Marius

In the past I had this game on my a8. I saw a topic written by a fellow named "Tempest" ... so I thought! This game = Tempest! But I can't find an atari 8bit game name tempest :S strange... This is the game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_2000 I hope someone could tell me what a8 game this is. I'm 100% sure I played a game looked like this on my 800XL in 1987 or so. Marius EDIT: It might be a PD version of this game. Sigh... I can not find it hehe

Hi folks, In 1984 I won an atari 800xl... and now 2007 I own over 40 Atari XL/XE machines. I really am 'nuts' but I really L O V E these 8bits. In 1990 I bought myself a 1040STfm... and during my whole School-period I have used this fantastic machine. First year of conservatory: i still used this 1040ST very much. but then... I bought PC, later Mac. And the only thing the 1040 (and all other ST/Falcons i have) are eating dust. The 8bitters are still going VERY strong. Using them everyday for coding, gaming, having general fun. And the 16bitters are doing nothing. I really would like to increase my interest for Atari ST, but I have not the feeling they are really so cool. So please tell me: why is this Atari ST so cool? In the past i played The Addams Familiy on it. I really loved that game. I used Cubase and had an original Magic multitask OS. I'm curious... perhaps I could turn them on again! Marius

Ofcourse. I'm really glad people like fandal do all these conversions. I almost only use the real equipment, and I have the cartridge. But my question was a little offtopic... I would take a look at panther... because -besides the fact it is great to have as much as possible file versions of games- I don't like Desert Falcon. But Fandal: keep doing the great work. thanks. Marius

I think it does not matter. The version that init's your ramdisk... that seems to be a boring boot sequence all the time. I have a bootdisk Turbo Basic XL 1.5 (red boot screen). Turbo Basic is great indeed, but I never use it ) Marius

Could somebody explain me what the fun is of Desert Falcon. I don't get thrilled by this game.... Thanks Marius

You said something like: Why inventing/using the CD solution from this topic, when you could simply plug a CD ROM on a black box. I say: Most people don't have a blackbox, which is hard to obtain these days, and is very expensive too. And my point is: Coming with a rather "rare" and expensive interface like a BlackBox when someone comes with another solution, seems not to be fair to me. So I don't see why someone should get a blackbox to hook up a CD rom, while he also could use this much cheaper solution described in this topic Marius

Because 1. Most people don't have a black box 2. It is always fun to have other kind of devices. The more choice, the better. And in my opinion the Black Box is the BEST ever produced Atari 8bit interface ever. But it has one disadvantage. It is so big. I like to use my atari 8bit on several places, and I'm moving around with it lot of time. A fast plug-and-play thing like MyIDE or any Sio2Whatever fits better to my needs. that is why )) and besides that... you could post your answer on every (new) invented interface. Why sio2SD? We already have BlackBox Why sio2IDE? We already have BlackBox Why sio2USB? We already have BlackBox Why MyIDE? We already have BlackBox? Why printerinterface? We already have BlackBox. See my point? It is always GREAT when people invented stuff for a8. Even when we don't need it at all. Thanks Marius

The new link is: http://atariarea.krap.pl/PLus/index_us.htm histeria in url name is changed to krap Greetz. Marius

I think it does not like the format command. I have tried to format a disk with xinit.com (spartados) and this also failed! Pretty strange. By the way I wrote a spartados tool (perhaps it works with mydos too... not tested yet)... that let you save the Qmeg Freezer data into a file. I prefer my own tool above the option to write the freezer to a complete disk. Now I have on my disk files like: rckmlev9.qmf oilswlv4.qmf which I can load into the Qmeg Freezer. Very handy. And it works with sio2ide ) Have fun. Marius

My Atari 8bit is used for: 1. Running BBS the Atari Inside (look at signature) 2. Visiting other BBS's and a dutch moo. 3. Playing Games 4. Coding in 6502* 5. Arranging and composing songs in CMC format. (In the Past I used even MIDI on my 320XE!) 6. A phonebook and a small notepad * sometimes I need a little tool, that is never available. It is very cool to write such a thing myself. The only computer I can write software on is my Atari 8bit. I do not agree with people saying the atari 8bit is only good in Games. Ofcourse, games are lots of fun, and yes compared to modern computers, it is hard to do anything usefull with them... but I think you should not compare them together. Atari 8bit is good in doing real 8 bit things. Nothing beats the real thing on that. Greetz. Marius

Hi Folks, In Qmeg (I am using 4.04) is an option to write the entire ramdisk (X) to disk. This goes with "W" or "Shift+W" in Qmeg menu. This works perfect with: Sio2SD APE real 1050 But with Sio2IDE (I tested 3.3a and newest version 4.x) .... it fails. I get an error 90 (I suppose this is $90 = Error 144). I guess the Sio2IDE does not understand the command it gets from the Qmeg. Is there a fix for this? I use this option on a regular base, and on that compy I only have Sio2IDE .... thanks for any help Marius p.s. I use this copy thing to write the "Freezer" data to disk. So a file copy is not an option.

Eh... I can be wrong... but I'm a little sure I already had a file version of LOGO somewhere... I'll check it out Marius

Was that a fileversion, a diskversion or a rom? Greetings Marius

Hi Folks, Do you know if there is a barnstorming port, or look-a-like for Atari XL/XE? It's this game: http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareID=846 I found this game on my Ninentro Gameboy Advance SP, on the Activision collection. Love it to play on the nintendo, and I think I should buy this game on ebay for my 2600 too. But since I'm an atari XL/XE user only, I would love to have this game on the a8. By the way... Midnight Magic for 2600 is also much much much better pinball game than whatever pinball game ever released for the XL/XE. So if someone knows a perfect port of that Midnight Magic 2600 game for a8, I would be VERY happy to have it too ))) Now I'm writing... And the last game I really LOVE on 2600, which I would love to have on my XL: Private Eye (could play that silly game for hours) I know there are lot of people busy porting all kind of games to a8. But all those games are hard work, and will take lot of time to release... I could imagine it is easier to port an 2600 game to a8, because the a8 has a better performance as the 2600... (or am I hurting 2600 owners fealings now?)' Thanks for any ideas! Marius

I do not agree 100% about that music comment Their songs might not get all out of the pokey abilities, but their songs do sound really "genuine" and have wonderful melody-lines. It is not the techno/trance/dance style most demo's are filled up with now. And they use more basic pokey tones, without many special effects... But their songs stay in my mind for a long long time. That part is annoying indeed hehe, but that is a good sign of quality i guess I really love the load-tune in Cool Emotion, and their arrangement of "Heal the World" (Last part of Side A of that demo). Also the title Song of Veronika and the song in their Abbuc Intro. And what about the music in the Juggler part in Joyride (I also like that loading songs (both Sides of disk have different load song) And don't foget that nervous, but great song in the BLIP game. Yeah I really love their music ) But ok... never argue about taste )) but I really had to post this, because I'm a pokey-music-addict, and love their music. By the way I don't like the first pokey musics, like in the AMS format, but musics from Magnus (also a previous generation already) do sound cool too. And the musics from Benjy soft... and Peter Sabath (hehe sound really robotical). Oh and I almost forgot: what about that great OUTRUN arrangement of Hard in Cool Emotion. Yeah... that music blasts the Pokey to a great performance! Greetz Marius

Hi! Yes the goold old Boink demo. It still is cool, but please look at newer demo's. Boink is cool, but really outdated, when you compare it to the newer demo's. I was wondering about some people asking Beetle what mods he did on his Atari 1500XL portable, when they saw Drunk Chessboard. The did not believe Atari run that demo. And I think many people don't realise what their fantastic 8bit atari is able to run! so please take a look at all those demo's, and then compare back to boink... However.. I like boink Marius

About 900(XL) ... check this picture I found on the Atari Museum.

The 8-bit computer architecture didn't change significantly from the 400/800 models. The technology is basically 1979 tech in the 800/XL/XE. The 7800 was created later, AFAIK. True. But strange enough... I never like 7800 games. They look beter... but they miss something I call "soul"... I think this is a personal thing... but for some reason it is nothing for me. Btw. you wrote that about 1979 technology... and with that in mind... I even like my Atari 8bit machines more! It is amazing what that old architecture (almost 30 years old) these days can perform. I wished I could fly back to the early eighties and show the world what atari 8bit is able too ))) Marius

What does your Sio2SD when you do not connect any SD card an switch on the Atari? Booting without SD card, boots the Sio2SD menu normally (if you did not change that setting) Do you have access to another SD card, to check if that SD card is the problem? You said it worked before on 800XL, so that still should work. Make sure you test things without any other Sio devices connected. Are you sure the ATR it tries to boot is 1200XL compatible? But first try to get it operational again on your 800xl. Don't give up. Did you build it yourself or buy it completely assembled? I have good experience with Sio2SD. It sounds silly, but don't forget: this is a hobby ) figuring out things, how bad they might look, is still part of the fun. I notice here myself: when everything works, I'm done )) ... so I keep looking for things to improve ) Marius

OK for me... (random order too) Ms. Pacman Crossfire (I've sold this Cart in 1990... why did I do that?!?!?!?!!) Barnyard Blaster (hehe you've hit Gramps... no bonus...) Missile Command Millipede Star Raiders II Qix But I have to say: I'm not a Cart lover... I have all these games as working file (except for the barnyard blaster... that does not run on my real a8... that's a shame... who has a working file version that runs on REAL equipment?) And about Qix: ok that a8 port is not as good as the 5200, but man... what a cool game. Greetz. Marius

Hi! Demo's are great to run on atari 8bit. I love it so let my a8's do extremely cool things... Best demo ever, but needs 320K - Numen My personal favorites are (running on 64K!!!): These are Mega Demo's - Cool Emotion - Joyride - Over Mind Other Mega Demo's with also nice parts: - the Top #3 (old, but still very cool... I love the video worm part hehehe) - Demologicus - Bitter Reality - Sweet Illusions - World of Wonders (music... sounds great) Binary file: - Shake (also mega demo, has some very cool parts, and fantastic song) - Bobsland (has some difficulty to run... but from a standard NDOS converted disk it runs perfect) - The Break - Little Colour Demo (ok it's old... doesn't do very much, but it is really a nice golden oldy)

Could you try that 1200XL with sio2PC or with a real atari diskdrive? Marius

Cool! I love updates. What is the improvement? Why is that buffer chip? For the speed? Or other reasons? (or isn't it a buffer chip?) Please let me know I want to make new order soon Marius

Yes I know! I need little time.... for made good manual for nobies! Now all interface was made on 2.0 pcb -> like this -> http://sio2sd.gucio.pl/board2/sio2sd_brd.gif On my Sio2SD I can't find that 74HC254 ttl. Is it there? Or do I have the 1.0 version? Is that buffer chip for having higher Sio rates? Thanks Marius

I'm not sure If you want to know that about my BBS system, or the gateway the TS is talking about. My System is atari 800Xl with BlackBox and Lantronix MSS100. Software is TCPIP Express 7.0 written by Stephen J. Carden. Greetz Marius