LoTonah

Forgive me if I'm missing the point here (and I'm just a dabbling programmer, not at the level of you guys), but it seem there are a lot of vertical scrollers on the CV, like Bosconian and Rally-X. I'm seeing a lot of talk about not being able to scroll vertically quick enough, but those two games do a decent job. I'm sure there are more. What did they do differently? Is it just a matter of having too many objects to scroll? Is it because (particularly with those two games) only 2/3rds of the screen actually move? Would a narrowed playfield help?

I don't see we're all of the hate for the Spectrum ZX version is coming from-- I've seen quite a few Speccy games and this is pretty decent. I'd rather see Commando for CV look like it than the turd that is Frontline! Sure all of the objects are monochrome but at least you can make out what they are.

Stupid question, but could you somehow use dithering to change the ghost colors?

It works great! Thank you so much for this...its really going to change how I write code. I had to use CoolCV (didn't know it could run Adam software, huh.). It didn't like my AdamEm front-end/DOSBox combo. I don't have AdamEm 1.9, only 1.81... where did you get 1.9 from?

I've only seen one working Commodore Plus/4 in the wild, and it was mine. Worked for almost two weeks before the video chip fried.

Yeah I don't think I would have been buying much there if I hadn't been working there. The employee discount is all that made the cartridges somewhat affordable! I usually wait until things were on clearance before I bought them.

Hear, hear! Marat is definitely a legend in his field. Thank you for everything you've done for this hobby, Marat!!

I just had a crazy thought... instead of selling Atari, I wonder what would have happened if Warner had hired Jack to run Atari instead. Yes, this is purely hypothetical. Imagine that! Jack would have to have full autonomy, of course. Wouldn't have gotten far if a board of directors held a knife to his throat. Anyhow, I'm super tired and thinking crazy stuff and I'll just leave it up to your imaginations!

Just noticed my 500th post was my apology to Curt. Yay, karma!

Did he get your little dog, too?

Yeah, it made me sad too. Our manager would order less and less, but it was still available to order so I had to make sure I talked to everyone who was looking at that wall. I had that list memorized! I actually ordered a lot of software for myself that I never ended up using (just because it was cheap/on clearance)... especially for the Atari 8bit. I didn't own a floppy drive at the time, so it was complete speculation. Bought a C compiler that I sold 5 years ago that was still in shrinkwrap, for instance.

Yes, a few years later (1989), I was working at a store named Compucentre in Metrotown Mall (in Vancouver). We sold everything--C64's, Macs, Apple //e, Compaq, IBM PS/2, Atari and Amiga. Even NES, Atari 7800, TurboGrafx, SMS and Genesis consoles. All of the salespeople had their niches... mine was the ST. I had the Snowman video, and that combined with promises of IBM and Mac compatibility (had the CP/M and C64 emulators, too) helped me sell a fair number of them. I wish I had a few more demos because I sure got sick of that Snowman demo. LOL

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... Okay, it was nine years ago. I ordered a USB joystick conversion kit from Legacy Engineering. Curt got sick. I got a divorce and moved cities. Changed email accounts. My computer died and I did a file recovery onto a new one. Took awhile to find my electronic receipts. Blah blah blah. It didn't stop me from grumbling publicly about it (and him) a few times over the years in this forum. About a month ago, I said something snarky...not proud of it, but at least it got Curt and I talking via PM. Today I got a package in the mail...not the conversion kit (because after so long I doubt he has them anymore), but a brand new USB Atari stick. Works great! I'm a happy boy again. So, sorry I was a dick about it Curt. You came through for me, so I thank you. -Don

No doubt it sat there for so long--their pricing of TG16 gear was attrocious. I loved my TG16, but I refused to buy any of my stuff from RS and instead did a lot of mail-order stuff.

I'll take a look to see what I have for sale when I get home. I think I have a 1040STE with box. And the US to Canadian dollar conversion will probably save you some money!

I don't have Slither. May as well take them all, though. Here's my postal code (yes, I'm in Canada) if you want to find out the shipping charges: V2A 1V1 Thanks!

What are the titles? Maybe I don't have them.

I've been looking around a bit...not finding much, either. Keep in mind you're operating at a few levels above me, I'm just hoping a second set of eyes may help. In http://theadamresource.com/articles/misc/wk970127.html, an article with a partial disassembly of Pitfall! for CV, it mentions that spinners, trackballs and steering wheels use interrupts. I believe Marcel de Kogel's Coleco Library (coleco.h) file has spinner code. I also found a bunch of source code in the "ColecoVision Coding Guide" here: www.theadamresource.com/manuals/technical/ColecoVision%20Coding%20Guide.pdf , specifically around pg 65. Also, there is spinner control code on page 141 but I'm too tired to know if it is useful to you Also, pg.71 talks about VDP_STATUS_BYTE, and how it shows the VDP status, providing the interrupt was enabled. So wouldn't this be a good check to see if an interrupt worked? Also, I'm not sure if you set 38h like this: VECTOR_38H: RET ;RST 38H DW 0 I remember something about that being wrong, and that RETI should be used instead. Update: the source code for Get Booty has it as RETI, not RET as well.

I miss the twinkling stars in the background, *BUT* I was extremely impressed at how fluid the animation is. I've got the arcade game on MAME and there is something different on the CV version--it is better! Also, the audio lacked a bit of a punch in the video but I'm sure on a good sound system it would sound more like the arcade (the arcade game actually had a pretty decent speaker setup for its time). I think the audio issue is more like the video capture equipment didn't capture it well. I guess I'll have to check it out in person

More like the father disappeared years ago and someone bought his I.D. and is claiming to be him!

We charge extra for the "wafer my ass" treatment around here

Sure, I'll get this started. I have a SmartLOGO package that I've never used, and never will. Manual, DDP, the whole works. Pay shipping and its yours. Who knows, maybe karma will be nice to me and give me something cool, like Super Cobra or Peekaboo! on cartridge. Don't judge me, I have kids EDIT: Untested. It worked the last time I tried it, but that was years ago. If I get a chance I'll try it, but it's already 3AM.

I switched because of two reasons. First, I was running a 520STfm with 4Mb of memory and a 4096 color upgrade. After a while it started screwing up disks...and I could find NO ONE to repair it. I would have had to send it to California to have the board looked at...I lived in British Columbia. Yeah, I could have sent it to Ontario and had it fixed there, maybe even Edmonton, but I was pretty isolated and didn't know the right people. I knew a few people in Vancouver, but not one of the Atari stores there would look at it. Second, people were already starting to give me spare parts. I had amassed a 286 with 1Mb of RAM and a 40Gb hard drive, VGA card, mono VGA monitor, keyboard and mouse... and didn't pay a dime for it. I had to buy my own copy of MS-DOS, but that wasn't all that bad. I eventually bought another Atari (a 1040STE) and ran that as my main computer for about another year, and i bought Bill Wilkinson's hard drive from him. He didn't wipe it before sending it to me so I had all his utilities and source code, until it screwed up and I had to reformat!! Should have made a backup (sigh). But Windows 3.1 came out and that was that. I think at that point the 286 had been swapped with a free 386SX-16 board.

What advantages? Besides being cheap, its advantages were all *potential* advantages, with very little software to exploit it. Don't get me wrong, I lusted after it, still love the ST, but I remember going into the computer shop and looking at the software shelf (and a small one at that), and thinking "that's it?" Our dealer didn't have anything to really show it off until he got a copy of Sundog, then King's Quest. That's when he started moving units. Until then, it just sat at the TOS screen in low res-- I think he was embarrassed to boot ST BASIC for me to play with.

Thank you! I've been keeping an eye out for this.