LoTonah

I think I'd be alright. I'd immerse myself in Heath Kits, finally learning how to *make* electronics. And knowing what the future was going to be like, I'd invent some of the things that we take for granted. Simple things, like ...mice. Trackballs. Joysticks. Daisywheel printers. Dot matrix printers. And patent them. Yeah, I think if I had the patents on those things, I'd do pretty good for myself... I'd get richer every year, as my inventions got more popular. Oh, and I'd get to hang out with all my heroes, because by the time the 70's rolled around I'd be able to actually have a tech/engineer conversation with Woz, or Chuck Peddle, or Al Acorn. Oh, and I'd buy Atari from Bushnell just before Warner could get their idiot hands on it. The computer wars of the early 80's would have been a lot more interesting with me at the helm. Tramiel would have had to work a lot harder to make the C64 number one! And the Atari VCS Pac-Man would be an 8k cartridge. And E.T. would never have happened. The 5200 would have had good joysticks... actually, there wouldn't have been a 5200... at least not like we know of it! I could go on and on. Hell, it'd make a cool book, alternate computer history!

I'm not a huge fan of the pastel buttons, either... but at least it looks better than a Jaguar.

I have some questions about getting a working ADAM setup on my Mac. First, I've tried SDLMESS, and MessMenu on the Mac. On the PC (through VMWare Fusion), I've tried MESS. I can get them booted into SmartBASIC, but editing is a big hassle. No backspace! How can I set that up? Also, the only good version of SmartBASIC I could find was 1.0. Version 1.2 has some sort of bootloader which crashes on me. I've heard that there are several versions of SmartBASIC...does anyone have an .DSK image of a better version? Last of all, how do you save on the emulator? I tried stuff like "SAVE TEST,D1" using D1 through D4, but when I do a catalog, I see that the volume name has changed but the file doesn't appear as one of the files. Are the .DSK images locked from MESS? I wish someone would write a better ADAM emulator!!!

Cool! Now I seriously want to know what they were up to with this.

On watching a few of the CGE 2010 videos on YouTube, I saw something I think was labelled as the Atari Miral (fuzzy videos). What was the Miral??? Check here (around 4:45)

Please, please keep going with this. Awesome stuff, brings back so many memories!

Geez, it is too bad you live in the UK (I'm in Canada). Those books would flesh out my collection nicely (only two repeats!)

Tell you what, man---I've been in the studio every day for the last week working on the album. It's been unbelievably exhausting, but rewarding at the same time. =) I'll post links to the tunes on here somewhere when they're closer to done. Tonight is my last night in the studio for the next month, because I'll be playing in Florida for 3 weeks and then Georgia for a week. Life gets crazy sometimes. What are ya gonna do? =) As for Beryl Reichardt updates, I have nothing new... It's sad, but I kind of rely on input to keep going. I'm so green in Assembly and this whole thing is so daunting... I've been plugging away at my document, and I've started a couple spreadsheets for battle stats, but I have nothing new to show visually. I kind of got a kick in the face a couple weeks ago on this project. I posted the game project on a couple of RPG forums and it developed a bit of excitement briefly. Then the threads became discussions about why the hell I would write a game for a vintage system in assembly--- A bunch of "You're wasting time and you won't finish it," "Why would you put such shitty restrictions on yourself" and so on and so forth. Then all posts on the game ceased. It didn't mortally wound me or anything, but it just kinda gave me a bad taste in my mouth. I know HERE people GET IT... But other stuff has kind of taken over the life for a brief period. I will try to be a bit more active--- This past week has just been so insanely BUSY!!! BTW, I have just discovered the magnificent SNES game FFII!! I knew about the game, but never played it before. It's technically the fourth game in the series, but FFII for SNES has probably the coolest story of any of the console RPGs I've played. =) I hope you don't get too discouraged and drop this. I don't even own a TI anymore, but I find this project fascinating. I'm sort of in the same boat as you, just (cautiously) crossing that bridge between BASIC and assembler. I'm doing it on the Apple and Atari 8bit systems, though. Keep it up. Don't listen to the people who don't get it. We need people like you on the fringes, doing their own thing.

Lots of books for download here: http://apple2online.com/index.php?p=1_2_Documentation-Library Click on "Documentation Library" on the right hand side, there's a menu that'll appear. Hope that helps

Hi José, What book did you get that code from? I'd like to read up on it. Thanks! Don

Hey there, Love this idea. If you'd like some help, let me know. I can write HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc., so if you need help customizing your website or tweaking Wordpress, let me know. If you plan on doing it as downloadable PDF files, I've got a lot of Indesign experience. If you need articles, I can do some reviews, and maybe write a programming column or two, mostly BASIC-centric (but willing to step outside of that, too). Let me know what you think -Don

If I had to go with an 8-bit OS, I'd have to say GEOS for the C64. 8/16-bit, Apple GS/OS 6.0.1. 16/32-bit, NeXTSTEP. NeXT is considered "classic", isn't it? It first came out in the 80's, after all! Although to be honest I didn't use NeXTSTEP until the mid-90's. Until then I thought the Amiga OS was the best.

That's odd, I love my 128D. I program on it from time to time (love the BASIC), fire up Turbo Pascal on the CP/M side occasionally, and sometimes even fire up a C64 game. I have a nice monitor for it that does all modes nicely, and I have a 1541 and 1581 drive. I'm still on the hunt for a cheap memory expansion so I can run GEOS 128 properly. Gets more use than my SX-64 and my Amigas combined.

Hey everyone, I've heard a lot about various 600XL, 800XL, and XE upgrades (among others). It occurred to me that I haven't really heard of anyone doing much with the good ol' 400, except maybe upgrading the keyboard. Anyone tried anything beyond that? S-Video? More RAM? Is it a unit that is so upgrade-unfriendly that no one bothers? I'd love to know!

They all suck! My abacus spanks them all!!!

I'm still wondering who is going to design a 130XE with 1Mb memory/VBXE/AMY/1090XL in a GS form factor.

This is exactly how I feel. So many enormous letdowns after Tramiel took over Atari. I wonder if Tramiel or his sons get any hate mail after all these years? I hate to say it, but the Tramiel regime faintly reminds me of the Saddam Hussein regime with his sons running around the country causing mayhem and murder. Tramiel and his sons did this to what could have been the Atari Amiga 1850XLD. I wish someone could deliver this computer today, to make good on the promises that have left us wondering what could have been. Seriously? You'd compare the Tramiels to a murdering dictator? WTF is wrong with you?!? We may not agree with all the steps that Jack and sons took, but I think considering the shape Atari was in when they stepped in, they did a pretty amazing job. Yeah, there was a lot of cool stuff that was shelved, and they let a lot of good people go, but Atari wasn't going to last much longer without some serious axe-swinging. Don't get me started on advertising and stale technology, either. Besides, I seriously wonder if Amiga would have gone with Atari with or without Jack appearing on the scene. From what I've been able to gather, Jay Miner and company weren't exactly in love with Atari in the first place... a lot of them were ex-Atari employees FOR A REASON. The way that they were treated caused them to leave, after all. Yes, there's a lot of stuff I'd have loved to have seen come out of Atari. The 8-bit expansion card box comes to mind. The ST line took forever to get multitasking and font scaling (GDOS took ages!). Super cheap/debugged development tools would have been wicked. 68020 based STs should have replaced the 68000 units by 1989, selling for the same price. Dealer support in Canada was a joke, I remember waiting weeks for my back-ordered STe. They shouldn't have bothered with all of the Transputer B.S. Jaguar developer tools were a joke, too. All in all, though, I think that Atari lasted about as long as the rest of the market let it. Any of those extra steps would have just kept them going for a year, maybe two, longer. The majority of the computer users out there were already picking their favorite architectures to back--Windows and Mac.

Well, I'm not going to talk about systems that I have for my collection, 'cause that's not really the same thing. Why buy a lot of software for a museum piece (and plus, sooo many images online). When they were new, that's a different story: My Coleco Adam. I wasn't even in High School yet, so no money. I got a few ColecoVision games for birthdays and Christmas. The only program I actually paid money for was Dragon's Lair. My Amiga 500. I bought Marble Madness, Empire, and Modula 2. I quickly got sick of doing the floppy shuffle, and hated programming for it. Traded straight across for an Atari 520STfm with a monochrome monitor. That was my primary system for about 5 years after that, and loved it every step of the way. Only sold it 'cause I got a job where I needed to do some Borland Pascal 7 programming so I bought a 486. Don't worry, now I own both several Amigas and Atari ST machines.

Any idea when we can see more of these? Loving 'em!

Between renewed competition in the videogame sector, and what Commodore was doing to the home computer market, the Coleco was doomed. It wouldn't have mattered if the quality control was better, if the datapacks were perfect, if the printer wasn't noisy as hell, it was still doomed. Sure, when it first came out, it looked great when you ran the numbers. Similarly configured machines from Atari, Apple, Commodore, Radio Shack and Texas Instruments were all more expensive, but within *months* TI was gone, Radio Shack was starting to focus on IBM compatibles, Apple was focusing on the Mac, Atari was reeling and Commodore was squeezing the market harder and harder (vertical integration was the key). I owned an Adam. It was my primary computer at home for years (school and work was another matter). My biggest beefs were the printer and the damn SmartBASIC language (although I appreciated the typewriter quality of the daisywheel when I had teachers/profs who refused dot-matrix printouts). I always wished that Coleco would have come out with a decent BASIC/Assembler ROM cart, and provided as much technical documentation as you could swallow, but that obviously didn't happen. It's a software base that keeps a system going after it's launch, and third-party support was pathetic. I'm in Canada, and in 1989 I worked at the Burnaby Metrotown Compucentre. By then, Atari 7800 games were only brought in when I custom ordered them (I'd scan the price lists to see when they went on sale to beef up my private collection). Indeed, NES outsold SMS by about 10 to 1, but I was also there long enough to see the launch of the Gameboy, Lynx, Genesis, TurboGrafx, and NeoGeo. On the computer side, the C64 sold more than anything, and that included Macs, IBM PS2 machines, Compaqs, Atari ST's, Atari XE, and Amigas. Damn, I miss those days.

I couldn't sleep, so I made your program look more like the TI-99/4A. Yes, I'm that A-type. LOL 100 PRINT CHR$(147):REM CLEAR SCREEN 110 POKE 53280,13:POKE 53281,13 120 FOR C=0 TO 20 130 FOR I=0 TO 15 140 POKE 646,I 150 PRINT CHR$(18)+" "; 160 POKE 646,13 170 PRINT CHR$(18)+" "; 180 NEXT I 190 PRINT 200 NEXT C 210 GET K$ 220 IF K$<>" " THEN GOTO 210 230 POKE 53280,14 240 POKE 53281,6 250 POKE 646,14 260 PRINT CHR$(18)+" ";

As far as I remember, the VIC-20 could only display 8 colors. Maybe there's some assembler trickery to make it happen, but not in BASIC.

I'd love to check this out to see if it is suitable for my step-daughter. Anyone know where I can find images of it? I tried AtariMania and Google, no luck. Thanks!

Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but there was PLENTY of early support for the Adam in the U.S. They had their own version of Scholastic's Family Computing magazine dedicated directly to Adam for a bit at launch (dropped after 2 or 3 issues I think and just became a section of the regular monthly Family Computing magazine). K=Pro magazine also featured BASIC listings for Adam, as did Family Computing (and I think even Compute!). Books were available at B Dalton and Walden Books in my area that had more programs in them. And if you picked up Family Computing (sensing a theme here? lol), there would be plenty of listings in the back for user groups (like NIAD) and 3rd party vendors for support. And there was the disc drive, additional DDP drive, and modem introduced fairly quickly, too, after launch. But all were PRICEY! I think they were A) overconfident because of the ColecoVision's success and B) pioneering new marketing strategies. The FAIL came in, from my perspective, in the All-In-One approach. Partially because it inflated the price tag, but more so because of the shelf space it took up at retail! You could probably fit (10) C-64 boxes in the space for ONE Adam! That and supply WAS an issue... When the launch buzz and hype was there, the systems weren't there for people who were ready to commit. By 1986 (IIRC), "American Design Components" was advertising Adam stuff piecemeal in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics (both I think, may have just been one). There you could buy boards, DDP drives ($9.95!), controllers, keyboards, and more all at dirt cheap liquidation prices. Even "Baker's Dozens" of DDPs for like $19.99. As a Canadian, and former Adam owner (looking for another Adam, BTW), I can say that we had access to pretty much everything that was available to U.S. owners. IIRC, Compute! had no Adam support, but I can attest to the K-Power and Family Computing support. Computer Shopper also had an Adam column for a while. My first Adam was DOA, but a quick trip down to the store got us another unit. Never had a stitch of trouble with that one, no wiped datapacks, nothing. I did a lot of word processing and SmartBASIC work. I hated the fact that they didn't make a BASIC that showed more of the Adam off (shape tables versus sprites?). I wished at the time I had more money to buy more of the technical information to take my programs to the next level (memory maps, etc.)... unfortunately I was in grade 8 when I got the unit and didn't have a lot of disposable income. I agree, American Power Conversions was awesome. I bought a second DDP drive, a replacement keyboard, a spare CV mobo, and replacement controllers from them. I wish I would have had the money to expand it further. By grade 10, we were learning Turbo Pascal on CP/M machines... I wonder what kind of neat stuff I would have come up with if I had had the money to convert my Adam to do all that (disk drive, CP/M, 80 column adapter). Ah well.