'General' tab, followed by finally giving the OK to one more 'do you really, Really, REALLY want to do this?' dialogue. If you're only updating your firmware occasionally, this isn't a huge deal. However, if you're testing multiple firmware builds in a short span of time, jumping through the hoops every time there's a new build gets in the way pretty quickly. Being able to install one major version of the installer that only requires periodic updates would be a huge plus if code signing isn't an option. And yes, this is definitely a macOS problem. But given Apple's track record on things like this in the past, it's not likely to change.

Done! That's all that I get after letting it sit for a couple of minutes. I'm going to guess that 'CHECKSUM_ERROR' probably isn't desired behaviour