potatohead

An RCA patch cable works just fine.

I'm enjoying this show. Good comments so far. One thing AMC is doing is adding features to the website. Like when they all got sucked into the text adventure game. AMC hosted it, with some hints on how to play and I think they should get some credit for trying to share the culture. Music playlists for the characters are good too. Nicely done so far. I like the characters a lot. They are vibrant and believable. Of course, it's fiction, but it's good fiction in an under-appreciated setting. AMC has them streaming online too. Just watch 'em there, if you want to.

Very cool. I don't know enough about the various OSes and DOSes for CoCo. Wouldn't surprise me. Most software for that machine is pretty smart, well designed stuff. OS/9 or NitrOS9 is a lot of fun. Need to use it more. But then again, I need a 512K machine too.

I've got a 400 and 800XL. Once in a while I get the 400 out for some games. It just looks so damn cool. But the workhorse is 800XL.

In terms of "best", I would rate my experiences as: 1. Apple ][ The disk could be handled as a track and sector device on a basic level. One didn't really need a filesystem, if the disk was going to be used for some specific storage task, such as for a game, or within one's own programs. It was fast and flexible. I liked PRODOS, for the speed and volume/directory support, but I liked 3.3 better. Long file names, and low hassle, reasonable speed. The whole "put a CTRL-D" into a program method of triggering DOS almost puts Apple at #2. This was goofy, but documentation was good. I liked the file type system. In terms of being robust, I would rate this one high too, right along with the CoCo. Never had data loss troubles on either machine that were not totally my fault and I didn't have trouble working across various drives. Drive hardware was good. On early machines you had to get the connections right, or break things. Never used cassette. I think it rates fairly low with Atari in that respect. Got to use a hard disk, and it was a 5Mb Corvis something or other. It was fast, had tons of room, and under PRODOS, rocked pretty hard. Did some fairly large writing / graphics projects on an Apple for a proof of concept business type project that ended up getting done on a PC a few years later. Being able to use long, descriptive file names on DOS 3.3 was something I valued and missed for years, until the PC finally got back around to resolving it all, and today we know they Microsoft basically cloned the Atari ST way of doing things. This and the lower level being wide open to learn on and make use of puts the old Apple on top, but not by much, and only in the early times. Otherwise... 2. Early PC. 5 1/4" disks were great! They worked, I didn't have trouble, were fast, and fairly cheap. Also got to use a "Hard Card" drop in hard disk that was amazing to me after working with the Corvis on the Apple. A whole 10Mb of space at speeds much quicker than any floppy, or the hard disk on the Apple. Never used cassette on a PC. The only reason the PC isn't #1 is due to how unique the Apple ][ was in using software and such a simple controller. Learning higher level things about storage happened on a PC, but the lower level understanding came from the Apple ][. Storage sizes were double or more what I found in 8 bit land, but programs were bigger too. This turned out to be mostly a wash, but for storing my own data. Larger writing projects made sense on a PC. Add some graphics, etc... and multiple floppies were less of a concern overall. Of course, the PC grew rapidly, and it's storage options grew too, exceeding the classic machines. I'm putting early ('85 ish?) experience here for reference. Using two drives was easy. Never did anything else. I didn't do hardly any 16 bit computing, so I can't really compare things like the Amiga, ST, etc... Sort of which I had. But I made the jump to PC land, and it mattered for employment. Since I went into manufacturing, Apple ][ computers with custom cards saw some use, which I really enjoyed, as did the PC, which ended up driving CNC machines, running terminal emulations, CAD. I actually did some of those things on the Apple ][, which is kind of amazing really. On both the Apple and the PC, I had a love hate affair with 3.5" disks. Never lost so much data in my life! Those things were just crappy. Hate 'em. Ended up using 5.25" disks in their various formats way longer than most people just because I had such ugly experiences with 3.5" disks. And that caused me to go right for hard disks as soon as I could afford them too. On early Apple machines, hooking up two drives was fairly easy. Same problem as one. Get it right, or send in for repairs. I never botched this, but I knew plenty of people who did. Drive slots and numbers were more of a PITA than drive letters are, but PRODOS just went with named volumes, which made a lot of sense to me. 3. CoCo It stored amounts comparable to the Apple, and it was fast. Cassette had file names, and they actually worked. Transition to disk was easy. Didn't like the goofy cartridge sticking out, but oh well. Drive hardware was good. I never tinkered with the DOS much, like turning verify off. It was just fast enough I didn't care. Disk commands from BASIC were simple and easy to use. The ribbon cable and sort of out in the open nature of it was interesting, but largely a negative to me. Cassette was flat out awesome! The stock setup was comparable to C64 disk access in some cases. Was easy to patch 'n go at the higher clock speed to get even faster. I wrote some fairly large programs in assembly language and BASIC using just cassette and it was nice enough to really use. Never used more than one disk drive on my own systems. Other users obtained drives, made their own cables, power supplies and hooked them up to their CoCo's. I think that's cool. 3. Atari, and it's sort of tied with the CoCo. Didn't get as much storage space, but then again, I never used some of the later DOS software either. I liked SIO a lot, and I liked that I could hear the sector transfers. One of my first lame hacks to get around copy protection for Ultima II was listening for the 23, or was it 19 beeps in to the loading, so I could open the door, trigger an error, close it and carry on with the game. They just checked for an error, not so much a specific one. (thanks guys) Verified writes took a long time it seemed. Turned these off, from time to time, depending. Hooking up multiple drives was easy. And the drive number thing was cake. For the above three, writing things like a sector editor wasn't too difficult, and I enjoyed messing with things on the disks I had, copying, etc... Cassette had file names, but the system didn't really do anything with them, but your program could. Cassette was SLOW. But it was also reasonable. I had few problems. Liked the ability to put music, or audio on a tape. The speed was a killer. Used cassette for archives and basic programs, but that's it. 4. C64 I liked the no boot DOS, but I didn't like the speed, nor the bulk of the drive itself. The whole thing seemed clunky, and I did run into hardware trouble as well as disk trouble. Got into this one late in the game, and the clunky nature of it meant not really using the disk system as much as I did the others. Total bias there I'm happy to own up to. I did really like the disk tricks, such as have the drive do stuff, and the nice ability to have a program doing things while using the disk is pretty great. Hooking up multiple disks was easy. Never used cassette.

Not at all. Agreeing with you on the overall sentiment being expressed, and was just a bit too brief about it.

Most of the people I knew back then, who bought an Atari computer, bought it with Star Raiders, and BASIC. And several did it for that game alone, thinking if it was that good, who knows what is coming next? KIller app? I don't know. Seriously major attraction for sure.

lol That thread was epic! Great entertainment. Costly though. I get it, but it was pretty great at the time. Hey: TMR indeed! I read this opinion a lot and it's generally incorrect. A bit of crap, if you want to characterize it some, you know, just for fun! Here's some perspective written by somebody who used Apple computers hard, and could not wait to get my Atari machine for the spiffy capabilities! The truth is, the machine was not weak. In terms of multi-media, yeah. Apple computers didn't have the advanced hardware features. Back in the day, where gaming and some kinds of home computing were concerned, the Apple computers lacked. However, the lack of advanced hardware made for some interesting trade-offs. One of these was the lack of interrupts in the system, as well as cycle stealing common to more advanced video hardware. This meant the 1Mhz 6502 ran very well for it's clock speed. It also meant things like the disk drive were possible in software, which made it flexible, fast, reliable, etc... So I got that Atari machine. Loved it. Still do. It's setup next to my //e right now. Just like I had back in the day. For a while, the Atari was the only machine I had, and the Apple computers were at school. I used the Atari to do all sorts of fun stuff! But, as I needed to do some actual productivity computing, I found myself going back to the Apple, and it was for a real 80 column display, lots of graphics applications, fast, big storage. I played hard and learned hard on an Atari. Most of us did. I got a lot of work done and made money on the Apple. (which paid for more Atari stuff, frankly) Couple of other things: The Apple had just enough. 6 colors on a high res screen, not 4, 80 column text, and the later double low and high res options took it just far enough to make a lot of productivity things possible, practical. As for the cost. Here is something that is STILL true. Apple adds a lot of value. Always has. And the difference between Apple and most other companies is they present that value, position it so people understand it, and then they ask for the money and they get it. All of that is why they are so very well capitalized, and were then, and are today. Most Apple users understood a simple thing: The more you spend, the more you get. A stock ][+ isn't anywhere near close to the same machine as a well stuffed //e with Mockingboard, serial, disk, parallel, RAM expansion, CPU acceleration, etc... That basic nature of the stock machine provided for lots of expansion and it got used in a ton of ways. Not cheap, but then again, back then, possible on an Apple where it wasn't always possible on other machines. People paid for that difference. At the time, I struggled with the cost of things, but I sure liked the results. Used to think it was a rip-off due to the Atari and C64 machines offering such nice, fun capabilities. But, when I went back and got a machine and got stuff done, business, work, graphics, done and got paid for it, things clicked. So not braindead at all. Just a different set of values / needs / experiences. Carry on. I just gotta push back on that one.

Indeed: http://atariage.com/forums/blog/105/entry-6693-color-computer-3-artifact-art/ NTSC CoCo 3's can generate nearly 8 bits of color by arifacting!

You might try sending the composite signal into both the luma and chroma inputs on an S-video capable TV. Many will process both signals and that can really improve text. You can add a resistor to the chroma part to control it's influence. I often run my CoCo 3 on a capture card. Those tend to make the most of the composite signal.

They generally are just composite monitors. The better ones have a finer shadow mask dot pitch, which helps a lot with monochrome 80 column text. Another common thing, and what I'm doing right now, is just run both. Setup two screens and view text on a monochrome screen and graphics / color on the color screen, whatever that is. I'm using an 80's era TV with a pretty fine shadow mask. Some of those were made. One of these days, I'll have to connect the Apple to an HDTV. The signal processors in those might do really well, or really poorly. I find the Atari machines look pretty great in NTSC. So does my CoCo 3.

I like all the home brew efforts. All of us have different tastes, and it's often fun to make and share games like many of us did as kids. Rock on! Everybody is welcome in my book.

Guess you can't really do tricks, without trick documentation...

IMHO, the gaming experience being similar to a //e rings true for me. I have both. However, the CoCo rarely got pushed on graphics. And the CoCo3 even more so. That one can do very nice 160x~200 graphics in nearly 256 colors... 1 byte pixels! Never really got exploited in that way. See my blog for some pretty pictures generated with the awesome help of Jason Law. Both machines could use a bit of modern programming trick love, also IMHO.

The video scanning circuit does refresh and displays the graphics, and does so on one clock edge while the CPU runs on another, which maximizes the 1Mhz delivered to the CPU. No DMA / Interrupts in the default system. The video system just works in parallel with the CPU. Add on cards can choose to do both an interrupt and or DMA.

Excellent. I enjoyed these a lot. Nice work!

This is great! Of course, there are always improvements. Well done so far. I would jam on it for sure.

I think it's worth looking at demos today for some of the answer to this question. One problem with that is more Atari demos are needed. Or, I'm not seeing them. Something... Does somebody have a quick link or links to the latest Atari productions? In any case, given the ones I know we've all seen, and the "better" problem depending on definitions of better, I much prefer comparing strengths... Totally agreed on game ports. It's rare to see a game really changed to incorporate the strengths of machines other than the one it was authored on.

Yes, exactly. I did that long ago with a less sophisticated program where a simple 8 bit table lookup ran pretty fast. Go and look at all the pixels, shift them into a byte, which indexed the pixel color, like a truth table. Nothing fancy, just a text mode where each of the 256 table entries were shown and the user could just arrow up, down, space bar to toggle the pixel state on or off, or some color, if a 4 color mode was being used. Back then, I wanted to do a four color lookup = 64Kb table., but I had 48K, so I settled for the one bit result pixel on or off was used as the index to color a pixel one of 4 colors. 256 byte table. On the machines we've got now, a whole 64K could be used for the table! Should produce some interesting graphics. I might have to go and explore this idea again. I think these kinds of things are a lot of fun. Your hex cells turn out quite nice. Good effect to watch and tinker with, IMHO.

I really like the first one, but I think it should have a let go rule case. The snow one is just begging for a holiday greeting of some kind. And you've got tunes already. If there is room and time, I think this would be a lot of fun for people to just play with. Allow for a rule selection and initial screen condition setup, then let them run it to see what happens.

I really like the O2. It has one of those distinctive feels like the VCS does. The sharp limits on it's capabilities translate into some real fun when a game exploits those well. UFO! is one of those, and it's probably my favorite on the console. It feels great to play, and the limited graphics were used to great effect. It's just ART. Beautiful. The console is worth owning to play on. If you have room, etc... highly recommended for a great, distinctive retro experience. The marketing surrounding it, box art, etc... is very good as well. it's just fun to look at and think about.

I like the C64 when it comes to pixel art. The limits of it's palette and ability to offer square pixels in color make for interesting picture. Great artists can do a lot with that to imply detail. I also like the C64 when it comes to character games. Again, the square (or roughly square) pixels can render characters better than the 2:1 pixels can. I like the Atari better for more abstract games. The additional colors are fun, and the larger color pixel sizes, combined with scrolling and the PM graphics have a distinctive feel I really enjoy. Another thing about the Atari I like better is the ability to do nearly full frame graphics. It was not always used well, due to increased cycle costs from the DMA needed, but it's a nice feature to be able to eliminate the border. On modern HDTV displays, this combined with the aspect or "size" button can yield nice results. My Apple 2 just sorts of occupies the center. C64 does too, but for some tricks used to push the border out. (and those are clever) Overall, Ataris have half the color resolution of the C64. This results in stable, no "dot crawl" graphics on composite displays. The look is very appealing to me, and something I think of as "better' but it has it's limits as mentioned above. The C64 has a better video output and improved color resolution, and when viewed on an S-video or C= display, offers more detail for characters, icons, etc... As a user of the Atari and Apple machines, where I didn't program on the C64 too much, I really enjoyed the Atari graphics, particularly full frame. Back then, I had build up my color displays from scrounged color TV's, and ended up with this hybrid one, using a CRT from a smaller set on a larger one. Creative yoke placement, and some serious convergence work gave me a full frame TV in the mid 80's! Used to look for things like the boom mic on newscasts, etc... Better graphics in this case went to Atari and for one reason only: Full frame made me a lot of money, which I poured into better Apple computers and some add-ons for the Atari! Spent two summers tuning up TV's after I got good at the ones in my home. Using the full frame graphics on that hybrid TV, got me a near pixel perfect display. I had also tuned the RF, so that it was pretty solid, improving both broadcast TV, and the Atari display. Anyway, that setup was cassette, and I lugged it from house to house, doing my thing. They each paid at least $20. Over the two years, I made a few grand, which got me the MAC/65 assembler cartridge (YES), some electronics gear for HAM Radio, an Apple, disk drives, etc... I would load programs from cassette, then run them. They included the usual test patterns and some references, like where the "safe area" frame should be. Most TV's back then often over scanned a lot. I could usually improve that and people noticed. Honestly, that impacted me with "better" being what I could make money with from then on. So that Apple was "better" graphically for quite a while due to the 80 column display and double-high-res graphics and productivity software. Made more money and used it all in college, until I got a crappy DOS PC in the mid 90's, maybe 93 or so. After that, the Atari was and remains very fun to game on. I really like the look and feel more than I do the C64. Simple titles like "Star Raiders" just ooze retro, and I like that a lot. A C64 just isn't quite the same feel, so there is a subjective "better" for you too. I strongly suspect this opinion would vary some toward the C64 for people who got started on NES instead of VCS. Maybe true for ColecoVision gamers too.

I like to develop on emulation. I like to run things on both hardware and emulation. Personally, I too believe the FPGA devices will play a big part in the future. I've got a DE2 that is being used to help develop a new micro-controller. So far, it's been very impressive in it's ability to render silicon as an emulation. Fast too. And it's only a hint at what will come in the next 10 years. Running on a well engineered FPGA emulation will differ very little, if at all, from the real deal. And that means all the controllers, etc... will work too, as well as modern displays right along side legacy ones. To be perfectly honest, I'm slowly leaving CRT land. I have a few, but they will likely be the last, unless I build my own specialized one. I might do that. But, modern displays can deliver great experiences now and an FPGA is particularly good at bridging that gap. As for emulating current consoles? I'm not sure that I care. But, there are people coming up through the ranks who will, so I'll bet they get emulated too. IMHO, games and other applications where part of it is located on a server somewhere are going to be increasingly painful.

Ahh, the cassette adapter. Perfect, and yes the far more practical. Didn't even think of it. I wouldn't mod a drive either.

Yeah, that's about right. Can't wait until I get back to my Apple to try this one. Very curious to see how the shape tables play out. I'm not sure I've seen much assembly code driving shape tables.