playermissile

I found so much material that this is going to be a series of 3 episodes, the first of which I just released: http://playermissile.com/podcast/ep030.html This episode covers the 5200 references I found in 1982 magazines. The next 2 episodes will cover 1983 and 1984, respectively. After that I'll be back to my usual 400/800/XL/XE content, so I'm going to be competing with the 5200 podcasts. This is just a little supplemental info comparing the 8-bits and the 5200.

It's been so long since I've seen, let alone played, a 5200 that I don't have a good memory of the controllers. The initial review of the 5200 from Creative Computing in early 1983 was positive, even saying "the soft touch buttons were a joy to use". But by May 1983 the downer views were coming out, saying stuff like the joystick "made Pac-Man appear sluggish." Unfortunately I don't speak Spanish, but I can always run them through Google Translate if electronic copies are available. Were they original articles or translations of stuff from the US? If you have a pointer to the official statement from Atari, that would be great. There is a section on archive.org with Atari press releases but I can't seem to find any that related to the UK. https://archive.org/details/atarihistorical

I had a habit of editing my DUP menus to be silly, so yes, these DOS 2.0s images are from standard sources. I didn't change the DOS.SYS as far as I remember, so here's that from my Trak disk image. It does differ by a few bytes from the DOS.SYS on the earlier attached .atr file. DOS.SYS

Thanks, I'll look through those. Benj is a history expert, for sure. Thanks for the pointer to that episode, I'm listening as I type. Archive.org is my go-place but I hadn't looked into Video Games & Computer Entertainment, so I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

I think DDINIT must do more. This is not it. I disassembled TADS and it looks like all it is doing is sending two commands to the drive using calls to SIOV. The first is a #$4e command, and the second is a #$4f. Both commands are non-standard. The $4e must be a read of the drive status of some sort, because if succeeds reading in the 12 requested bytes, it toggles a single bit and sends it back out with the $4f. It my dim memory, I think it might be switching the density of the drive? I seem to remember there was a way to swap the drive status light from single to double, and maybe this was it.

It turns out I had already imaged my Trak disk, but it didn't have the DDINIT program. However, it did have a program called TADS.SYS. I used it and wrote out new DOS files to a double density disk image, and the resulting DOS.SYS files do have differences, e.g. FD in the DD version where it's 7D in the SD version. UPDATE: now I'm not so sure what TADS.SYS is doing. It seems that the DOS 2.0S that is there is able to format and write to DD without using the TADS.SYS file. dos20s-tads.atr dos20s-dd.atr

I do still have my original Trak drive (non-working, as I've mentioned incessantly on the podcast, haha) and I certainly remember having the disk. I'll look.

Thanks, I otherwise would have missed this magazine!

Thanks for those issue references! I'll check them out.

I'm doing a one-off, special episode on the 5200 for my podcast (normally about the magazines & games for the 8-bit computer line) because I've hit November 1982, about the time the 5200 was released. I'm looking for some help finding magazines that may have covered the 5200 as I'm going to summarize everything I can find. I don't normally cover Atari Age magazine and Electronic Games magazine, but have found references in these that I will include. For magazines that I normally cover, I've found references in: ANALOG, Antic & Creative Computing. I've found nothing significant in: Byte, Compute! & Hi-Res. There are the occasional mentions in these, but mostly in relation to a CES or some other show, or in reference to how much infighting there was among rival Atari divisions etc. It's possible I missed something because it's a big task going through all these, so if anyone does know of a reference, I'd be glad to be corrected. I've found nothing at all in: Atari Connection, Computer Gaming World, Micro, ROM, Softline & Softside. And, because the 5200 didn't get a PAL release, nothing in the UK magazines I normally cover: Computers & Video Games, Page 6 & Atari User. In summary: any other magazines I should be looking into for the 5200 coverage? Thanks!

I just hit Hopper in the latest episode. It's my favorite type-in BASIC game that I've encountered for the podcast so far. It's got limitations like any BASIC game, but there's a lot of stuff moving on the screen and the gameplay is good. Definitely recommended!

I don't know typescript but your code looks clean and easy to follow. Long learning curve ahead from me, but it's possible that I might be able to contribute something eventually.

This looks great! VSCode is cross-platform, so the syntax highlighting should at least work on other systems. When I get a chance I will try it on linux and see if I can start the atari800 emulator by setting the altirra.path variable to point to atari800.

Yes, I enjoyed the reminiscences in that article very much. It was the August 1982 issue of Creative Computing, which I covered in episode 25 of the podcast. His writing has such great detail that it took me 12 minutes of audio to cover it.

So I'm bad at self-promotion! 3 episodes since the last update: Episode 25 with an overview of Aug 1982 magazines including a new addition, Softline. I also throw shade on Adventure International for publishing the sub-par Atari port of Rear Guard, and in an attempt to not get the author Neil Larimer mad at me, praise his much better followup game Stratos. Episode 26 for Sep 1982 magazines & talking about Deluxe Invaders with a tangent talking about the Lost Cause retcon of the Civil War due to the unfortunate (and unrelated) game Hazard Run that was based on the old Dukes of Hazzard TV show. And just this week, Episode 27 for Oct 1982 where I unexpectedly encounter and try to dissect a kernel game, Worm War I which is a port of the 2600 game that @ferghead discussed very early on in his show. Embrace pause technology, since all episodes are at least 2 hours. Enjoy! If you like this sort of stuff, of course; otherwise, probably don't download them.