kogden
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Posts posted by kogden
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If I dig around I probably have a PCI Adaptec 2940 if you have a PC with actual PCI slots. You could just hook it up, boot Linux and run "dd" to make an image.
My Atari ST still has a 36GB Ultra160 SCSI drive plugged into an SCA adapter plugged into an ACSI to SCSI card.
Sorry for the necrobump...
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On 8/11/2022 at 10:03 AM, tep392 said:
I occasionally buy original 5.25" floppy software and I would say 95% of them are still fully readable. The NOS games I have bought worked 100%. I've purchased a bunch of blank NOS Athena disks produced back in the 90's and they all work very reliably. It depends on how well they were stored, but it's really amazing how reliable these old floppy's can be.
I have found that the disks survive much better than the drives themselves. Drives I *ALWAYS* have to clean, strip down and often replace a belt or two. 80s era power supply boards can be scary as hell too.
I've actually had a FAR worse time trying to preserve ST software and craptastic ST 3.5" floppy drives. Lack of SIO for peripheral emulation makes things tougher too. Time for an UltraSatan I guess.
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On 7/9/2022 at 8:02 AM, Mark Simonson said:
Makes me want to buy a cheap PC...
Or you could simply use a Windows VM or WINE under MacOS with almost no performance hit. VirtualBox is free, Parallels is better. You can even use the USB passthrough support if you want.
Atari800MacX is a fine emulator as well with a good disk editor built in and WUDSDN will run natively. SIO2OSX is also great for peripheral and transferring files to Atari. You just need the FTDI serial drivers.
You can even run the ARM version of Winblows or Linux in a VM on the recent ARM Macs if you have the cash for one. WINE/Crossover works well on Intel.
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It's always sad when history and culture are erased due to unnecessary conflict. I hope this guy is able to rebuild when this is all over. I would happily ship him a spare machine if needed.
On another note, if the iron curtain is going back up I want someone to send me one of those Elektronika BK home computers with the PDP11 clone CPU first. Wars suck ?
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Retrofire! Call me weird but I actually love it. Uses artifacting for color. Neat 3D lunar lander clone with wireframe terrain that gets more detailed in steps as you land. Having to worry about radiation exposure is a weird twist too. I play this game a lot still. It was a machine language type-in in a magazine I believe.
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It really is soooo much better than official release. Who wrote the 5200 version originally? It really is a work of art. The original was really nowhere near as fun to play.
Glenn's 5200 conversions were certainly worth the effort. The 5200 got a few enhanced versions of various games. Also the only console that ever got a good Star Raiders port.
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Yeah I'd certainly be interested in taking a look at this. What format are the design files in? KiCAD?
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7 hours ago, santosp said:
AM29f040b is a flash memory! ? I think we need dynamic ram.
If we are doing things like replacing video circuit....why not just replace dram and associated circuitry with a big SRAM instead? Eliminating unnecessary passives and TTL chips to keep costs down without going too insane with feature creep seems like a win to me.
I would just be happy with a better quality PCB in the same footprint with clean video output and more expanded RAM. Mine has damaged lifted traces on SIO port and is falling apart.
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The thing that put me off the most with the 2600 was the awful sound in most games that I found irritating. I'll never understand why they didn't build POKEY into the 7800 design.
I did have a 5200 as a kid. I wouldn't mind having a 2600 adapter for it but I couldn't see myself going out of my way to have a 2600 collection.
There were some ok games for it but very few that didn't have better A8/5200 ports. I just have no nostalgia really for the 2600, some people do.
I was just a spoiled brat I guess.
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I'm working on building an RCA 1802-based machine in my spare time. I e thing I stumbled on working on that project is a support chip that is usable in other CPUs as well. The CDP1855 hardware mult/div chip. Can stack 3 of them to get 24-bit hardware mult/div support that's much faster than the CDP1802 CPU pulling it off.
I think using an ARM or STM32 or something is cheating a bit but that's just me.
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Allows you to play dumps of large bankswitched cartridge games like Commando, Karateka, BattleZone, etc from floppy or HDD. SDX is badass. Extended RAM and a PBI IDE controller make this machine much more versatile.
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7 hours ago, slx said:
Due to most Ataris sold having 48 or 64K, there wasn't much incentive for software, especially games to require it as the market for 128K software would have been minuscule. Without the need to have more than 64K for games there was little incentive to upgrade computers which at the time mostly meant soldering (except for the Axlon boards for the 800). Lack of demand for expansion resulted in hardly any plug-in expansions being available although the XLs and XEs would have been capable of using them.
Of course you could use them as a RAMdisk and for a few productivity applications but I doubt that generated a lot of demand.
It's strange however, that amid all kinds of other gimmicks they developed, Atari did not design the 1064 to allow expanding an 800XL to 128K.
RAMBO-style XL upgrades were quite a common sight at user group meetings where I grew up. There's actually a fair amount of software that supported it compared to C64 expansions. The fact that Atari adopted the community standard for PORTB bankswitching when they released the 130XE is pretty telling.
Expanded XLs weren't that uncommon. Many people had dropped the 8-bit and flocked to the ST at that point here though. The market for 8-bits evaporated pretty quickly once the ST, Amiga and Macs hit the streets here.
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Karateka is actually far more playable with the keyboard. Both the 8-bit and ST versions. I was never able to beat the game until I started using the keyboard.
I think you have to hit "K" to switch to keyboard control.
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On 1/9/2021 at 10:41 PM, Gunstar said:
I think the PBI "device" we need most is an expansion box. I'm not talking about the 1090 or something similar, just a box (similar to a 1090 only as far as the case goes) that has multiple PBI slots and PCB edge connectors for multiple PBI devices.
I've been thinking this for a while and started thinking about giving it a shot to build a simple backplane with internal SCSI-style 50-pin locking connectors for each slot. I had started to come up with a simple IDEa-like but simpler IDE interface for CF cards that would fit as well. Life unfortunately got in the way.
I *LOVE* my IDEPlus 2.0, until I had one I never knew how cool it would be to have a real PBI disk controller. A RAM320XL-style RAM expansion and a card with a couple 16550 UARTs would make me happy as well.
It would really be sweet to be able to use PBI as intended with multiple devices. Lots of fun could be had. A 1450XLD-style voice synth, COVOX, simple Z80 card for running CP/M based on an eZ80 or something.
A standard backplane supported by the community with cheap proto cards available could really open up a lot of possibilities for us. Rather than a handful of really awesome devices that aren't interoperable or compatible, we could really have something managable. It would make hardware hacking more newbie friendly as well.
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21 hours ago, pixelmischief said:
Damn, that's cool. I never played Prince of Persia. Been in my backlog for decades. Glad I can save myself for the A8 version. The A8 was always my favorite Karateka, by a long shot. Absolutely loved it. Only fitting that I get another Mechner classic on my all-time favorite platform.
The ST version of Karateka was pretty awesome. A8 PoP looks like it's going to be far better than the ST version though.
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I finally got a more recent mac and gave this a whirl. Still my favorite 8-bit emulator on the planet.
Any chance SIO2OSX will get an update eventually? I really liked it for printer emulation, etc. If not is there a good alternative for OSX that integrates well and includes a disk editor?
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On 8/13/2020 at 2:25 AM, flashjazzcat said:
I have no idea about that, and nor do you. As a matter of fact, people have had such mixed experiences with Bradley Koda of late that I wouldn't necessarily advocate buying anything at all from him unless you have no choice in the matter.
That wasn't meant to be serious but I guess you can't hear the fake used car salesmen tone.... didn't you plug his XE Touch kit in the past at some point? That kit made it suck a whole lot less.
Other than Brad being weird about cancelled orders, have people really had a lot of major issues with him lately? I haven't ordered from him in a few years so I honestly don't know.
Once I get back to work I was going to get my ST's and XE back in shape. 130XE SIO port has broken solder joints and lifted pads as well so it needs repair too.
Any recommendations on parts sources for Tramiel era machines that are less of a PITA to deal with? I ended up with 6 ST's and monitors recently for free and most run but need love pretty badly.
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On 7/30/2020 at 1:40 AM, leech said:
I have two sets of the "XE Touch", but they were springs, and made the keyboard REALLY touchy. Like if I tried to rest my fingers at all on the keys, they'd type. Though I kind of noticed they have a wider opening on one end than the other. And do consider that maybe I just put them upside down (larger area going downward). Would be interested in seeing what your keycaps look like
Mine looks like a stock 130XE. I didn't have a keyboard with springs. It had rubber cups. The XE Touch replacements actually gave it the best feeling keyboard of any Atari 8-bit I've ever had. Lovely tactile feedback. Far better than my 600XL or even 800XL even with the Alps keyboard.
I not exaggerating, this made the keyboard fan-f**kin-tastic. If you have a later XE without springs you won't regret the effort. Instead you'll be crying about why the XE PCB quality sucked so much that's it's hard to install the RAM and video upgrades when the keyboard is so awesome.
I'm not joking and Brad at Best didn't pay me to say this. Even FJC would probably agree. It is night and supernova. I WISH my PC keyboard was that nice feeling.
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A 130XE with 320K and an "XE Touch" keyboard upgrade from Best is a sweet machine. With the replacement cups it feels much much better than even the early XL keyboards.
My major gripe is just the crap PCB quality. The SIO port broke in mine and lifted some traces. Going to be painful to repair. Some of them had crap RAM that could fail too. Taking a soldering iron to these machines can be scary.
I think a 130XE is totally worth having though. Was my first computer as a kid. Parents bought it for me when they got STs.
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2 hours ago, Kylev said:
DrVenkman,
Thanks. I will follow this advice as far as I can. I will order a new non-Ingot PS and then test the machine with the cover and shield removed.
Won't be for a while, though, so I won't be reporting back here very soon. Probably a few weeks.
I appreciate the help!
I just used a modern 2A 5VDC power supply I had laying around and chopped the connector off the ingot and wired it to new power supply. Old power supplies scare me in general and 5V power supplies are everywhere these days.
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1 hour ago, ACML said:
Just to add to the discussion, I also give the SIO2SD the edge due to potential reliability long term. The SIO2SD is simpler while the SRIVE MAX has a LCD touch screen and a more complicated board. Over the course time, will the LCD screen hold up? Same goes for the computer on a board. I imagine that in the next 10 years, there will be much less demand for 8-bit stuff. We aren't exactly being replaced with newer younger members. If you are under 45, you probably have no clue that the Atari 8-bit ever existed. The point is, in 10 years, with demand low, if this thing breaks, can you get it fixed or even procure another? With low demand in the future, Lotharek and others will likely have lost interest and moved on.
I'm 38, first machine was a 130XE as a kid then moved on to an ST. My kids are also pretty entertained by 8-bit games, light pen doodling. They are less interested in productivity apps, operating systems, etc. They find the tech intriguing. My son likes playing with Atari BASIC. I think interest is actually increasing.
If folks on the hardware side lose interest hopefully they open source the design files and firmware for things like IDEPlus, etc.
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I thought about buying a copy of Tempest Xtreem but the developers are well.... Xtreem. In the modern age only offering a cart seems like a dick move only to promote artificial scarcity. I don't use carts most of the time as there is little reason to wear out the cart slot. I'm sure someone will post a dump eventually.
I would have happily paid for a digital download and so would a lot of others. Might even pay for a cart if a couple people that worked on the game weren't so obviously obnoxious and shady. I liked the demo though, it's a shame.
What annoys me more is Lance imposing artificial scarcity on things they did NOT develop and likely don't have the rights to..... like Xenophobe. I really want a copy of this and when one comes up secondhand or I find a dump I will have it. The fact that Xenophobe prototype was sold to V61 pisses me off to no end. At least I still have the ST and Lynx versions to enjoy.
People that think there's still a bunch of money to be had in the Atari community and engage in bullshit legal threats are incredibly delusional and sad people.
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My current 8-bit and ST setup.
800XL
576K upgrade
1050 Happy Drive
SIO2PC
IDEPlus
SIO2SD (shared with 400 in living room)
850 with iPocket232 serial to Ethernet
1040STf
4MB RAM upgrade
B&W and Color CRTs with Monitor master switch box
AdSCSI adapter w/ 36GB Ultra160 SCSI drive with an SCA to 50-pin adapter
I want an UltraSatan, NetUSBee and a VGA adapter at some point for the ST. I want a MIDI interface for the 8-bit too.
And both are running Stunt Car Racer
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Damn. That's impressive. Now I need to get a 1020 plotter again.
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Drunk Chessboard and 3D animation question
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted
One of the few demos that (almost) works on NTSC machines. I really wish there were more NTSC demos. Spinning/bouncing 3D Atari logos and a cool robot were about the best we got 😞
Is the Drunk Chessboard source available? I'd love to see how a couple of those effects were done.