JD6502

Thanks. Thought it might be something like that, but didn't know Atari had made anything like that so early. The 800 style color scheme and apparent use of wood on the chassis gave away it's vintage. This one is on Craig's List Bakersfield for $200.

Probably the wrong place for this, but anyone know what this is?

Thanks Freshy, I'll check the book out if I can find it.

The only problem I ever had with Silent Service is that it crashes every once in a while, which is pretty irritating 2 hours into a session and you lose credit for all the shipping you sunk. I like the fact that its a simulation, not an arcade game, but that's just my preference. As for hard - keep in mind that the casualty rate for the real submarine service was horrifically high. Again, just sayin', not criticizing, I've been known to activate cheats myself now and then. This is the first time I've heard of someone creating them, though!BTW, it was never clear to me how the "angle on the bow" calculation worked in real life. Was there a device like a slide rule? A computer? A guy with paper and pencil? And who was in charge of generating the numbers? Always been curious.

"Back in the day" for me extends all the way to right now. After putting my 8-bit system together in the late 80's early 90's I became fossilized, and only in the last few years started getting newer gear. The Panasonic 1080i I bought mail order in the late 80's is still my only printer. I use it on those rare occasions when I need to print something, thanks to ebay where I found a ribbon cartridge and had the foresight in the 90's to get the extra large box of laser edged tractor feed paper. My first adapter was Xetec's Graphix AT serial to parallel interface but retired it after getting a Black Box. I had lots of fun, and used up a lot of ink creating NLQ fonts using Daisy Dot III. The biggest problem in those days were line feeds. The printer has a DIP switch to add line feeds, the interfaces have DIP switches, and most word processors have a line feed option. I wasted a lot of ink and paper printing whole pages on one line, or double and quadruple spacing because I couldn't remember what settings I was using.

On the very rare occasions when I need to write a letter I use PaperClip, printing to my Panasonic 1080i. I keep a business letter template on disk so I don't have to mess with format codes. I have fun wondering what the recipients think. Do they know what a dot matrix is? What do they make of the four sided perfs of tractor feed paper? The default screen for PC was white over black, but you could change to any color combo of the Atari palette(I like light green over dark). I think GT Estate also used the white-black scheme.

A couple of decades ago, as part of some science fiction ideas, I envisioned a touch display replacing the mouse. The concept was to add a small touch screen near or perhaps on the keyboard. Imagine a slightly over size iPhone. Stuff like pop-up and drop down menus, icon bars, task bars - all,or most, of the controls would be on this touch screen, the main display would mostly just show what you were working on. I can't say that I thought it through very far, but the modern touch interface is pretty close to what I had in mind, except that data entry would use voice or keyboard. I didn't think of tablets - Who would want to plaster their grubby fingerprints all over the screen? How would you keep it clean?

I've not checked in for several days and was surprised to find the lighthouse had attracted so much interest. I'm glad people had some fun improving it. Emkay, your method of cycling destination pics sounds like a good way to optimize results but stitching various parts of pictures together without advanced graphics tools is a bit fiddly. Not terribly hard, but it takes a little patience. I'll give it a try on some troublesome pics when I have time. On another subject- I've only really scanned through this thread so I apologize if this has been discussed before, but it occurs to me that some kind of Rasta slide show program would be useful. An A8 prog that would link Rasta XEX files so they would run one at a time in a chain. Don't know how doable that is, certainly beyond my pitiful programming abilities!

Thanks for the tip. I copy a separate Rasta folder for each pic I attempt, so I can always continue. I haven't got the hang of adding a mask, I don't have many graphics tools on my PC. Not sure if it would help on this pic.

This is an image that was on my PC when I bought it. This is also my first attempt to upload attachments,we'll see if I've managed it correctly. I let this run a long time (over 30 mil) but the artifact in the sky to right of the trees never resolved. LIGHTHOUSE.xex

I still <have> my first 130 XE, even though it got fried in the 90's by a bad PSU. Fortunately I already had replacement XE and an XL I got from a guy who had upgraded(?) to a Tandy 1000. Pretty much everything else I bought new I still have, and still works, including the box the XE came in, Indus GT w/carrying case, Newell 1meg, Blackbox! (everything Bob Puff! sold had an exclamation point to highlight how fantastically great! it was), not sure if the 10 meg Miniscribe and Adaptec 4004 it came with were new, but I still use them. Also assorted joysticks, Panasonic printer, trackball and assorted floppy and cartidge software. Oh, and not Atari, but still 8-bit - TRS 80-I. Been awhile since I set it up, but it was still working then.

I've used several versions of Mydos with TB as well.

I've been watching the Rasta thread, and tried using it without success from the command line. Don't have much experience with that stuff, but had no trouble with an initial test using your front end. Thanks for posting it!

I'm using the 10 meg MiniScribe I got from CSS originally, don't remember the model number. It seems faster than my Sio2Usb drive, but I don't deal with files big enough to make a difference. Love the BB. Being able to force a cold start without cycling power, and manipulate drive numbers comes in handy. I'd have it hooked up even without an HD.

There is an excellent thread about Atari PSU's on the forum. As I recall the one to stay away from is the black brick with no vent holes. These are not only prone to failure, they sometimes take the computer with it. I lost my first A8 that way. EDIT: My memory is faulty. The one to avoid is "The Ingot". The thread I was thinking of is called "power supplies". I'd post a link if I knew how.

After playing with this under emulation for a few minutes: It's not the HELP key. In the OPTIONS menu there is a way to turn off the raster effect on the banner. Nothing about eliminating the banner. I suspect there is no way to turn it off short of rewriting the code. I'll play with it some more on real A8, but won't be back to AA till next week.

I did a web search for creating sudoku puzzles, and found a guide that seems to use a much different approach at "www.sudokuonline.us/make_your_own_sudoku_puzzle.php" (Sorry, I don't know how to paste in a link). They start by selecting blanked and exposed cells then systematically filling in the numbers. I've only scanned the site quickly but their technique seems to guarantee a single solution puzzle. It's designed for making puzzles by hand but there's a lot of logic involved and is likely to need a boatload of cycles. Still... probably better than a brute force approach.

buying from page looking like from 1994 is abnormal.. Not sure about that. Almost everything on the site is from the 70's, 80', or early 90's. Seems appropriate to me. I've not tried to buy anything from Best, but this thread makes me want to - just to see what would happen!

I like Mydos, one keypress directory lists! Friendly menu interface! Command line doses are great for power users, but for us casual users they can be intimidating as they sit there staring at you silent and imposing, daring you to type something silly.

Hi Idavis I checked this little program out on real hardware and I think you've done a good job. I like the blue background, I've always wished that hue was the default for Gr. 0. I prefer the default font, it looks good. Oddly, I stumbled over the multi-solution problem on my second puzzle. I can't say it bothered me much, it didn't change my score much and I'm more interested in just solving the puzzle. Unless somebody has a magic math algorithm for generating unique puzzles you may need to check for a solution's validity and accept it, given the limitations. As for pre-generating puzzles, the question is : how many can you stuff into 8k?

I don't use my XE daily, but do use it regularly, and have since 1985. I do some casual turbo basic programming (simple stuff), use a little program written by a local user group back in the day to track my home budget, and a very slow bit mapped 64 column display prog I wrote to view investment info. On the rare occasions when I need to send a letter I load PaperClip and fire up the old Panasonic nine pin dot matrix. I've only recently started using a PC, and I still trip over the keyboard - the punctuation marks are on the wrong keys!

I built the ANALOG circuit back in the 90's,but the chip had already been discontinued. More than fifteen years later I found a company called Greenweld in the UK that has some. Don't know if these are rejects, but the one I bought works. A quick check at greenweld.co.uk shows they're in stock for 9.50 (pounds), if anyone is interested.

One thing that has been touched upon only indirectly is force of numbers. There are just way more XL's than 130's. Off topic- You hear a lot about the cheapness of the XE's, but does that cheap feel translate to less durability? Does anybody have anything more than anecdotal evidence that the failure rate for XE's is higher. And it should be noted that even the youngest XEGS is around 25 yrs old. How many iPads are gonna be around that long?

I did it backwards, I bought a 130 in '85-6 first then picked up an XL later as part of a bundle of Atari stuff. I prefer the 130, perhaps because it was first, but believe it or not I also like the keyboard better. Not all XL keyboards are the same, in fact the later ones are pretty crappy (as I understand it). Mine is a two guide type and the keys tend to bind easily, has a short throw, and a hard feel. There is much to criticize about the XE's, it may be that I'm simply used to it, but I think I would replace it with another 130 rather than switch to the XL. Perhaps I am the exception to save2600's rule - I've had almost thirty years to get attached to my 130.

Let's see... (You know you're getting old when you have to stop to calculate) I'm 54 this year. Sadly, most of the people I know aren't even aware or have forgotten, that Atari made a computer. Young or old they think I'm talking about the VCS when I bring up the subject.