SlagOMatic

It was, and my response acknowledged it as such. But then your ego kicked in: "was there a reason to doubt my post?" As if you're some kind of deity that's beyond the understanding of mere mortals. So forgive me (/s) for deigning to wonder if there was something else at play. PS: Conditional apologies aren't sincere because they don't acknowledge any wrongdoing. You really do need a second account. I'm out. Enjoy the final words. Both of you.

Was there a reason to rudely and unnecessarily question me after I already admitted that I stood corrected? God, your ego must be huge. Might wanna get a second account for it.

Good point; I stand corrected.

I know this doesn't necessarily prove anything, but I don't think it's a RAM issue -- or at least not entirely. I just tried Altirra as a 400/800 with >48K and Food Fight did not run, while a "stock 800XL" ran fine as did an 800XL with >64K. However a "stock 600XL" crashed the emulator so memory is at least part of it.

I would be curious enough to open it up and see if the chips inside are ROMs or EPROMs. If the latter, that may be a prototype.

I have an internally-bone-stock 1040ST. Externally it has an UltraSATAN, a Dell 24" LCD monitor, and Logitech speakers. The monitor and speakers are driven by a VGA adapter that I bought from a dishonest vendor whose name I shall not mention here because I'm sure people in the back of the office would make a show of it. Suffice to say the adapter doesn't work properly, the guy I bought it from was dishonest in his sales pitch and lied to me about making things right after the fact, and refuses to support his product. I also bought an ST cartridge slot power source from the same jackass (bought at the same time; I fell for his deception and wasn't aware he was a jackass when I bought it). The cartridge adapter provides power for both the UltraSATAN and the speakers which is nice as it means I can turn the speakers and UltraSATAN on and off with the Atari. Anyway. Internally the ST is bone stock. According to this page I'm running TOS 1.02 ("Copyright 1986, 1987"). On my (Atari's) wish list in no specific order... A new VGA adapter with audio that isn't sold by a dishonest and unreliable vendor. A memory upgrade. I think 4MB is max on the 68000? An upgrade to TOS, perhaps a switchable ROM setup to let me run different TOS versions on demand? Any way to upgrade the keyboard? A Y-adapter so I can connect a mouse and a joystick to that port at the same time. (I used to have one decades ago, no idea where it went.) Any way to adapt a more modern mouse? Maybe some kind of network adapter a la Fujinet? Suggestions appreciated. Thanks.

Battlezone was one of the better 2600 games. I hesitate to say it's an "arcade port" because there's really very few similarities between the arcade game and the 2600 version. Activision's "Robot Tank" (2600) was probably closer to Battlezone than Battlezone was. And of course the official Battlezone for the Atari 8-bit was about as close as you could get, all things to considered, to the arcade version, while Novagen's "Encounter" was a well done interpretation that's still playable today.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kvkx9/dont-piss-off-bradley-the-parts-seller-keeping-atari-machines-alive I've ordered from Best Electronics perhaps a dozen times over the decades and have not, as of yet, been blacklisted. Bradley is abrasive and abrupt, employing an oftentimes nonsensical rule system that only he's aware of. He dislikes change, even if it's to his benefit. He hates repeating himself; get him on the phone with a bad connection and you'll be lucky if you'll have the opportunity to call him back. His web site is obnoxious to the point of absurdity; I'd swear he just types it all out in MS Word and exports as HTML. He's not a fan of small talk and will make you feel about this tall if you try to engage him with such. But. He's also one of the most helpful Atari guys I've ever encountered. The man knows his shit like nobody else does. Not only does he seemingly know everything about every Atari ever produced (or even theorized), he has about a 99.8% hit rate on remembering what bits and pieces he has in stock. Twice he's told me that "he's pretty sure he has some(item) in a box somewhere, let me check" only to come back a few hours later and tell me that he found the box and the items as expected. And yeah, let's not forget about his curated stock. If he doesn't have a part then there's a damned good chance the part doesn't exist anywhere. For the most part his prices are reasonable. Everything he sells is shipped out promptly and well packaged/padded. I would absolutely never buy a fragile item like a CRT monitor from anyone if it had be shipped, unless I was buying it from Bradley. After some reflection I think I came to understand something about Bradley. He's not just a businessman, he's a gatekeeper and he's doing it for the Atari community. Consider this: Lots of his items aren't available to purchase more than one or two at a time. Seems silly at best, inconvenient at worst. What if you wanted to buy (for example) two keyboard mylars for your 600XL (to have one as a long-term spare) but couldn't because of Bradley's "dumb rules"? But then consider what might happen if that rule didn't exist. Some Atari prospector wants to bulk repair a bunch of machines and resell them, so he wants to buy 20 mylars. Now Bradley is out of stock, there's 20 obscenely priced restored 600XLs on the market -- and your 40 year old 600XL is still collecting dust because Bradley sold all his inventory. Doesn't seem fair, does it? So I think that's Bradley's angle on everything. He's gatekeeping, for us. He wants to make sure his parts go to the right people -- the collectors, the enthusiasts, the ones who keep things moving forward without forgetting what's behind us. That's why he has draconian sales rules, that's why he insists on communicating with people rather than using an electronic shopping cart system, that's why his web site is a literal nightmare to work through, and that's why he doesn't put a full and complete list of inventory available for easy access. He doesn't want it to be easy because people looking for easy aren't the audience Bradley wants to sell to.

I used this with no regrets. Holds like iron.

I tried that but I couldn't get a solution that I was happy with so I gave up. (The 7800-style version started out as the XL version.) It's more difficult because the XL (a) uses brushed aluminum and I readily admit that I'm weak with faux metal skills, and (b) is designed around flat surfaces and straight lines and 90° angles whereas the XEGS uses 45° angles and spheroid buttons. That limits me in how I can adapt XL styling cues to the XEGS body. (For example, I would readily remove all five round buttons from the XEGS in favor an XL-style button bar, but that goes beyond this thought experiment's focus on just a repaint.) This is the work in progress, as far as I got with it before I threw up my hands and moved on to the 7800 version:

I don't see why not. Mask out everything that isn't the front bezel and then hydrodip. You could also do an adhesive vinyl, or if you're good with that sort of thing you could probably even make a thin veneer strip of actual wood and bond it to the plastic. Regardless of what you do, note the buttons on that design. The 2600 had a thick black bezel around the switches which I gave homage to by making a similarly thick black bezel around the buttons. If you're going to dip or vinyl or whatever and you wanted to keep that look, you'll need to work out how to do the bezel.

Photoshop. I’m far from an expert, but I think I’m better than most.

That’s exactly what they are.

I tried but I couldn't get it to look right.

Feeling bored, here's another variant.

Here's a fun and traditional one.

Realized.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. The only thing I really did was point out that there's been quite a bit of hype over a project that doesn't exist and has no information given about it. Oh, and I also pointed out that there's been similar "hype projects" in the past that have followed the same formula (lots of flash, no substance) which have come to naught. If that's being "bent out of shape" then, well, okay. I disagree, but okay. I'm not sure I could have missed that since that's the point of what I'd originally written, but again I suppose we'll have to disagree. Popularity is only a guarantee of popularity, nothing more. Oh, believe me, I do understand. As I said, I'm no stranger to an environment of die-hard fanboys. Thank you, at least, for being civil.

One, I'm not "bent out of shape" over this. At all. As I said earlier, this is much ado about nothing. Two, I've read this thread in its entirety and found no objectively verifiable hard evidence for the existence of this alleged project. I'm willing to concede I've missed it. Whose messages did I miss? And three, as far as "starting with the volume at 11", I think that's a matter of opinion. I thought my previous post was simple and fact-based, and given that the only thing I've gotten in response from that are personal attacks and projected accusations -- and again, zero verifiable information about this alleged project -- I would have to disagree with your assessment. Look, I get that I'm the middle of Atari Fanboy Central and as such there are people who get hurt over even the merest suggestion that things aren't exactly as they appear to be on the surface. I've been a Mac user for nearly 35 years so I know how die-hard fanboys instinctively react. 🙂 If you want to talk about "turning it up to 11" just step back and take a look at what's happened here. All I did is point out that there's been an incredible response over nothing more than a couple of shiny pictures and a vague wish list, and look at the response it's garnered.

Thank you for further proving my point, albeit in an unnecessarily crass and lowbrow way. My "assknowledge" (your crowning achievement of personal insults, I'm sure) points out that so far we have exactly zero objectively verifiable facts about this alleged project, and that without said facts this whole thing smells exactly like the sort of hyped-up pipe dream the internet has seen time and time again. You take offense to that, and by way of "proof" you -- someone who is not involved in the project in any way, shape, or form -- point out that a person is involved with this alleged project was also involved with another (different, unrelated) project, wrote a video game, has a YouTube channel, and has a web site. Okay, great. Bravo. Let's assume that your claims are true, because quite frankly I have neither the time nor the crayons to get into that debate with you as well. In what way does ANY of what you just wrote provide any objectively verifiable facts about this alleged project? Am I supposed to go, "Oh, he wrote a video game, therefore I have no basis to question the lack of information about this alleged project?" Or, "Holy crap, he's got a YouTube channel! Clearly nobody needs to know how this alleged project is supposed to work!" Provide facts. Show us proof. A circuit diagram. A parts list. The name of the processor that's being used. A picture of the logic board. The name of the supplier for the case and keyboard. A targeted timeline for prototype production, manufacture, and release date. (Hell, if he's got a YouTube channel, where's the proof-of-concept video?) ANYTHING that can be objectively measured against the yardstick given on that web site. Where is it? Because as much as it galls you to hear it, your claims of "he's a known guy! that should be enough!" are NOT, in fact, enough.

This is seriously much ado about nothing, and TBH I'm pretty surprised that it's gotten this much attention. We know LITERALLY nothing about this alleged machine. NOTHING. The only thing we've been fed so far are a few renderings on a slick-looking web page. Nothing objectively verifiable about it exists anywhere. All of these ancillary "sources" -- web pages, YouTube videos, etc -- are 100% speculation and hype. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING concrete about this. Seriously, give me a couple of days to set up a WordPress site with some shiny graphics and I can come up with the "RM 130XE" that'll be more believable than this. You know what this reminds me of? CherryOS. Anyone else remember CherryOS? It was emulator that was announced in the early 00's whose claim to fame was its ability to run PowerPC software, and specifically Mac OS -- at 80% the speed of actual hardware. The scammers folks behind that scam made all kind of claims that were either (a) completely false or (b) wildly inflated. Shortly before its impending release it was redefined as an open source project ("due to overwhelming demand") and almost immediately thereafter completely abandoned. At best -- and I personally put the odds of this at less than 2% -- we'll see a Raspberry Pi-type logic board paired with some kind of homemade interface card with the physical interfaces (cartridge, joystick, SIO, etc) and a combination of custom software and a modified open source emulator to make everything mostly work together. It'll be built into a low-quality but overpriced chassis designed to endear itself to the nostalgia crowd. If it sells for under $500 I'd be amazed.

It would be an undertaking, but... Take a page from reddit. Include a "Report" button for PMs and the message forums. When a person clicks on it the systems asks why they're reporting it. Have "Scam" be one of the options. After <x> reports the user is shadowbanned until an administrator reviews the situation and un-bans them or permanently bans them, as applicable. If you want to go a step further (to help against abuse), set up a point system. It costs one point to report a message/post. If you report a post/message and the person actually gets banned, you earn two points (regaining the one that you spent, and earning one more). If you report a post/message and the person doesn't get banned, you lose a point (thus losing two points overall). If your score goes below <x> you lose the ability to report a message/post.

I think this is a good idea, but I think it should be expanded upon via user-selectable options in the web interface: Status quo. One file at a time, manually downloaded via the web interface. Save to SD card. Using your naming convention would be good. A FILES button would provide a simple file management interface where people could see all stored files, or select one or more for download or deletion. Save to TNFS. Still use your naming convention. A CONFIG button to specify the server, and a FILES button would provide the same file management interface as above.

You're misunderstanding. I'm not referring to a conflict with Translator and SpartaDOS.

I read this as "we have a bunch of magazine scans that haven't been turned into proper code yet". Is that accurate? If so, is there an organized volunteer system where people whittle down this pile in their spare time?