Nebulon

TRON full-size 1982 coin-op. It's my pet.

I have both and the TI99 just sits there. I like the look of the T.I., but that's about it. I'd say sell the T.I. and keep the CoCo 2 (there are thousands of imaged games for the Color Computer 2). And if you're unfamiliar with the CoCo, here's some DOS info to get you started: http://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/coco.html

Sounds like you might be interested in this: http://www.avoidspikes.com/dsplib/chips/sp025x.html http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/gi/speech/General_Instrument_SP0250_Speech_Synthesizer_preliminary_datasheet.pdf I'm hoping to see the day when this technology is taken farther. After all, without it, I never would have known that fighter pilots were needed in sector wars.

Thanks everyone. The Atari 8-bit machines sure have an awesome library. I realize now more than ever that I seriously missed out back in the day. Oh well, better late than never...

I'm fairly new to the Atari 8-bit games catalog (and I really like what I'm seeing so far). Anyone have any favorite games for these machines that are a little less well-known than the Dig Dugs and Pac-Mans of the world? They don't necessarily have to be obscure... just things that people sometimes overlook. Thanks in advance!

Thanks! I'll have to give this another shot. I did run into the file copy restriction that you mentioned. I was only given the option to move the save file and was not allowed to copy it to the USB stick. It's been awhile, but I'm guessing that I took that as meaning that NO files could be copied -- only moved. So I then proceeded to create a new profile under the same name on the second 360. And therein lies the problem since the new profile under a different name is still viewed by the XBOX 360 as a totally unique profile. In your case, you copied the profile and carried it to the other XB. Stay tuned...

If anyone out there has (or knows of) the following for sale, please let me know: Rear top light assembly for 1982 full-size upright TRON arcade coin-op (the one behind the image of the MCP). This incudes the L-bracket, ballast, EM filter, and wiring (with plugs). Thanks!

Nope. They're both mint and unmodded. In fact, one of them has never been on Live, so it can't have been banned. And the account for the machine that has been on Live is still good. I'd like to avoid having to move my profile over from one machine to the other. All I want are the save game locations for the campaigns so that I don't have to start over from the beginning again when I change locations from one floor to another. The profile that the games are saved under has never been connected to XB Live (and it never will).

Speaking of which, I finally went for the AtariMax Maxflash programmer and 8Mb cartridge. The first word out of my mouth was "Wow!" Seriously, this thing is BRILLIANT. That and the software that comes with it is elegant, refined, and well designed. http://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/documentation/

Holy smokes! I can't even imagine what it would be like to have a 2GB SD card attached to a Color Computer. That's pretty wild. I see the CoCo hardware hacking culture is still alive and well. Makes sense, since that's always been one of its strong points.

I recall Amiga OS 3.x running really smoothly during the Windows 3.1 and 95 years. And I sure recall the Windows problems, since I had to provide tech support for Windows end-users at the time. The only thing that I found to be a headache in Amiga OS was editing startup scripts and mounting devices. That seemed to be a bit complex for most casual users. Oh, and the annoying Amiga OS/Workbench issue of the error message that wouldn't go away when a diskette or hard drive is 100% full. THAT is one thing that drove me crazy.

One of the units is slated for on-line and the other will never be connected or updated. So that cancels out the cloud option (thanks though). As for copying across -- I tried that. Unfortunately, the 360 is pretty smart and knows that it's a copy across to a different profile. Turns out that each profile you make on a machine has a unique number generated for it. I'm guessing it's a number that is created in conjunction with the MAC (or whatever unique hardware ID) the particular XBOX 360 has. There's a utility for the PC that allows you to view these numbers. Even when the same profile name is used on two 360 machines, the profile numbers that the console sees are different. At the end of the day, it just returns an error to the effect that there's a profile mismatch.

I don't suppose there's a .xex of the 962KB file available, is there? I'm really curious to see this amazing work in person.

G'day. I have two XBOX 360-S machines and I'd like to continue playing some of the games that I started on the downstairs machine on the upstairs machine. I don't do any on-line gaming. It's campaign only. Is there an easy way to carry my save data over to the other machine? So far, what I've seen looks pretty complex due to the unique ID for each XBOX 360 unit.

Well, as I tell everyone who wants an easy MAME setup, simply go with: MAME32 .035 The ROM Zip files go straight into the ROMs folder. Do not decompress the zips. Then double-click the Mame32.exe file and you're good. Click [Available] to see a list of games that are actually available to play. Right-click a game and choose Properties to adjust its settings (resolution, sound, etc...) In game: TAB - to configure the game's keys 3 - add coin 1 - start P - Pause ESC - Quit back to menu That's pretty much it. I recommend an older machine like a Pentium II or PIII and Windows 2000 or XP. Some newer video cards will scramble the colors. Lots of stuff comes up if you Google MAME32 .035

Well, now's my chance to throw some CoCo/Dragon tidbits out there for people who haven't had a chance to play around with them much: A list of recommended games: - Time Bandit - Cash Man - Dungeons of Daggorath - Dragon Slayer - F1 Racer (somewhat like Pole Position) - Buzzard Bait (Joust) - Downland - Grabber - Lunar Rover (Moon Patrol) - Phantom Slayer (crude-looking but effective) - F-16 Assault - Color Car (Bump n' Jump) - Qiks (Qix) - Whirlybird Run (Super Cobra) - Pit Stop II - Shock Trooper A quick video of some of the better Tandy Color Computer games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2QlXXU0waw And for anyone out there looking for a way to transfer TRS-80 Color Computer data from diskette to the PC (or for how to get the data from the PC over to Color Computer diskettes), here's a way that works quite well. Time to fire up the ol' Windows 98se PC that's likely collecting dust. The executable is a patch for Windows 98se that fixes some issues that the O/S has with 360K 5.25" disk drives. http://www.voltage-control.com/cocotrns.html As for using Atari joysticks, it is possible to use an adaptor. I had one built by a cable-supply shop way back when. It's a simple box that goes from the round DIN-style ports to the DB-9 joystick plugs.

Some CoCo games did have in-game music. Like Grabber by Tom Mix Software. And now that I take a closer look, I see that this has already been mentioned. As for which machine to go with? Well, I'm more familiar with the CoCo/Dragon and there are lots of games on there that I like. However, I really dig Omega Race on the Vic 20. Both systems are quite primitive, yet unique. A bit of a dilemma really.

The C64 originally did. According to an interview in "Commodore: A company on the edge" it was stated that someone deleted the high-speed data transfer lines from the C64 motherboard to make room for the mobo in the case. The guy handling this part of the design found out about it and was just about to put the lines back in. He says that Jack (again) vetoed the fix in favor of expediting the release of the machine.

Yep! I totally agree that the release date of the machines really does need to be taken into context for any kind of comparison of computer technology.

pixelmischief Posted Thu Aug 22, 2013 5:51 PM She needs to decide what kind of computer to buy for her home and she has to choose between products made by Atari, Commodore, and IBM. She just got her kids "an Atari". They don't make serious computers, they make video games. She looks into the Amiga. All of the literature talks about image manipulation, video editing, 3D. She's not doing any of that at work. It looks really cool, but I need WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Then her IT person at work seals the deal. "If you want to be able to work on your files from the office at home, you have to get an IBM-compatible." That meant Intel, DOS, and eventually Windows. From trusted typewriter to trusted computer. IBM was the standard. Businesses put it on the desk. People put it in their homes. The relative strength of the platforms never even played a role. Those who would argue that the success of the Intel platform is evidence of its superiority are conveniently forgetting its history. ____________________ Nebulon: Wow. After 14 years of computer tech and retail for the PC platform (1989 - 2003), I couldn't have said it better.

- TG-16 / PC Engine - Dreamcast - SG-1000 - Vectrex - Atari 7800 And after seeing Space Harrier on the 32x, I have to give that machine a thumbs-up.

ColecoVision TRS-80 Color Computer 2 Amiga 500 Amiga 4000 I really REALLY wanted an Atari 8-bit, but it was too expensive at the time (hence the CoCo 2). Just thinking of all the nifty colors and sounds I could have played with. Snif. Oh well, I now have a rockin' Atari 800XL which has been seeing a lot of use as of late.

My first PC was a 8086 XT. I was interested in graphics and audio, so I got the best video card I could (an 'enhanced' EGA card). As for sound -- well, there weren't any options at the time. Just annoying beeping. Wanting to do CAD work, I added a math coprocessor to it. That was probably the only time I was ever impressed by the early PCs. The coprocessor really did speed up vector graphics to a very significant degree. Later on I did computer tech and retail. I recall Windows 2.0 on our shelves. It just sat there. It didn't even qualify as an operating system, and people knew it. Then there was all the horrible crap we dealt with in DOS (like the 640K barrier, utils to try to use high memory, and the awful experience of low-level formatting hard drives using Debug). As for the 80286, take a closer look at this chip. It has horrible issues from a programmer's perspective. It wasn't until the 80386sx came out that the PC looked to have some potential. Windows 3.1 was pretty awful though. More of a cosmetic overlay than a real GUI O/S. Then there was Windows 95. That seemed to change everything. It was a bloated program, but it sold like mad. The AdLib sound card was garbage. So was the first Sound Blaster (monophonic with poor sampling capabilities). Finally when Windows 98se arrived and the Pentium II appeared on the scene, I had to finally recognize the PC as a force to be reckoned with. Still though, they're inefficient machines with odd quirks. Of course, most computing platforms seem to have their own unique quirks. I use the PC a lot these days, but I can't help but wonder how things would have evolved had Atari or the Amiga won. The PC seems to need vast resources to get things done (and task manager isn't exactly the most elegant way to handle multiple apps). The early years of the PC were a bit of a joke from a gaming and audio/video standpoint. The first PCs were fine for crunching raw data, but not much else. Between their association with the professional reputation of IBM and their sharp displays, they gained respect in the business field. Line graphics and number crunching was pretty much all they were good for back in the early to mid-80s. Clones made it possible for lower prices and tons of peripherals. And the rest is history...

As another person who likes both platforms, I don't think that one rules and the other sucks. I think they both have their good and 'less-good' points. When it comes to reliability, my Amigas have been good. Crashing is very unusual, unless I'm running some questionable PD stuff. Two of my A500s have never needed any work done on them in all these years. One A2000 and one A4000 needed a bit of fidgeting, but it was my own fault for stuffing them full of expansion cards and a few 'questionable' modifications. For an example of an OCS Amiga doing some pretty nifty stuff, consider checking out a Tetris-esque game called Vital Light. As for the ST, I still have my STE and a friend of mine has a very cool TT030. I really do wish the original Amigas had a high-rez productivity mode like on the ST/TT machines. I'm glad both platforms existed at all (especially during the early PC and Mac years). Otherwise, the 16-bit and 32-bit era of computing would have been sooooooo borrrrrring.

According to a number of sources, there were to be two machines released by Atari using what is now known as the Amiga chipset: A video game console and a home computer (the Atari 1850XL). http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/XL-Pages/xl-range-main.htm