CharlieChaplin

Well, a friend of mine has such a 65XE (made in China). He replaced the faulty GTIA and upgraded to 128k RAM. When he wanted to upgrade to 320k RAM later, the computer did not work anymore. So he examined his upgrade and searched for errors, but found none. When he finally replaced the newer XE OS with an older XL OS the computer worked fine again (and the 320k RAM was fully usable)... Again, upgrading is easy for such machines, but the bugs (faulty GTIA, etc.) are not so nice. And it is not always easy or cheap to find that Gate Array chip... For the incompatibility problem because of the new OS revision number: there were several old Atari XL games that checked it for copy protection reasons. The only one I can remember right now is Encounter by Novagen, it will not work on these machines. Think someone reported me that some older carts (Pacman? and some others) do also not work at all on these machines. In my PD collection I found two programs that did not work: Fast Packer (by SRU) and Muad Dib Demo (by Hurek), but I am not sure if this also has to do with the revision number or some other XE OS changes (or illegal OS calls/jumps by these programs)... -Andreas.

Oh, stupid me - I thought Marbles Deluxe was just another version of Marble Madness. Now I see, it is not... So, if the game does not require a certain controller or if none of the available controllers do have big advantages, I would choose joystick control. Think 100% of Atarians do have a joystick, not so with the TB or ST mouse... But if you can make an option available to choose controler type (joy, TB, mouse) and it is not too much work or costs too much CPU time, give it a try... Anyway, keep up your good work and please finish it !! There is still too much talking around here, about what could be done better in game x, y or z (graphics, sounds, sprites/players, etc.) - but alas a lot of these games are still unfinished. That`s why I belong to the group who says, better to have a finished game with standard gfx and sfx than a game-demo with extra ordinary or outstanding gfx and sfx that is unfinished... -Andreas.

Hmmm, hopefully "completed" means "finished" or "reached the end" here and not complete as a collection of program + manual + package. Because I tend to collect only the program(s) and its manual(s), but not the package. If my first guess is true, I do have the following programs in my collection: - approx. 120 cart. games (including commercial, prototype and selfmade carts); completed: Pitstop, Pole Position, Archon, Dark Chambers, Dandy, Atari Chess and maybe a few others; - approx. 20-30 tape games (only commercial ones); completed: Ninja and maybe others I do not remember right now; - approx. 40 disk games (mostly commercial ones); completed: Fort Apocalypse, Deimos (polish clone of Montezumas Revenge; not sure if the game really ends when you reach the room with the holy grail; could not take it with me; but all other rooms were cleared, so there was nothing left to do...); almost finished: Bruce Lee (18 of 20 screens), Conan (1 level left), Henry`s House (1 level left), Snokie?, Fred? (here I guess that I once was near the end); always a loser: Archon 2 Adept (against computer), Mirax Force, Piekielko, Amauroute and many many other A8 games; not the time to play or finish: Seven Cieties of Gold, the Ultima Series 1-4, AR City + Dungeon, Wizards Crown + Eternal Dagger and most other role-playing games; I also finished some german commercial games and german PD games, but I think they don`t count here, since you most likely do not know them... -Andreas. P.S.: Think I would count as a lier if I said, that I won (3D) Tic Tac Toe... harhar!

hmmm, maybe he is talking of SETcolor while he writes Color...?!? Anyway, on my Atari 800XL (PAL) the color that comes after black is brown. Now if you step down all colors until you reach black again, the color before black is the same brown color again. Or shorter: the colors before and after black are brown and they seem to be the same brown colors... (at least for the human eye). Only with an oscilloscope one can find out a difference (at least someone told me so), but for the human eye these brown colors are the same. Funny thing is, this seems to be typical for PAL systems. when I read color tables written on paper for NTSC systems, the first brown should be a more red-brown... afaik, this (PAL) bug not only appears with colors, but also with luminances - at least for the human eye two luminances seem to be the same. thats why I often say that NTSC Ataris have 16 x 16 = 256 colors, while PAL Ataris have only 15 x 15 = 225 colors... And thats some kind of explanation to me why 256 color pix originally painted or converted on a NTSC system don`t look very good on a PAL system... Otherwise said, in the last 20 years I have converted dozens of GIF (and other) pictures into 256 color atari pix (with my PAL Atari 800XL). There were lots of PC pictures with red and brown tones which appeared only as brown tones on my Atari (allthough Atari has red tones!). And there were also lots of PC pictures with blue and violet/lila (leela?) tones that appeared only as violet/lila on my Atari... -andreas.

Well, afaik the article about a double Antic/GTIA was published in Atari Classics many years ago. Someone told me it was written by Bob Woolley, someone said it was Chuck Steinman (the man that informed us about the double Pokey upgrade - stereo with two Pokey chips in one computer). Anyway, I don`t have any AC magazines, so I cannot quote this article or tell any details... But, as far as I know, all the interlace modes used with R.J. Espino`s CPEGview and other gr. modes like Apac, HIP, RIP and TIP would work without any interlace with such a double Antic/GTIA... Meaning 1) 320x200 pixels with 32 colors, 2) 160x200 pixels with 64 colors, 3) 80x200 pixels with 256 colors and other nice gfx tricks - all without interlace or flicker... Alas, this double Antic/GTIA upgrade seems to be a lot more complicated than the double Pokey upgrade... Besides, it is not random luck that these sound and graphic upgrades are possible. Atari already "thought" of such upgraded computers, but of course when Atari had big financial problems in 1983 and 1984 and later was taken over by Jack Tramiel, all these and many other A8 projects were cancelled... -Andreas.

Well, Apacview converts GIF87a into Atari gr.9, gr. 9+11 (apac) or R,G,B mode (9 and 15). Jview converts GIF87a into Atari gr.8, 9, 15 and R,G,B or RGB (modes 8, 9 and 15). Alas none of them converts GIF into the newer formats HIP, RIP and TIP... CPEGview seems to "convert" JPG pix into Atari Gr. 8 +11, Gr. 9 + 11 and Gr. 15 + 11 (or the other way around Gr. 11 + Gr, 8,9,15). Alas, as of yet, a save function is missing, thus CPEGview is only a viewer (ok, thats why it is called CPEGview). Hopefully it will be a converter program (with save function) soon... Besides, I found a small bug: You can load and view a JPG pic fine. Now load the same or any other JPG pic and it will appear with stripes. Switch off the Atari and back on again, then load a JPG again - it will appear without stripes. Reload it again - and now it has stripes again... In short: The first attempt to load a JPG works fine, the second attempt to load (the same or a different) JPG picture produces nasty stripes, independent of the Atari gr. mode you have chosen... Hope this gets corrected soon... -Andreas.

Hello analmux, can`t wait to see SMB3 being finished... besides, the deadline for the ABBUC software contest is august 31, 2005. Hope you can make it til there... Otherwise you may release the game as freeware or wait for the contest 2006... The game-demos are great, so this game has to be finished !! -Andreas.

Well, interlace means flickering. For fast action games (like e.g. Space Harrier) this does not matter very much, since you almost have no time to look at the gfx - you have to act/react. But afaik for Marble Madness you do not need these very fast reflexes, do you ?!? And as a result you have more time to look at the gfx and thus you will notice the flickering and most probably you will not like it... Anyway, would like to see a good port of Marble Madness and/or Marble Madness Deluxe... But with good controls please! The joystick should react normally and not like "in sleep mode". Next, don`t change the joystick directions (like some MM clones did - afaik 90, 180 or 270 degrees clockwise), instead left, right, up and down should still be left, right, up and down... -Andreas.

Well, I prefer the pics from postings 34 and 42... -Andreas.

Well, and now for the bad news: these XE`s were made in China. They all have faulty GTIA chips (which have to be replaced with good ones). The faulty GTIA chips in these machines "have problems" with gr. modes 9, 10 and 11... Next, these chinese machines have the new XE OS which will say "copyright Atari 1985" (instead of 1983 which it did before). Alas, the 1200XL special keys are gone in the selftest and I am not sure if they are still available in the OS. The OS has a new revision number, making some programs incompatible which look for that number... the Memory test will also test the additional 64k XRAM (shows 4 blocks which should be 16k XRAM each). alas, if you want to enhance such a machine further (more than 128k RAM, e.g. 320k RAM) it does not work, unless you replace the new XE OS with an older XL OS... Thus, upgrading these machines is nice (and maybe easy if you have a Gate Array chip at reserve somewhere), but the bugs and incompatibilities these machines have are not so nice... -Andreas.

Afaik, there is no need to replace Antic or GTIA in an Atari 800. They have all graphic modes available. It is the software - especially Atari Basic (Revision A cart. for the 800) that does not have gr. modes 12-15 available. But *again afaik*, with Assembler for instance one could still force an Atari 800 to use / display gr. modes 12-15... Thus, when Atari advertised the XL computer line with new gr. modes, it was actually the built-in Atari Basic that did have new graphic modes. The graphic chips (Antic and GTIA) were and still are the same as in older Ataris... -Andreas.

Afaik, even more Mastertronic games did have (and still do have) a bug: Rockford: level 9 is not solvable, you have to collect more diamonds than there are available... One man and his droid (not sure about that game): if I remember correctly, this game (or another one) had 25 levels, each with a password; the last or pre-last level could not be solved... (have to read my tipster texts again to check it out)... Amaurote: great gfx and sfx, but in my eyes awful to play and impossible to finish. I once played it with infinite lives (no collision detection) and still needed 15-30 minutes to end one level. alas, the game has 25 levels, no passwords, no save options. Thus you have to play the whole game in one go - and with the standard number of lives (3) this is absolutely impossible... besides, the "jumping" bombs make it almost impossible to target and kill the insects... I have asked often, if anyone ever finished this game, no-one did and I doubt anyone ever will (especially with the standard number of lives)... Novagen: - Second City (sequel to Mercenary): There is a room which contains a triangle key, it is the only room which does. Alas, the only door leading to this room is locked and to unlock it, one requires the triangle key, which is simply impossible... (or maybe a Lucasfilm gag)... anyways, the game has to be patched, so the door can be opened with any other key and the triangle key can be taken... - Andreas.

Well, afaik the bug in Colony only appears if you 1) order new items and 2) switch on the beacon. You can avoid the bug by not ordering any new items (which would be stupid) and of course by NOT SWITCHIN ON the beacon. When the items arrive then, there is one dis-advantage: you will not find the items at the landing space, instead they are "thrown" all around the colony (some are even out of reach, meaning beyond the colony borders). But as said before, there is no graphic bug then. You have to search around the colony for the items (and some are out of reach), but they can be taken then without any graphic bug to appear... or maybe the gr. bug appears only with some items (items I did not order or items I have not found or items that were out of reach)... ok, this tip does not solve the mentioned bug, but it informs you how to avoid it somehow... until you find a better solution of course... -Andreas.

Well, I downloaded and unpacked everything. Two questions: 1) Why are all programs available twice (as pure files and as ATR images) ?!? You can load *.EXE (or *.XEX) files directly into the emulator, but you cannot load *.TUR (Turbo-Basic-XL) or *.CTB (compiled TB XL) directly... So most of the pure files (except the EXEs maybe) are redundant aren`t they... ?!? 2) Amongst the images, it looks like one image (5B.ATR, if I remember correctly) is missing. At least all other images do have b-sides...?!? Ok, this post is not meant to be a complaint, just some stupid questions... -Andreas.

Well, ahem, as said before when it comes to filenames, my PC is as stupid as an Atari, using only 8.3 filenames (because it is an 486 PC running under MS-DOS 6.22). Thus, I never get to see the full path of any updated files... nor their full filenames... The packed version is indeed only 3.5 MB, but it is packed. Under MS-DOS and 8.3 filename limitation it is very difficult to unpack only the updated SAP files and when I unpack the whole package, I get the mentioned 10MB and +1800 files again... -Andreas Magenheimer. P.S.: My friends use to say, that my PC (1994) is damn f*cked old. Well, my Ataris are much older...

Afaik, the Axlon upgrades provide eXtra RAM, but no RAM under the OS, like the XL/XE computers. But (again afaik) Mosaic also sold various Atari 800 upgrades. One of these Mosaic upgrades made your 800 compatible to XL/XE computers, meaning it gave RAM under the OS to the 800. Alas, most if not all Mosaic upgrades are very rare... And of course not every Mosaic upgrade made your 800 compatible to XL/XE computers. Some Mosaic upgrades did only add eXtra RAM, but not compatible to Axlon or XE extra RAM... For those who are interested, a Mosaic 64k xxx (insert name here) upgrade did provide 48k RAM plus 16k XRAM. The XRAM did use memory location C000-CFFF, thus it was doing bankswitching in 4k blocks. (So one 64k Mosaic upgrade gave an 800 Atari 48k RAM plus 16k or 4 banks of 4k XRAM; a number of programs do support the Mosaic upgrade, but most programs do not bankswitch, they only use one bank = 48k RAM + 4k XRAM = 52k RAM. The Axlon and XE upgrades on the other hand use both 16k banks, they both use memory location 4000-7FFF for bankswitching. The difference between the upgrades is that the XE ones use port B for bankswitching [that`s why the joystick ports 3 and 4 have gone in the XL/XE series] and as a result of that any *certain* bank can be used/reached, whereas the Axlon upgrades do not use port B, so bankswitching can only be done in one direction, starting at bank zero, then bank one, then bank two, etc. Or to say it in "easy words": the Axlon upgrades behave like a tape player => one way street, whereas the XE upgrades behave more like a disk drive => any direction, any certain bank/sector.) However, there were several other Mosaic upgrades advertised and as said before, one of them should give an 800 owner full XL/XE compatibility... at least thats what the adverts said... Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, is it possible to get *only* the new songs ?!? I have downloaded the +1800 songs some months ago to my PC, then downloaded, renamed and tested/played them on my A8. This was a lot of work, since both my PC and A8 use only 8.3 filenames. Next, the SAP player for the Atari XE could not play all .SAP sounds, so I had to play & test them (and erase those songs, which could not be played). Now many months later I am almost done with this. So I would like to get only the new songs - and not the whole (approx. 10 Megabytes) package again. -Andreas.

Hello Fandal, there are several packers which can theoretically do this: - magnus Cruncher 4.x and 5.x: does not like Init adresses however; probably requires 128k RAM; does not pack programs with a startadress 0700... - code cruncher: requires 128k RAM, does not pack programs with a start adress 0700... - APC packer: requires 320k RAM, does not pack programs with a start adress 0700... have not found out yet, how to reboot after packing and load the linker program (Reset does not work)... - fast packer: requires 64k RAM (does not work at all on XEGS and XE`s with XE OS made in China); a very fast but not so good packer; therefore it can split any program segments into a max. of 32kbytes; it uses page 4 (0400-04xx) for depacking; the packed file can be packed again with another packer (like DJ56 packer, superpacker, etc.)... alas, most gamedos and gameloader programs will also not load programs with a start adress of $0700... (tried: nanodos, microdos, picodos, mypicodos, micro-spartados, etc.)... e-mail me, if you are interested in these packer programs. -Andreas.

Well, thats the reason why I splitted the list in the A8FAQ subject 8.7, the first (long) part counts games that should work with both devices, but where Paddles are much better than koala Pad. the second part (only one program "micro-illustrator") should count the programs which could also be used with both controllers, but where a koala-pad would be the better device... Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, the "Smutek" picture looks like an enhancement of an old Gr. 15 pic. If this is the case, then the author has surely done this enhancement in less than 24 hours. but, err, I am not sure if the rules of the 24h compo do allow using others work and enhance it... (nor am I sure if the work is merely an enhancement or if the author did it himself / alone)... -Andreas.

yeah, I also hate those EXE to ATR conversions. They always create "shortened" ATR images (shorter than 90kbytes or any other standard density). The problem is a) to convert them back into real Atari 5,25" disks and b) the creation of dozens of different images and image-sizes of probably one and the same game... -Andreas.

Alas, Fandal is right - the game does not work on a real A8. it hangs at the select screen... can anyone correct this ?!? -Andreas. P.S.: I hate A8 programs that work only with the emulator...

Well, simply read the A8FAQ by michael current, subjects 8.11 and 8.12. they contain hundreds of programs that a) support a Ramdisk / XRAM (subject 8.11) or even b) require a Ramdisk / XRAM (subject 8.12). This extremly long list was collected by me (with little help by other Atarians) and it is far from complete of course. If you cannot find the text anywhere, just e-mail me and I will send it to you... -Andreas Magenheimer.

Heya, since I have hundreds (if not thousands) of source codes - what sources do you want ?!? Only Assembler (*.SRC, *.M65, *.ASM, etc.) - or also other languages, like C, Forth, Pascal, Action, Quick, Pilot, Logo, Lisp, ... ??? Most of these sources were taken from magazines, like Antic, Analog, Compute!, Atari magazin, etc. And err, most of these sources are not commented in any way... -Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, originally the XANTH demos were written for the CES 1985. They were *one* big 130XE demo which included a) the Robot b) the Fuji boink c) the Swan d) the Spaceship and e) some scroller (in one file!) - all running on a 130XE (using its 64k extra RAM). I have that demo in my collection, one big file with more than 500 sectors. Looks like someone cracked this demo and made separate demo parts for 48k and 64k machines available, meaning a) robot+spaceship, b) fuji boink and c) the swan. The amiga boink however, was also done by XANTH, but it was not a part of this demo series (the CES 1985 demos), think it is even older than these demos... -Andreas Magenheimer.