Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

Foebane

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    370

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Foebane

  1. Posted

    It's always bothered me why companies hide the details of their technology, even when they go bust, so that people have to resort to recreating it from scratch from technical manuals for emulators instead of simply using the chip designs directly. Or if there are no chip design documents, why they can't simply take an existing chip, cut it open and use an electron scanning microscope to examine the surface of the IC and recreate it from there?

     

    If this AtariBox wants to be a full-blown VCS system, why use an emulator running in a Linux OS? Why not get hold of the genuine hardware and copy it? Is it still under copyright (laughs)?

     

  3. Posted

    Right, let me explain:

     

    I have the emulators and software for each platform I use put in separate folders labelled with the code I use for the platform (like A8 for Atari 8-bit). There are also zipped versions of the files which are extracted from a source folder into a target folder. With the emulators, I split the zipped files up into the main emulator app, any extras like ROMs or additional apps, and lastly, the settings. This way they can be easily changed without affecting the other parts, and when they are extracted into the target folder, they are all put together in a working form. However, every time I extract a particular folder, the original contents of the target folder are deleted first. This is what I call a "fresh install", so to speak. I have a small set of batch files dedicated to doing things this way, and it works for those other emulators that use MRUs. But not with Altirra. Could my way of doing things be the cause?

     

    My spec is: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP 1. I use the 32-bit version of Altirra.

  4. Posted

    IIRC Altirra normally stores the last location you used to load etc something

     

    Edit: That is indeed the case, there's no default directory setting I'm afraid....

     

    I suppose you could have a shortcut to an alternate ini file where the MRU pointer is set to what you want to call the default directory

    It doesn't work that way for me. Everytime I refresh the Altirra emulator, I get put into the Altirra folder itself.

     

    How can I set an MRU pointer?

  9. Posted

    Is this an alternative name for the original Atari ST? Why does Steven Seagal in his Steem SSE emulator call it this?

     

    I know that the F stands for Floppy, but then again, the STE also has a floppy drive, so why not just call it an ST?

     

    I just find it a nuisance that the systems emulated on Steem are "STE, STF and Mega ST 4". If the STF is the original Atari ST, why isn't it first in the list?

     

  10. Posted

    I tried the Shortcut idea and it sort of worked, but I had to devise a workaround to pin the shortcut to the taskbar, as all my emulators are accessed through the taskbar and otherwise parameters aren't allowed.

     

    In the end I simply experimented with the file selector in Altirra and discovered that just typing in "..\" was enough to bring me out of "A8 Emulator" and allow me to access "A8 Software", since they're on the same level hierarchically. So that's that sorted! :)

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    Mine remembers the directory (2.70) - I think at an earlier stage it only remembered one directory which it went back to for disk, Rom, boot but now it seems to memorize each seperately.

    The way I have my emulators set up, I have batch files that can erase the Emulator or Software folders and re-unzip them from a ZIP source that I put together, basically "resetting" them to defaults. What I would really like is for the default to be what I wish, rather than the home folder for the emulator.

     

    I'm away from home at the moment, but could Wrathchild's shortcut idea work in this case?

  12. Posted

    I have my emulators stored in their own individual folders marked "(platform) Emulator" and all of their corresponding software in individual folders marked "(platform)" Software.

    When I start up Altirra for the first time, the default path for launching files with Alt-B is always within the "A8 Emulator" folder (the Altirra home folder) but what I'd like to do is to have it start from within the root of the "A8 Software" folder instead. Is there a way to do that?

  13. Posted

    Thank you, Rybags, that link did it!

     

    The ROM for Pole Position is indeed how I played it back in the day, and the same for Defender and Computer Chess, too! My father used to ration me to one game a year, presumably because he figured I should be learning coding rather than just playing games, or because they were so expensive as ROMs.

     

    So yes, the original US ROM version has got the chequered flags at the end of the final lap of the race, but I hadn't seen them for so long (instead of corrupted graphics) that I'd forgotten they had a red outline to them!

     

    As of now, I'm replacing the current ATRs I've got of those games with the ROMs that I remember owning.

     

    BTW, the US ROMs featured on AtariMania were available in the UK, right?

  19. Posted

    In this video here, I mean:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9mCxIUwVs

     

    The guy behind this channel said that the 600XL was totally vanilla, only the cartridge drove the conversion of the video in real-time.

     

    What gets me is how can a mere 256 colours, using HSV, recreate the millions of colours needed in FMV? In other videos he made showing off the cartridge, he used Tron and Dire Straits' Money for Nothing, probably because they have bright primary colours to them. Another one was A-Ha's Take on Me, for the drawn animation sequences I imagine.

     

    The sound is quite good, too!

     

    It certainly shows that Jay Miner hardware was the best at the time.

     

    One last question: Can this be emulated in Altirra? I have a few videos I'd quite like to throw at it.

     

  21. Posted

    The first documentary with this name had practically no mention of the Atari 8-bit series, just Speccy, Speccy, Speccy and C64, C64, C64. Heck, even the BBC Micro got more love than the Amstrad CPC!

     

    The Amiga Years documentary addressed this a bit, but it was still only like a footnote.

     

    I'm sick of the Speccy and C64 getting all the love and plaudits for solely creating the 8-bit games industry, it's an injustice!

     

    • Like 4

  23. Posted

    First of all, I have tried software like Nvidia Shadowplay and Bandicam to record fullscreen video from Altirra, but for some reason, the audio sometimes manifests these annoyingly loud clicks and chirps from the audio which is nothing to do with what's running, and it seems to happen somewhat randomly or even not at all, depending on the type of audio.

     

    I discovered that emulators tend to have built-in recorders, and Spectaculator has an excellent recorder, which came in useful as neither Shadowplay nor Bandicam would work with that emulator at all.

     

    However, I look at Altirra's video recorder and am wondering about a couple of things:

     

    1. What is the best frame rate to use? As default, the one marked "accurate" (49.861) is chosen and it sets it to that every time I choose Record, so should I stick with it? Ideally, I wouldn't mind 50fps but I know that video encoders tend to use fractions under the intended frame rates (29.97 springs to mind).

     

    2. Does "encode duplicate frames as full frames" make the video more compatible with players and other encoders? I tried a video encoded without this option and it didn't play properly on an Android player.

     

    So can you please advise?

     

  24. Posted

    I figured on-board sound these days was simply a case of using a simple DAC, as Windows handles everything to do with audio and just sends it out through the DAC.

     

    However, a long time ago I discovered that when I plugged in speakers through the audio out socket on the motherboard, I could hear interference from the graphics card, as the output was converted to analogue and that's when the interference started. Then I got a USB device that was a simple DAC and moved it as far away from the PC as I could, which reduced the interference. Lastly, I simply set the graphics card to output audio via HDMI and the interference has stopped outright, as the audio is digital all the way to the monitor which THEN converts it to analogue for output via it's own audio socket.

  25. Posted

    Yes, I have a mid- to high-range card, the 960GTX.

     

    I just checked, and it seems 2.80 doesn't work well with a lot of demos neither - on 2.70, Numen by Taquart performs much better than on 2.80, where at one point it will stutter badly, and it is unavoidable.

     

    I am particularly peeved as I have just recorded a whole bunch of demos on 2.80, having forgotten the above issues, and now I'll have to re-record them all again on 2.70!

     

    I don't have a Creative card, the motherboard audio works perfectly fine. I haven't had a sound card for well over a decade.

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...