Foebane

Well that ATR didn't work. I have a whole bunch of Atari files on my PC hard disk. Is there any way of using AtariDOS to treat the PC HD as if it were an Atari one? What settings should I use on Atari800Win? And which AtariDOS version should I use? I've been trying to access these files on an A8 for ages but it's driving me up the wall.

I created an .ATR file with files on it, but when I try to open it by itself the Atari just crashes. I assume I can use AtariDOS to open the files on it but I can't find it anywhere. Do I have to hunt down a random .ATR with DOS on it or is it available built into Atari800Win. Or could you provide me with a DOS .ATR? Help, please!

Talking of PAL errors, one day I went on AtariBASIC, and wrote a simple program that used Mode 11 to draw a grid of hues from 0-15, from left to right, and top to bottom, and did it so they interlaced between each other, creating a colour grid. What I saw on a colour PAL TV blew me away. There were over 200 subtle shades there, a lot of them pastel shades, different from all standard Atari colours. And this was from the basic 15 Atari hues! I never knew the Atari was capable of such colours, even though it was on a PAL TV with the inherent errors and that they were all the same shade. Of course, I run the program on a B&W TV set and all I get is a grey box. Try the same thing on your real Ataris hooked up to PAL sets - you'll be surprised! Just out of curiosity, recently I retyped in the program on Atari800Win, and to be frank, I was majorly disappointed. Of course, running on a simulation of a PAL computer on an RGB computer yielded discrete shades. Boring. Made me pine for the genuine article!

Basically there is two ways to REALLY mix colors on a PAL display: 1. Luminance mixing with hires pixels. Choose two colors with the same chrominance but different luminance (light and dark blue for example). Since the pixel clock is 7.9 MHz on a C64 (and similar on an Atari) setting alternating pixels will get you a frequency of 3.94 MHz on the luma signal. This is already very close to the 4.43 MHz color carrier, so when the PAL decoder tries to divide the video signal into chroma and luma signal, it will use a filter with a cutoff frequency around 4 MHz -> the hires pixels will disappear and an almost perfectly mixed luminance will appear instead of the single hires pixels. 2. Chrominance mixing with any pixels. This is always there, but for mixing "perfect" colors choose two colors of the same luminance level and different chrominance level. Now alternate them each rasterline. The PAL decoder needs the color carrier of two rasterline to decode the color offset signals... This means: the chrominance of the current rasterline mixes perfectly with the one from the previous line, but luma will still be full resolution. 895285[/snapback] Like this, you mean? This is an IFLI mode which mixes colours to create many more - certainly, there are colours there I've never seen on a C64:

I just remembered two things about the 1010s I had: 1. I used to use my A8 on a B&W TV set, and sometimes I would take the A8 and the 1010 downstairs so I could use the big colour TV set. One morning I did so, but fumbling around in the dark, connecting the power lead to the 1010, I stuck it in the data port by mistake, frying the circuit board. In the end the 1010 didn't load programs at all. 2. When the buttons (levers) broke on my 1010, I took off the front brown panel, replaced it with a cardboard cover (as it looked so ugly) and I actually used LEGO pieces for the new buttons! It worked fairly well, too! Just a couple of my reminiscenses about the good ol' Atari 1010!

Uuuumm... that's not actually the POKEY playing that tune - it's an audio recording that's stored on the tape, so it could be a techno track, a full orchestra, a SID tune or, as with European Countries And Capitals, have s a narration track during loading and the computer itself isn't involved in the playback. 894980[/snapback] Actually, TMR, I already knew that! I just wanted to see if I could catch anyone out. It IS a good system isn't it? Simply record your background soundtrack in mono (so it uses both stereo sides) and then simply use the program recorder (410, 1010) to record the program on top. And since it only records on one stereo side, the soundtrack will still be there on the other. Try listening to the tape in a Walkman afterwards, it's quite curious hearing data on one side and the soundtrack on the other. You're right, Atari put it to great use in the early days, it's just a pity more people didn't use the ability. On the downside, though, you are stuck with the same soundtrack each time you load the program, even if it's your favourite pop single or whatever!

I don't know why I didn't think of that before. Just take Mode 9, take three bitmaps, each R,G,B values of one image, and simply display each one under a red, green and blue hue in a cycle very quickly indeed! Has anyone ever done this? I bet it would be AWESOME to see!

4 POKEY voices are not able to play "real" music... as 4 SID voices wouldn't. One problem is the acoustical resolution....another problem is the "mono" setting. Having four voices played on one octave results in weird noise. To have better acoustical results, the octaves have to be more spreaded than it is possible with 4 channels. Another solution would have been a stereo pokey, so the voices are separated by their played position. 3 channels are "the" solution for chipmusic on almost every 8-bit system ... (incl. ST). Having the possibility of using 2 operators for enhancing the main voice (the whole tun also) is a great thing. The best result musically would be a "3" operator main channel with two digitized channels. 894797[/snapback] Is there an audible manifestation of this "weird noise"? How would it sound? I've noticed lots of times in the past that when certain POKEY tunes are played, some of the notes sound muffled, and there is even sometimes momentary silence when notes are meant to be playing, as if the two notes have cancelled each other out. I've also heard some unintended distortion in other places. Is this what you mean? I know the AY and SID chips have three channels and can also play white noise or digitised sound, but on the AY doesn't one of those three channels have to be given over to producing white noise, reducing the actual voices down to two tone, one noise? If you ask me, four channels is the optimum for music, for the vast majority of music consists of the following: 1. Main melody 2. Background melody (including chords) 3. Bass notes 4. Percussion Must be why the Amiga is so popular with musicians!

me thinks you mean either 410 or 1010, not 810 (which didn't have any buttons) 894842[/snapback] I mean this thing: The buttons were attached to levers underneath that pushed against the actual switches for the functions, and more often than not they would snap if you pressed the button down either too hard or too often. In the end I took off the brown plate off the front and pushed the switches directly.

No need to be sarky! Don't blame me, anyway, blame the person who started the C64 thread!

Yeah, I'd've preferred one of those to the 810 tape decks for the XL series - the buttons used to break so easily on those!

I always thought 8-bit frequency was perfectly adequate for POKEY music. I don't see what is to be gained by using 16-bit frequencies - so what if the POKEY sounds like a piano that is in ever-so-slight need of tuning? If you ask me the SID is TOO accurate with it's standard 16-bit frequencies.

Atari 8-Bit by a long shot! Better sound, better graphics, better I/O (Kempston, HONESTLY!), better everything. And Speccy games are no more playable than Atari games. I don't see what the fuss is all about. Your thoughts on this?

Of course the POKEY is capable of playing four-channel music during tape loading. Check out Atari's Lone Raider, which plays a 4-channel rendition of "Flight of the Bumblebee" and some other tune, as it loads! The other thing that surprises me is how small the loader program is. I'm surprised they can fit such an amount of musical data in such a small space. Amazing!

SID has only 3 channels as opposed to POKEY's 4. SID superior? Hah, don't make me laugh! Also, C64 graphics are inferior as well. Those 16 oddly-chosen colours really stand out in artwork, and as such, all the artwork has the same horrible feel. And those "cells" or "attributes" as I call them remind me of ZX Spectrum graphics, which I HATE!

God, and I believed it for a second! I mean, I've seen portable Ataris before, but not with TFT screens, and certainly not with an SRS logo on the side! What is the point of this? You've simply taken a laptop and stuck an Atari sticker on it! Not cool.

CMD worked, it's gone. Thanks all! Stupid WinXP!

Recently, I downloaded an Atari game in the form of an EXE, but accidentally ran it on WinXP. Now I can't get rid of it. Every time I try to delete it, it says some process is using it, but I can't figure out what. Restarting the PC does nothing either. It's happened before as well - I eventually had to reinstall Windows and that got rid of it, but I reinstalled for another reason, not that. Anything I could do?

I don't know about any Atarians here coming from London, but I also post on a Harry Potter board, and I know of at least one person there possibly caught up in this chaos. Hope every poster here or there is OK, and everyone else of course.

Happy to see 800XL running Pole Position, unhappy to see PP include a high score table, which it never had. Also, the fact the Atari is the girl's reminds me of Alex the hacker in Jurassic Park.

WOW! So many Atari games in their original forms! How tempting an auction is this? If only I had a real 800XL!

Well, I played Fractalus earlier, and found these keys to be the ones: A - Airlock S - Systems on/off L - Land Shift-6 - Take-off This is on Atari800Win, mind! EDIT: Why do you think I wouldn't believe you concerning your mobile? If you say you've got a Jaggi bashing on your spacecraft windshield as a piccie on your phone, then I believe you! I too got a Jaggi pounding on my windshield as well! It took a long time to happen, but it did!

Heaven, Fractalus was one of my favourite games back in the 80s, but because now I've forgotten the keys used, I can't really enjoy it as I used to. That, and the emulator didn't seem to recognise the obvious keypresses either. Yes, sound was GREAT in that game. I remember being scared when the Jaggi popped up in front of your viewshield and then punched it in! Made a right fool of myself in others about that - ahem.

Invitro IO4 can be found in this Demos index: http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~sgl/atari/...index_php3.html I think it's actually downloadable from DEMOS004.ZIP. These are special megabyte-sized disk images, and you'll have to use the program they mention. I think it's in the instructions.

And on what do you base this extremely unlikely conclusion? There are several sound effects in that game which are very obviously digitized (most notably the water sounds in the fish-tank minigame). 883569[/snapback] Schmutzy said the same thing, why don't you blame him as well? What I mean by their not being sampled is they're not taken from outside sources like real water, etc, but use POKEY's base sounds, changing very rapidly to achieve sample-like quality - BUT they still sound artificial. As someone else said, the person who created the SFX was a genius on the POKEY, so he must've been excellent at achieving sample-like quality without using samples as we know them.