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

Stephen

+AtariAge Subscriber
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    10,234

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    20

Posts posted by Stephen

  3. Posted

    24 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

    I don't have a problem with this as long as people aren't deliberately hoarding machines.

     

    There's a certain Amiga user that does just that and openly brags about the fact that he will never 'let go' of his hundreds of Commodore machines literally littered all over his home rotting away with leaking caps and Varta NiCads - Pisses me off no end when there's good homes those devices could go to and actually get used. There's a TRS80 user in Australia that goes out of his way to import retro Tandy's from the USA (as that's where the bulk of affordable retro gear is) and restores them to on sell to good homes - IMO, that's a healthy and positive attitude that can only improve the community.

    Wow - that's not cool at all.  Most everyone here is very open to helping out others.  Some of us have a few copies of every machine, but if anyone has a massive hoard, it's a secret!  Everything in my collection is in active use - if not all the time, there's a rotation that goes on, to make sure everything is maintained and kept in working order.

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    7 minutes ago, ZuluGula said:

    With exception of underwear, all my piece's of clothing are different. I can wear only one pair of pants or shoes at the time. On the other hand my Atari pheryperials don't get dirty and don't have to be changed regularly like clothes. But I know where are you coming from. I know a guy that looks like Elvis every day for the last 20 years since I know him and maybe longer, but I never asked him about that. I'm sure that he has 20 pair's of the same jeans and shirts in his closet, plus good supply of black leather cowboy shoes. I personally don't like to look like a guy that has only one shirt and never change it.

    He could be a secret genius.  Think back to Jeff Goldbloom, in the 1986 remake of The Fly.  When Gina Davis asked him "do you ever change your shirt?", he explained that he copied Einstein in having 7 identical suits.  That way, he never has to think about what to wear.  He just "grabs the next clean one of the rack" :)  Good movie, and anything from back then with Gina Davis in it sure made my day.

  5. Posted

    40 minutes ago, leech said:

    Well I would argue Atari is the dumpster fire and the VCS is a crack baby that someone pulled out in time and is nursing back to health.

    That's awful, but since we're already there, I would argue that Atari is the crack baby that caught on fire and lit the dumpster.

    • Haha 7

  7. Posted

    2 hours ago, ZuluGula said:

    I know all this and I understand very well. My original question was, why anyone would want to buy more than one of such expansion, that is designed to be swaped easy between different machines, similarly to most of the multicarts. I'm not talking about rare cases when someone has a permanent Atari setups. We don't hear about people buying multiple copies of multicardiges. On top of it, the easy and unlimited availability should keep people from hoarding this extension. 

    If someone wants to support the creator, they could buy another device instead getting multiple copies of the same thing. 

    Again - I ask.  Do you have more than one pair of jeans?  More than one pair of shoes?  More than one shirt?  Why would anybody do that.  What a stupid way of supporting clothing manufacturers.  Sure is strange to own more than one of something.

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    4 hours ago, ZuluGula said:

    You can buy other products from the same creator, but why buy multiple copies of the same? The only reason I can come up is speculation that it can increase its resale value. 

    Do you own more than one pair of jeans or socks?

    • Like 3
    • Haha 1

  10. Posted

    11 minutes ago, thorfdbg said:

    Oh well, maybe we have very different ideas what kind of a system this should be. Any kind of hard disk handler will take even more of my precious RAM. If I would want a faster or more powerful machine - I have a PC, thank you.

    But this is a feature Atari provided to us all the way back in 1984.  It's not like I'm advocating putting in an accelerated CPU or anything.  No worries - we have so many nice upgrades which allow for switching OSes, so it's not like a missing feature would cripple a machine.

     

    Again though - I wonder about how people seem to use their machines.  Should we not use floppy disks because we have cassette?

  12. Posted

    10 minutes ago, TheNameOfTheGame said:

     

     

    Sorry, I know Jon and he is a great dude and am not trying to be rude.  I am simply suggesting some alternative revenue streams that might facilitate resuming development on GOS.  Everyone has to make a living and I understand that.  Calm down Stephen.  It's just Atari.  The world will keep spinning :).

    Also sorry - there's been a rash of posts on here (among other places) where a lot of demands seem to be being made.  Probably hit send before thinking about it.  All good (except for all the assholes at work cracking the whip down on me, demanding what I do, when I do it, and how fast).

  13. Posted

    1 hour ago, TheNameOfTheGame said:

    And it never seems to get going again since you have the work on the bioses.  I heard you had a financial interest in those though so that is understandable.  Gotta pay the bills and all.

     

    With that in mind, maybe a Patreon or Kickstarter project could get you funds to resume work on the GOS.  A shame to see the project with so much promise languish.  It could literally transform our 8-bit machines and how we interact with them.

     

    Could even have a Patreon going to finish development and then have the final product commercial also.

    It's incredibly rude to dictate how a hobbyist spends their FREE TIME writing FREE SOFTWARE.  How would you like it if some stranger came online and demanded your wife cook them dinner or wash their car because it would be convenient for them?

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    17 minutes ago, Nezgar said:
    On 2/2/2021 at 5:31 PM, zzip said:
    On 2/1/2021 at 9:01 PM, Stephen said:

    Also - the 1030 used the PoKey to generate the dialing tones, while the XM301 did not.  Really big size difference too.  Pretty safe bet it was an all new design.

    I thought the XM301 used Pokey as well?

    I could have sworn by the sound coming out of my TV that the XM301 was doing the POKEY audio DTMF thing like the 1030. Though I've never owned a 1030 to say if the behavior is different, I always thought the XM301 was software-wise basically the same as a 1030... Id be happy to be corrected and learn!

    I could very much be wrong.  I was 12 years old when I bought my XM301 (1987).  I do still have a 1030 and an XM301 - I guess I could just plug the guys in and dial.

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    1 hour ago, bfollowell said:

    I'm sure you're probably right. There's probably not a lot of call for bench repair techs as much as there used to be.

    I wish the globe wasn't so damn large and shipping so expensive!  I want to offer to help with all of these mods / upgrades where people can't do them until I see the distances involved.

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    51 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

    Question for the ultimate experts on this thread:

     

    I have the soft-core for Ultimate/SD cart to enable VERONICA-emulation (one of the few, pure plug-and-play and true "slave' co-processors designs I know for the Atari).

     

    Any way we can run some of these benchmarks in there? 

    No expert - but the best I can offer if the fact, that there is Veronika BASIC (thanks again phaeron!).  Any BASIC benchmarks could at least be tested that way.

  18. Posted

    1 hour ago, rensoup said:
    18 hours ago, emkay said:

    Seems the ADSR Bug is playing it's own music. And the 4th voice is missing ;) 

    But it's a 3 channels tune originally?

    But Pokey has 4 channels and SID has three, so we know Pokey is better!  It's like those amplifiers that go up to 11.

    • Haha 2

  21. Posted

    3 hours ago, thorfdbg said:
    16 hours ago, ivop said:

    But if I'm not mistaken, you took out the PBI code, isn't it? PBI code really is necessary these days.

     

    And wouldn't you like to have 10-12kB extra ROM space (for each extra bank) to enhance the current OS? HATABS can hold up to 12 drivers! :)

     

    But alas, there's no hardware support 😕

     

    By whom? Frankly, the number of PBI devices is rather low... the whole thing is grossly underdocumented, so I don't dare to look into this dark area of the Os.

    I'd guess everyone using a hard drive of some sort (Ultiate 1MB + SIDE2/SIDEB, IDE2+, etc.)?  I won't use my daily machine without HDD these days.

  23. Posted

    First thing I can think of, is the 1200XL has an internal current limiting resistor (R63).  It needs removed (or left in place really) and jumpered with solid wire.  This will allow more than a few mA on the 5VDC line of the SIO port.  I would start there.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    2 hours ago, Mark2008 said:

    Also, how are people editing these files?   I'm editing the files using "ED" in spartados x.

    Although I get an 80 column screen, or a 64 column screen, depending upon what I choose, ED immediately stops working.

     

    Is that expected?  That you get the columns but tools stop working?

    ED unfortunately writes directly tp screen RAM.  Therefore it does not work with 64 or 80 column drivers:(

     

    There's a pretty cool workaround that can be done from the SC (Sparta Commander) shell.  That will run in 80 column mode, and it can be set to call ED via the ctrl+E Edit command, and it will automatically switch into 40 column mode before calling the editor, and return you to 80 column mode upon exit.

     

    And just like that, I spy this nice piece from the 4.49e changelog: 

    EDX: a new text editor to be used with 80-column drivers.
    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    1 hour ago, flashjazzcat said:

    My memory can be vague too, so I'm not saying it didn't happen. :) The primary influence on the redesign on the window manager and the main 'consultant' when it came to the multi-tasking micro-kernel, however, was Jorn Mika (@Prodatron); I don't really know much about Liber809, but I was under the impression it didn't have a Graphical UI. Perhaps there was some flow of information in the other direction... I dunno. I was just curious to look back on any such discussions.

    I believe all the talks were related to Nitros-9, perhaps in this thread:

    Seeing that was from 2012, I don't feel bad for having hazy recollection.

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...