a8isa1

@zbyti Would you please explain what the asterisk (*) does in this line of Action! code. I recognize the format of the instruction as similar instructions appear in the runtime library but I never understood what the asterisk does. Regards, -SteveS

Would the NTSC version of the game be called, "Cookies in Hell"? Biscuits here are a hard treat for the dog or a light, fluffy pastry for humans, often used to convey large portions of butter to their mouths.

Dug my drives out last night but forgot to make note of the models. From 1983 until about 2008 I used TEAC FD-50A single sided mechs. Never did feel confident about as to how to change the the pressure pads. Replaced the mechs with double sided Chinon FZ-502 drives (I think that the model) from a 1989 PC-XT clone (yes, 1989!). I occasionally connect one or two 1.2 MB mechs. I can't remember the make or model numbers. Definitely dual speed units retained from my first PC, a PC-AT clone. These days I mostly just run the drives to see if they still work. I try to do something to keep my interest at least for a few hours. This time it was connecting the ATR8000 and using an ESP8266 with one of the older fujinet test firmwares ("multilator-rev2-n32"). There aren't many SIO2whatever type devices that ATR8000 would play well with. I never managed to get the 1.2 MB drives to work in tandem with the 40 track drives. -SteveS

Is there a story behind the solitary sneaker?

I forgot to make that a link. p.s. That's not my site. I played the tactics mentioned.

Space Invaders was my one video game addiction. OK, maybe Donkey Kong as well. However, I was pretty good at Space Invaders but not the latter. I don't know if it had a hacked ROM or there was a feature of the game's settings or if there's a bug in software, but the machine I played would post 99 credits when I rolled the score past 9999. I routinely rolled the score 5 times. Rarely 6 times. There was one player who was better. Together we played all morning before afternoon classes on 50 cents. These tricks and "easter egg" made my score possible. The latter is a cheat but you need to develop a skill in order to make use of it. When an invader one row above the bottom (or just above your gun) you are safe from being shot. You move to the far right then move back to the left shooting every invader along the. You must be 100% every time a row reaches that region. It's possible to recover from a miss but it takes a lot of fast shooting and mostly luck. I hope your port will play on NTSC machines because I truly love this game. Looks great so far! Thanks for revisiting this classic! -SteveS

The reason was an overheating issue. The memory got too warm in the cases. Analog Computing published a blurb about it. I'm glad there was a simple fix. My 800 used to crash in under an hour of use, even just sitting in BASIC. After I took the single 16K board out of the case I never had a problem again. I still have the 800. Eventually I upgraded the 800 to 48K but for a few years it had 24K and for several years it had 32K. p.s. DrVenkman beat me to it! Just by seconds!

Thanks, Ivop! It looks great! I'd love to take a look at it but unfortunately all my SIO devices aren't working. SIO2PC no longer detected by my laptop. RPi won't read any of my SD cards. Barebones SDrive failed due to bad voltage switcher back in 2009 and the workaround (2 signal diodes in series) , which worked for 11 years, failed recently. Can't find my supply of 1n4148s. Cable to my SDrive-MAX snapped off due to not having a for it case and without it not having a convenient means to add strain relief. Also the cable is far too short . And I can't remember which test software for fujinet (esp8266 version) was the one that worked (mostly) for my homebrew.

My signature's link now points to one of my attachments. Any browser tab that has one of my posts in view would need to be refreshed to have the change.

oh wow! Sorry about that. It's Microsoft OneDrive. Didn't know it was running so many scripts. I'll move my signature's link to my Dropbox account for now but I don't know if that's much better. Can someone suggest a clean (and preferably free) host for sharing small files. Here are my palettes: a8isa1_palettes.zip

would anyone like to do an NTSC conversion using the saturation 40 palette (see my sig)?

I think this is a Newton Design joystick but I'm not sure of that name. I remember it was only available via mail order. I bought it in 1982 (best guess). The stick is arcade quality but with leaf switches. The spring in the button is much to stiff for long session use.

As it turned out Mathy stored the images as DCM files. Here is a newly created ATR of my disk. mydos_builder_3014_319.atr

Back as in flip side? Not possible. The ATR8000 is the only A8 drive system I've ever owned and the disk doesn't have 2 index holes. I doubt it's a "flippy".

Mathy has it and perhaps 4 or so earlier versions on his mydos page. I sent them to him 10+ years ago. Www.mathyvannisselroy.nl

This is the final MyDOS disk I have for my ATR8000. I don't even recall how I obtained the disk seeing I acquired the unit second-hand in 1983/1984 which is earlier than the 1985 date indicated on the disk. I'm curious if there were versions later than the 3.014/3.19 builder disk. I seem to recall before MyDOS began shipping with ATR8000's that OS/A+ was the DOS of choice but I'm not sure. Were there ever other DOSes included with or made available specifically for the ATR8000? If so, what were the final version numbers? Thanks. -SteveS

You could put one of Wrathchild's big Infocom_AtrQuads onto one 8mbit cartridge. More than one won't fit and there are six to choose from ? You would need a real disk (or disk emulator) to do game saves. Probably easier to use all the ATRs on a disk emulator but the above is option -SteveS

Stunning! One more reason to wish to have PAL hardware!

I just stumbled upon an old advertisement for these disks. I'm glad someone archived them. Thanks for providing the images!

Branch v13 is what I cloned but the display still indicates v1.2. p.s. Nevermind. The fourth attempt was the charmer. v1.3b now installed.

Lord Thag, Sorry I can't quote you because of the multiple quotes in your reply. In the first line of my reply I indicated that have saved and loaded spreadsheets using SpeedCalc in SpartaDos X. However, you can't use SpartaDos X's drive letter notation. You must use, for example, D1:my_spreadsheet. -SteveS

I compiled this version. I am sure it was successful, both the compilation and the flashing of the arduino. However, my SDrive-MAX still lists "v1.2" on the touch screen. Is there something I overlooked doing? -SteveS

Correction: That's atariwiki.org!

SpeedCalc.xex loads (use "X SPEEDCAL.XEX"). I can store and load files but I need to use the Dn:filename notation (where n is the drive number). This is the SpeedCalc published in Compute! Magazine. Atari version printed in March 1986 issue. I found SpeedCalc at www.atarionline.pl. I found more versions (including an enhanced version) at atariwiki.com. I also found a short article entitled, IF-THEN-ELSE for SpeedCalc at atarimagzines.com I don't know if SpeedCalc would suit anyone's needs but it seems to run. I don't have enough knowledge of SpartaDos X or spreadsheets to give this combination a good shakedown test. -SteveS

This image needed some NTSC love too a8isa1_ferrari27_NTSC.xex