Foebane

1. This was around 28 years ago, and I was too panicked and too young to think logically. To be frank, I can't remember if I tried to resolve it but it happened again or not, but I think I would've tried something. 2. What could a neighbour or local friend do? 3. I will reply here as often as I like, you're not going to shut me up that easily.

I concur! Paranoid, it's not just a case of "turning it on and off again", it would happen whenever a joystick was connected with autofire turned on and contact made at the right moment. I mean, once you know how it happens, you can take steps to prevent it by turning off the autofire, but as I said, I practically panicked when it first happened, as I recounted above.

Trivial? I thought I'd damaged my ST, somehow, and I risked it further by taking it as I did into town to get it seen to, to no avail, on an unnecessary trip, because I did not know about this quirk of the ST, and I had absolutely no possible way of knowing about it back then. Put it this way, this philosophy of "not caring" nearly cost me a computer!

Sorry, Christos, I meant to change that first remark about insulting me, but for some reason the Edit button was non-existent. I take that back. I was also soused when I posted last night, so that's another something-I-should-not-do for me, really, but I was upset by the posts I saw, namely yours and the one that followed it, I reacted and I take it back. I don't hate everything about the ST - the graphics are good and, to be frank, I've been impressed by a lot of the Demoscene graphics stuff I've seen on it (both STFM and STE), but I think the poor sound chips let down the ST line. After all, that's what this thread was all about. If I've gone off on a tangent, I shouldn't really have insulted people on the computers they had, as children, or by choice, or both. I had a mostly good-to-great experience with the ST - after all, it was my first 16-bit system, by choice - and I enjoyed several games on it, namely Carrier Command, Damocles, E-Motion, Vaxine and a few others. The joystick autofire was the only worrying part, as I recall. It was only later that I went for the Amiga, after much convincing of my parents after the £300 they just splurged out (I must've made a hell of a speech, I don't recall anything about it). They gave in, my Dad walked in my room at Christmas and practically threw in my first (albeit faulty) Amiga 500 and that was that. I sold the ST to the college I was at at the time, and continued to use it there for a while. I have fond memories of my time with the ST, but it was not a Jay Miner machine (I must've had a REAL hard-on for that guy at the time, but all I knew was I wanted a kind of "higher-end" Atari 800XL experience. More of the same, please, etc. BUT, the audio was a disappointment for the most part. I don't mean to troll, but my drinking at night gets the better of me. I should really stay off forums at those times, I've landed myself in trouble before. If I sound hostile once more one night, then call me out on it.

To elaborate, I don't exactly hate EVERYTHING about the ST, and to be frank, "hate" is a strong word, but I really don't like that Yamaha sound chip, it just doesn't seem suited to a 16-bit system. I couldn't edit my previous post to you, so I posted again. I take back my attitude here, but again, I couldn't edit my previous post.

I am NOT trolling, and I take a very DIM view of people who think I am. Don't forget, this is an Atari forum, not just ST, and I appreciate the Atari 400/800/XL/XE much more than I appreciate the Jackintosh, and I doubt I would be banned because I support at least one of the platforms here.

That's correct, but you do not win a prize since you insulted me. Why would Jack permit such a stupid design decision? I confirmed the joystick test by holding down the fire button when I reset. Result? Same issue.

You are VERY warm indeed. Clue: It's to do with the connected peripherals I mentioned, but I bet you'll never guess it in a million years - no offence.

Calimero, have you seen "From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years"? Does RJ Mical repeat his statement there, too? I have it, and I could find out for myself, but it's a long documentary.

I've noticed that there seems to be two people in particular across the 8- and 16-bit divide, and who happened to head teams who developed competing systems, namely Jay Miner and Jack Tramiel. One was a mild-mannered man with a cute dog who developed pacemakers when he wasn't developing robust, polished early computer hardware and who suffered from kidney problems. The other was a man who suffered horrifically in his younger years, and as a result grew a ruthless streak and a zeal to promote cheap computer hardware and undercut the competition. One created the Atari 400/800/XL and later on masterminded the Amiga development, both computers which I admire and appreciate to this day. The other spearheaded the development of the Commodore 64 and later Atari ST, two computers which initially undercut the Atari 8-Bit AND the Amiga (to my annoyance) who won with the former but ultimately lost with the latter. There is the old axiom "Nice Guys Finish Last", but to be frank, I know which one I'd rather admire as an icon of computing. I guess it could so easily have gone the other way.

You mean Tramiel wanted Amiga so badly so he could KILL IT STONE DEAD??? WHAT a BASTARD DOUCHEBAG! What is RBP again? So, here's the real reasons why those companies turned down Amiga: Apple sucks, it's only ever been about Jobs' closed-system vision, nothing else matters. HP only ever do printers anyway. Sony are Japanese and do their own thing. SiliconGraphics are a bit high-end with their stuff, to be honest.

Calimero, you sound annoying, like an Amiga demo named after you that is also annoying. EDIT: Enjoy! (Or not, I really don't care) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORhSzwvwhfA

Let me tell you a little story about one way in which the ST sucks: I had my STFM back in 1990, around Autumn, and one day I put it on and was horrified to hear a constant beep, like that annoying blippy little beep that occurs every time a key is pressed, but this time it was a constant bleep and I couldn't do a thing, like use the keyboard or mouse, and the ST had locked up. So I disconnected everything, including the mouse and joystick, and proceeded to put the ST in a suitcase, wrapped in newspaper and took it to the computer shop. Guess what? It worked perfectly. I was confused and annoyed that I'd taken this thing on the bus to town and had to go back with no explanation as to why it suddenly started to work again, but I took it back home, and yes, it did work again. Guess what the cause of the lock-up was. I'll give the answer at the end of today.

I salvaged the .ini file and tried it. I think it's worked, but it's hard to tell since I set it up again just yesterday.

Never mind. I couldn't find the answer so simply decided to set everything up from scratch, from the registry.

I would like to move all my Altirra.ini settings to the Registry (no .ini file) without having to set everything up from scratch (the last time I deleted my .ini file it resetted to defaults). So, is there a way of doing that, easily?

Platformers? You want platformers on the ST, you go to the Demoscene, there's a whole massive bunch of ST demos disguised as platform games out there. The premise is simple: unlike something logical like on the Amiga where a multi-part demo is loaded one part at a time and you press the mouse button to move on to the next, ST demos require you to play a (mostly shitty) platform game with a lame character who goes to each door to load each part. I mean, it's honestly tedious, whoever came up with that idea should be shot.

I'm glad Atari went bust in the end, really, REALLY glad. Face it, both it and Commodore were part of the OldSkool, and that had had its day. Gaming was big business, and there was no fucking chance in HELL that those two could possibly, POSSIBLY compete with Microsoft and Sony.

Yeah, but for a while it was always starting in the path I specified in the parameter mentioned above, but now it just starts in the folder where I last opened an Atari image, very much like a MRU would do. That means all my emulators now use MRU, like WinUAE, VICE and Spectaculator. Oh well...

UPDATE: Strange thing since I've upgraded to Windows 10: the entry in the .ini I mentioned above is still there in the file, but now the MRU (which I can't see in the .ini) seems to have taken over. Does Altirra have a MRU in the Registry, at all?

A 600XL, then 800XL. No C64.

I'm sure I acknowledged the ST/Falcon's sound superiority (at least with MIDI and DSP) in an earlier post on this thread. I'm so Jay Miner because I grew up with his hardware, and was jealous at the C64 getting all the software that the A8 could've also handled. I only knew one other A8 owner at school, and I swapped games with him. I also got an ST when I should've gotten an Amiga from the start, I never even went to the local computer shop for a demo of both of them, I just carried on with Atari, not knowing ownership had effectively swapped around.

I didn't say "NOT good for him". Read again. Why are you so defensive towards Jack Tramiel? Did you personally know him? Are you a relative of his?

See post #58.

I would say that the Jaguar and Falcon were commercial failures (disaster is a bit strong) but the Amiga sold quite well outside of North America. The way I see it, lack of R&D on Commodore's part (or at least, not enough), mismanagement and looming obsolesence were the death knell of the Amiga and Commodore, as the PC became much more powerful, upgradeable and popular as a gaming machine. Even if Commodore had gotten their act together, the Amiga would've had a fixed lifespan anyway, but would've been a serious competitor to the PC during that time. But it was too little, too late.