SpiceWare

I hadn't watched Discovery in a while as Comcast didn't offer it in HD. I switched to DirecTV recently and in spite of Comcasts "1000 shows in HD"* I now have a lot more viewing options. *they're counting on-demand viewing of the various HBO, Showtime etc shows, so they count 1 for HBO, 12 for the 12 on-demand episodes of True Blood, 12 for the on-demand episodes of Entourage, etc. to come up with 1000. With DirecTV I get more overall shows as I get channels like Discovery HD and Sci-Fi HD that Comcast doesn't even offer.

I was flipping channels and caught part of Prototype This and thought one of the hosts looked familiar. Turned out to be Joe Grand, who I got to meet at AGE back in 2003. SCSIcide was one of the first homebrews I acquired, which I purchased from Joe at the expo (the other was Thrust+ Platinum, which I purchased from Al ). Show looks very interesting, I've set the DVR to start recording them.

Interesting interview, thanks for the link!

I've seen this and the big wheel one here in Houston.

Atari 2600 Controls A Robot More info here

While commonly defined as 8 bits, the definition of a byte really depends on the hardware. From wiki - byte Octal is very useful with 6-bit bytes as it's 3 binary digits grouped together so the full value can be represented by 2 octal digits, just like an 8-bit byte can be represented by 2 hex digits. From wiki - Octal has a bit that display hardware was also a factor (early computers didn't have monitors)

My HDTV has the same problem with my Atari systems(one mod, one RF) so I just play the mod one on my C= 1084S monitor.

That's true now, and I fully expect purchases of PS3's for use only as a Blu-Ray player will decrease. When the price of the PS3 was the same as the non-upgradeable players it made sense to go the PS3 route. I went HDTV in 2001, but only because my old set broke and I couldn't see buying a non-HD set when NTSC was going to be phased out soon (this was before the USA's analog cutoff was pushed back to 2009, I think the original cutoff was 2006). The red gun in the old set stopped working and all I could see were cyan colored people

Less of an issue than you'd think - a number of people have purchased the PS3 strictly to use as a Blu-ray player, in part because it was able to keep up with the revisions to the Blu-ray spec. While mine does see gaming use, it sees a lot more action as a Blu-ray player. New Blu-ray 2.0 spec makes PS3 the most future-proof player Sony's PlayStation 3 tops another "Best Blu-ray player" list I've watched many movies on my PSP, but not one was on UMD - they've all been ripped from my DVDs via HandBrake.

That article I linked to seems to imply it's being adopted more rapidly in Europe (6x DVD rate) than the US (3x), though it doesn't mention what the DVD adoption rates were. The US does get a bigger picture gain by going Blu-Ray - 480 -> 1080 scanlines vs 576 -> 1080 for PAL users.

Blu-ray has outpaced DVD adoption

Stella's in place now I also switched to DirecTV recently and have been updating my Pronto Pro with all the new HD channels I get. Hit the channel logo and the remote sends the IR codes to change the channel.

Doubt that would help, look how they keep trying to get Creationism to be taught in a science class.

Drat, forgot to play! Been spending the evenings setting up my new MacBook Pro

I was point out to Nathan that was more obvious to see the change from 6->4 by watching the high-quality version of the video. I would have thought that was made that clear in my reply to you by stating that I had to watch it (the low quality version) a few times to see the change. Since you didn't seem to comprehend that, I thought maybe you were questioning my use of the word "obvious".

It's quite obvious if you click the watch in high quality link just below the video. UH, what exactly is obvious? I still see 6 switcher then I see the 4 switch model. What exactly am I missing? obvious - "easily discovered, seen, or understood" It's easy to see that it changed from 6 switch to 4 switch in the high quality video. In the low quality video I had to watch it a few times to make it out.

It's quite obvious if you click the watch in high quality link just below the video.

Not just a PAL thing. My 2001 Mitsubishi HDTV is hit or miss on the Atari as well. For the few games that get a picture it's only in black & white with occasional hints of color. I've tried connecting via both RF and S-Video. As I understand it, the Atari puts out a signal that's slightly out of spec - I suspect that with the variation in scan lines each game puts out is what causes the problem.

Populous and Populous II were a couple of my favorite Amiga games. I don't have a DS - wonder if a PSP version is in the works...

Thanks! You can play Thrust on my Atari Homebrews Online page as I use a newer version of JStella. You'll have to power off the Atari, switch cartridges to Thrust(via the drop-down directly above the cartridge port), then power the Atari back on. Controls are in the instructions below the Atari. Hmm, the instructions for each game aren't consistently loading. Main thing for Thrust is to use: F and G as the Fire and Thrust instead of using the space bar. Left - rotate anti-clockwise Right - rotate clockwise Down - tractor beam/shields F - Fire G - Thrust.

You need to put those prefs back, you'll have even more problems if you don't when you go to add the sound samples that Nathan directed you to. The Disk Image Directory is for games that had a hard drive. I've tried a few of those but performance wasn't all that great on my 2GHz Core Duo MacBook. I plan to try those games again when the 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro I ordered yesterday shows up. I've never added Artwork, though I suspect that's where the overlay for Warrior would go. Warrior bounces the vector graphics off a partially see-thru mirror. When you look at the game you see the reflection and the hand drawn background graphics, without which the game would be difficult to play as you wouldn't know where the stairs and pits were located. There's 3 tabs to show the games. ALL - all games, even if you don't have all the ROMs GOOD - games that have valid ROMs FAVORITES - your favorite games (even if they don't have valid ROMs). So besides using the SEARCH in the top-right corner of the window, you can denote which games are your favorites and get a very short list of games to look at by clicking on the Favorites tab. To set a game as a favorite, select the game in the list (on either the ALL or GOOD tab) and hit the big red heart in the toolbar. Any game tagged that way will show up on the FAVORITES tab. yep, that it is.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Turbo Tape made the Datasette just as fast as a stock 1541. I saw it demoed at a C= user group meeting in Corpus Christi, TX.

Check out MAWS. Type in docastlo in the search box. Scroll down when you get the results and right below the screenshot you'll see a Rating followed by a listing of parents and clones. Click on the parent, Mr. Do's Castle (set 1), and it'll take you to the page for the parent where you can see that it's setname is docastle. MAWS doesn't have the ROMs, but it'll help you figure out what's a parent and clone.