kenjennings

I thought the driving controller needs more than one sample per frame not scan line. Similar to what a mouse requires as it is (in simple terms) just one axis of a mouse controller.

I noticed last year that availability increased (and price decreased). I bought two (standard chip shipping cases), and a third in the original packaging.

How much? (and how much to ship to Florida USA) Does "XL" include 1200XL? I'd probably get one for an 800XL. Potentially one more if it does work in a 1200XL.

Interesting topic. Related question -- Does anyone have an idea of what that Samsung MST phone feature could do? Reportedly, when the phone is near a point-of-sale card swipe it can broadcast a field strong enough that the magnetic stripe reader believes it read a physical card stripe. I would figure it must be pumping out a decent magnetic field to trick a read head from a distance without touching it. Does anyone know how to evaluate how strong this field could be? Would it nuke old school floppies?

Thanks. That actually helped. One of the group's emails discussed GRASS documentation but its link pointed to a non-existent PDF file. I removed the filename and got an entire directory full of everything concerning GRASS. http://www.ballyalley.com/documentation/zgrass/zgrass_docs/zgrass_docs.html

First computer -- get a 800XL. Better build quality and reliability than the XEs. If you have the opportunity for a second, get an 800. Built like a tank. The 1200XL with a video fix, and SIO power fix would also be an acceptable second. If you exhaust the possibilities of the 8-bits and want the next generation look for an Amiga.

I pretty much skipped the NES and Super NES completely when they were current. At the time I was busy programming on my Atari and Amiga. I've had every Nintendo since the N64. I'm not much for blood-splatters-per-second gaming, so much of the PS and XBOX libraries are unappealing. I have a kid now, so the Wii U is getting more mileage than usual. Much of my gaming is on a PC with Steam doing cooperative, online, multi-player and sandbox-type games with my office friends.

Does anyone know where to find a reference manual for the GRASS, ZGRASS, or RT-1? The information on Wikipedia is lamely incomplete. The links on the page yield nothing useful. Google didn't find much more. I found a big Bally enthusiast site, but its mostly just pictures. i read that GRASS was ported to multiple platforms as RT-1, but I couldn't find anyplace where these could be downloaded.. Anyone have anything better?

Cool site. I like that it is simple and loads quickly. (not loaded with mountains of CSS nonsense.) Keep it simple. Ignore the nit-picking about HTML purity. In the end you'll waste a ton of your time and still not make everyone happy.

Where is the list?

For anyone looking, that hand-drawn block diagram occurs at 22 minutes in the video. (He says that diagram was done in 1979.)

Keatah: Atari did that on its own by ignoring the engineer's ideas. So, a lot of hardware and software folks packed their bags and set out to make a brave new world. That Atari talent is the same group that made the Amiga. Many here recognize the Amiga as the logical evolution from the Atari 8-bits. Atari succeeded on the momentum of those initial, great engineers. But I think the Atari 800 was the last good decision by Atari management and it looks to me to have been pure stinking luck. Atari was a slow motion train wreck most of the time until its death in 1984. What if Atari management had better listening skills? The engineers knew the 2600 had a limited lifespan and the Atari 400 should have been packaged as a VCS-style super system to replace the VCS instead of confusing the home computer line. That would leave a distinctive computer line with the Atari 800 "personal graphics workstation." :-) What if Atari let the engineers make the 68000-based system that they wanted? There could have been an updated, power-users' Atari graphics workstation using the 68000 released in 82 while Commodore's offering was the C64 videogame system. No contest. Commodore declares bankruptcy in 1983 and Jack Tramiel is later seen homeless, eating in a soup kitchen. Since a fictional, competent Atari would have been happy to support the engineers' ideas an Amiga-class system would not have been delayed by engineers leaving the company, finding investors, and struggling to run a company to develop their dreams. So, an Amiga (or better) could have been available at the same time as the Macintosh. RIP Apple. If it had run unix then Atari would have owned the world. We now depart from our retro fantasies and return to the leftover quart of eggnog.

Depending on price I'd probably get two, three, maybe four.

A single density sector is 128 bytes. A double density sector, (or a page in the 6502) is 256 bytes. So, what is a "paragraph"?

That was simple. I have no idea what I was trying to do. I'm such an idiot. Deeeeeerp.

Its cool that they can cram all that into something so small. Unless I need a stand up arcade cabinet for Barbies then this isn't practical. . To really get any enjoyment from games a bigger screen and more comfortable controls are necessary.

All the movements and animation sure seems like it is all character based. But I notice something .. when the player is walking between two passenger cars the player is partly visible through the accordion-like joint connecting cars. If that connector is not done by a sprite then they went to the extra effort to make a set of characters for the partly obscured player. hard working programmers that.

Is there a way to capture printer output? I'd like the text from an LPRINT or write to a channel open to a printer, but if it could capture all the real bytes sent by the Atari that would be cool. I tried several things in linux (diverting ouput to a file, an alleged "null" printer driver, etc) and the best I get is a short sequence of binary junk every time the printer is used.

Having started with Atari BASIC's large DIMension capability and the ADR() function, in later years I immediately understood C strings (aka char arrays) and char pointers. Atari BASIC strings are a lot like C strings (less the C end of string sentinel.)

What Stephen says. Its not broken. That would ordinarily be hidden by normal CRT TVs in the overscan area.

Leaking capacitors? Had that happen to several old PC motherboards.

The internet censors did not catch that he used that C-word in public.

Several moons (and Altirra versions) ago I had used the emulated printer and it worked just fine and dandy. I recently tried it in current Altirra and it doesn't work. I can open the printer output window, but that's it. The emulated Atari just blows raspberries for any attempt at printer I/O. The printer selection on Altirra's menu has a check mark next to it, but the line on the menu is also ghosted out for some reason. Any idea what I need to fix?

You mean you hear the same high-pitched chirp sound as a keypress when no key is touched? (not simply a random pop or tick sound from the speaker?) Maybe there's something wrong in the keyboard registering a key press? (I admit totally blind speculation of an imagined possible fault in hardware that I know nothing about.)

I thought it was obvious that he time traveled and brought a computer back from the future.