[Ballblazer for 2 Ataris connected by serial cable - would it be possible?]

6 hours ago, Rybags said:

A potential issue is that you aren't frame-locked so VBlank on one machine could occur when the other is at mid screen.

Too bad we cannot control vblank via cpu like vcs 2600 did!

Or could we somehow?

[Ballblazer for 2 Ataris connected by serial cable - would it be possible?]

I have finished my Ballblazer grid engine with horizontal and vertical anti-aliasing! (for backstory see here:)

By reordering the writes in the Kernel and by using all three processor registers (Duh!) for quicker write succession in each scanline for Hscrol, colpf0, colpf1, colpf2 and colbak I managed to avoid any noticeable mid-line color change glitches! 

I am quite pleased with the result - although there is virtually no time left in the code whatsoever for any game logic or anything (if I wanted to stick to 50 fps that is...) And it only runs on PAL machines.

 

But this got me thinking, would it be basically possible to have such a full screen, one person-only version of Ballblazer running on two computers each, connected perhaps via joystick input/output connections (800 has 4 ports) playing against each other, both machines sharing the same game world?

 

 

 

BBgrid03.xex

[BallBlazer framerate]

.. I forgot to say it runs in Pal only. Not enough time in ntsc for frame setup..

[BallBlazer framerate]

Just for fun I tried to apply Anti aliasing on the vertical lines too..

It is working, but now I have to change all 4 color registers plus Hscrol in each scanline - ugly midline colour changes are visible!

You can set to a higher clock rate in Altirra to get rid of that and have a clean picture...

 

BBgrid03.xex

[How can I boost color saturation on an Atari 800?]

On 11/15/2022 at 3:43 AM, bob1200xl said:

I would try making R203 (now 270 ohms) smaller and/or R204 (now 75 ohms) larger.

 

Bob

 

 

Thanks Bob, I'll try that!

[How can I boost color saturation on an Atari 800?]

I use Y/C (separate luma and chroma input)

 

Does that mean there is no easy way to improve color strength on the old 800?

[How can I boost color saturation on an Atari 800?]

Here is a side by side comparison of the 800 on the left - and a 130XE on the right. The difference shows only slightly on the pictures. Its quite hard to capture APAC with interlacing on Foto.

But you can see Alfred's face is more rosy with the 130XE.

 

[How can I boost color saturation on an Atari 800?]

I'll try to make some images of a side by side comparison of a 600xl to the said 800 with lower saturation.

[Secrets of Speed]

After eight years I started to meddle with my Star Wars crawl a bit and I made some alterations.

 

It now uses wide screen mode and the source graphics is now a 256 pixel wide bitmap which allows more detailed text so I made an almost screen accurate lettering with a font similar to the movie.

And I finally got rid of the ugly jagged graphics- for 30 years now (I started that thing around 1990) I thought it was lack of precision of the scanning routine, but I just missed to align each line correctly with the right scan width.. vertical lines are now smooth as they should be.

 

No changes on the speed here - the framerate is as slow as it always was - but in Altirra with warp speed mode on it looks quite nice 🙂

CRAWL 2022.atr

[How can I boost color saturation on an Atari 800?]

I have an Atari 800 which has quite low color saturation compared to some other XLs I own.

Especially when displaying APAC images the colours are quite dull due to APAC using color only on every other scanline.

 

How can I boost the saturation in the circuit? surely there must be a resistor on the Chroma line somewhere that could be modified?

 

Any hints?

[Clash of the Lightsabers - A little APAC animation]

After 8 years I improved the APAC conversion a little. The converter I used back then made ugly black dither noise - now the picture is much smoother.

You can also restart the animation at the end..

 

Attached are two ATRs for english and german version.

 

 

Clash of the Lightsabers 130XE - english.atrClash of the Lightsabers 130XE - deutsch.atr

[just installed U1MB - No cartridges working anymore]

3 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

Make sure the pbi and hard disk are disabled on the relevant screen in the U1mb Bios. Everytime I want to run a cartridge I have to go into U1mb and turn off the pbi and hard disk function. 

Thanks a million! That was it ?

 

With PBI disabled I can play the Centipede Cart!

[just installed U1MB - No cartridges working anymore]

I just checked SIDE2 again and I find that it is only working when U1MB setup has SDX enabled.

With SDX disabled I get the Self Test also with SIDE2 plugged in.

 

Surely the SIDE2 should go to spartados mode on itself when U1MB SDX is disabled.

 

I guess there is something wrong with my machine..

[just installed U1MB - No cartridges working anymore]

Ups, I posted some pics multiple times..

 

I should add that my SIDE2 Cart is working! loader and FAT.

[just installed U1MB - No cartridges working anymore]

Thanks for the hint, but it is not working. With SDX enabled, after "CAR" I get the message "Not present!"

 

 

 

 

With SDX disabled, after a few seconds of purring sounds, the machine goes into self test.

 

 

[just installed U1MB - No cartridges working anymore]

Hi,

 

I just installed Ultimate 1MB in an Atari 600 XL and updated to Flashjazzcat's latest firmware. Everything is working fine except one thing:

 

It seems that none of my game cartridges are working anymore.

 

I have tried all sort of settings, OSX enabled, disabled etc. But nothing worked. It is like the cart is not plugged in. 

 

Before I upgraded to the new firmware, with the original Candle U1MB firmware cartridges did work with some settings (I think I had to disable spartados in the setup, but I am not sure anymore if it really was that)

 

Is there a setup with the new firmware that enables good old cartridges to run? Or do I maybe have a hardware fault?

[Images generated by RastaConverter]

cool! I never knew that! Thanks ?

 

.. I mean the ctrl-F8 trick described in post #2324..

[Images generated by RastaConverter]

Is there a way in Altirra to disable / enable PM display? I would like to see where Rasta pictures use the PM bits..

 

 

[Incognito LED - What kind?]

I guess that's about the same as the ones that had been put on the power board 40 years ago ?

 

Anyway, I now have a blue (!) power- on light and a faint orange glow to it when the HDD is accessed. That's fine for me!

[Incognito LED - What kind?]

Orange LED is in and flashing almost brightly enough...

[Incognito LED - What kind?]

At the moment I'm going for an orange one which seems to be the brightest one I got and is NOT red ?

 

I'll put in a higher resistor R201 (660 ohm instead 330) to dim down the now super bright red power led..

[Incognito LED - What kind?]

I wish it were like that - all the LEDs I have here are either so weak you barely see it flash (1,8 Vf) or they don't light up at all (3,0 Vf) with the incognito board

 

I guess I'll go looking specifically for LEDs with the lowest forward voltage I can find. (most likely red ones)

[Incognito LED - What kind?]

I found that the old red LEDs have a forward voltage of 1.6 volts - the new ones I got have more (1,8 or 3,0). Does the incognito really work with that low voltage?

 

Or is there a series resistor on the incognito board already that could be removed/bypassed?

 

It's a bit of a bummer really, that the only solution would be to use the low voltage LEDs, which are quite dark of course....

 

Flashjazzcat - where are you? Which LED did you use?

[Incognito LED - What kind?]

Hi, I just tried to replace the default LEDs of the 800 with new and brighter ones. I wanted to have a red one as the power-on light and a green one for the CF card activity, so that when busy, my newly made glass button on the Atari would give yellow when green and red are on. When the default LEDs were still in place the busy light on the left LED was going ok, but of course it was not very noticeable.

 

Well, I have only rudimentary electronic knowledge so I thought any LED would do...

 

After resoldering the red one on the right the result is great - really bright power-on light!

 

Now the problem - The green one (left) does not blink at all when the internal SMD LED on the incognito board is flashing. Polarity is correct and soldering is also ok. I tested it by applying voltage to the  led lines to the connector I made between the power board and the incognito.

It might be that the threshold voltage of the LED is too high and the voltage from the incognito is too low. However, it is very difficult to measure the voltage of the LED line with a multimeter when there are only short impulses.

I used two types of green LED. At first I tried a VF 3.0 - 3.2V one and then VF 1.8-2.0V after that. Both did not work in the left place on the board.

 

Does anybody know what is the voltage on the incognito busy line, so I can choose the right type of LED? Or is there something else I missed?

 

 

[Artworx's Strip Poker - The Final Highscore]

Here's a loader for Turbo Basic that I did in the 80s. IIRC I took the descrabling routine out of the original Basic code of Strip poker..

 

STRIPLAD.rar