bfollowell
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Posts posted by bfollowell
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7 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:
Is the VGATE available as a stand-alone mod? I don't know - I've got it on my 1088XEL and XLD of course.
You may be right. I knew it was incorporated into our 1088XEL & XLDs, and I saw an image of it installed in an XEGS on Michael's page, but when I read a little further, I read a comment he made about the firmware being stable but the hardware not being quite ready for prime time.
Still, in theory I think the V-Gate would take care of this. It just may not be available to the general public outside of 1088s just yet.
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Check out this page
https://ataribits.weebly.com/vgate.html
Also, watch the video at the bottom. In the example shown there, the corruption doesn't look as bad as what you're seeing, but I'm pretty sure it's related.
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3 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:
Um, get a 4:3 display?
Otherwise you're pretty much stuck with it. If your TV has a 4:3 mode, you could try switching to it and see if it hides the video noise. (*)
(*) That noise is actually data in the Atari's memory that would normally not be displayed on a vintage screen.
Wouldn't Michael's GTIA V-Gate mod take care of this?
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It looks like overscan garbage.
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I have one of the Best Electronics cables and a 15kHz compatible NEC Multisync monitor that will work with all three ST resolutions but, to be completely honest with you, I was never all that thrilled with it. Low res looked pretty good. With a little bit of tweaking, high res looked good. However, medium resolution only ever looked mediocre at best, regardless of how much tweaking I did to the monitor. I purchased an OSSC and fed my VGA signal into that, but it never seemed to help things more than just a little. I'd heard a lot of good things about RGB to SCART cables, so I bought an STE to SCART cable from Cool Novelties in the U.K. and fed that into the SCART input of my OSSC. The difference is night and day. The picture that I get is unbelievably beautiful. I've never seen either of the ST's color modes look so good and clear. My issue may have been the Best Electronics cable all along. I've heard of some others complaining about getting interference when using it. My high and low res modes looked decent with it though.
For high resolution, I'm thinking of getting one of those RGB port switches liek exxos and other sell and using a regular VGA cable into my OSSC.
An OSSC is an expensive option that not everyone is willing or able to shell out for though. If you wanted to get an ST SCART cable and use it with a much cheaper SCART to HDMI converter/upscaler, I've heard of a lot of users having a lot of luck with them, though I have no personal experience with them myself.
The plus side to going this route and using an upscaler is that, chances are, you'll be able to use your ST with just about any modern monitor or TV that you wish, as long as it has an HDMI input.
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Excellent. I'm glad you got it worked out.
I know a lot of people, especially retro fans, go in for CRTs and older style monitors. Personally, I want my setup to give the best image possible. For me, that's a modern LCD display. If you're interested in moving to a more modern monitor, I could give you some ideas there. If you plan to stick with an old school style display, you're really better off trying to find an Atari SC1224 RGB monitor rather than using RF or composite or anything along those lines.
Good luck!
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On 7/30/2020 at 7:26 AM, Divarin said:
Recently I acquired a 1040 STF with a Gotek replacement for the floppy drive. Personally I'd rather have a floppy drive and I have a post in the buy/sell/trade forum looking for one.
In the meantime I'm trying to figure out how to use this gotek. I've read the docs and they don't seem to be very consistent with how mine works.
First off the file selector program that lets you choose the .st file to "mount" on startup doesn't seem to work properly and I don't much care for it anyway so I'm just trying to figure out how to switch from one .st file to another.
I put about 23 .st files in the root folder, thinking the order might depend on filename I prepended "000-", "001-", "002-", etc... to the file names. This order also matches the order in which files were added to the USB thumb drive.
But when I start up the ST and hit the button on the gotek to advance to a specific number some random .st file is loaded. At this point there only seems to be two ways to use this thing and neither is very convenient:
1) I can either have only one .st file on the thumb drive (or at least in the root folder) which means switching to another disk image involves putting the thumb drive in a PC, moving files around, then back to the gotek
2) I can have all the files in the root folder but then select a number, see what comes up, and write it down for future reference.
Am I missing something?
First of all, the order that the files appear has nothing to do with the files themselves, or their filenames. There is no need to prefix the filenames with any numbers. The numbers that you see on the Gotek's display correspond to "slots" available on the Gotek. The File Selector program allows you to easily search through, find the disk image(s) that you want, and assign them to whichever slots you wish. When you start your ST, you should press the buttons on your Gotek to make certain that slot 000 is selected. This is what allows the file selector app to start. Of course, if you already have Zork III assigned to slot 005, and you know that's what you want to load, you could select slot 005 as you boot your ST and load Zork III. Typically, you have a few seconds after turning the ST on before the disk access actually starts, so you have a few seconds to select the appropriate slot. If you don't have time, you can boot, select the desired slot, then reset. As far as changing disks, let's use my Zork III example. Let's say you have Zork III assigned to slot 005, and a blank disk you use for game saves assigned to slot 006. You'd boot your computer with slot 005 selected to boot Zork III. Later, when you wanted to save a gave, you'd use the Gotek's buttons to select slot 006. This is the same as swapping a real disk. You could then save your game.
Your Gotek definitely shouldn't be loading images at random and you most certainly shouldn't have to have each image on a separate flash drive.
If your Gotek doesn't appear to be working in this manner, then something is wrong, because the behavior that you've mentioned is definitely not normal.
I like to have subdirectories for my disk images organized by genre, and then letter, to make it easier and faster to find what I need. Of course, everyone finds out which system, if they use any system at all, works best for them. I have hundreds upon hundreds of disk images on my flash drive, so dumping them all together in the root directory would be a nightmare for me, but to each their own. While you only have 23 images, it probably isn't too big a deal either way. I suspect you'll probably want to organize them a little better as you put more and more disk images on your flash drive.
Do you have AUTOBOOT.HFE in the root directory of your flash drive? You can use the Gotek without it, but I highly recommend using it. It makes your life a lot easier.
If you haven't already checked it out, read through this thread at Exxos' forum.
https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=593
It's about setting up a Gotek, but there's a lot of good, useful information there on basic Gotek use as well. It should be required reading for anyone wishing to use a Gotek with an ST.
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12 minutes ago, Mr Robot said:
Just an FYI, the UC supports the most common cart formats so it covers a great number of carts, the AVG support a bunch more, SIDE 2 only supports 8K carts, SIDE 3 looks like it will support at least the same formats as the AVG.
Ultimate Cart got left behind due to lack of software updates or continued development.
True, but as I said, at the time I ordered my UC, about a year-and-a-half ago, AVG development was very early and it was nowhere near the UC in terms of compatibility. It has definitely met and even surpassed it since that time though. Ah, hindsight is always 20/20.
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For me, it depends on what you want to do with it, and what machine you plan to use it on.
For me, I wanted the best compatibility with the most cartridge types and, from my research at the time that I bought my Ultimate Cart, the UC won. Also, I knew I planned to build a 1088XEL with the CF3 installed, so I really wouldn't need the HD emulation of the SIDE2, or the SIDE3.
If I'd been planning to use this with an original 8-bit, I probably would have sacrificed a few of the more obscure cartridge types for the sake of the HD emulation of the SIDE2 and would have purchased that. Also, for all I know, today, the SIDE2 and SIDE3 may be fully compatible with all the same cartridge types that the Ultimate Cart is compatible with. The firmware for these is being updated routinely and new features being added.
I'd initially planned to sell my old original 800XL when I got my 1088XEL going well. Now, I think I've decided to keep my old friend and add a UAV and U1MB to it. You can be sure that, if I do, I'll most likely be adding a SIDE3 to the setup as well.
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I went to Lotharek's site and added a cased US, cable, and SD card with the software to my cart and this was the shipping shown to Indiana. It looks like the shipping cost issue has been fixed, at least for now. All three of these are sold separately on Lotharek's web site, so I'm not certain that they come together when you purchase them off of eBay. Something to consider and confirm before purchasing. FedEx starts at $41.10, and they or UPS are the only way to get anything out of Poland at the moment.
Another option to check into, Marlin at The Brewing Academy here in the states sells UltraSatans and cables. He shows out of stock at the moment, but you may want to check with him and see when I might have some new ones in. You can reach him here: macrorie@thebrewingacademy.com, or here: MacRorie
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He answers email from his site. Not sure about from eBay.
Hopefully, he'll get the crazy pricing showing on his web site fixed soon.
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44 minutes ago, Randy said:
Thanks, B, do you think it would be OK to go the ebay route? Can't get an email to him or thru ebay, just don't want to look at $100 shipping for this.
If it's actually Lotharek selling it through eBay, then yes, I think that would be fine.
33 minutes ago, larrylaffer said:If shipping is with the Ebay international program I would do it. It is very efficient and the least delay in customs (at least pre-covid19): usual 2-3 days where buying directly from a seller in EU I had a recent experience having my package waiting for a month in the US customs...
I know that can be true in some instances, but my US, which was order right before everything started going to heck in early March, got held up for three months. I'd paid for Polish Post shipping, and they completely stopped International shipping altogether. Lotharek finally paid the extra himself to ship out all of his orders via FedEx after three months. I finally got mine about a month ago. That being said, once I got the notice that my order had shipped, I had it here in southern Indiana in a week, so there was no holdup whatsoever at customs. Of course, that may have been because so little was making it into the country at the time.
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I saw the crazy shipping prices in his thread where he announced pre-orders for the new SIDE3 cartridge. There seems to be some sort of error with shipping estimates right now. He's looking into it, but I'd definitely wait a little bit to see how things settle out.
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XF551s show up for sale on eBay. Not nearly as often as 1050s, but routinely, in the states anyway.
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The XF551 was a double-sided, double-density drive capable of storing up to 360KB on compatible diskettes. The stock 1050 was a single-sided, enhanced-density drive, which most people didn't use. Most people used it as a single-density drive or upgraded the hardware to fully support double-density. If the disks are single-sided, single-density, the should work. If they're single-sided, double-density, they could work, assuming your drive has the US Doubler or Happy or something like that installed. If they were full DS, DD disks, they will never work with your 1050.
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I'm pretty sure that's the case Randy. I finally received my US about a month ago after about a three-month Covid delay. I haven't had time to hook it up and play with it yet, but I'm anxious to check it out.
I've seen various users mention using one or the other of the three main driver options, ICD Pro driver, HDDriver, and Peter's HD driver, but I don't think I've seen a major breakdown or comparison of them. I'd like to see a good comparison listing features, pros & cons of each. I know the ICD Pro is free, and I don't mind paying for one of the other two, but I don't want to pay for both to determine which is the best for my needs. Has anyone seen a comparison like this anywhere?
I'm pretty sure there's a trial of Peter's on the SD card I ordered with my US. Is there a trial version of HDDriver?
Thanks!
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I've used multiple SanDisks and had no problems. SanDisk is pretty much all I use for flash & SD media. Also, it goes without saying, never buy removable media from eBay.
I finally settled on these for my Goteks because I like the low profile format, they're a reputable brand, and the capacity is more than enough to hold pretty much everything ever released for the ST line.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MPCJDXS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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I checked back and I've purchased four, all from the same seller on eBay. I've had no problems whatsoever with this seller or with the Goteks purchased from them. It looks like they still have some for sale, though they do ship from China, so they may take a bit longer to receive, depending on where you're located.
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Probably a silly question but, did you have a floppy working in this machine before you swapped for the Gotek?
I've always bought my Goteks off of eBay. Actually, I think I bought all four from the same seller, at different times. Where are you located?
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1 hour ago, DrVenkman said:
I'd be happy with an NTSC core for the current VBXE. ?
I agree 110%. Guys were trying too get viable NTSC course for our existing VBXEs. Please don't hijack our thread to try to convince candle to totally remake his device. If you interested in that, please start another thread for it, as it isn't related to what were trying to do.
Thanks.
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The M0 jumper isn't needed, butt I don't think it will cause any problems if used. Have you tried another flash drive or made certain that the one you're using is formatted to FAT32?
I'm assuming you don't get the FF file selector screen on your ST?
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Did you remember to flip the floppy cable?
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Good, at least you're back in business.
I know from experience, and from a recent thread, that Steve is really scarce lately. Real life, work, family, and all that. I hope you hear back quickly, but don't be surprised if you go a few weeks and don't hear anything. If you don't hear anything in a couple of weeks, try him again. He does eventually get back, but he is extremely busy. You may also look into trying the AtariMax forums. Users there are mostly fellow AtariMax device owners and are usually willing to help, though those forums don't get anywhere near the traffic these do here at AtariAge.
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Hmmmm...
It sounds strange. I've definitely never experienced anything even remotely like that.
I looked back at when I bought my SIO2PC-USB, and I've only ever used mine with Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 10 64-bit.
First of all, do you see the initialization messages in APE? Where it says [Device Manager] APE USB interface detected and configured?
Secondly, what do you see in Device Manager? You should see something like this?
Finally, when you say v3.11, do you mean 3.0.11, or 3.11? I'm using v3.0.14 registered, and I've been told that that is the latest version available.
Also, if I understood your post correctly, you have the trial and the registered version both installed. Why? If you're a registered user, you should just be using the registered version and should have only one install. Delete everything and reinstall the full registered version only.
Otherwise you're pretty much stuck with it. If your TV has a 4:3 mode, you could try switching to it and see if it hides the video noise. (*)
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Could anyone use the full Cyber Studio 3.0 documentation?
in Atari ST/TT/Falcon Computers
Posted
I'm not sure that I've seen the 3.0 disks or documentation available out there anywhere. While I'm not necessarily interested in having it hard copy, it would be a shame not to see it archived. Do you have the ability and inclination to scan it for posterity? The disks too if you still have them.