Fox-1 / mnx

You don't need an extra XL for just that. What part(s) do you think you need from it?

An easy way... no. Software solution: Write a custom assembler routine that takes a chosen input (joystick/paddle/whatever) and translate it into a key press. Modify the game in question and hook the routine into the game. Safest bet is the joystick handling part. Sometimes it possible to run the code in a VBI which you can init before starting the game. Depending on how the game does set-up it's own VBI routines you can also extend it by adding your routine to the end of the existing VBI. Hardware solution: Hack your keyboard input. Did it once with a PC keyboard on where I added a joystick connector. A connected Atari joystick acted as cursor keys with the fire button as space bar. The same can be done on 8-Bit Atari.

You skipped a crucial step. Need to go to Boston first.

As long as it works, it's o.k. Tried something similar with an XE keyboard and it turned out exactly as expected. Totally ruined... The melting point of the used plastic was just way too low. Looks like the guys at "DIP" did a better job then Atari did with their keyboards. No, you won't see much Portfolio stuff here. It's an 8088 based system, where "our" 8-bits are 6502 based so they have nothing in common.

First game to play should, of course, be E.T. Phone Home After that it can only get better.

Besides the line issue, it's funny to see the green "blob" at the front of the vehicle on a real screen, which is actually right but turned out grey on my Altirra config. Must be a PAL/NTSC/Palette/Artifact/whatever difference. edit: the black scan line on real system doesn't match the white line I initially got, which was a few lines up. So, not related...

I'd be more worried about the rotated text. Must be a challenge to type in a BASIC listing with that set-up! With that being said, those symptoms can also show up when using thin cabling, or bad cabling, or too long... well, anything with cabling, but that's just one possible cause of many.

No, I wasn't aware of possible issues with the real deal vs. Altirra. Good to know. Unfortunately I don't have a real set-up at hand right now. Since I need to move it's all packed up. Well, sort of. It should be but not connected nevertheless. A real torture because I can't get used to work with an emulator like Altirra. Despite it's near-perfect emulation it'll always "just" be a substitute, admitted the Black-Box hard disk emulation is a real neat feature, which I didn't even knew about until a week ago. I let the MARV conversion run for a few days and when I finally checked it some bright white lines crawled in at (coincidence?) the top of the barrel. This was over 20,000,000,000 evals so lot's of wasted CPU time. I restarted the conversion with the same settings to stop it at 1,000,000,000 evals and this is how it turned out. Exactly the same as the first try but without the disturbing lines.

Something without dithering. The M.A.R.V, GDI's epic unit in the game "Command & Conquer 3 - Kane's Wrath" stats rc Fox-1_CnC3MARV2.png /height=192 /s=600 /pal=olivierp /brightness=6 /contrast=22 /threads=11 /dither_val=1.2 /dither_rand=2.6 (dither parameters are bogus in here) Altirra screenshot Fox-1_CnC3MARV.xex

No go. Too warped. #3: problems start at 2:40 #4: problems start at 2:34

Errors in the last few seconds/blocks of the WAV. Non-audible but non-loading either. Audio editor shows nothing weird.

Hickory_Dickory_APX.cas.xex Hickory_Dickory_APX_2.cas.xex (cut the ".xex" part at the end of file name) edit: Both Player Generator tapes are seriously warped. Unrecoverable audio.

Do you mean on a hardware level? I don't see any reason why the other ports won't work with a light pen / light gun. As long as paddle's work, a light gun should too.

Yeah, forget about BASLST.XEX for TurboBASIC. It does make the files list-able but they're still useless.

Tested or not, it's the way they brake down. Most power supplies just stop functioning when it fails. The ingots, however, start to output a higher voltage without warning, which will eventually destroy your XL/XE.

Tried the 4 *.HSP files from the first disk and it seems to work fine. CITYGAME.LST HEXARUN.LST VORPGM.LST WILDGAME.LST Done with this: BASLST.XEX with XDOS 2.4 Edit: listing works fine. Editing doesn't.

You need to obtain a power supply, no matter what. I'd think the reason of buying it is to use it. Spending $35 on a power supply isn't worth it if you ask me because you can get those much cheaper. I mean, it's just 5VDC you need which is an overly common voltage. Check the forums. There's a lot of info about power supplies. Too much to mention in a single post. Connecting the coax to a regular TV will do but it's the lowest quality of video output the XL's/XE's have.

And the former daily driver. The blue colors often causing troubles, at least for me. No matter the chosen palette. input png - stats rc Fox-1_CadillacZ90.png /height=186 /pal=olivierp /brightness=-10 /contrast=16 /threads=11 /dither=jarvis /dither_val=0.7 /dither_rand=2.4 /init=smart - Altirra Fox-1_CadillacZ90.xex

The daily driver. A bit too saturated. Oh well... Source png - Stats rc Fox-1_FordCortinaMK2.png /height=205 /pal=olivierp /brightness=6 /contrast=36 /threads=11 /dither=knoll /dither_val=0.3 /dither_rand=1.6 /init=smart - Altirra Fox-1_FordCortinaMK2.xex

An example of where the banding actually is an advantage :-)

The list is incomplete. Didn't spot Alien Blast Gangsters Geisterschloss Invasion Pajaki II on yours. All XL/XE games.

My default contrast setting is somewhere around 20, sometimes up to 60, depending on the image. A value of zero or below rarely worked for me. Usually also brightness is slightly adjusted, depending on the chosen palette. I always prepare the source image in such way that it looks good in 640x480 png. Sometimes less than 480 height because, well, the image just hasn't enough lines to show. Prior to starting the conversion I also make two 50% versions (320x240) of the same image. One resized as "smart", the other with a plain pixel resize. I check all three versions with chess dithering to see which one works best. Most of the time it's the 640x480 version which gives the best result. As for sharpen the image... I experienced the opposite. A very tiny gaussian blur will usually return a better result.

Like I said, not bad at all. But... it's still grey scale. I'm curious about how a colorized conversion will look like. Requires a lot more thinking and concessions. But we'll see when you're at it I guess. EXE is nice. I don't really like online options for conversions. Call me paranoid :-)

That should be Atari Interlace Studio I guess. Sorry... the program looked promising but is buggy on my Win10 system. Unable to load palettes (access violation), corrupted screens (black squares in pics), weird color and size conversion. All of this may just be user errors but the fact that the docs and available online info are all in Polish doesn't really help me to solve things so I'll just let this one go.

For the stock color graphic modes I guess Koala/Micro-Illustrator is the most universal format, either compressed or uncompressed. Tried it with a pic I prepared to convert with Rasta Converter With the complexity in mind it came out not too bad when viewed back with IrfanView and FAIL. Left: IrfanView - Right: FAIL No way to view it on real system right now. Will the final tool only be available as an online service?