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dark willow

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Posts posted by dark willow

  1. Posted

    Coming from an ST with TOS and TeraDesk to DOS/Win3.x felt clunky, fragile and overly complicated when it come to the OS, but I appreciated the quality of the hardware. The ST keyboard, mouse and form factor was inferior to the minute but extremely well built IBM PS/2E, and Lotus Write and 1-2-3 felt well made. Ironically, there was software on the Atari at the time at least as good, but (living in a rural area) was hard to get and expensive.

     

    Had I been aware of what could be done with the ST and had more hardware knowledge, in hindsight I would have brought a Mega STe with HD, modem and decent monitor, and invested money and effort in getting hold of decent TOS software to tide me over till Win 2k came along.

  2. Posted

     

    PnP to me means solder-less and hacking up my good TT is not an option. I'd have to add the cost of the add-on plus another spare TT. As was pointed out the video would not be that great, so if the add-on had slots, then you're adding a video card again. I also don't see all this fitting inside the case.

     

    I don't find the coldfire all that appealing, especially when it comes to older software and that's mostly what we got. I am not interested in coldfire at any cost and you have to wonder how many others think the same way. There may be a market for a proper fast 68k based clone, finding out is the trick.

     

    Ah I see what you mean. I'd like to use it on my current TT rather than get a new one, if only because of space/cost/availability. My motherboard is the old first revision one with a daughtercboard for the CPU, so I'm not sure how the CPU is mounted on later boards. Could the VME be used? I remember reading somewhere that the VME bus is basically just a breakout interface the 68k CPU pins.

     

    Actually, since you ported GFA Basic to the Coldfire, I think quite a few more people are now considering it ;) I must admit, the lack of support for it was my initial reason for hesitating... Now, I've pretty much felt that with the amount (not enough) and sort of things I do with the TT (older productivity apps and "hello world" level programming) don't really justify €700 for a new Firebee. I get that the sort of hardware they designed can't be done for nothing, it's just I personally don't think I'd make enough use of the extra power to make it worthwhile in my case.

     

    Plus I'm shamelessly nostalgic about my TT and keeping original hardware going, ideally with a bit more get up and go.

  3. Posted

    I'd rather drop money on a proper 68k clone that runs 60mhz. I can't see such an add-on being plug&play for a TT. There's plenty of clones going around, but everyone's messing around with 8 or 16mhz. Those seem pointless to me, but then I don't play games or watch demos. If you have a TT, you probably aren't playing many games or watching to many demos anyway. Maybe such an FPGA chip is still too cost prohibitive. I don't know enough about FPGA to be able to determine which chip would be up to that task. Doesn't stop me from dreaming though. :D

     

    Personally, I'd rather have a plain vanilla accelerator, as I already have a decent gfx card and SCSI reader, but I'm not sure if others would (if it actually happened, I imagine they'd be a muddy compromise like the original ct-60, basic accelerator with an expansion bus for more add ons). As for making it PnP, maybe include a complete patched TOS (alongside a legacy TOS) on ROM chips?

     

    I think a clone wouldn't make it due to competition with the Firebee and price level. I doubt you could get a clone out the door for <€500, whereas an accelerator would be ~€300 (probabaly), so the market would be tiny (people who are willing to spend €500, *and* who dont want/already have a firebee). You could lower costs by dumping legacy support, but that would erode the pool of buyers too... tricky!

  4. Posted

    Further thoughts on this, just stream of conciousness really... Unlike the Falcon, the TT has some other areas which hog-tie it sufficiently that for an 060 board to be useful would pretty much have to be addressed as part of the upgrade.

     

    * Video. Unlike the videl, the TT's built in video modes are pretty much fixed, and would cripple most applications which would benefit most from 060, including multi-tasking. Most 060 buyers probably have a VME gfx card, but not all, and many cards are themselves quite slow. Given the space inside the TT, including a PCI slot for a Radeon, or perhaps having an FPGAed upgraded virtual TT shifter chip on board would be pretty much essential to make use of the accelerated system.

     

    * IDE. SCSI storage solutions are increasingly old and hard to find. IDE (rather than a straight to CF or SD interface) allows people the option of adding a range of modern options, from IDE HDs, CF, SD, CD/DVD or whatever they wish.

     

    * Improved cooler support. IIRC the Falcon CT-60s often had heating issues. A new 68060 board really would benefit from being layed out in such a way as to have better support for modern coolers, poss. including liquid-coolers, as well as improved temperature sensing.

  5. Posted

    I'd *love* to see this happen. As has been said, it's been raised before but getting enough orders seems to be the issue. I find it hard to imagine we can't get 100 TT users interested. If the project actually happens, I would be down for one unit.

     

    One thing that would need to be addressed is the different versions of the TT. Early TT's (including mine) have a daughter-board for the CPU, as well as not conflicting with installed VME cards. I'm not sure how much this could complicate a TT variant CT-60. Despite both being 030 machines, the TT are quite different in terms of architecture, so I don't think this would be a trivial project.

  7. Posted

    Hello guys

     

    The XEP80 receives data at about 15.7 kbps. Check out some stuff Erhard Puetz found out at my special stuff page. Start by reading XEP_1.HTM and XEP80_2.HTM, that'll tell you why the XEP80 seems to be slow.

     

    Sincelery

     

    Mathy

     

    I had a look at the articles. A lot of it was a bit beyond me, but very interesting as it seems the XEP was crippled more by Atari's sloppy programming than by inherent flaws in the hardware, though the choice of the joystick port for screen data transmissions seems bizzare to the say the least. Maybe less at the time, though, given the way terminals worked over standard RS232 ports in the days of yore - and as a plain text interface I guess that beyond a certain thresholdm higher bandwidth didn't make that much difference.

     

    Do the (improved) drivers work in a similar fashion to those of the VBXE, in that programs using the standard screen handler will be redirected to the XEP?

  9. Posted

    I'm looking into getting an 80 column display adapter for the 800XL, but confused by the options out there. I know the VBXE is out there, but I'm frighteningly hopeless at soldering, so really tossing up between a XEP-80 and other external or software solutions. Is there anything out there that is TurboBasic XL and SpartaDOS X compatible that can run comfortably on a stock 64k system?

  11. Posted

    Falcons are different to the ST in this respect.

    * You can output the standard Falcon modes on a stock VGA monitor, so there's no need to use the RF-out, which is region specific. The output is also MUCH better quality than the RF feed.

    * The TOS language / keyboard settings are not fixed (unlike on earlier TOS versions), so you can just select whatever language / keyboard layout you prefer.

    * The power supply is NOT multi-system. You will need to swap it out for a UK one or get a transformer. You can get a transformer online for about £30-£40. Falcon PSUs are not common, but not as rare as you might think. However, if the one you have is healthy then the transformer is probabaly a better bet, since it also helps protect the Falcon from power spikes and feeds it a stable supply (something the PSU is poor at regulating by itself).

  13. Posted

    Simple as it sounds really. Just looking for a UK PSU for the 800XL (doesn't have to be the black original XL one, can be an XE - as long as it does the job!) and two joysticks so me and my partner can go jousting :) We moved flats recently, and it appears some of our gear went AWOL during the move - a load of cables and a few carts.

     

    Note on joysticks:

    Not the Atari ones. Anything that works and in solid condition with plenty of movement, and ideally *not* microswtiched, with a trigger button on the stick itself. Yea, we go against the current ;)

  16. Posted

    reading back through some old threads about the 1027 print head disintegration and rotting problems, and the 1020 gear problems - I wondered if anyone out there who has an intact original print head / gears has made CAD models of the original parts?

     

    If so, a fairly and easy option for producing a new head would be to get them 3D printed using something like Shapeways or 3Dprint. I was still under the impression that 3D print services were still restricted to rough melted plastic wire models, but it appears the technology is evolving very fast, and might be up to level where the materials good enough for a usable print head are available.

     

    By putting the CAD models online, anyone who needs the parts could just upload a copy of the file and order as and when needed.

     

    It seems to me that 3D printing might well be the solution to a lot of problems for the mechanical and aesthetic parts of retro computer gear.

  18. Posted

    There are any number of things that can cause 1050 errors, mostly on the PCB, not the drive itself. There are speed and clock adjustments that should be checked before you start changing parts on the PCB. (although it is not a bad idea to replace the big electrolytic capacitors when you work on a 1050)

     

    It may be cheaper to just get another 1050 and donate your old drive to someone who fixes them.

     

    Bob

     

    Thanks for the info, Bob. I've got a nice little STe setup I'm not really using, so thinking I made offer it for trade for some 8-bit gear, as there's a few bits and pieces I could use for for the 800XL.

  19. Posted

    Does anyone have an experience with connecting the XEP-80 unit to a modern LCD display? I'd like to give it a try sometime, but I'd rather avoid using a CRT due to space issues. My 800XL works pretty well on my LCD from the on-board monitor/composite port, sop hopefully the XEP-80 could do the same *fingers crossed*

  20. Posted

    I've also just downloaded Altirra for a laptop (Thinkpad X60). I've got the screen control keyboard shortcut running OK, but the keyboard is not recognised in the emulator, i.e. F2 - F5 won't work as function keys, cursor keys won't be recognised as joystick keys etc. I've set under "input mapping" the first option "arrow keys > Joystick (Port 1)"

     

    Is there something obvious I'm missing here?

  21. Posted

    Atari uses bare-bones drives in their 1050s, not standard drives. All the drive circuitry is on the one PCB so you have to use the Atari drives.

     

    Bob

     

    Eck... that's not good! I'll look inside it next week and see if I can see anything obvious that's wrong - maybe it can be fixed? :?

  22. Posted

    I have a 1050 drive, but it's definitely on the way out - often has issues loading, and is making some very unhealthy noises. I'm loathed to junk the whole unit though, and I guess the drive unit itself is standard, with separate circuits for the SIO host control. As such is it possible just to swap out the drive itself? If so are there are particular models that are compatible?

  23. Posted

    Yes, I ordered one of the SuperVidel cards. But I was suggesting a *normal* non-Super Videl. Less complex, the TOS infrastructure is already there, backwards compatible with the old Atari screen modes, and a line doubler to get onto modern screens.

     

    Good on you, the SV is a great project - I imagine youll have a lot of fun with that :)

     

    Actually I did wonder at the time the Falcon was released why Atari didn't use the Videl to make a VME graphics upgrade for the TT, combined with a TOS upgrade kit to drive it and give the TT and the TOS 4.x desktop. There's more discussion on the ET4K and other alternatives over the the Atari Forum thread, so I won't fork off that, but have a look over there to see what ideas are being kicked around.

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