Instant video game store...

[Instant video game store...]

So what's gonna happen if he doesn't sell it by the weekend?

 

His bookie breaks his legs, probably.

 

Then he hires the A-Team.

[MultiCart]

I would recommend you visit the creator of the flash carts at Atari Max. The 8Mb is only $39.99, comes with an optional USB programmer, but that is not necessary. The cart is designed to be programmed directly from the Atari computer. It's flash, so can be reprogrammed a ridiculous number of times. There are tons of free images for the cart on the forums.

 

I got an 8Mbit one just yesterday and had a question (I asked in the MaxFlash forums, but haven't got an answer yet, so maybe you could answer it): After flashing the first time, I ran into a dilemma - if I boot another flasher disk to reflash the cart, the cart menu comes up; if I hold down OPTION, I boot the flasher disk, but the cart is now gone. Are you really supposed to boot without the cart plugged in, then plug it in after booting? If so, how safe is that?

[Calling All 400s!]

In addition to the pic, my A400 also has a hand-written label with "AV 194896 7-12" on it. I haven't looked in the cart door.

[What is the Atari 400?]

Finally got around to it...

 

 

and a close up on that connector

 

 

That ISN'T soldered into place - merely stuck to the pins sticking out the bottom of the PCB.

[Calling All 400s!]

Here's my A400 -

 

[Thinking about getting an Amiga...]

I'm as die-hard an Amiga fan as they come, but even I'm more likely to fire up E-UAE on my PC than to use my A1200 or A4000, and the old A500 hasn't been out of its box in years. It helps that I put my PC into an A1200 case, though.

 

I don't know about your "die hardness" there.

I just got my Amiga 1200 set up with an accelerator and networking so I have been web browsing from it (No, it's not my primary browser, but it's perfect for Aminet and some other sites).

 

I'd use mine more, but I really need to finish making an RGB-YUV converter for it.

 

 

Although I have to admit, the part of me that isn't screaming about the poor 1200 that died to have a PC placed inside of it, is impressed about a PC inside an Amiga 1200 case..

 

No A1200's were harmed in the making of this movie...

 

I bought several A1200 shells from an Amiga store. I've used one, and have three or four more empty shells in the closet. The "PC" is a 3.5" form factor SBC (single board computer) based on the CoreDuo+945GM, with a CF card on an adapter in the belly door, and a Samsung Spinpoint 3.5" harddrive in the top left corner (like the floppy in the top right, but the other side).

 

I had intended to use the CF in the belly like a CD for transferring stuff, but the belly door isn't really convenient for that, so I use a USB CD/DVD and USB sticks instead.

[Thinking about getting an Amiga...]

I'm as die-hard an Amiga fan as they come, but even I'm more likely to fire up E-UAE on my PC than to use my A1200 or A4000, and the old A500 hasn't been out of its box in years. It helps that I put my PC into an A1200 case, though.

[What is the Atari 400?]

Doesn't that raster ramcart thingy only work with xl's and xe's

 

Only if you want to be able to flip the switches on it without turning off the computer.

 

Looking it over, I don't see any reason it wouldn't work in a 400/800 - you just don't have access to the switches. It looks like it's the same size as a regular cart, so it should fit in a 400/800. It's called an XL/XE cart because it's mostly designed around holding XL/XE cart games loaded from disk. It also can handle XEGS cart games.

[failed consoles]

Lendorien, I agree with almost all of what you say, but I'm not sure the Saturn was a failure but it probably borderline. The system was underpowered and missed the move to polygons. It was released on the heels of the 32x. And Sega's surprise launch didn't help and turned off retailers. Still, many games were lots of fun, and while they may have not looked as good as the PS1 games, they played well. For me, Daytona looked bad, and Ridge Racer looked good, but gosh was Daytona fun, and same for VF and Tekken. But in Japan, I think the system did well.

 

They did make a move to polygons, but they did QUADS instead of triangles. That really screwed them over as quads are much harder to work with. The best looking/fastest Saturn games were the ones where they took the time and effort to convert the render engine to quads and redid the artwork for them.

[What is the Atari 400?]

Oh, was looking around and remembered you asked about a ram expansion via the cart port...

 

http://raster.infos.cz/atari/hw/ramcart/ramcart.htm

That looks like it was much later than I was talking about though (I don't see a date, but it seems fairly recent, or at least from the 90s), and for an entirely different purpose. (it's more of a flash cart than RAM expansion, plus built-in bank switching and more RAM -SRAM at that- than would have been feasible at a reasonable price back in the mid/late 80s -other than for development purposes; if they DID push such, it would have made more sense to use DRAM with onboard logic to facilitate that)

 

I was thinking of a plain 16k (or 8k even) SRAM cart mainly aimed at the 400 to allow added RAM expansion to 48k without modification and at a reasonable price back in the early/mid 80s. (you could have had games with onboard RAM as well, but that would make more sense on a console than a computer -since you could upgrade to at least 32k on every model; albeit the 5200 lacked provisions for RAM expansion without hacks -the 2600 module compatible models have Phi2, so those would only need a simple read/write hack in software rather than what the VCS had to do -the 7800 added read/write as well, and had several games with RAM expansion, some with 16k SRAM, and I think 1 with 32k)

 

I know, but it's the only "ram cart" I've come across.

[What is the Atari 400?]

Would 130XE FREDDIE banking full under the "normal" bank select category?

 

Yes, XE banking is "normal" banking.

 

 

The Mosiac predated the 1200XL, didn't it? (so Atari could have taken the opportunity to use a mapping scheme compatible with an existing -albeit 3rd party- product with some existing software support -that, or they could have held back on the full 64k XL in favor of a more direct cost/size reduced +built-in BASIC version of the 48k 800 and not push for further expansion until they had the kinks worked out on the software side as well as facilitating a more complex banking scheme for RAM expansion -so a fully compatible system avoiding the hickups of the 1200 while quite possibly being cheaper and offering better expansion capabilities like the PBI rather than a closed box)

 

Yes, Mosaic pre-dated any models other than the 400/800. I'm not exactly sure why Atari chose the method they did for XE banking as opposed to something like Mosaic banking... maybe they were afraid they'd get sued... or maybe the way they did it used less hardware in the memory mapping chip.

 

 

In all cases you'd still "waste" 16k of RAM when cart games were used. (aside from a scheme that allowed that 16k to be remapped -perhaps into Mosiac or XE type banks -hmm, that could have been useful for expanding anywhere beyond 32k, for any cart based programs at least -especially convenient if the cart RAM space automatically mapped into banks -especially the non-conflicting Mosiac type- when a cart was inserted)

 

There's lots of ways you could do carts and ram and ram banks... this is just how the Atari happened to do it. Every system is different.

 

 

Oh, was looking around and remembered you asked about a ram expansion via the cart port...

 

http://raster.infos.cz/atari/hw/ramcart/ramcart.htm

[what do you reckon is the best psx/playstation emulator]

PCSX and variants - nothing else reaches as many platforms.

[What is the Atari 400?]

I can see why they opted for direct mapping for the original 48k with the shared cart space (to simplify the design and avoid added cost/complexity and avoid limiting RAM to 32k), but I'd have thought that by 1982, a simple bank-switching scheme would have been applied to add the extra RAM and not waste RAM space with the OS or the I/O gap. (especially if a parallel bank switching mechanism had been used to minimize CPU overhead)

The Mosaic seems to have done just that, and more than that it banks into the one totally unused "hole" in the original A8 memory map. (and in small/manageable 4k banks at that -significant given the number of complaints of many systems using banks that were "too big", even the 8k of the CoCo 3's GIME, let alone x86's 64k segments, albeit I think the CoCo 2 simply toggled between 2 32k banks for 64k use, so that wouldn't have been particularly attractive as such either)

 

I think the XL RAM was mapped the way it was for simplicity - the memory is flat with no banks to have to worry about. Bank switching takes time and space, both of which are limited on old 8-bit systems. The XL scheme is much faster than "normal" bank select.

 

Add to that the fact that most games can get by with 62KB for the entire game - when a cart is only 8/16KB (and expects only 16KB of RAM), that means you have an extra 38/30KB of memory for your game.

 

Then remember that the Atari floppy interface is simple if you write your game to read/write set locations on the floppy (no need for a filesystem). Games like The Eidolon used the floppy and XL bank RAM, and as the first person to hack this game (yay me!), I can tell you that the floppy code is both small and elegant. It could even play music during the drive accesses!

[What is the Atari 400?]

Can the full 128k be accessed by the 130XE, or was that limited to 126 kB?

 

All Atari 8bits have the 2kB hole in memory for the hardware access. I suppose technically a memory expansion that "mistakenly" maps the original 64k as part of its banks would allow one to use that 2kB, but really, that's a lot of effort for not a lot of gain.

 

--Kurt

 

Well, it could give you SOME gain, and I don't mean the "missing" 2KB - you could bank switch the original 64K while leaving the OS in place, so you could have the full 64KB of RAM usable without needing to "waste" some of it on a replacement OS.

[Scariest Video Games Ever?]

For old-school scary, you can't beat The Eidolon - tension rises as the sound indicates you're closing in on the dragon that ends the level, then you break that barrier and it attacks!!

 

Personally, Silent Hill and Resident Evil were only creepy, not scary. What scared me on the PSX was the Tyrannosaurus in Tomb Raider - especially the first time you play that and you aren't expecting it.

[What is the Atari 400?]

Can the full 128k be accessed by the 130XE, or was that limited to 126 kB?

 

126 KB

[What is the Atari 400?]

The single memory slot on the 400 by default maps four 8K selects, so 32K is possible without soldering. The additional 16K is implemented by pulling in additional signals, hence the reason soldering is required on 48K kits. The 800 has three memory slots so the 48K can be directly populated.

OK, so there is 48k of RAM space directly mapped to the CPU? (no bank selection)

Not talking about physical connections on the memory board slot, but the actual address/memory map of the computer itself.

 

Left carts can occupy up to 16K in the third 16K zone the memory map (XL/XE/XEGS only have the left cart). 800 right slot only maps the lower 8K. Even with banking, the bank still occupies the same area. This implies you can map 16K of RAM in the cart slot to bring a 32K 400 to 48K RAM without physical modification.

Where does the OS ROM map in then?

 

Simple memory map:

 

$0000 to $3FFF = 16 KB RAM (stock for 400)

$4000 to $7FFF = 16 KB RAM (or nothing if you don't have a memory expansion)

$8000 to $9FFF = 8 KB RAM or nothing or 8 KB ROM for 16KB cart

$A000 to $BFFF = 8 KB RAM or nothing or 8 KB ROM for cart

$C000 to $CFFF = 4 KB RAM bank if Mosaic 64 KB RAM expansion, or 4KB RAM if XL/XE and enabled, or nothing

$D000 to $D7FF = hardware IO

$D800 to $DFFF = OS ROM or 2 KB RAM if XL/XE and enabled

$E000 to $FFFF = OS ROM or 8 KB RAM if XL/XE and enabled

 

So you can have up to 52KB of contiguous RAM directly addressable with the Mosaic expansion or an XL/XE, but only if you don't have a cart plugged in. The cart overrides the RAM. With a 16KB cart, you can only address 32KB of contiguous RAM, and with an 8KB cart, 40KB of RAM. With an XL/XE and no cart and the OS ROM turned off, you can access 62KB of RAM, but 10KB of it won't be contiguous.

Hmm, that's rather different than I'd assumed in some areas. (in particular, I'd assumed the final 16k on the XLs was all bank-switched in as segments -like bank switched carts- rather than re-arranging other parts of the memory map to fit it in -more like the VIC-20; the 130 XE must be using bank switching though)

 

Yes, the XE uses a bank at $4000 (IIRC). You can also set the ANTIC to use the bank as well. That's only for XEs with more than 64KB of RAM; the 65XE is really just the same as the XL, but updated to the latest chips and look.

 

 

So the XL/65XE can't access the full 64k, or can that last 2k be used via bank switching? (or for that matter, can the 400/800 bank switch into the full 48k while a ROM cartridge is also in-use, banking between ROM/RAM?)

 

That 2KB of RAM under the hardware cannot be accessed. Also, the cart cannot be switched out - when you plug the cart in, it overrides the RAM until you unplug it... unless you make a hardware modification. On my brother's 400, I added a switch to the line that determines if a cart is plugged in, so we could switch in or out the cart at the flip of a switch.

 

 

Were there any ever RAM carts for the 400 (probably SRAM) to allow 48k without internal modification? (ie 32k internal +16k cart RAM)

 

Not that I know of. That would certainly be one way to do it on a 32KB 400/800. It's just cheaper to do it internally.

 

 

They had a small PCB that stuck to the pins sticking out the bottom of the motherboard to connect to certain signals. I'll take a picture when I get the chance.

Oh . . . that's exactly what it sound like he was implying, but I couldn't imagine that being the configuration used: interesting. I wonder why they couldn't do something like that for the ST (given the general lack of socketed chips but largely through-hole construction, at least on earlier models), though clip-on type arrangements might have been more practical/easier for that. (piggybacking to a chip on the top of the PCB rather than the pins on the underside, and that could work for surface mounted stuff too -sort of like Cyrix did for some 386SX upgrades) That would have been a lot simpler than requiring users to desolder the CPU and add a socket.

 

A lot of PCB assemblers clip/grind off the excess part of the pins sticking out the bottom of a PCB after soldering, so you wouldn't have anything to stick to. It's only because the 400 had such long pins sticking out the bottom that you could get away with sticking something to them.

[Dual 6502 chip?]

I've got the Rockwell datasheet on that in a box somewhere. I really need to dig some of that stuff out and scan it.

[failed consoles]

As others noted, it all depends on how you define "failure." Is it making money? Is it the size of the user base? Is it just getting a successor? Some fit one category, but not any others. Some fit most of the categories, and those are the ones I consider TRUE failures.

[failed consoles]

The most successful failures have to be the XBox and XBox 360. MS is so far in the red on both systems they are likely to NEVER show a net profit. MS is only NOW barely turning a profit on the 360, and only because they bought a couple major dev houses that got lucky (cough - Halo - cough). A thin profit for a couple years doesn't make a scratch in the billions MS has sunk into the XBox line over the last decade. It's only their Windows and Office monopoly profits that keeps MS in the game business.

[Thinking about getting an Amiga...]

I switched from the Atari 400 to the Amiga 500 back in the day.

 

I did the 1MB chip ram hack on it, and added 3.5MB of slow ram to the belly slot. I also had a slingshot with two zorro cards on the side, and a 68030 accelerator with 8MB fast ram. I then got an A1200 and A4000. Both went through various upgrades.

 

I pulled the accelerator and slingshot from the A500 so I could use it for old games. Anything the needed power was run on the A4000 at that point.

[What is the Atari 400?]

The single memory slot on the 400 by default maps four 8K selects, so 32K is possible without soldering. The additional 16K is implemented by pulling in additional signals, hence the reason soldering is required on 48K kits. The 800 has three memory slots so the 48K can be directly populated.

OK, so there is 48k of RAM space directly mapped to the CPU? (no bank selection)

Not talking about physical connections on the memory board slot, but the actual address/memory map of the computer itself.

 

Left carts can occupy up to 16K in the third 16K zone the memory map (XL/XE/XEGS only have the left cart). 800 right slot only maps the lower 8K. Even with banking, the bank still occupies the same area. This implies you can map 16K of RAM in the cart slot to bring a 32K 400 to 48K RAM without physical modification.

Where does the OS ROM map in then?

 

Simple memory map:

 

$0000 to $3FFF = 16 KB RAM (stock for 400)

$4000 to $7FFF = 16 KB RAM (or nothing if you don't have a memory expansion)

$8000 to $9FFF = 8 KB RAM or nothing or 8 KB ROM for 16KB cart

$A000 to $BFFF = 8 KB RAM or nothing or 8 KB ROM for cart

$C000 to $CFFF = 4 KB RAM bank if Mosaic 64 KB RAM expansion, or 4KB RAM if XL/XE and enabled, or nothing

$D000 to $D7FF = hardware IO

$D800 to $DFFF = OS ROM or 2 KB RAM if XL/XE and enabled

$E000 to $FFFF = OS ROM or 8 KB RAM if XL/XE and enabled

 

So you can have up to 52KB of contiguous RAM directly addressable with the Mosaic expansion or an XL/XE, but only if you don't have a cart plugged in. The cart overrides the RAM. With a 16KB cart, you can only address 32KB of contiguous RAM, and with an 8KB cart, 40KB of RAM. With an XL/XE and no cart and the OS ROM turned off, you can access 62KB of RAM, but 10KB of it won't be contiguous.

 

 

The original Mosaic 64K board mapped four 4K segments above the 48K area (used by the XL OS) allowing for 52K of contiguous memory. It was just a RAM board and did not piggyback onto the CPU board (if you've seen the clearance in CPU board cavity on the either the 400 or 800 you'd see why). I highly doubt it would be directly XL compatible and allow for running software that required RAM under the OS.

So when Chilly Willy said "plugs into the bottom of the board" what did he mean?

 

They had a small PCB that stuck to the pins sticking out the bottom of the motherboard to connect to certain signals. I'll take a picture when I get the chance.

[What is the Atari 400?]

The original Mosaic 64K board mapped four 4K segments above the 48K area (used by the XL OS) allowing for 52K of contiguous memory. It was just a RAM board and did not piggyback onto the CPU board (if you've seen the clearance in CPU board cavity on the either the 400 or 800 you'd see why). I highly doubt it would be directly XL compatible and allow for running software that required RAM under the OS.

 

I need to find the manual that came with mine. It did CLAIM to handle RAM under OS in XL mode. As I mentioned, you had to solder lines to the PIO (which prevented you from using the 3rd and 4th joystick ports), and it replaced the demultiplexor with a daughterboard (IIRC), which allowed for full XL emulation. Now I can't say if it actually WORKED in that mode as I never bothered - Mosaic mode was more useful to me, and by the time I was wanting XL mode, I had my 65XE to use for XL/XE software. So my 400 remains in Mosaic mode. If I find the manual, I'll scan the instructions on setting it for XL operation.

[Say SNES]

I've always said it as "sneeze", and so has nearly everyone I know. Meh, no big deal... tomato, tomahto...

[What is the Atari 400?]

I think the 400 would be preferred if you're on a tighter budget and the keyboard isn't a deal breaker. (especially if you're reasonably competent at soldering for the 48k RAM kit -the price of the kit and a reasonable deal on a 400 would tend to be a lot more favorable than buying a 48k 800)

The compact size is a plus too. (I like the look of the 400 in general over the 800 personally, nice clean angular wedge design -and functionality aside, the keyboard looks neat too)

I have a 400 with a 32K RAM board inside and there was ZERO soldering involved. That's usually enough since 16K cartridges take up rest of RAM space anyways. But you could put in a 16K RAM cartridge and avoid soldering.

 

I got the 400 because: it was cheaper; it was smaller; it looks cool.

 

The 32KB ram card required no soldering or anything more than inserting the ram card. The Mosaic 64KB ram expansion also didn't require soldering if you used it in Mosaic mode - it had a special board/connector that attached to the bottom of the main PCB... very ingenious design. If you used the Mosaic in XL mode, you had to solder lines to the PIO to control the bank selection.

 

I started with the 400, a 410 cassette, and the 32KB ram card. Over the next couple years, I got the Mosaic 64KB expansion, the B-Key full-stroke replacement keyboard, and a Percom DD floppy. It was a REALLY nice system. I still have it, but have it packed away for safe keeping.