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kogden

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Everything posted by kogden

  1. kogden
    That's like saying: "Ethernet is a game changer, we should just all move to diskless workstations and have a fileserver in the closet". While this is possible, it's never worked as well as people thought. Pointless for YOU maybe but for me doing everything over SIO would be painful. Most of the time I do my big transfers to my IDEPlus over SIO and just take the kids to McDonalds or something. Once the FATFS driver does writes, it may become the default filesystem I use on my IDEPlus LOL Wouldn't a parallel SIO2PC device need some pretty serious software support Atari-side? If we're going that route, I think a PBI ethernet interface and a PCLink-over-Ethernet protocol would be even cooler.
  2. kogden
    Is it possible to utilize extended RAM in MAD Pascal or is CLSN Pascal the only one that I can do this with?
  3. kogden
    I'm pretty sure the current versions still support PPC. The biggest problem is that supporting PPC is getting tough with newer versions of XCode. I know of very little software that still supports anything older than OSX 10.6. Not even modern browsers. If I still used my old PPC hardware it would probably be running straight BSD UNIX (FreeBSD or NetBSD) instead of OSX.
  4. kogden
    You can still run most games and such but you'll need DOS to manipulate files and save/load from BASIC. There's a couple ways to tackle this. 1.) If you can solder and have a spare SIO cable to butcher you can build an SIO2PC USB adapter. This will let you run drive emulation software on the PC in tandem with your real 1050. You can then run disk copier software to make a real DOS disk from a disk image. This would cost anywhere from $5-$15 for an FTDI FT232RL breakout board and $5-$10 for an SIO cable. 2.) You can buy a pre-made SIO2PC adapter built into an SIO connector for like $30ish. SIO2SD device could be used for this as well. 3.) Someone can send you a DOS disk. If you are in the US, I'd be more than happy to do this if you send me some blank floppies and return postage. I have an SIO2PC interface, a 1050 Happy drive and a huge library of software. I'm out of blanks right now though. You'll really want an SIO2PC interface eventually, it allows you to use a PC or Mac to emulate all manner of Atari peripherals.
  5. kogden
    I would love to see a replacement original 800 keyboard made with cherry switches. The 800 keyboards are getting tougher to keep going and replacements are really pricey. Every 800 keyboard I've seen recently has some cracked posts and keys pop off easily. An 800 keyboard would be easier to design as well since you the function keys on the right are separate from the keyboard. The best thing I did for my 130XE was get the XE-Touch replacement rubber cups for the keyboard from Best Electronics. It completely changes the feel of the keyboard immensely. The toughest part with designing a new keyboard for the XE would be the funky shaped function keys.
  6. kogden
    Looks like a very entertaining sabotage clone! The planes look like a pain to hit though. Any plans for paddle support?
  7. kogden
    Yeah, it's quite stable and works very well. Certainly the best OSX-based SIO2PC app at this point even if it's getting dated. I paid as well, certainly cheaper than APE. Definitely interested to see how some things work under the hood. Might take some work to get it building on newer versions of XCode though. While a native Mac app and not based on QT, it'd be interesting to see some cross-pollination of ideas between RespeQT and SIO2OSX.
  8. kogden
    Totally understandable. Juggling work and school sucks, I don't know how you do it personally. Especially at the PhD level. I struggle with juggling school and kids.... throwing a full time job into the mix would put me in a mental hospital. Those bastards. I thought Kagi was more reputable than that. They've been around almost as long as the modern web. Thank you for this, that's quite generous and I wish you well in your job search. I look forward to checking out the source at some point, I might have to play with it some and learn a little Objective C. Do you have any tips for getting Atari800MacX to build with newer versions of XCode? Thanks again!
  9. kogden
    The bad keys should be easy enough to fix. Probably just some oxidation if it's the older style keyboard. Fixed mine with careful use of a pencil eraser on certain spots on the mylar and connector on the "cable". I dumped all the springs everywhere like a retard though. Took me a few minutes to gather them all back up and figure out which fell out and which didn't.
  10. kogden
    Only way to figure it out is to try it. Assuming the 810 actually works. I'd say wait until the kid tries a couple things outlined here and see what he figures out. If it's a 48K 400, an 810 that still works and a good copy of DOS 2.5 on an SD-formatted DD disk (if he got this with the 810, I'd assume that to be the case) that hasn't suffered from bit rot in 25 years..... then he's in good shape.
  11. kogden
    No love for Spectrum 512? You could more than 16 colors and it even did nice looking anti-aliasing.
  12. kogden
    Yeah that sounds pretty rough. I have a pile of old SCSI drives but since I have an 850 and a RAM upgrade already it probably makes more sense to stick with IDEPlus and dual-CF adapter. MIO devices seem to go for ridiculous sums when I see one for sale. They are neat though.
  13. kogden
    What values to the pots on a 5200 stick need to be? I'd love to build a thumbstick based controller but IIRC the 5200 sticks are nowhere near the same values of typical playstation/xbox analog sticks.
  14. kogden
    Best is a good company that's been around for ages. A shopping cart would do wonders for his site though and make dealing with customers less of a hassle and reduce his stress level. He could probably focus more on just inventory, shipping and receiving at that point. There's a lot of things he sells that are really tough to find elsewhere, especially on the computer side of things.
  15. kogden
    I had a 5200 for a while as a kid w/ a Wico stick and trakball. My dad got it for me because it had a lot of cool games I was familiar with from his 800 and an innovative control scheme. Was also durable. Was replaced pretty quick with a 130XE when they upgraded their ST's. The one I have now has a rebuilt controller and one semi-reliable original controller. I haven't got a Trakball yet. I was thinking of doing an AV mod and building a PC Gameport->5200 adapter but I've been too lazy since I already have upgraded Atari 8-bit computers with most of the same game library. Analog control with Star Raiders is a lot of fun though. Pole Position's control scheme is much better on the 5200 also.
  16. kogden
    It may not really be formatted as double density. Go ahead and give it a shot. I have many double density disks formatted as single density. Very few Atari-branded drives supported true double density without add-on boards. I would check how much RAM you have available in the 400 first. Most only came with 16K which may make floppy use pretty tough. I ended up upgrading mine to 48K, was well worth it. PDF books on Atari BASIC are easy to find. You'll find it's a bit different in ways from BASIC on the C64.
  17. kogden
    I like my TI-89. My real TI-89 is an old HW2. The titanium just added extra flash and supports a newer OS update which added a feature or two. They are based on a 68000 for a CPU and the OS incorporates the Derive/muMath CAS engine which is implemented in muLisp. muMath and Derive were available for desktop PC's and competed with products like Mathematica. I think muMath was originally implemented for CP/M. Do any CAS systems for symbolic computation exist for the Atari 8-bit? That would be an interesting extension to have for BASIC or Interlisp.
  18. kogden
    Working great so far on my IDEPlus 2 Rev D! Is there no ATR flasher for the original MyIDE+Flash cart? Not a big deal at the moment because I don't really use it very often anymore but figured I might as well keep it current.
  19. kogden
    I actually like Numbers. Chances are that it's just using the same math libraries most OSX applications use though. Which are quite good from what I understand. It's strange though, I and a lot of other always viewed the HP-48 to be the ultimate in engineering nerd calculators. Especially the 48 with it's mutant little CPU with a 64-bit/20-bit/4-bit architecture. I'm really surprised to see it lacking in accuracy compared to my TI-89 which I've always been derided by "real engineers" for using. They complain the algebraic input is like debugging LISP. My response is usually "Hey, I *LIKE* LISP!" and they call me weird and we move on. Even early VAX machines were slow to adopt IEEE-754 floating point from what I understand so I'm not surprised an 8-bit architecture like the Atari machines weren't compliant. What's surprising is that Atari never cared to deal with any of the mess. I wonder what kind of precision floating point libraries on the ST typically had.
  20. kogden
    How standards-compliant is the MIO SCSI implementation? I've managed to get newer Ultra160 and Ultra320 SCSI drives to work with some really antiquated hardware with nothing more than an SCA->50-pin adapter. When I say ancient I'm talking like DEC VAX and MicroVAX w/ QBUS or onboard NCR 5380-based controllers. Are these SD and IDE adapters just really non-standard or is the MIO just non-standard? Can an MIO support a full SCSI chain with multiple devices?
  21. kogden
    I get correct answers for both on my HW2 TI-89. Never was efficient with an RPN calc.
  22. kogden
    LOL The Vectrex was awesome but has NOTHING in common with a Lynx hardware-wise. Totally different beast. I really miss my Vectrex I had when I was little. Cosmic Chasm was great. And the vector monitors were cool. You could do much higher resolution than bit-mapped pixel-based graphics. You would have to see it up close to understand why emulation doesn't cut it for these sorts of games. All in all, the hardware in the Lynx is closer to the TG16. 8-bit CPU but with advanced graphics hardware and marketed as a 16-bit machine. Both were crushed in the market even though they were quite advanced for their time.
  23. kogden
    C64 vs Atari is a difficult comparison in several ways.... C64 has better multicolor sprites and more colors in hi-rez without tricks. Atari has faster CPU, more useful OS, more elaborate BASIC support for graphics and sound, more versatile and programmable graphics hardware, faster I/O and far bigger color palette and with DLI magic and programmable graphics chipset can achieve more on-screen colors of greater variety. C64 had more big-name games like Elite, Lemmings, etc later on and a very interesting sound chip. Atari's SIO bus is brilliantly designed and PBI is cool and you generally had MUCH faster floppy drives. Pros and cons to both. Personally I think the Atari is a better computer but for many types of sprite-based games, the C64 is a winner. It really depends on the game though. They are very different in a lot of ways. Comparison can be tough.
  24. kogden
    I loved playing with my parents ST's as much as I loved my 8-bit. The ST was a great machine with a great software library even if it was rushed to market and was a more basic design compared to the Amiga. I don't understand the ST hate with a lot of the 8-bit crowd. It spanked early Macs and PC's of the day hands-down and was far cheaper and VERY capable. Had the ST line not stagnated so much before fairly crippled 32-bit offerings were finally released (in severely limited numbers and overpriced) it would have survived long-term. Complacence killed it. Apple machines spanked'em and average PC's were just as fast by the time the TT was available in numbers. The Falcon was basically DOA.
  25. kogden
    I make pretty good use of it now with SDX, playing large bankswitched cart dumps, etc. I play with bankswitching code here and there. It's far more useful to me now than it was then. The problem for me was that when I started getting into more than playing cart-based games and got a floppy drive, the 8-bit was basically a fun yet defunct line. Shops no longer carried software. I only figured out how to switch banks because my dad got a box of old ANTIC magazines from some guy at the WAACE AtariFest for $5. The 8-bit scene here didn't last long after the 130XE and the ST were released. Apparently the 8-bit held on much longer over in Europe.
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