Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

Keatah

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    25,396

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    16

Posts posted by Keatah

  5. Posted

    8 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

    Bit Slicers? Sounds awesome. Do you know if the AMD 9511/2 can execute 2901 code?

    The extent of my programming experience with the AMD was through Applesoft. I doubt it however, because, the 2901 was a module, 1 part of many, of a complete microprocessor made from several ICs. The 9511/2 are complete solutions on a chip needing only glue logic.

     

    8 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

    The CCS board is one of those Apple expansion boards with the 9511, right? I'm surprised those Apple II retro enthusiasts haven't found other uses for it. They're pretty hardcore about their Mockingboards. Basically the only thing keeping them from maxing those sound card options out are the scarcity of Votrax speech synthesizers... the GI AY sound chip in comparison seems to be in endless supply...

    Right. And no one really used the powerful 4MHz (and faster) Z-80's on the CP/M cards for anything other than CP/M. The 6809 fared little better. There were 68000 boards almost exclusively used in data acquisition.

     

    ZipGS accelerator cards were popular for a while and selling for near $1000 on ebay not long ago. They've fallen off the map these days it seems.

     

    I assume that faster/different processors changed the essence of the II series too much.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted · Edited by Keatah

    Yes. And mold can transfer from one disk to the next, or leave enough behind on the head to where it fucks up the next disk. Promise you that. So after trying to read a non-readable disk (especially one starting to shed the dried lube coating, binders, and oxides) a head cleaning is required. No way around it unless you want to start damaging the next disk.

     

    As a matter of fact, I'm doing head cleanings inbetween most (but not all) disks now. Not extensive runs or anything, just a few seconds of alcohol/silicone/water mix on a head cleaning disk. Enough to wipe away the shedding material.

     

    It's not the like carefree days of the 80's and swapping disks by the boxfulls during 2am warez sessions. This is just how some old disks need to be handled. Most are now over 40 years age!

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    3 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

    I'm going to *bump* this subject because it's fascinating.

     

    And yes, there were "FPUs" in the 8-bit era although I do believe they were referred to as "ALUs" by AMD. 

     

    Matej posted links to the AMD 9511/9512 and the Intel C8231A licensed clone.  

     

    There were 1, if not 2, expansion boards for the Apple II line that used those chips back-in-the-day. Don't ask me if they were used for anything more than Visicalc though.

    Still have my California Computer Systems 7781 ALU board, uses the AMD 9511 chip. Very little commercial software recognized the board, if any. But the documentation was good and many scientific graphing applications were written as needed. Not much of that material survives today. It integrated rather well with Applesoft BASIC straight away.

     

    3 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

    If I'm not mistaken, Atari Coin used earlier less-powerful versions of the AMD ALU in their "math box" for a few of their vector-based arcade games.

    Those would be bit-slice processors. Tempest used 4x 2901 to construct a 16-bit machine.

     

    3 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

    So, a good question to ask, if one didn't want to go the 65816 or modern microcontroller route, is how much an AMD/Intel ALU goes for these days and what's the supply like? Or how easy could their functions be replicated in a "cheap" FPGA? Such info could also be potentially useful to Atari vector arcade game collectors/enthusiasts...

    Replicating those chips' functions in fpga should be simple enough. I mean MiSTer simulates micros like the Amiga and Mac and even a 486 system. And mame has been doing atari mathbox for over 20 years now.

  8. Posted

    10 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

    I believe that Tandy's biggest issue was not opening up software as much as what they could have done considering they were using Z-80 processors in the TRS-80 line.  They could have gotten a lot more developers on board such as Digital Research with CP/M. 

    Agree. Any misstep by non-IBM compatibles was enough to resign them to also-ran status. And anything "Z-80" in the mid-80's was long in the tooth. With the exception of Apple. Apple's products were very well polished and functional.

     

    10 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

    However, they didn't and instead the open architecture of the IBM PC plus its much easier reproducibility path made the PC standard a massive steamroller to all other rivals. 

    Yes. Standards made the PC standard.

     

    And to fulfill the promise of interconnectivity (in its infancy with BBSes) standards had to be developed or allowed to evolve. This was painfully evident when transitioning from say a Vic-20 to C64 to Amiga. Or migrating 8-bit anything to 16-bit anything. Well, you couldn't. You had to manually redo everything. Re-write everything.

     

    By not pushing state-of-the-art performance limits, the PC afforded stability. A necessary quality for those standards to emerge and stabilize. Another thing is that the few custom chips Intel made, like the DMA & memory map controllers or keyboard/interrupt controllers were so numerous and omnipresent they were treated like generic off-the-shelf TTL logic.

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    I had painted the outline with a yellow/orange paintmarker. Did wonders to restore the looks. You can either be very careful painting, or cover with masking tape to get a straight line and not spill off the bezel sides. Ideally you want .006 spill, which isn't much.

  14. Posted

    On 3/5/2021 at 12:06 PM, 5-11under said:

    Not yet, but hopefully later this year. I think this is going to be my take on the "Zimba 3000".

    I'm super busy right now, so I'm just thinking about the implementation so far...

    [..]

    My favorite aspects are that the hardware and software seem pretty simple to set up, and I'll be able to play a bunch of systems with the same controller. This will be ideal for me as a barcade or living room setup. I'm not overly concerned with having things such as colors, lag, and scanlines 100% "perfect".

    Many folks see the R-Pi and MiSTer in this manner. As do we.

     

    Most all of my vintage gaming is done on Intel NUCs, but we plan on setting up a MiSTer (or two) in the reading room. They'll complement one another nicely.

     

    All these modern minisystems are great for gaming in cozy attic rooms or temporarily setting up in a blanket fort.

  15. Posted

    I'm sure they made PrintShop for the PC. And Hallmark Greeting Card Maker. There was also Microsoft's Picture-It! Photo Premium 9, also for the PC. Though MS PIPP9 doesn't have a PS-like interface, it does all the same things and so much more in spirit. A very useful 2004'ish XP era program that was a pack-in on many Centrino systems.

     

  17. Posted

    Read through the thread.

     

    Since this console was under muddy water and all that the first thing I'd do correctly and thoroughly clean the board. Remove the chips, wash everything with soap and water to dissolve and remove contaminants. Rinse with deionized or purified water and blow-dry with air compressor. Replace old and affected caps. Use Deoxit on all contacts and IC sockets, switches and cartridge connection pins/slot. Perhaps replace IC sockets. Clean and buff each pin on each IC. And all the other trappings of restoring a board like this.

     

    There's simply too much residue causing short circuits and partial short circuits.

    • Thanks 1

  19. Posted

    The VCS encourages (requires) a kind of programming style, one that keeps the bits close to the hardware. So to speak. This style also enforces a lot of timing requirements. Things have to happen on a schedule - as the transistors and logic gates flip'n'flop. Complete opposite of a PC with APIs and OS.

     

    The VCS is simpler hardware and doesn't step all over itself. It doesn't waste time transferring things on a complex bus, or to and from main memory like in a bitmapped system. No significant custom chips to introduce waitstates. Most of VCS is CPU -> TIA -> CRT/display.

     

     

    • Like 1

  20. Posted · Edited by Keatah

    19 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    Quite OK. :) 

     

    What the game really needs is play testing to fine tune the parameters.

    • How strong should the boost be?
    • How strong should the braking be?
    • How should the boost arrow density be (more or less longer ones)?
    • Should there be more or less friction?
    • How about the minimal speed?

    The current values are resulting from only a little bit of play testing myself. I hope you and others can provide some good input here.

    The boost strength is fine.

    The breaking is a little too strong. Very easy to get far enough behind you have no chance of catching up.

    Arrow density could be longer once in a while.

    Friction is fine.

    Minimal speed should be a a bit faster.

     

    AI needs to be more random. The grey/white car never wins. The two red ones win nearly all the time. AI should be less perfect. The 6 players I asked to try this never won against AI. Should be adaptive to where it sometimes just lags behind human players (by messing up the timing) and other times where it's spot on and pulls ahead.

     

  21. Posted

    4 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

    I personally found the braking sound really helpful. It's hard to see the last bit of acceleration arrows turn black as they go off the screen so the new braking sound indicated I was holding down the button too long when I didn't know I was doing it before.

     

    The braking sound actually improved my gameplay!

     

    - James

    That works well for 1 or 2 players, but 8 players? When there's that many players sound isn't a good cue for anything.

     

  22. Posted

    21 minutes ago, azure said:

    I was thinking something. This game would work nicely in the vertical direction but with rockets instead of cars. Although limited to 6 rockets for non-flickering sprites. Instead of acceleration arrows, maybe acceleration clouds. Heh.

     

    Maybe an option for a future sequel? 

    Lots of transition possibilities as the rockets leave the launch pad and travel though space.

  23. Posted · Edited by Keatah

    8 hours ago, Bomberman94 said:

    Already looks really great - unbelievable for only 2k and having up to 8 players 😳. 
     

    Maybe you can add a number „1“ (maybe left) next to the car the player chooses and „2“ to the second and so on - else it is hard to see what car a player controlls. 

    This would work nice, have it display for a few seconds. Once the race starts it disappears. Or, as mentioned earlier, use colored stickers. Make them a pack-in extra.

    ---

    Don't like the new sound mixing. Or whatever happened to it. Sounds disjointed and tedious. Can also do without the braking sound.

     

  24. Posted

    10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    This is planned as a party game, where people a competing against each other. So why would it need a score?

    Just a thought. The game is good as it stands. And 8 players?!?! Ohh my ohh my! Never would have guessed that possible back in the day.

     

    10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    However I could provide points based on positions and then the players could play e.g. 3 rounds and accumulate points (displayed on a separate screen). But I am not sure of that fits well to the target group.

    By default, if it's out of the way, it wouldn't do any harm. But do what you think is best and what matches the target audience.

  25. Posted · Edited by Keatah

    How would you keep score? At the end of the game toggle a difficulty or b/w switch to swap between displaying the track display and distance traveled? Or do it automatically at the end?

     

    Maybe include a max & average speed if you care to..

     

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...