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danwinslow

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    Atari Sparrow Proto

    in Auction Central

    Posted

    Better Translation :

     

    Atari Sparrow Prototype VERY RARE

     

    Super Rare! A prototype of the unreleased Atari Sparrow! It belongs to a run of 100-150 prototypes that were sent to developers only. From this prototype the Atari Falcon eventually came. It's the computer with the serial number S/N A325 31 00000 8.

     

    The board is mounted in a dark Sparrow-grey housing. The keyboard might be from, or at least identical to, a Falcon keyboard. The top case has a thin crack, but it could be repaired with no visible traces.

     

    The device is not operational, and is something strictly for a collector or perhaps an artisan. One socket on the board is empty. It must therefore be sold as is. No floppy drive and no PSU. It comes from a large German development house that cleaned out its basement.

    Why still mess with this ancient computer?

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted · Edited by danwinslow

    I am a professional programmer, and have been for many, many years. I've worked on everything from old Burroughs 3500's through Unisys through Honeywell, Early PC's, Wangs, Perkin Elmers, and the whole spectrum of bizarre DoD computer stuff, many and various Unix/Solaris/Linux boxes....you name it, I've probably coded badly on it. Why, in this age of terabyte storage, gigaflop processors, and more RAM than the entire DoD had in 1975 on my frikkin calculator, would anyone still want to mess around on 8 bit computers?

     

    I have been having to explain this obsession to people. They don't quite understand. "He likes computers", they think. "He ought to like new, powerful ones, but he doesn't. He likes old crappy ones." Conclusion : "He's nuts".

     

    In thinking about this, I have reached the conclusion that the main reason for my interest in these older computers, aside from nostalgia, is that you can wrap your arms around the WHOLE thing in a way that is impossible with modern platforms. Anybody out there seen the ENTIRE windows API lately? Think you could memorize that? 1/10 of that? Anyone tried to learn every motif call? Anyone tried to punt Windows out of the way and take over the box? Anyone tried to write a new OS from scratch on a modern computer?

     

    There's just too much in modern computer systems to really handle as a whole. You have to specialize, and that means you are always at someone elses mercy in some regard. You have to put up with someone elses ideas. Hell, 'programming' in modern J2EE environments is not so much programming as using some kind of really complicated library of pre-written stuff. It's kind of like learning Word really really well; you get a lot of power but you live with the world as the designers of Word deemed it to be, and you won't get to optimize anything or to be clever in some low level way. You just stick glops of pre-written stuff onto other glops, and execution speed be damned. Buy More Hardware. It's cheap!

     

    It's kind of like people who work on old cars. Yknow, on an old car, you can take the sucker apart and rebuild it, optimizing, tweaking, changing, adding. Hell, a old VolksWagen beetle is practically a Go-Cart, more like a really big lawnmower than anything else. You can mod the crap out of them. A modern car, you get to hook up a computer and swap hardware modules as commanded to by the little diagnostic machine. Thats it. Attempts to modify things usually end badly, with the little 'Check Engine' light on. This light means that one of approximately twenty million different errors has occured. Engines don't 'break' any more, now they just won't boot.

     

    Working on an old 8 bit computer not only gives you the freedom and possibility to optimize, but it is also very hard. It takes skill. The 2600 guys out there, man you guys remind me of like Zen Monks or something, secretly practicing Really Hard Things in the darkness of the temple courtyard, then running out every now and then and kicking everyone's ass with Killer Ninja Assembly Hacks.

    • Like 1

    Falcon on the network

    in Atari ST/TT/Falcon Computers

    Posted

    1. Yes. This guy makes a very nice card called an Ethernec :

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=5173161818

    Other links :

    http://home.arcor.de/thomas.redelberger/pr...herne/index.htm

    http://hardware.atari.org/ether/index.htm

    You can also connect via SCSI with a Daynaport SCSI->Ethernet adapter.

     

    2. Yes....just get it on your home lan behind a router and you are all set. Don't expect to browse the web like lightning...the web browsers available are not great. Usable, but not great. Very slow, there just isn't enough horsepower in an unaccelerated Falcon.

     

    3. Yes, tons. Google and put in 'atari falcon games and utilities'

    How far do you take it?

    in Atari 2600

    Posted · Edited by danwinslow

    Plastic bags? plastic BAGS? Let me tell you, that isn't going to stop the *worst* scourge of our precious carts, and thats MR. COSMIC RAY! Yes, thats right, there are literally billions of highly energetic particles streaming towards your carts at THIS VERY MINUTE, all of them eager to change bits in a random manner! Even XEBEC can't stop them! They have been accellerated to ridiculously high energies in the hearts of exploding stars and THEY HATE CARTRIDGES!11! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhggg *foam*

    *thud*

    AR: City - FlashCart / Stage 2

    in Atari 8-Bit Computers

    Posted · Edited by danwinslow

    Once again, it's not about what I want. The discussion is about what is best for the game cartridge.

     

    You may think so, but the discussion is really about what you want. You think that you know 'what is best for the game'. That is also what you want. Anybody who disagrees with you, therefore, does not have the best interests of the game at heart. Most of us are avid gamers, so we probably just don't understand. And even if we do understand, but yet still disagree, there is no chance at all that we are right, because....YOU are right, and you know that. So there's no point. We are either stupid or secretly hate the game. Because you, Xebec, are right, and if we just listened to you and thought about it, we would see that too. Because it is whats the best for the game, and we like games, and you, Xebec, are right. You are just plain right. Why can't we see this? It should be easy. I mean, with you being right and all, and it being the best for the game and our playing experience. I mean, its so clear. To you. Who are right. You might have toyed with the idea of pretending that you WEREN'T right...that maybe other people's opinions might be right...or at least valid....but, that would mean that they disagree with you and yet are still right, and that is an impossibility, as you very clearly know that YOU indeed are very, very right.

     

    Right?

    corrupted data

    in Modern Gaming Discussion

    Posted

    I don't know what you mean by 'my data'. You mean like a save game or something thats seperate from the disc? I don't really know jack s**t about xbox but if different program discs cause the same crash then yeah, it's something besides the program itself, which I guess leaves 'your data'. Do you have any earlier saves of this data?

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