CharlieChaplin

Do you have a cheat for Amaurote? => invulnerability, so the insects cannot kill you, but you can kill them...?!? Saw this cheat once in the german "newspaper" Computer Flohmarkt, but lost it and never found this cheat again... (but maybe the cheat switched off the collision detection)...

Did not know that the Indus could play 45rpm records... gonna test it... Does it also play them backwards so I can bring some old rock / hard rock groups to court ?

We are now sending two hobbits on a journey to avoid this...

The rules for the Abbuc software contest do not set a minimum nor a maximum of RAM required, so you are allowed to code a program that runs with 8k RAM and you are also allowed to code a program that requires a minimum of 1MB RAM; you are also allowed to code a program that requires separate Antic access or VBXE or Rapidus or 16MB / 32MB harddisk partition or whatnot. Of course with certain requirements you will only target a small audience and because of that you will most-likely not get a good score from the few Atarians that are able to run your program. The same counts for a program that is NTSC-only or even Secam-only - it will most-likely not get a good score, since Atarians that cannot run the program will give zero points or just one point. Atm we are lucky, that the majority of Abbuc members are from PAL countries, so a PAL-only program can score quite high, but this may change in the future (or maybe it already has changed, since Abbuc got a lot of members from America)... There is however a limitation set in the rules of max. two disksides of 90k or 130k, so I guess it is quite unlikely we will see some programs released that require 1MB or more RAM (or harddisk partitions)...

Made a little TIP Ani, just for fun ;-) FracAni_OliN_128k.xex: uses Olivier N palette (for NTSC), requires 128k RAM FracAni_OliP_128k.xex: uses Olivier P palette (for PAL), requires 128k RAM The NTSC version looks strange on the emulator, hopefully it looks better on the real A8. (I do not have any NTSC Ataris) FracAni.zip

Afaik, Bomb Jake = Corina cart. version Bomb Jack = XEX fileversion, last released version was V1.5 Bomb Jack XEX (I prefer the Exomizer packed version 1.4 of Bomb Jack, because it shows the name, the version number and the RAM requirements during loading.)

Errrm, sorry but I do not know... you have to ask the tech guys. I simply used the various copy programs for the Speedy and the copy either worked or did not work. There are many programs like BackupCopy that work only with copy-protected 90k disks, but also some programs like MS-Copy, Ultracopy, etc. that work with copy-protected 130k disks (AMC-Verlag, etc)...

Yes, there are track editors for the Speedy. In the german Atari Magazin there was a series about copy-protection, originally written by the author for the Happy 1050, but from day one also for the Speedy 1050 (since the publisher requested it) and a little later also for the Turbo 1050. One of the released programs was "ReadTrk.COM", guess what it does... and of course there were several programs to copy various copy-protected disks (without the need for any PDB files) like MS-Copy, MS-Formatter, MS-whatnot, Ultracopy, BackupCopy (several versions), Track Analyzer / Track Editor, Diskmaster (a german program to create and analyze various copy protections) and several other programs. Allthough most americans do not like the 130k format, it was very usefull with a Turbo 1050 enhancement. The Turbo 1050 works with sector interleave, just like USD, Archiver, Super Archiver, etc. One could install the turbo driver manually into page 1 or page 6 and if the disk had the special turbo sector interleave format, it would load and save with 68kBaud. [The built-in utilities of the Turbo 1050 enhancement allowed one to load the turbo driver, create special formats and to backup copy-protected 90k disks; the enhancement was able to slow the drive RPM down to approx. 270 RpM to create bad sectors and maybe other stuff.] There were turbo copy programs that transfered a disk from 90k into 130k (including bootdisks) and furthermore there was a turbo autoload program that a) copied the original bootsectors into the "unused" sectors 1025-1027 (unused by DOS 2.5 and bootdisks that were originally 90k, e.g. most commercial disks) and b) created a driver in the bootsectors, so the disk would load with 68kBaud turbospeed. The created turbo driver used either page 1 or page 6, so programs only worked with turbospeed when they did NOT use page 1 or page 6 themselves. But therefore many commercial (pirated/hacked/cracked) programs could be loaded from such a prepared 130k disk in full turbospeed. Besides, if a disk used the special turbo sector interleave and came with a turbo driver, then reading + writing was faster than a Speedy or Happy 1050. But, thanks to the track buffer, there is a Turbo 1050 emulator available for the Speedy 1050 enhancement...

Avery, what was changed/fixed/updated in Altirra Basic 1.57 ?

YES, as long as the game is stand-alone and runs without the Arcade Machine. You could also create a pinball with the PCS (stand-alone COM/XEX version) or any other type of game with available A8 game creators / construction kits...

There is also "Acrobat" on the A8: http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=1234

Correction: Four magazines a year, which means quarterly (March, June, September and December). Not mentioning special magazines (mostly disks) and from time to time an "end-of-the-year gift" (disks, books, CD's, DVD's, etc.)...

GTIA, Antic, PIA, Sally and Basic Rev. C ROM (internal) are all available at ebay by vendors from GB/UK or vendors from the US. My Atari (B & C) also sells Basic Rev. A (brown label) and Basic Rev. C (silver label) on cartridge at ebay... but there are no Pokeys available...

Well, if you would own an AVG cart, it would be that easy: 1) copy all video image files onto the AVG SD-card, 2) rename the video files from e.g. *.IMG into *.AVF. Done. You can then chose any video you like from the AVG menu and play it back, return to the menu whenever you like (or when the movie has reached the end) and play back the next video or do something else... But maybe @flashjazzcat is so nice and creates a universal movieplayer for the SIDE, which works similar to the one of the AVG cart. and plays multiple videos ?!? Besides, I am wondering, you are from the Czech Rep., a PAL country - do you own+use NTSC Atari hardware ? Because afaik, on PAL machines one can only use+playback PAL videos with 50fps, the 60fps/NTSC ones will not work... At the moment I have 30 videos for PAL/50fps, some of them very good (No Limit, Bad Apple, Dragon's Lair, Matrix, etc.) and some of them very bad (e.g. Skyfall intro, GOT intro).

Errrm well, I made such an experience once with the Ultimate cart. (requires the same software and hardware to update, Quartus IDE, USB BLaster cable) and it was very frustrating. In the end I was unable to do it and asked my friend (who was studying IT and networking and therefore has a master) to do it for me. He really hated doing that update and shouted some rude words several times, but in the end he was successfull. For me of course this means: Never again! It is sad to hear, that PokeyMax requires the same shitty software to update the firmware... so I am waiting until that special flashing tool is available to update the firmware without USB-Blaster and Quartus IDE.

Hmm, Wikipedia says .PNG is officially pronounced Ping ?!? Doesn't make sense to me - POrtable Network Graphics = Pong, not only for us Atarians... ;-) Or you pronounce it pi-en-gi.. ;-)

Well, the original size is 270x300 pixels, a little bit more vertically oriented, while the A8 screen is clearly horizontally oriented. TIP has a max. resolution of 160x119 pixels, but only 160x100 can be displayed with TIP animator. The 128k version above has approx. 72x80 pixels, when using full height and not changing aspect ratio it would be approx. 90x100 pixels. But I wanted fullscreen with 160x100 pixels and so I had to change the aspect ratio... ----- EDIT: Tried it with full height (90x100 pixels), original aspect ratio and NTSC (OlivierN palette). Do not know if it looks good on the real machine, since I don't have any NTSC Ataris and can only test it under emulation... ATmorph_NTSC_128k.zip

Like this ? - fullscreen (160x100) - PAL (OlivierP palette) - fast + slow version (packed and unpacked) - requires min. 320k RAM ATmorph_fullscreen.zip

Here is the animation in a higher, errrm, lower A8 resolution... ;-) Converted for 128k PAL Atari as a slow(er) and fast(er) animation. ATmorph.zip

Maybe add a general greeting, like "Greetings from Atari Age 8Bit forum users!" or something similar ? Donated.

Yes, that was the other tool and if I remember correctly there was another one (maybe from MatoSimi)...

Afaik, not with Superpacker, but with several other tools. One of them is Ataricom by HiasSoft: https://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#tools-win32 There were two similar tools here at AA forum, but I forgot their names...

Do you have a source for these drawers ? Would like to buy some of them... (Does not matter if it is a US or european source.)

Hmmm, here are two pictures of my joystick collection: Yes, I am a fan of Quickshot II, Quickshot II Plus and Quickshot II Turbo, all of them do have autofire (you can see 4x Quickshot II, 4x Quickshot II Plus, 4x Quickshot Turbo and another 2x Quickshot II in these pics.). There are two more Quickshot II Plus joysticks not visible in these pics, you can see them near my disk boxes in the "Cartholder" topic (and there are two more Quickshot II joysticks in my living room, connected to the 800XL)... so that's 18 joysticks atm. You can also see a Sys-Check-2 on top of the mice and in the small parcel under the mice are two IDE+/IDE-2 Rev. E interfaces. The packed Atari is defect and requires some repair service...

Welllll, here are two pictures of my cartholders: I currently have twelve of them. Yes, these are 5,25" disk boxes, but they have space for 24-26 A8 carts (two rows of 12-13 carts). Alas, eleven of these boxes are completely filled and nr. 12 is already half filled. And these boxes are not easy nor cheap to find nowadays...