potatohead

IRIX is my favorite. Today, I run Win 7, which I like, Mac OS, Linux. Mostly Ubuntu. From the classic era, I'm a big DOS / PRODOS fan. PRODOS took the Apple ][ series a long way.

If you could buy one in the era, it should be considered.

Unless one uses an 80's model The //e and C are 80's machines and should be considered in that era.

I've been doing some coding on my Apple //e I really love the system, built in monitor, mini-assembler, etc... In that respect, it's fun to code for. Lots of cross-development was done on Apple ][ series machines and I can understand why now. IMHO, there are some display tricks possible too, though I've not seen them exploited much yet. Could be I've just not seen it either. Happens. IMHO, a big obstacle is the basics are convoluted. Want to make a fast double low res software sprite renderer? That requires understanding the addressing and it's not trivial. Same for double high res and just the ordinary hi res screens. The book that was scanned in recently actually details how those things are done and provides some nice template code to work from. Because the Apple has 7 pixels per byte, and it uses NTSC artifact color, just moving a shape on the screen while keeping it the same color takes some thinking through. Compare that with Atari / C64 and rather simple bitmap graphics and the various sprite capabilities and getting something to happen fast is much easier on those computers. Once somebody decides to push it and do something great, I think all the machines are hard, and they are hard in different ways.

Get a capture device for a computer. You can probably get the computer output converted for a TV too. You will have to look around for low latency capture / preview software, but other than that, most all the capture devices I've tried do PAL with just a software setting.

Ignore 'em. Plenty of people into classic / retro who don't do that. The beauty of it is you can find your niche and have good times on fun machines. In the end, that is all it's about.

Now this looks interesting! http://stevehanov.ca...ndex.php?id=133 Scroll down for the C64 SD card reader... Short story on this stuff is to start asking around and searching to find out who is active, what they are building, how it works, etc... Then you pick something and start jamming on the machine. Bear in mind the C64 disk drive is actually a little computer and it was capable of running code a C64 user sends to it. This means emulations vary from just file compatability, which the SD card device appears to do, up through drive emulation compatability. Lots of things will just work with a file, but there are plenty of demos and advanced programs / games that need to see the real disk drive, or a capable emulation. That's the first thing I linked you to.

Yeah, that seems a good call. I've not followed the C64 disk emulator devices, mostly because I don't currently own a C64. Emulation works for me, and I mostly follow demo productions for that one anyway. A real quick search brought this: http://www.1541ultimate.net/content/index.php IMHO, that's typical for these kinds of things. When I got the CFFA card for my Apple, I had to wait on a list until the next production batch got done. With an Apple or Atari machine, you can just use a cable and a PC to get things loaded. I am not sure whether or not the C64 has that kind of solution or not, but it's worth a look.

What kind of games do you think would be fun or worth exploring? The various machines all have games unique to them as well as their own flavor for games they have in common. Atari, for example has many excellent arcade ports, but is kind of weak on character/ plat former type games, but has a lot of good home brew type projects going on. C64 has more newer games because it saw commercial support, has shooters and more plat formers, and plenty of home brew. Apple has a lot of odd games, many not found elsewhere, is a killer machine for Ultimate, text adventures, etc... not as much new going on though. Opinions will vary on all of that, and I'm not happy with those summaries myself, but I'm posting on a phone, so it will be brief. In terms of other software, Apples have tons of things for business, graphics, programming, etc... Atari has less of this and lacks a good 80 column display. C64 has more IMHO, but it too lacks that display. If you like hardware stuff, Apple rules. All of the machines have disk emulation so you can run lots of stuff. What do you want to do?

Yeah? Of course it's press for his modern offering. At some point we all need to benefit from our time. He's doing that. However you see it all play out, the video itself is good material that conveys some of the challenges very well, potentially leading to some greater appreciation for the retro hobby. The question, "was it possible?" is a fun one, and the video answers that clearly enough, which is why I posted it.

I'm not into Intelly right now, though I think you guys will appreciate this: (And it's a cool system, don't get me wrong there) So, I'm working on a spare bedroom. Need to shuffle some items around and out comes the pile of VCS stuff. I've got a nice restored and modded 6 switcher, Harmony, all the controllers and a pile of carts, bunch of original instruction sheets, catalogs, etc... from the time period. In walks my youngest son, who has played on that thing more than a few times when we get it out to jam on near Xmas time. He's got a friend with him who looks, stops, looks again, lights up and says, "Oh man, you have one of those Atari things?" My plan was to locate a few things I wanted to get quick access to, then sort through the rest, maybe repackage a little, etc... In no time flat, it was all over the floor! They were picking through the carts, and they called the Harmony a "modded one" and "very cool." Their core experiences more or less started in the Super NES / Dreamcast era. (There is one of those on the shelf too.) We started talking, and I hooked the thing up for some quick gaming action. They had a great time. Never fails either. COMBAT ends up in there. It seems just about everybody likes the tanks. INDY 500 doesn't take long either, and so it goes... So that's why I keep stuff. I don't collect for value. Many of my carts are in various states of repair. Some look great, others have a metallic pen marked end to identify them as the labels fell off or just degraded long ago. Doesn't matter. Plenty of the art is still there, the old stuff looks kind of old, and the real fun is in the playing of it all anyway. And it's a great way to connect too. We've got some common ground yelling and stuff while playing simple great games I personally value a few things, like the Supercharger and the few tapes I have along with the Stella CD. That's always a trip, loading up a game from CD like that. But those are just milestones, or some good memories, or something really fun to play.

I like this too. Well said.

Re: Spiffy graphics system. I kind of stalled out on this for a number of reasons, but taking a capable micro like the Propeller and putting it into one of the slots that has video signal access, etc... would enable existing software to display better / in new ways, and anybody that wants to write to it, simply could, presenting the product of that in various ways. Maybe this will get done someday. Maybe it will get done on the current second generation of that chip, which is proving to be awesome so far. (it's in FPGA right now, awaiting fab) I go back and forth on this. Part of me really wants to extend the Apple a little, maybe enabling it to be a development station of sorts. That would be really cool, but not too many users. Another part of me wonders whether or not that makes any real sense. But dammit, putting cool hardware into Apples is part of what it's all about. Who knows? If it could be done cheap and easy, like some of the cards are, non NTSC users might really adopt it quickly. Apple artifact color makes using one without some kind of video assist in non-NTSC land way less than optimal. Could be a lot of growth come out of that, even when just used to render the display on component video / vga / PAL composite. There was that Carte Blanche project with an FPGA and it could do cool stuff, but it was also pretty complex. High barrier to entry. On the other hand, using a capable micro on a card to do something like implement a blitter? People could get hold of that pretty easy and existing titles could benefit from hacks / reworks like we see on other machines. There is that 20Mhz Z80 floating around out there. Can it write to the graphics memory? If so, man! Time to do speccy ports! That's the kind of discussion we see in these parts, and it's got a flavor I think appeals...

Gone?? LOL. Yeah, hardly. Look, I like retro machines and I'm currently enjoying the Apple ][ Characterizing various groups of users and or places where they gather isn't productive. Frankly, it's in the best interests of everyone, on every machine, everywhere to encourage new discussion in all it's forms. Ideally, that kind of discussion competes and good stuff happens. And we all want good stuff to happen. In order for that good stuff to happen, there needs to be a robust discussion, and I believe having that happen means expanding the places for discussion and the modes of discussion with the intent of there simply being more discussion, and with that more things happening, etc... If you feel this is some kind of threat, know two things: 1. That's your problem. 2. It's not, k? Re: Books. Lots of reasons to preserve computing history. And frankly again, where there is more discussion, there is more preservation and where both of those are happening, there is more goings on in general. Look around. These things are true. They will be true for the Apple as well, unless people really want to make them not true, and does anybody really want that? No. Right? Right? Time to move on then.

Oh man! That's cool! Thanks MarkO. Appreciated.

True that. To me, it's all about expectations. His optimizations are well executed for that system, which is why I liked the video.

I second that, and cite it as one good reason to make a sub-forum here. IMHO, Apple ][ series computers are a great retro-playground. We don't have as much documentation scanned and available as we do for other machines, but the core stuff is there and some really great stuff is there and there is ongoing development. Personally, I just want more Apple related discussion and don't care who and really don't care for poking fun at other Apple communities and users. Not productive in the end. Much better to just start doing and talking about the machines to attract people, who then may well go and explore other computers. That's how it happened for me years ago, and today the first thing I would recommend to an Apple user looking to branch out a little is go and get an Atari Did you all know Bill Budge used an Apple ][ development system to build the Atari 800 version of "Pinball Construction Set?" Most of us know 2600 development of various kinds happened on Apple ][ computers, but I didn't know that cross computer development was going on. That's an Apple strength IMHO. One could run some pretty powerful stuff on an Apple, due to the ability to add hard disks, and all manner of hardware. Interesting! I'm beginning to appreciate how powerful Merlin was, for example. As I work through building PoP, I'm impressed at how that whole setup could work.

I would ask him what gets him out of bed and into work each morning, besides money. You might find some real common ground discussion there. Another good topic is games he likes to play. As far as retro goes, why not bring it up? Who knows? Maybe he's into it. Retro-gaming is growing right now, and you might find a great conversation there.

Fun exercise! It's strange hearing the tunes reproduced that way. Thanks for linking those.

I'm looking for the ability to write object code above $FFFF, that would be intended for an address below $FFFF. Think of a floppy disk as a linear series of bytes. When the code is assembled, it gets written to it's place on the floppy disk directly, which is an address above $FFFF. When that code is loaded by the RTWS, it then ends up at the correct address below $FFFF.

Update: I've been reading the code, sorting out how things got built, and what connects to what. That's been fruitful. But, the information user Miles gave on how to build directly to a disk image has proven difficult to replicate. It's been quite the rabbit hole! Anyone here have some help? I see how it can be done mapping segments and such, but before I start down that road, I really want to know whether or not any of you are aware of an assembler that can do the following: Build code at one ORG, while writing it to another one above the 64K address space. Say assemble to work at $2000, with object code written to $13000. The assumption here is that a disk is represented as just a long string of bytes in the PC RAM. The code gets assembled directly to it's location on the disk just as it was done on the Apple, the difference being it's a virtual disk image. Saving that image as a binary equals a file that an emulator can boot from directly. Anyone see that capability out there in any 6502 capable assembler you've seen? Do tell. Please and thanks! It's important for me to know if that option is available to me or not because it impacts the work required to build the code significantly, and I don't want to start down that road using clumsy segments and memory models largely intended for bank switching and carts and such only to find out it was there for me, but I missed it somehow. Got a great handle on how it's built now, and I understand a lot about the program. Really needing to vet this piece before jumping in so that time is maximized.

In the past USENET kicked a lot of ass. It was the reason to get online. Personally and professionally, I got a lot out of that option. Met great people, did great things, talked about a lot of stuff too. Today, it's still useful, and I still read, but it's darn near invisible when compared to other communication options. Really, I don't mean any of that as bad or negative to anyone personally. Much of the attraction of networked computers is communication and collaboration. Those two things have moved on, and so have a lot of of people one could interact with. Rather than attempt to frame potential people into that arguably small and limited space today, it's better to network and build interest where it may lie. Good for everybody. There are a lot of options here and elsewhere that are flat out easy, useful and attractive to many people. I see people using shared gmail account passwords and such to share data on mailing lists and USENET, etc... On one hand, that's kind of a nice, private, low noise way to do things, but on the other, it's in the backwater too where some passer by might not even know, or if they do, not take the steps to consume things, gain interest, etc... I value those things very highly, and there just isn't more to say other than not one word, or this request for comment itself should be taken as "that option over there is bad", because it's not intended, nor true! There are just different options, people and the potential to communicate and collaborate. That's it.

@all, no worries. Better safe than sorry. Tensions there are sometimes ugly as it is.

There was zero reverse engineering. VIC II works entirely differently from the Atari 8 bit chipset.

Near perfect...