pjedavison

The A500 Mini has toggle-able "Advanced" options, so hopefully they can do something similar here. I would advise everyone to send all these suggestions to support[at]retrogames.biz when you have a moment, otherwise you're just shouting into a void.

yes, I am someone who will happily do a Let's Play of a text adventure. (In fact adventures are some of my favourite games to do videos of!) Let's Moonmist!

You select 50Hz or 60Hz on initial boot. That also affects whether the emulator uses PAL or NTSC colour palettes. Try a factory reset (you'll lose any save states for the carousel games, but not any config changes or save states you've made to USB games) and make sure you select 60Hz if that's what your monitor is expecting.

Ballblazer.xexI've had Fandal's version of Ballblazer working on The400 Mini. Attached!

Bear in mind that it may not work if your machine is set to 50Hz/PAL. Artifacting is primarily an NTSC thing. There's a good writeup on the subject on this page. https://www.raphkoster.com/about-raph/hobbies/emulation/atari-8-bit-guide-for-lr-atari800-and-retropie/ Don't think we can directly translate the info on here to The400 Mini because we're not using the libretro version of Atari800 (and there's still some debate over whether it's Atari800 at all, I know) but may be worth tinkering with the settings using the info here as guidelines, particularly the 4 "modes" that may or may not correspond to the setting in the .cfg file. One thing I would advise is writing to RGL's support email support[at]retrogames.biz with details of what you would like to see in an update -- in this case artifacting settings. Probably coincidence, but it was very soon after I reported the M.U.L.E. issues to them via email that they put out their acknowledgement and temporary fix. I've also asked them to up the max res to at least 336x240 so we can get the full overscan border... couldn't hurt for a few more people to ask that too

I don't believe it's possible at the moment unless someone figures out that .cfg option. Maybe try "enabled" instead of "1"?

Time for Bristles! Considerably more fun than watching paint dry... but also a tad more difficult.

You can actually omit the drive number and just do SAVE "D:FILENAME.BAS" and LOAD "D:FILENAME.BAS" Without the number, the Atari just assumes "Drive 1" or, indeed, the only drive. The important bit is the "D:"

Not seen this at all, and I've tried quite a few games at this point. The only thing that is faster than it "should" be is loading, and that's a deliberate choice that doesn't affect the speed of the games themselves once they're in memory.

I do actually have a ring binder of photocopied manuals for some games, but definitely only a minority of the stuff we had in The Disk Boxes. I've kept up the tradition by printing out manuals for more complex games and/or those that used the manual for supplementary material/copy protection (hi, Infocom) in some more ring binders. With the absurd prices of retro computer software on eBay, it strikes a balance between having the cool physical stuff and not having to make scalpers rich. I did buy a boxed copy of Temple of Apshai Trilogy for cheap a while back. It was cheap because the label had fallen off the disk so the seller wasn't sure if it was the right one, haha. Everything else was immaculate. And it was the right disk.

The400 Mini should automatically create it when you insert a correctly formatted USB stick that doesn't already have it in its root folder. If for some reason you need it outside of The400 Mini, it's just a blank DOS 2.5 disk.

...Yeah. Lost. That was definitely the problem. For some reason, my Dad and brother could never "find" them at the "Computer Club" they used to attend and get all our games from.

That's great to hear, thanks. I've experimented with different formats over the last few years, but the one I consistently enjoy doing the most is just playing something and chatting with the audience in the role of "invisible friend". Its comforting for me too -- makes me long for days gone by when I'd sit in front of the computer with a pal and we'd try to figure out all sorts of games, to varying degrees of success.

This is marginally off-topic, but thank you to this thread for introducing me to Salmon Run. I'm hooked! No pun intended.

That's good they've acknowledged it (relatively) quickly and provided an interim solution for now. Hopefully it won't be long before some tweaks and fixes! Looking forward to seeing what the future holds.

Much appreciated, thank you!

IIRC, Altirra sets up its virtual disk drives in "virtual read/write" mode, which doesn't keep any changes you make to a disk image after Altirra closes. In the Disk Drives window, use the drop down menu to change from "VRW" to "R/W" and then your changes should be saved to the disk image when the disk is ejected or you close Altirra. You can also set this as the default write mode in the Media section of the Optipns window. Or just use the "H:" option in the thread linked above, either should do the job. I personally prefer disk images for that old school feel, but YMMV.

My personal wishlist, some of which are more likely to happen than others: Fix MULE Increase max screen height in settings to 240 so we can get the full overscan border without manually tweaking .cfg files Alongside that, allow "Vertical offset" to go as low as 0 to, again, allow for the full overscan border A means of configuring default settings for USB games rather than having to do everything individually Ability to mark and quickly access favourites on USB Map the Inverse/Fuji, Reset and Help keys to USB keyboards (and add Reset and Help to the on-screen keyboard) Disk image creation/duplication on the device itself to allow for quick creation of save game disks etc. Optional realistic load times with I/O sounds Option for more simulated RAM over 128K Option for dual/stereo POKEY chips Most of these are "nice to haves" rather than things that I feel are particularly "essential". It would be nice to see the screen size and MULE issues resolved sooner rather than later at the very least, though.

Be sure to send some (polite!) feedback to Retro Games Ltd via their support email. I don't know if anyone from there browses this forum, and if they don't know about issues, they can't fix 'em TheC64 and TheA500 Mini both had some excellent firmware updates. I'm sure The400 Mini will be the same in the long term.

Besides the built-in games, I'm also going to explore some stuff that folks might want to load onto a USB stick and enjoy on The400 Mini, both old and new. Today it's the turn of Binary Parasite, which I stumbled across while browsing some homebrew discussions on this very site. Great game that I like very much! Can imagine it gets exceedingly tricky in the later stages, though.

Just tested this and it indeed works. Booting the game fresh says how far you previously got and allows you to start from your furthest reached level by beginning the game with Option. So if you get stuck like I did, reboot and restart the level!

Yes, Yautja also sent the DHII manual to me privately. Thank you for that! In answer to my original question, I believe if you get into the situation I described you are boned. However, you can pick a level to start from (up to the one you previously got to) from the title screen with Option (it saves your progress, including stats, to disk, I believe?), so if you get "stuck" it's a case of restarting and picking that level to go from again. Haven't actually tried that yet but will give it a go later and report back.

The "XL Fix!" was our translator of choice

Aha! That would explain it. Yeah, the Maxi's one is pretty nice in my experience, all things considered.

There's also compatibility issues with some older games on the later revisions of the OS. If something crashes (or doesn't work at all) on the 800XL/130XE settings, setting it to 400 or 800 will often get it working. 800 is a sensible default because that will work with most games from back in the day; more recent stuff that requires more RAM or the GTIA modes can be taken on a case-by-case basis.