LoTonah

Awesome... I was hoping this one would get scanned soon (just finished reading Hackers to my girlfriend--it helps her sleep lol) so I've been scrounging around for Altair info!

Yeah, he worked there. So it was his creation? He was running the show and not CEO John Sculley? I thought Jobs was just a pitchman. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. Jobs didn't just "work there". Since you're so knowledgeable about Jobs, why don't you detail - quite specifically, please - exactly what it is he did, or created? I don't think we need to get into what Woz did, but you can reassure yourself by looking at an Apple II. Why are you so angry? Jobs was important to Apple, believe it or not. He "created" quite a few products... not with a soldering iron, but by leading engineering teams. Jef Raskin started the Macintosh project, but when Steve took over as head of the project, it really turned into what we know as Mac (under Raskin, it was still a 6502 then 6809 based computer, with menus instead of a GUI). Steve was also responsible for the look of most of Apple's early projects, from the look of the case, to the manuals, to even the way the circuit boards were laid out). Steve was also instrumental in getting venture capital funding, working trade shows, setting up a dealer network, and working with suppliers. He also studied the way that other companies built things, like Sony. Because of that, the Apple assembly lines ran quite efficient. It not only made a better product, but improved their bottom line. So... just a pitchman? No.

I used to play Empire and a cool German mahjong game on my monochrome ST back in the day

Yeh you can can thank Geocities going down for the loss of the Spectre page I used to have up, which was there with the blessing of Dave Small and everything. Maybe one day I'll put it up again. I wish you would, I really enjoyed reading it. David Small was definitely one of my computing heroes back in the day.

Hi everyone. Pardon my ignorance on the topic, but did anyone ever come up with other graphics modes on the ST? I obviously know about the two color modes and the monochrome hi-res mode, but did anyone ever come up with a mode that used more colors, or a custom resolution? If so, is there source code and/or tutorials? Thanks!

I'm interested in the manuals... what titles do you have? Also, where are you located? And what is a "Free Games forum"? Sorry, Google was not my friend on that search

Cool about your brother's emulator... I've been waiting for this (and a C64 and Apple //e emu). Unfortunately, it is really only for playing games. Is he planning on adding keyboard support soon?

I have to say though: the trailer to the movie is horrible! It doesn't even really explain what the movie is about. I was trying to "sell" the movie to my wife (in the sense that if she liked the trailer I could buy it), but that really didn't help at all.

The smaller resolution version is a great idea. Maybe we should see whether people prefer that? Keep it going, this is awesome and your work is greatly appreciated!!

Hmmm... maybe *that's* the design Curt should use for his Atari-compatible project

What are you talking about? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation Okay, but it still represented time, money, and brainpower that could have been used to make something marketable. By 1989 the ST was becoming pretty ...average. IBM had VGA and the Ad-lib card by then, and a lot of the Mac models were now color models. Yet the ST was almost identical to the machine that first came out four years earlier. And stuff like the Transputer was *NOT* the answer! Atari wanted something expensive and luxurious, but the majority of customers just wanted a better machine, as cheap as possible. At what point did Atari forget their own mantra? "We build computers for the masses, not the classes", indeed!

What are you talking about?

Good question. An even better question is, why did Atari bother? All of the nonsense with Unix and the Transputer and such... didn't amount to anything, didn't make them any money, and distracted them from doing things that people actually wanted. All I really wanted was a faster ST with better graphics and I'm sure that's what most people wanted, too.

They're definitely interesting. Where are you located? Just wondering if shipping would be insane or not. Also, what do you think you'd want for them? Thanks!

Chill. Oops, forgot that he'd said that he'd be busy for a bit. Do I look good with egg on my face?

Dammit....BUMP! I'd hate for this to die.

Oops, you snuck your reply in while I was still writing my last comment. Yeah, I think that it was ridiculous to have the different divisions behave that way toward each other. Apple and Commodore both had the same problems. Imagine what would have happened if all the Atari divisions had gotten along?

Well, wouldn't it be a good thing if the 800's chips were more advanced? That way they'd be able to emulate their simpler counterparts in the VCS. I'm no expert on this, but wouldn't you be able to section off some of the 800's memory to map out as VCS? Maybe a combination of emulation and leaning on the 800's chipsets a bit. Geez, I'm starting to sound like Carmel! This is all just hypothetical musing

Maybe it didn't occur to them at the time, who knows... but how easy/tough would it have been? The second cartridge slot on the 800 could have been wider, making it big enough to fit VCS cartridges. As far as I know, the CTIA/GTIA were like TIA chips on steroids... does that mean that with a little extra silicon and tweaking, it could have handled the same modes and data? So... why do you think they didn't go for it?

If you are willing to ship (yes, I would pay for that!), I'd love to take whatever you have remaining. Everything you've listed is useful to me, although the Mega STE would be like a dream come true to me, almost as good as getting a Falcon. I'm in Penticton, B.C., Canada. Thanks!

The resolution on the PCjr wasn't much better, but the color palette was. The Apple only had 7 colors to work with (16 in DHR mode, which hardly anyone used for games), whereas the IBM had 16 colors without trickery. A lot of PCjr owners had the PCjr monitor, too... very nice picture. The PCjr was actually about 3x faster than an Apple (1MHz 6502 chip on the Apple versus a 4.77MHz 8088 on the PCjr, although without DMA support the "actual" clock speed was about 3.5MHz). A game like King's Quest would have been noticeably slower on the Apple, and the sound would have been awful (unless you owned a Mockingboard or something like that). The PCjr used PC-DOS 2.10, although a lot of programs also came on cartridge, which meant the computer could be easier to use because you didn't have to learn and rely on DOS. It's actually a pretty nice machine. The BASIC that is built in is pretty nice, the second version of the keyboard is pretty sweet, the audio and graphics were some of the best out there until the Amiga came along. Third-party companies made it even better with RAM expansion, hard drives, etc.

Not necessarily. I have the Xgamestation AVR 8-bit, and it has USB, SD card support, and VGA... yet is *nothing* like a PC. Heck, with a bit more RAM, it'd be a wicked little 8-bit homebrew system. I'm hoping that what Curt has in mind is something non-Intel. Maybe ARM-based, or even smaller like an ATMega chip.

I'd say go with the 800XL look. The XE cases are too grey and bland. My second favorite idea is a Mega ST case, but I'd doubt most people would like that. But PLEASE, PLEASE make an external keyboard option, preferably USB. You could sell 'em seperately... I'd pay for an XL-style external keyboard with the upside-down T-shaped cursor keys and a numeric keypad. Heck, I'd buy one for *every* modern computer I own, if it was done up nice. Oh, and is a DVD really necessary anymore? SD cards are almost becoming cheap enough to use for software distros.

I don't know if it's relevant to your poll, Curt, but there's a few Mac users here. I prefer the following: NoSTalgia (ST emulator for OSX) Atari800MacX (possibly the best computer emulator I've ever used, that and Virtual ][...both allow cut & paste from a Mac text editor) Stella, of course. And I sometimes break out the actual hardware, too... to see if my finished projects are truly finished

Where are you located? I'd love to have another 800. I'm not sure if my profile says so, but I'm in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada.