Geister

I suspect the porch pirate opened the package, took one look at the bare circuit board and tossed it in the trash. If they're a little smarter than the average theif, they might have googled it and learned that it has a limited scope of interest to Atari owners and then threw it in the can. The person you sold it to probably isn't going to find it on craig's list.

I hope that I can do something with this. I'm very rusty as a developer, but right now, I have nothing but time on my hands. Perhaps I can shed some of the rust.

Something like that but on a plug in card. They used to have them for the Apple II. The card had a large breadboard area and a silkscreen for standard buffer chips (you had to provide). I used one for the 65C816 card I built for the parallel bus port on the Atari. (It was handy that the Apple cardedge connector was 50-pin.) I stole the interface chip design from reverse engineering a Commodore accelerator that was available at the time. I had access to a GAL(?) burner where I worked and wire-wrapped everything onto the board. It was a bare-bones design to get the 65C816 up and running on the parallel bus and I was surprised that it came up and just ran in 6502 mode when I powered it up. Sadly, as work began demanding more of my time I just gave it up and threw it in with all my Atari stuff which I gave to Bob Tune back in the late 80's. I have been unable to reach Bob, and don't have any idea what happened to my notes on the accelerator board but I'm sure that it's not much of a loss with the modern solution available.

Perhaps a build-a-bear (development) board for the 1090 expansion board would allow quick development of a VBXE-like (80 column + Hi-res and Sprites) plug in for the Atari. One of the advantages of a standard expansion interface for a computer is having pre-buffered development boards that can be experimented with. I could see an accelerator board with a 65C816 coupled with a 4MB ram board and an 80 column video providing a complete development system that would obviate the need to develop on a PC. Since the VBXE needs to sit on a GTIA, I guess moving everything else outside the box would leave room for the VBXE to fit in the case? And with the full system bus on the 1090/1, perhaps the GTIA could be moved outside the case as well? I haven't looked at the schematics in a long time.

Soundes like an opportunity for an intelligent sound card for the 1090 backplane. I'd buy that!

These images are OMG amazing and especially for an old 8-bit computer. Maybe a Raspberry PI can be used to auto upscale these images to 1080p?

I guess it's the boomer in me. I didn't get a computer until I was in my late 20's and I just reply when I reply @'n and #'n is for Tik-Tokers and other people I think are crazy. I guess once you turn 70, you just get cranky and stuck in your ways. When it comes to Apple, I'm team Woz all the way. Danged new fangled Macintoshs!

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I not @ or # you? I'm not looking to convince you of anything, just stating what I had heard back in the day. Steve jobs may have gotten the parts from Al Alcorn, but I've never heard that story before. I did hear the one about his body odor problems. Not that I ever smelled him or cared to. Everything I've heard or observed about Steve Jobs paints him as a sleazy character, including the thing you mentioned about him screwing the Woz.

Cute, but pointless.

The chips, dude, Steve Jobs raided the parts bins at Atari while he worked there to build the prototype apples. This is not breaking news.

Is that a scrapple? What are Apple I's good for? Too late to recover the chips and reimburse Atari for what Steve Jobs stole.

Probably wouldn't work anyways because insurance companies are experts at explaining how your loss ain't their problem.

If he actually has all that stuff shown in the pictures and they are all original and in working condition...there are some holy grail machines there... Then that may actually be worth the money to someone. Not me, but someone. Edited to add, oh hey Brian. I just sent you a message...speaking of holy grail machines.

Well this is disturbing. I don't often see porch pirates in my area. but they do exist. One thing I would recommend is don't buy or ship around X-Mas time as they are out in force at this time of year. They actually follow the delivery trucks and take stuff off the porch before it gets cold. I'm usually not a violent person, but I think they should declare the holidays open season on porch pirates.

If you have the CAD software you could send the design files to PCBWay and they will print it for you. There are other companies that will do this as well.

Guitarman, looking at the Reno collection, that gold disk I think came with the Eidolon game. I don't remember if it had a purpose or it was just a decorative pack-in.

Merry Christmas all. Whatever you are dealing with. We aren't getting any younger or healthier!

Taking orders?

This, if you can spay them for 3 Pounds then they can't reproduce.

Looking at you Brian!

Being an auto mechanic that switched to programming when more and more computers started appearing in cars, this rings true. But to be pedantic, it's distributors to electronic ignition and carburetors to fuel injection. As for languages, I learned to program on the Atari and continued with QuickBasic on the PC. That version of Basic got me paid as I wrote a ton of software for my employer using it. I moved on to Object Pascal and Visual Basic/.net and C++ and C#. I always said the language didn't matter. What mattered was learning how to program and the language was just the tool you used. I had a professor at college that told me that I couldn't build linked lists in Visual Basic and that C was better because it had pointers...until I showed him how to build a linked list of objects using object pointers in the object definition. For someone that wrote plant and lab automation software, the real limitation was when you couldn't reach the hardware to do data acquisition because Windows discouraged direct access to the raw metal. Fortunately, there were assembly level programmers writing device drivers to do that. I'm not sure I'd endorse Python. That language is a "kitchen-sinker" language with so many half-explained constructs tossed into it that I can envision uber-spaghetti code being written in it that would make old-fashioned basic look clean by comparison. I volunteered to check a manual for Python that was being written for publication be a college professor and at on point I was so confused by the explanations of the language features that I tossed my hands up said good luck with that, I'm out. I just want to know when I can get my hands on a PBI expansion box and any cards to go with it.

Now you've dashed his hopes.

I think we need to get IEEE involved in this discussion of standards for a 40 year old computer. But obviously, the answer is to design cartridges with hydraulic extension capabilities that also fit the width restrictions of the original Atari design! Didn't flashjazzcat have a video of himself playing the Belt Sander Blues on guitar?

At 70, I know which reason is coming for me.

I turned 70 this year. My interest in Sci-Fi led me to want the future yesterday. A personal computer was part of that future, so I bought the semi-affordable 400 over the Timex-Sinclair and was glad I did. I taught myself to program with the aid of a couple books and ended up getting a job in IT related areas. I think I got my 400 in 1982. Still looking for my first rocket ship. I need to check out the used ship lot in Texas.