Poll: Better graphics -- Hardware upgrade development

[Poll: Better graphics -- Hardware upgrade development]

Just a small reminder:

- atari 400: no parallel bus !

- atari 800: no parallel bus !

- atari 1200XL: no parallel bus!

- atari 1400XL: not sure ?!? (probably no parallel bus!)

- atari 1450XLD: not sure !?! (the built-in floppy uses the parallel bus!)

- atari 65XE : some with & some without ECI port

(of course no XL parallel bus !)

- atari 130XE: has cart. port and ECI port !

(which can be used as an XL parallel bus)

- atari 800XE: some with & some without ECI

(no XL parallel bus!)

- atari XEGS: no parallel bus...

 

whereas:

- atari 600XL: has parallel bus !

- atari 800XL: has parallel bus !

 

From this point of view, the parallel bus graphic upgrade doesn`t sound so good or does it ?!? Anyway, it is a good project !! greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

[Poll: Better graphics -- Hardware upgrade development]

Hmmm,

think i have heard about this GTIA and Antic upgrade years before. Someone told me it was written by Chuck Steinman (the same guy, that wrote an article about the Pokey/Gumby upgrade for stereo sound) and appeared in Atari Classics. Alas, I don`t have any AC magazines, so I could never read that article and I have not found it online yet.

 

But, like the Pokey upgrade this Antic/GTIA upgrade should have been done internally - inside the machine, not via the parallel bus. remember: only the 600XL and 800XL machines do have them. The XE (alas not all XE`s, only some of them!) do have the Cart.port+ECI port which almost does the same job as the XL parallel bus. But this means, one would have to develop two different upgrades: one for XL type computers and one for XE type computers. and there would still be some Atarians left alone (those who merely have 400/880 computers and those who merely have Xe`s without ECI port)...

 

So, why not thinking about an internal upgrade ?!? Maybe one can piggy-back the additional ANTIC and GTIA chips right on the already existing ANTIC and GTIA chips and then do some wiring inside the computer... Personally, I think this is a great project. But it should be possible to "do-it-yourself". If one can only BUY your upgrade, then it will not have much chance... So maybe you can a) sell the upgrade on a pcb and b) also give details, plans and schematics (as well as programming hints and tips), so anyone can do it alone/at home... Ok, just some thoughts. Hopefully, they were not too negative. Besides, I am still interested in that article (maybe from Chuck Steinman, maybe appeared in AC...) that explains on how to install a second Antic and GTIA into your Atari computer... greetings from ABBUC, Andreas Magenheimer.

[Best graphics in Games ?]

For me:

 

- AR The City, AR The dungeon (req. a lot of time!)

- Capture the Flag (Sirius; just 8k, nice+fast; 2 players?)

- Amauroute (but an awful game!)

- Henry`s House (gets very hard!)

- Herbert (from german "AMC-Verlag" company)

- Space Harrier (hope it gets finished!)

 

- Andreas Magenheimer.

[Best Q*Bert Style Game?]

Well,

Q-Bert, Pogo-Joe, Xagon, QB, Kazoo, Avalanche, Mr. Cool, to name just a few... Andreas Magenheimer.

[Good conversion, bad conversion]

Hmmm,

so let`s vote for the worst game (and conversion): Frenesis !!

 

other bad + buggy conversions by mastertronic:

 

- colony (when you order new items, and they arrive, the screen gets filled with garbage...)

 

- universal hero: no music, uses the keyboard a lot (instead of diferent joystick directions with+out button), the tape version has the codeword-bug: it does not accept the given codeword (you merely can correct this on disk)

 

- rockford: an average conversion, but the tape includes a bug: level 9 (if I remember correct) could not be solved (there were not enough diamonds to collect...)

 

- one man and his droid: awful and boring game (but with a few similarities to Lemmings, i.e. you can give 3 different commands to your droid while trying him to get the lemmings/nasties out of the level...); but almost no changes from one level to another...

 

- amauroute: great graphics, nice sounds; anyone ever finished it ?!? Is it possible to finish it ?!? (25 levels and no save feature nor a level password, etc. etc.)

 

- there are many more buggy or average mastertronic games (I remember two more games with bugs, but I don`t know their names right now...)

 

Andreas Magenheimer

[Light gun games?]

Lightgun games for the A8?!?

Well, read the A8FAQ by Michael Current. Somewhere you will find a section: "What Lightgun games are there..." which counts most (if not all) available A8 Lightgun games. Sorry, since I do not own a 48k Atari, I did not list which games will run on Ataris that are smaller than 64kbytes... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

[Utility Cart soon to be available!]

Well,

why not include some graphic viewers and/or sound players as well ?!? One of the programs like: Mega-Graph-View 1.2, Mega-Graph-View 1.3, The Projector, etc. (these are all graphic viewers for various gr. formats) or Mega-Player 1.6, Music-Player 2.1, Smart-Player (these are all sound players) or finally Mega-Player 2.0 (a gfx+msx+fnt+txt player/viewer by MacGyver).

 

Of course you should not include all of these programs, but one or two of these would be nice, so whenever you encounter a sound or a graphic (or a text/font) you would be able to display it with one of these tools... greetings, Andreas magenheimer.

 

P.S.: If you do not know / do not have these tools, I can send you copies of them (with small english instructions)... Just e-mail me at [email protected]