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kenjennings

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Posts posted by kenjennings

  2. Posted · Edited by kenjennings

    A useless trivia question I was thinking about -- What is the first/oldest 2600 game that displayed the now classic "Atari Rainbow" (aka raster bars) in any way -- title, logo, in game screen, in game screen?

     

     

    I found the Adventures of Tron (1982) from M-Network.

     

    post-32235-0-82633500-1478390148_thumb.jpg

     

     

    I notice Raiders Of the Lost Ark (1982) shows gradients on objects on the win screen.

     

    post-32235-0-16344000-1478390666_thumb.jpg

     

     

    Can anyone identify anything older?

     

     

     

    Well, the background in Air-Sea Battle from 1977-when-dirt-was-new is a gigantic, full-screen raster bar :-)

     

    post-32235-0-72083600-1478390846_thumb.jpg

    • Like 1

  3. Posted · Edited by kenjennings

    What they said. OR works on each bit position. Same for AND and EOR.

     

    8 bits in a byte, so...

     

    1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

    OR

    0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

    ===============

    1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1

     

     

    1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

    AND

    0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

    ===============

    0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

     

     

    1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

    EOR

    0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

    ===============

    1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    Well it's been about 2 weeks since I sold the 600XL, (ebay buyer never bothered to leave feedback btw), but I still don't regret selling it, maybe more so today since I just bought a 800XL, with power supply, 4 games, manuals and box (box in fair shape) all for about the same price I sold the 600XL for alone. :) This wasn't the plan, but it happened and I got it :grin: ;-) :-D

     

     

    Providence had you sell the 600 to give you the money for an 800XL. All is forgiven. :-)

  5. Posted · Edited by kenjennings

    My family in Ft. Lauderdale reported that the hurricane had been significantly diminished by the time it hit land by them. God bless and keep the Haitian people, but those of us in the U.S. were spared anything like what they got.

    I'm in Davie, about 10 miles west of Ft Lauderdale. It was Cat 4 when it went by us. It didn't land here. A couple of the outer bands did go over western Broward county. We were saved (safe) by not so many miles. A little jog to the west and there would have been a lot more tension.

     

    I put up panels and my 12 yr old worked the cordless drill to put the bolts on. We finished 17 doors and windows in about 4 hours. My previous record for Wilma was six hours. There ought to be a girl scout badge for disaster preparedness for her. It will probably take two weeks to get them down.

  7. Posted

    I was reading the editorial in Antic's last issue when it occured to me...what happened to the programs that were never published?

     

    The usual directions were to include a self-addressed and stamped envelope for the return of your materials if not accepted. I submitted about a dozen things to Antic, Analog, and Compute! which were never published. I always included a padded envelope and enough postage for return of the disk and the color slide I shot of the screen. As often as not the only thing they returned was the rejection letter. Compute! was usually better and returned everything. I think I might have seen one of those envelopes hiding in a corner of the office the other day.

     

    Likely, most of the things submitted to magazines and never published ended up in a dumpster.

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    I was an ardent BXL user back in the '80s. I wrote several programs in it. . . .

     

    At the time, I had some success publishing my program listings in magazines. . . .

     

    You got programs in BASIC XL published? Remarkable. I sent a bunch of games and utilities to Antic, Analog, and Compute! in BASIC XL and never got any of them published. (Compute! was always nice enough to use the S.A.S.E. to return my materials with the rejection letter.)

  10. Posted

     

    Now, I don't want to be ungrateful, or nitpick too much, because it is certainly great that he provided them and you that digitized and uploaded them. Thanks ... But I wonder if it is the full source code ... I don't see a single comment line, that's pretty strange for assembler.

     

    Took a look at the OSNXL listing. This isn't a program listing per se; it is the output at time of assembly. I see a lot of external symbols not defined in the source, (or otherwise could not find the definitions) , so there's probably an include file or two not shown in the listing. I do see the occasional comment in there. Not aware of any assembler that would attempt to excise comments in the assembly.

     

    It looks like the author just wasn't a big fan on in-line documentation and/or it was likely not something expected to be scrutinized in public. Common programmer feature (flaw) -- when you're working with something every day all sorts of decisions appear self-explanatory and documentation seems redundant. And then a year (or twenty) later you look at it and wonder what the heck you were thinking of.

    • Like 6

  12. Posted

    ..the baboon thing might not be a digiview pic..

    The baboon ("Mandrill") was shown in the first reviews of the Amiga in magazines. Digiview came later. I think the picture was included in a demo disk for dealers. I recall it testing the crashability of DeluxePaint on a minimal memory spec 1000 in a store. (Can you believe they sold Amigas at Boston Store?)

  13. Posted · Edited by kenjennings

    I'll add my ditto. Started with Atari 800, added an 800XL later with 256K. Could not afford an Amiga when it came out, could only lust for it from a distance for what seemed like an eternity. Once I got some steady employment (Thank you USAF) I got an A500. I happened to meet a US dealer while I was in stationed in Germany (weird story) and got their very first A3000 delivery shipped to me, so I may have been the first A3000 owner in Europe. Before I even turned it on I upgraded it with 16M of 32-bit RAM. It was an awesome machine. (Still is. I have a 2000, and another 3000).

     

    Regret selling the original 800 and the A500. But I eventually got two other 800s to make up for it.

     

    I was using that 2000 with a 68040 and 128M RAM for USGS DTED visualization with World Construction Set (government contract project.)

     

    In 1996 my neighbor had a garage sale and I saw they had a 1040ST. They sold it and the color monitor to me for $20. Once I used it as a serial terminal. Couldn't find another use for it.

    • Like 2

  16. Posted

    Unlike many other platforms of the era, the Atari's executable files have a structure to them. Rather than a simple model of starting at a fixed address and loading data sequentially until the end of the file, the Atari can break the data down into segments specifying the start and end addresses of each segment. This allows the Atari executable file to optimize its contents, loading data into just the parts of memory that it is using.

     

    The value $FFFF identifies the start of a segment. The next two bytes are the starting address. Then next two bytes are the ending address. The bytes that follow are the contents of memory from the start address to the end address.

     

    Atari tests special memory locations while loading an executable file. One is "init" and the other is "run". When the contents of "init" changes while a file is loading then the Atari calls the address in the "init" location. After the routine called through the "init" location returns, the Atari continues to load more data from the file. When the "run" address changes the Atari calls the routine in the run address AFTER it finishes reading the entire file.

     

    Assemblers for the Atari generate a load segment (that is, the $FFFF-Start Address-End Address sequence) when the .org or *= is specified changing the assembly address location.

  18. Posted

    CPU: 32x speed is acceptable, even 16x is enough.
    ANTIC: twice the resolution of graphics modes is acceptable. I am also thinking about "bitplanes". For example, a two independent "ANTIC-5 plus" modes (320x192 overall screen resolution). Independent scrolling and 4 colors per char. Can be combined into one bitplan, so it gave us 16 colors for chars.
    GTIA: max. 4096 color palette, with a little "twist" - I mean not very accurate representation of RGB, which would bring the "character", which original Atari and other 8-bit computers had. Let's say, 64 colors with 64 shadows.
    More sprites. Hi-res sprites! RGB scart or video composite is ok. Yes, CRT does add a lot to nostalgia trip.
    POKEY: more channels plus kind of new features for Atari: PWM modulation and two (digital) filters (with LP, HP, BP modes)...

     

    Faster CPU, Higher resolution, independent multiple-playfield scrolling, 4096 color palette, half-brite mode, digital samples for audio... Where have I seen that before.... Oh, yes, it's the Amiga.

     

    It would be neat to have a modern remake of an 8-bit Atari in an Amiga 1000 pizza box case.

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

     

     

    Because there was always planned to be two machines in the initial lineup, 1200XL and a putative 600XL, just as there was an original 800 and 400.

     

    If they planned to have two complimentary models it follows that the computers would be designed and released at the same, or similar times, like the 400/800. Given the timeline it looks like the 600XL (and 800XL) was a reactionary move to the public nose-wrinkling at the 1200XL, not a pre-planned action.

     

    It still is entirely possible that the clueless management of Atari thought pre-planning sequential rather than simultaneous development of two computers in an unbelievably fast-changing market was a good idea. This would be more proof they were complete idiots.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    what's the deal with XEX files as opposed to .exe files?

     

    Because the world stupidly chose Microsoft products. DOS and Windows are morons that think the file extension identifies the contents of the file.

     

    On the Atari .COM or .EXE is a matter of convention. An Atari executable program could be named anything.

    On DOS/Windows .COM and .EXE mean executable programs.

     

    So, to prevent DOS/Windows from being confused by Atari files people have taken to changing the file extension of Atari programs, because the Atari doesn't care.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    There's nothing to prevent a DLI routine from acting across multiple scan lines... or even the entire screen.

     

    If you have an ANTIC display list running a text or map mode realize that there's DMA supporting that display for the display list, fetching screen memory, and for text modes fetching the character set graphics. All these have bus priority over the race-the-beam 6502 code. Even the blank line instructions take time for ANTIC to fetch for DMA which can throw off the timing where they occur.

     

    The point of all the bells and whistles in the Atari 8-bit computers (that is, ANTIC playfields, and the player/missile DMA) is to make the coding easier so a continuous display kernel is not needed to maintain the display.

    • Like 1
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