RetroElectroDad
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Posts posted by RetroElectroDad
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It's a sickness for me. Started with my 800XL with 2x1050 drives, 600XL, Amiga 500, NTSC SNES, Japanese Mega Drive that I bought new. Then it was buying any new console from Dreamcast onwards. Then it was buying up machines I had parted with - TI-99/4a, Sinclair ZX81 and Acetronic MPU1000. Then it was 'always wanted a VCS'. From that point on it's been a matter of collecting every computer I'd ever read or knew of and any console. As has been pointed out, I couldn't possibly find time to use them all, but from the top of my head the current inventory of retro computers not including various drives, monitors, flash storage units etc contains:-
Acorn Atom, Electron, BBC Model B x2, Archimedes A3000
Amstrad CPC6128
Apple IIe x2, Mac LC II, Mac LCIII
Atari 400, 800, NTSC 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL x3, 65XE, 130XE, 520ST x2, 1040ST, Falcon 040
Commodore VIC-20, 64 x2, 64C, SX-64, Amiga 500, Amiga 500 Plus, Amiga 4000
Dragon 32
EACA Colour Genie
Mattel Aquarius
Memotech MTX-512
Oric 16K, 48K, Atmos
Philips MSX2
Sam Coupe
Sharp MZ-700
Sinclair Zx81 x3, Spectrum 48K x3, Spectrum 128, Spectrum +2, QL
Sord M5
Tandy Color Computer
Texas TI-99/4a x3 (1 PEB)
Toshiba HX-10 MSX x2
Yamaha CX-M5 MSX x2
As for the ones I use most.... an expanded 800XL, TI-99/4a with CF7A+ and Amiga 4000 are set up most of the time. The others are boxed up along with most consoles. Space is now an issue.
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Well, seeing as it's bumped......
1. Opening up my unexpanded 600XL when I bought it after selling my TI-99/4a. The TI had to go even though I loved it mainly because it was a very closed system having no access to machine language. I was intrigued by the mysterious “peek” and “poke” commands I saw in listings for other platforms. The 600XL was upgraded by a 1064 a few short months later at Christmas - on my first trip to buy software for my Atari i bought Airstrike II by English Software at WH Smith in Newcastle Upon Tyne. I could only play the 16K version so couldn’t wait to get more memory and try the other side of the cassette.
2. Finding another Atari user at university and buying his 1050 disk drive with many disks of “backups”. My only brush with pirate copies from “the scene”. I went to his place to buy it carrying two boxes of blank disks and all were filled when I left.
3. Discovering RPGs with Alternate Reality - The Dungeon. I ended up playing this through three times. The packaging was beautiful and I’m so glad this is one that I bought and still have to this day. I was hooked on RPGs from that time and went on to finish Wizard’s Crown, Eternal Dagger, Ultimas III and IV before I moved on to the Amiga.
4. Many many hours spent with Synassembler and a black-and-white TV trying to be a games programmer. I was at one stage offered a conversion contract by Zeppelin (who were nearby) but I wasn’t allowed to enter into a subcontract agreement as a term of the government program I was on. That was disappointing!
5. Getting my Symbolism game onto a Page 6 special disk. I now know how much better it could have been but I was young and inexperienced!
6. Buying a Dixons 800XL plus 1050 drive package when they were really selling them off cheap. That 800XL became my main machine and it had a lovely keyboard, the 1050 meant that I now had two drives. What luxury! Shame that I binned the 800XL when it died as I haven’t found an 800XL with as good a keyboard since and if it happened now I’d hope to repair it.
7. Receiving the Mapping The Atari book for Christmas. How that book opened up the possibilities and answered all my questions. It was invaluable.
8. The intense shock the first time I encountered the Alien in RoF. It was around 2am, the house was quiet and my heart rate didn’t come back down for quite a while. From that moment the game was filled with a tension for me that had been absent up to that point.
9. Hiring games from a lending library and defeating the copy protection to create my own backups. Particularly copying Koronis Rift on disk and transferring Bounty Bob from cassette to disk (there were quite a few encrypted segments in that multi-load). I was pretty alone in my network as an Atarian so I had no access to pirated copies unlike my Commodore or Spectrum owning friends.
10. “The games are so much faster on the Atari” - a quote from my C64 owning best friend when he played Bruce Lee on my machine.
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I have all four on disk and only The Eidolon is in the hard plastic case. My Activision Koronis Rift is in a soft plastic case similar to RoF and Ballblazer. Pictured on Instagram:-
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Legionnaire - First true rts game as far as I know. You commanded up to 10 Roman Legions of varying skill, unit strength, and speed against hordes of barbarians. The barbarian tribes were separated into infantry tribes and cavalry tribes so you were always outnumbered 2 to 1. The game took into account factors including terrain elevation, flanking attacks, and unit morale when determining the outcome of individual skirmishes. The game came on a cassette tape so it was a sad day when my 410 program recorder died.
I've not played that game before - very interesting and will have to give it a try. It sounds like kind of a forerunner of Rome: Total War!
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I’m a compulsive collector / hoarder and I hadn’t made an inventory until now for this post. Many of the computers and consoles have expansions / add-ons for CF/SD mass storage and mini software collections. Computers often have disk drives etc. so there’s lots of extra equipment lying around. Most come from eBay over the last 13 years of active collecting if I’ve not had them since new. I think it was all kicked off when I wanted to buy an Atari VCS because I’d not been able to have one as a kid - it was kind of a gateway drug that led me on to basically wanting anything I’d ever seen a magazine advert for back in the day. These days I just tend to get a machine out once in a while for a session and take a picture for Instagram or sit and gaze at the machines and boxes when I'm supposed to be working!
I’d say the TI-99/4a was my first real programming platform, though I moved on to the Atari XL to be able to (cost effectively) learn to program in assembly language as I was jealous of other machine’s being able to PEEK and POKE. I’d say the TI (especially with Extended BASIC) was great to learn on initially because it didn’t use those hardware access instructions and made you concentrate on program structure and efficiency. I did have the ZX81 before the TI, but only typed programs in from magazines and quickly moved on for colour and sound.
The list of computers and consoles is below (all UK PAL unless stated), except for the handhelds. I think I may have a problem and have just prevented myself from compulsively buying a CoCo 2 on eBay.
Computers:
TI-99/4a PAL silver (x2) and a beige NTSC with PEB
Atari - 400, 800, 1200XL NTSC, 600XL, 800XL x 3, 65XE, 130XE, 520STE x 2, 1040 STFM, Falcon 030
Commodore - VIC-20, 64 (x2), 64C, SX-64, Amiga 500, Amiga 500 plus, Amiga 4000.
Sinclair - ZX81 (x2), Spectrum 48K (x2), Spectrum+, Spectrum 128, Spectrum +2A, Sinclair QL
Acorn - Atom, Electron, BBC Model B (x2), Archimedes 3010 (x2)
Apple - IIe (x2), Mac LC, Mac LCIII, Powerbook G4, iMac 17” (2006), iMac 27” (2010), MacBook Pro 15” (2006)
Tangerine - Oric 16K, Oric Atoms
Sord M5
EACA Colour Genie
Memotech MTX512
Mattel Aquarius
Sharp MZ-711
MSX - Yamaha CX5M (x2), Toshiba HX-10 (x2)
Philips NMS8250 MSX2
Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer
Tatung Einstein
Dragon 32
Amstrad CPC 6128
Sam Coupe
Consoles:
Atari VCS (x3), 2600Jr, 7800
Nintendo NES (x2), SNES (PAL and NTSC), 64 (x2), Game Cube (Japan and UK), Wii (x2), Wii U
Sega Master System I and II, Mega Drive (Japan and UK), Mega Drive II (with Mega CD), Saturn (Japan and UK x2 ), Dreamcast (x2)
Sony PlayStation, PS2, PS2 Slim, PS3 60GB, PS3 Slim, PS4
Microsoft XBox, Crystal XBox, XBox 360 (original version), Xbox 360 (black)
Neo Geo CD
NEC TurboGrafx and PC Engine Turbo Duo
Amstrad GX4000
Philips G7000 (Odyssey II) and CDi-210
Fairchild Channel F (Grandstand)
Intellivision
Colecovision
Acetronic MPU1000 (x2)
Winthronics Academy (Pong clone)
3DO
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I think if I was dis-regarding personal memories and trying to be objective, I'd have to champion Star Raiders as the definitive Atari game. Bearing in mind it's an 8K ROM and in the first wave of releases for the computers it really is a great achievement in game programming and use of the resources of a new platform - fast, colour, first-person view space combat in 1979!
The thing is, a screenshot doesn't do Star Raiders justice as the graphics look dated when not moving and it's only when played that the game shows it's calibre and you get that real Atari 'feel'. There's the wonderful maybe one second pause just before you exit hyperspace when you hope you've managed to steer the ship to the correct destination and you're maybe just about to enter a dogfight and you can really feel the tension. Then there's the desperate attempt to escape to save your damaged ship with failing systems using a blind hyperspace jump that could take you anywhere. All this wrapped up in a frantic race against time to save the galaxy
Any game that inspired both Archer Maclean and Jeff Minter deserves a place in the all-time all-platforms hall of fame.
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As a Retrobate and subscriber, it's great to hear of more Atari coverage coming up in Retro Gamer! I was a lonely UK Atari owner up in the North East looking on with envy at the other areas that had Atari specialist shops as I could only get new titles by mail order. I wrote a short article for retrogamescollector.com here: http://www.retrogamescollector.com/atari-8bit-memories/ about growing up owning an Atari computer in the UK.
Not that I think they're necessarily the best games, just personal favourites because of where I was at the time and associated memories....
- Alternate Reality: The Dungeon
Played this one through a number of times with many late, late nights. Incredibly involving with great replay value. - Boulderdash
Became a compulsive completion with a perfect difficulty curve. - Star Raiders
My first Atari game coming with my new computer and really convinced me I'd made the correct platform choice in moving on from my TI-99/4a. - Mercenary
Many hours lost to exploring the 3D world of Targ in a flying block of cheese. - Zork
The last pick is always the most difficult as there are so many more I'd like to have in the list but I loved the Zork trilogy and they really got me into text adventures.
If you pushed me for more -
Koronis Rift
For me, the best of the early Lucasfilm games that started life on the Atari.
Fort Apocalypse
Synapse at their best.
Necromancer
Synapse still at their best - frantic action where each level builds on how well you did in the previous.
Rainbow Walker
Those Synapse guys just couldn't stop releasing top quality games!
Dropzone
What hasn't already been said about this masterpiece.
Bounty Bob Strikes Back
For me, the game Manic Miner wishes it could have been.
Drelbs
Weird and wonderful.
M.U.L.E
The best four-player game until Bomberman arrived.Trev
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- Alternate Reality: The Dungeon
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The games I lost most late night hours to would be these, from most to least accessible:-
Alternate Reality - The Dungeon (probably The City too but for some reason I never got around to playing that one)
Ultima III and IV
Wizard's Crown and The Eternal Dagger (very hard core with a strategic battle system)
I'd find it very hard to pick a favourite.
I still have on my wish list to play (but I never seem to have enough time to devote):-
Temple of Apshai
Questron
Phantasie
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Was that one of the keyboards advertised with "brittle plastics, no warranty". If so, would like to know about your experience.
Hope you didn't pay too much for the ROM/RAM, one set just fitting your needs was on EBay Germany recently: http://rover.ebay.co...=item41724522a6
Sorry for the delay, I've only just installed the keyboard and it's working fine.
Yes, it was one of those keyboards but I thought I'd take the risk with no other option to hand. Like mimo mentioned, I found the '4' key was loose, fell out in transit and bounced out on use but after a while it seems to have stuck. I can see there may be a problem though. All in all, I'm happy with it as I now have a fully working 800, all keys work and I've kept the keycaps off the old keyboard just in case.
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On it's way to me from eBay (http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=4&pub=5574883395&toolid=10001&campid=5336500554&customid=&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fitm%2F321109903565%3FssPageName%3DSTRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT%26_trksid%3Dp3984.m1439.l2649) a 600XL with 1064 memory expansion. Comes with a 1010 tape drive (no PSU), Alley Cat cassette and four carts - Centipede, Miner 2049er, Boulders & Bombs and Blue Max. I don't think the price is too bad at £50.
I really need the 600XL - I got my childhood machine out to take a picture for Instagram (retroelectrodad on there) and it's giving me a black screen on powering. I'm planning on using this working 600XL to help identify the problem with a bit of chip swapping. If I can't repair then I can always put the working motherboard in my old unit - I love the keyboard and it's in pristine condition.
Also just received a new 800 keyboard through eBay from B&C to deal with the broken spacebar on my 800. This has been an ongoing project as when it arrived it had a faulty ROM board and one faulty 16K RAM board (also replaced via eBay from B&C), hopefully it will now be fully functional.
Now if I could only fix the 810.....
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I'd like to order 1 board please!
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An superb blog - it's bookmarked for me now. I read the MULE article and have found a few Zork articles to follow.
Thanks for sharing!
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I had two TI-99s that I hadn't used for a long while that had the same problem when I started them up. Corrupt characters and then eventually the computer would hang. Luckily I had two F18As waiting to be installed so I thought I'd at least use one to practice the installation and lo and behold installing the F18A corrected the issue and I had a working TI. Seems it was the VDP chip in my case.
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Not XB I'm afraid, but I posted a link to the WAVs of Atlantis in the "Raising Atlantis" thread:-
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I finally got around to checking my 1200XL's serial number - seems quite a high one!
83S DA 79646 143 - somehow made it to the UK and then to me through eBay, has S-Video, 256K RAM and built-in APE port
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Some progress... the zip file contains my Classic99 DSK1 directory containing:-
ATLANTIS - the original side A file
ATDATA - transferred side B data as a single file
ATLDISK - the side A code with the file open command changed to read the new disk file in DSK1
ATXFER - the program I used to take the cassette data and create the disk file
Now, running the new disk version in Classic99 I get a memory full error at line 39, on a real TI it's at line 28. Now to try to work out how to save some memory!
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Aha! I was expecting the middle 13 records with 2 values to result in 26 files. Thanks for pointing that out!
May not need to locate my cassette cable after all.
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The program on side A seems to be complete. On side B it finds 63 small files.
That's what I had. The problem is that from my reading of the code there are 76 items of data so the split doesn't quite marry-up. That's why I thought the way to go would be to create a version of the code to read the data from cassette and write to a single disk file using the real hardware (and my CF7+), then change the Atlantis code to read the new disk file and deal with any memory issues should there be any.
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As a British TI99'er I felt I should buy that copy of Atlantis and try to move it along. I'd hoped to get a chance to work on transferring it to disk over the weekend but failed (ended up with a large number of individual TIFILEs from side B) so I thought I'd post the wavs for both sides and see if anybody else can transfer it faster than I can, which is very likely!
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45563934/Atlantis.zip
If nobody gets around to it, I'll certainly be giving it a try - it looks to me like I'll need to find my cassette cable and use modified side A code to read the data from side B and transfer it to a disk file. That probably sits behind modding my PAL modulator for composite in my todo list right now.
Trev
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I scanned the manual today - quite low-res at 75dpi but I hope it's OK....
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Typing those C&VG programs into my TI was my programming education. Not that the games were well coded, more that fixing the typos and bugs was an excellent start in learning to program. I don't recall a single listing from that magazine being correct. Happy times!
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PM sent - hope I'm not too late!
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I'd give the advantage to the TI sprite system against Atari's PMG in straightforward use for the types of game being released when they competed against each other. The PMG are lower resolution,
narrower, more expensive memory-wise in normal use and there are fewer of them. However, I do think that PMG has advantages in some areas - the larger areas of colour when scaled up can act as an underlay to the playfield graphics and soft-sprites in front of them, it's easy to create large vertical overlays such as cockpit struts for a flight sim, screen area borders that you don't need to redraw when scrolling etc.
The real power comes when you combine PMG with the Display List and in particular the Display List Interrupt. This lets you change anything about the graphics - mode, colours, character set, scrolling offsets, with scan-line accuracy and without having to count the scan lines in a kernel as you would need to in the 2600. If you wish, and I think some early 2600 conversions did, you could write to the player register directly in a DLI or kernel without memory access and change the player hardware bytes, colours or enable/disable them on each scanline but the computer hardware was engineered to make this unnecessary.
For PMG players using DLIs you can shift a single player around, changing position and/or colour of the player stripe on different mode lines down the screen so that it bahaves like a number of sprites. If you consider something like Miner 2049er then it's likely that in some if not most levels all of the enemies are made from a single player stripe chopped around and colour-changed. For demo purposes, you could split the player on each mode line and combine the missiles into a 5th player to give you 5 players x 24 player splits = 120 apparent sprites if you only want horizontal movement. Not very useful or practical I know put possible.
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I went with the mini-customised Spectra2 in the data bank with the untouched library in my main bank 0. I'm trying to keep all of the bulk data separate which is why, although my code doesn't need a multi-bank setup, I decided to start with two banks and see how it goes.
For managing the routines in different banks, I'm trying out a branch table just after the cartridge header in each bank that stores branch instructions to the routines in that bank. Then I branch to the routines indirectly through the table branch instructions. I copy the branch table labels into an include file for other banks when a new routine is added. If I need to change anything I don't need to recompile the other banks unless there's an addition to the branch table for a new routine as the table labels are frozen. I'm thinking that I can then remove the branch table by moving the labels to the actual routines when it's all stable at some later time.
Spectra2 has really saved me so much effort and it's letting me concentrate on getting used to the TMS9900 coming from a 6502 mainly. I've only found one issue to now - in the YX2PX / YX2PXX routine I was getting X pixels a little offset to the character positions and found that I needed to clear TMP1 for it work correctly. I added the line in the Spectra2 library:-
YX2PX MOV @WYX,TMP0 YX2PXX MOV R11,TMP2 ; Save return address SWPB TMP0 ; Y<->X< CLR TMP1 ; Clear ready for shift MOVB TMP0,TMP1 ; Copy X to TMP1 ... ...Really I find at the moment that every time I try to add something I break something so progress is slow but without the runtime library I'd be nowhere. Thanks again retroclouds!
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One thing that hadn't occurred to me at first when I started collecting is that I'm going to have to develop some electronics skill to repair, recap etc these old machines as they deteriorate. I had to change the motherboards in my two Mac LCs and made my Spectrum 48Ks composite video but that's my limit right now.
I think I've shown most of my machines working on Instagram by now.