Tezz

Nice to see more people repairing chronically damaged XL's. @Lee, Where did you order the Futaba ML switches from?

Thanks @_The Doctor__ the photos I used in the post were just to illustrate the tracks to pin 10 of the PCB, they were taken from the previous repair I did a few years ago which I had to hand to draw over. There were some trace repairs on this current PCB however and as mentioned all the points going to pin 10 were showing continuity on the meter so I thought this morning that it must be that the trace repairs were perhaps too weak for the lower current from the keyboard connector so I ran a jumper wire from a pin where all the offending keys connect to that part of the matrix and then another directly to pin 10 and all keys are now working flawlessly. It goes to show not to rely too much on my basic meter when diagnosing. Thanks also to @StickJock for your earlier reply.

Thanks very much for the reply, sorry I forgot to mention in the post that the keyboard was tested in two different 800XL boards so it looks to be an issue with the keyboard itself. I was expecting to to find a lack of continuity somewhere with a damaged trace and run a jumper wire but all seemed to check out along those traces to pin 10. Perhaps one of the other switch pins within that group of five keys is causing the issue?

Hi all, I have an issue with an Alps keyboard with keys 7,6,U,Y,N being non responsive. Looking at the keyboard matrix this indicates an issue to pin 10, however after following the traces to pin ten, all the points appear to have continuity to both the pcb and the end of the cable so I'm unsure where the issue is. I've attached a photo tracing to pin 10 in yellow. (I had to split the image between two parts as I didn't have a complete photo of the PCB to hand with the cable out of the way). Any assistance appreciated

That ten years has passed quickly. I still remember chatting online with Radek like it was yesterday, it's still shocking.

Atarians never die we just get to the next level

Boulder Dash II was one of mine again, that was back in 2009. Whilst I was enjoying creating the loaders for the XBIOS examples in 2013 I did one for BDII also. I wanted to have a raster effect during disk IO, something that I was told was impossible back in the 80's It's a shame that loading sequences and pictures are redundent now with modern high speed solutions. Arkanoid was my conversion of the c64 loading picture done in the early days of G2F which is in the archive, someone added it to the executable many years ago which I wasn't aware of until recently. I did redraw an Arkanoid title based more on the arcade, I should have that backed up somewhere. xbios_bdii.atr

Hi Phil, ah yes that original Blinky's image was probably Jose, actually the Draconus picture was done by me and Jose together but the Blinky's intro I did from scratch to replicate the c64 title as a loader instead. Zybex didn't have a great loading picture so I drew the Zeppelin logo instead A few years ago in one of the competitions Rafal Strzelecki created a neat Zybex picture split with mode 9

@Karolj I've not been able to edit my signature since the forum upgrade! ?

Hi Phil, I'm not sure who did that version with the title but back in 2012 (or was it 2013?) I created some examples to help demonstrate XBIOS at the time. These included the Zeppelin games: Zybex, Draconus, Blinky's and Jocky Wilson's Darts Compendium. I added the loading pictures to each one displayed during disk IO. With Blinky's I added the full title screen and animation during loading. I also added some fixes to the games. I got carried away with Jocky Wilson's Darts and replaced the dart playing sequences with full colour versions along with a bunch of fixes. zeppelin_ed.atr

True although technically the channel could be used for samples

With regard to the irq you create a command jump list which is dispatched in sequence in your irq procedure at the precise time set by the timer. I'm using variations of this technique in Barbarian and planned for Bomb Jack arcade... well with any future project where NMI won't cut it really.

Hi, it looks like two people are working on the same thing again I've not been around for a year or so with family commitments. After TIX was discussing the Bomb Jack sprites last year (see link)... I started working on Bomb Jack arcade following my original intention for the conversion. I was working on the concept for the kernel procedure encompassing the sprite multiplex and backgrounds. I dug out my original arcade sprites from all those years ago and reworked or redrew them ready for the new project. I also reworked the backgrounds to improve them and bring them closer to the arcade original as compromises were nessasary for the soft sprites in the joint project back in 2008. I began planning a direct conversion of the arcade AY-3-8910 music which is quite well documented online. It goes without saying however that 2020 wasn't a good year. I'm hoping to get some more free time again this year to continue on with all the projects again.

Best wishes to you Paul, sorry to hear of your current situation. It's good to see that there are still many good people pulling together during tough times and looking out for each other.

This is terribly sad news to hear. A great loss

I don't have any problem at all personally with modern FPGA recreations, I own both a Just Speccy and an Ultimate 64 Elite with both SIDs. They've done a good job with the Next right down to Rick Dickinson (RIP) designing the case. Extending on the platform with full backwards compatiblity including peripherals is a great thing in my eyes. I was lucky enough to get to play around with the pre-production Spectrum Next and have a chat with Jim Bagley at the last couple of Expos 2018/19. Of course we already have modern updated recreations of the A8 although if somebody was to produce a board in the 800XL form factor with the modern upgrades integrated and in a new high quality injection moulded XL case along with a mechanical keyboard, yes please count me in.

I'm just catching up on your progress Paul as I've not been online for a few days with this heatwave. Sorry to hear that you had a mishap with the liquid, how long did you leave the case top in? I've been in two minds about whether to risk my breadbin case so I'm certainly put off now, I'm not sure that mine is discoloured at all as the beige is the same inside and out. There's too many variants of the case to judge the shade of the plastic from memory although I do remember my one from the mid eighties being pretty much the same colour. I'm not too worried about the Amiga cases and the light XL case sections, as I feel they will fair well in the liquid. The lower quality XE cases are another concern though.

Ah you mean Spelunker

Touch wood I've not had any disasters over the years with the previous peroxide cream and sunlight so hopefully the liquid method continues in the same vein. The peroxide is currently out of stock at the supplier so hopefully that will be back in next week, if I'm ahead of you I'll let you know how it turns out

Interested to see how things go Paul, I've been busy the past few weeks and haven't yet ordered the additional peroxide I need. I paid extra to get the UV LEDs from the UK so they arrived quicker too and then it's all been sat here for weeks! Oh well, I'll make sure to order the peroxide next week and can finally give this a go. So many cases to do.

Hi Tix, nice pixeling. Within the released source the sprite sheets have the separate 2bpp shapes and the 1bpp overlay shapes. As mentioned in the PM the sprite sheets don't contain the colours, that's dealt with in the code, it's just the shape data. The overlays which provide the 3rd colour are each one player and its associated missile for 10 pixel width so there are some edits required with your new sprites. I wasn't intending to revisit Bomb Jack but now that you've brought it up I'm contemplating whether I should pull the game apart and totally rewrite it a different way.

And answered! Before shutting off for the night I pixeled some possible first ideas for a couple of new enemy sprites, these are drawn in the smaller scale and with colours closer to the arcade as originally intended. Reattached the BJ sprites below, the red was set too dark in the previous attachment.

Hi Tix, Some nice pixeling, I like Jacks running animation. Just one point to mention with your rotating enemy sprite redraw, you've used the background colour like a third shade although however the background colour is mask removed so you will see the background graphics through those areas during gameplay. Black and Red are the permanent fixed colours for the software sprites in all rounds with a third colour provided by a player and missile. The problem with the original fat c64 sprites is that they are over scale which affects the gameplay dynamic. It's something that I brought up during development at the time but Vega absolutley wanted the large c64 sprites to remain. I'm sure the decision was in respect that there hadn't been an A8 game with so many large fast moving sprites seen before so it was an impressive achievement upon it's release. When I was previously working on Bomb Jack arcade, my original sprites were drawn to the arcade scale. I had Red and Black fixed but I used two PMGs for Jack .. White with overlap to obtain White/Pink and Cyan for the head/belt. The enemy sprites used the remaining PMGs for their 3rd colour. I thought it was worth sacrificing two PMGs for the main character. I read through the ongoing DX development thread, the guys working on the new version had immediately sought to address the scale of the sprites too. You can see a side by side comparision with the scale of the proposed new sprites that they posted in the thread early on in the development. Their early dot ball design they posted also first used the background colour for the holes which was later revised to transforming between grey and black which you can see in the later wip videos.

Hi Tix, No it's all good I was referring to around the time it was released. It was 12 years ago now!