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x=usr(1536)

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Posts posted by x=usr(1536)

  1. Posted · Edited by x=usr(1536)

    I was recently having a discussion with some friends and associates at work about game consoles. During the discussion the recent xbox one and PS4 were being put forth as the "best" game consoles but I threw in that neither was really a game console. I felt that pretty much every console since the original xbox has been a pc in disguise. I would have to say the GBA or N64. Anyone else like to throw in their opinion?

    Going by the "PC in disguise" guideline and adjusting for the hardware of the era, the Atari 5200 would have to be disqualified from being a 'real' game console by virtue of the fact that it's essentially a cut-down Atari 400 computer. Ditto the Amstrad GX4000 and Commodore 64GS.

     

    Realistically, almost every console ever made has used at least some off-the-shelf componentry shared with computers - and even the PS2 (and, later, the PS3) was capable of running Linux with its manufacturer's blessing.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    Hmm...Are you sure it was London?

     

    The Birmingham branch were pretty in to it...

    In all honesty, I don't remember. And, being perfectly frank about it, I'm not certain that I ever did know. But the statement about getting the disks from Maplin's stuck in my head because we didn't have Maplin's in Ireland at the time.

     

    As for as I know under my time there the only direct from Hammersmith shop seller was the Captain Alcan person who was not a staff member, he lost the ability to do all this when we changed the shop around. As far as I know none of the other staff were as 'connected' as myself but I never swapped anything directly from the shop as it was my place of work, I was young but not daft icon_smile.gif

     

    I was more about getting stuff, the few I swapped with ended up making the same connections so I just picked up my pile of floppies in the end, as I've always said, in those days it was a small world, every one knew every one in some way. I don't really want to glorify it all, it wasn't like a brand of Mafia and mobsters, 99.9% of the folk I'm talking about were very ordinary people, some geeks and spotty beggars, there were the bad lads also but again they were very ordinary people, one guy sold insurance for a living, I only ever knew one guy who made a killing out of it and he was like that all his life, where ever he could make cash he did.

     

    For me I just loved being part of both sides, I got the software early and got to sell and advise on the machines while meeting some of my hero's, what's not to like..

    That about gels with my memories of the time. Receiving bricks of disks in the post at school from the Continent and UK, then copying the hell out of them and uploading like mad to the local BBSes... That was a fun time.

  4. Posted

    Can't believe an image of a sealed copy of this finally surfaced. I, for one, didn't even know this game existed and can't find any information on it elsewhere. Wonder what kind of patch you could win by playing it?

     

    retro2.jpg

     

    Can't see the image.

  6. Posted · Edited by x=usr(1536)

    I've uploaded a demo video to the website, it's also here:

     

    -Thom

     

    I'm watching the video now, and holy shit is this awesome. This is easily one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in the retrocomputing arena, and soon as I can free up the time I'll be signing up an account and exploring it.

     

    The one thing that strikes me about PLATO: it's clear where a lot of the inspiration behind Teletext came from. Many of the concepts are very similar, though PLATO has a level of interactivity that Teletext could never have achieved - at least, not without external connectivity.

     

    Out of curiosity, what is the terminal shown on the left-hand side of the video?

     

     

    Gonna say this right now:

     

    FUCK NO.

     

    For way....way.....WAY too many reasons.

     

    The biggest of which, Compuserve ran on a set of 36-bit PDP-10 systems, PLATO ran on clusters of 60-bit Control Data CDC Cyber systems. Data conversion problems would be unbelievable.

     

    -Thom

     

    That would literally be a lifetime project for one person. You'd have to start a company and hire people to make it feasible.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    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?

  9. Posted

    Yes, Mikes secret was that it was known a lot of what dropped out of Atari did so because of him.

     

    The version of Ms Pacman that was on the disk which said other guy got done for was directly from inside Atari as one of their carts which was dumped and then rather stupidly sold on Exchange and Mart by the pirate who shall remain nameless (just in case ) although I think I have said his name or part of it before but I personally knew the guy a loong time as a friend. he was also the legendary Captain Alcan who pirated stuffed for sale in the Maplin shop in Hammersmith. The name comes from his aluminium type Atari jacket and hold all he carried his Happy in.

     

    Not sure of the young lad on Saturdays as you only had the managers and deputy managers ever meeting other shop staff unless you were really sad and spent your day off from Maplin at another branch...

     

    As for my shop being the place to be, perhaps if you were in London, we were the only decent retailer at that time but Silica shop Sidcup was my favourite Atari centre, can't say I liked their later shops in Tottenham Court Road but the guys were ok, Noel Daniel of Sidewinder and the Uridium clone (something fox) worked there as did a guy called Erol who wrote Foundations Waste on the ST, another Silica guy ran a huge Amiga pirate BBS...

     

    Old stuff I've mentioned before but as I've said before, its amazing how so many of us knew one another in one way or another....Closer than most folk realise...

     

    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.

  12. Posted

    Partial necroposting and probably old knowledge to some of you, but I just read about the Dragon MSX, a prototype machine from Dragon Data (who made the Dragon 32, a home computer very similar to the TRS-80 CoCo). This MSX computer was designed by ... drum roll ... Radofin in some time before Dragon Data under the control of General Electric Company (GEC) went into receivership in 1984 and was sold to Spanish startup Eurohard.

     

    Would this Dragon MSX design possibly match either Aquarius II or III, or just one more of many Radofin designs?

     

    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.

  13. Posted

    If you think that's bad (I've actually grown accustomed to the flat keyboard), try hooking up some Thunderbolt 3 peripherals. One expects a certain level of reliability from a $2000 computer, and it's also reasonable to expect improvement over the old unibody models. Nope.

     

    I guess they "didn't really want it to happen," not like AtariBox's creators.

     

    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.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    Yeah, that's doing it wrong. Their best computers are the little ones that fit in your pocket.

     

    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.

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    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.

    • Like 3

  18. Posted · Edited by x=usr(1536)

    Hi, for those of you who enjoy virtual trips a the Atari facilities, I've built this quick guide [link to google maps]

     

    Unfortunately, Google myMaps does not support StreetView, so if any of you can think of a way of enabling streetview that would be great.

     

    I hope you enjoy it.

     

     

     

    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).

  20. Posted

    Unless you want a 3D printed stick with, most likely, the innerds of some other stick for about $300 or more, you'd have to wait for a lengthy manufacturer selection process, contracting, design, mold construction, fabrication and assembly. That would be 3 to 6 months for a company that knew what they were doing.

     

    I suspect the retro stick is not even functional either. It's probably a hollow shell with a sponge or clay and LEDs inside like the main box.

     

    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.

    • Like 3

  22. Posted

     

    Retropie license prohibits commercial use.

     

     

    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.

    • Like 3

  24. Posted

     

    They aren't, they called for an announcement about pre-orders in April.

     

    *I am making an announcement now, that in September, there will be an announcement on when and how to obtain AA tinfoil hats.

     

     

     

     

    * No guarantee given.

     

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

    • Like 2

  25. Posted · Edited by x=usr(1536)

    I suppose this is neither here nor there, but it's very weird to have four USB ports, with none of them next to each other. Usually when you have multiple ports, at least some get grouped off into twos.

     

    Let's see... What else has four USB ports, an Ethernet port, a slot for an SD card, HDMI output, and a power jack?

     

    Bcd3Ay4.png

     

    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:

     

    BedWwWf.png

    • Like 6
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