Kirkman
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Posts posted by Kirkman
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We got the Jag for Christmas in 1993. All my other old computers are gone, but the Jaguar remains. And it's been rediscovered by my kids!
http://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/11/21/happy-birthday-atari-jaguar/
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Benj Edwards posted this scan of an old advertisement ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Jaguar's retail launch in NY and SF, which is this Friday.
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Don't forget about the Internet Archive. Jason Scott has been tossing terabytes of magazines, books, and other scans into IA for permanent storage. There are a ton of magazines here: http://archive.org/details/computermagazines.
If you have scans, I urge you to send 'em to Jason. The IA will make sure they are easily accessible to the world and for all time.
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Thanks for that. Assassin is still one of my favorite board games. I continue to play it
from time to time. (of course I've got a maxed out character on my board).
BTW, I hope you mentioned to him that we are still going and using his game
on our boards. (I'm sure you did!)
Yes, I linked to your board and others at the end of the "Remembering Assassin" blog post.
But even more interesting, the "C Monster" must have found your board sometime in the last few months. Just a day or two ago I encountered him in the Dark Force Assassin game, and proceeded to kill him.
--Josh
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Earlier this year I finally managed to track down Kevin MacFarland, author of the Atari ST BBS door game "Assassin." Thought you guys might enjoy my interview with him. Back then he went by the handle "C Monster."
I also wrote up a blog post remembering Assassin. If anyone else remembers the game, I encourage you to leave a comment on the blog!
(And, as I mention in the blog, you can still play Assassin today on Dark Force, The Grove, and Starfleet HQ BBSes.) -
Wish I was in SoCal.
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I just checked it out. Very cool to see another new (old) BBS, especially one running a newer version of Space Empire Elite than I had ever played.
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Correct. Both the DRI and Atari people working on TOS knew quite a bit about the Mac (through the Lisa, and early versions of Inside Macintosh). Some of the graphics development for the ST was initially done on Lisa systems. I bought a 128K Mac a couple weeks after it came out, a few months before the first TOS ROMs shipped.
There was /zero/ feedback from Atari or DRI back to Apple.
It was a treat to see you had replied to me! I'm a big fan of your blog, particularly your Atari and Apple anecdotes. I grew up on Atari STs given to my family as hand-me-downs and have always loved all things Atari.
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Slideshow: The History of the Desktop Operating System: Slide 8 is where the Atari OS gets covered.
Pretty cool to see TOS included!
But this statement struck me as a reach:
TOS is also the origin point of some GUI ideas Apple would later use for its Mac OS operating system.I don't think Apple took any cues from the Atari ST. Most of their stuff was either original or inspired by work at Xerox PARC.
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Got my S-Video cable. Lovin' it. Thanks, Todd!
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Just got a PM from him. Looks like my cable should arrive this weekend. That would be perfect timing since I took some time off from work to recover from a medical procedure.
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A while back, I came across a Synergy demo done in VT-52. I thought it was cool and made a video capture:
http://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/01/23/vt-52-demo-beat-nick-part-2/
Anybody know of other VT-52 demos or animations like this? I know there used to be such things, but I don't know where to find any collections.
--Josh
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Agreed. Hope all is well.
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I checked with Jason Scott, but seems like he doesn't have it. I've got to believe there are still copies out there somewhere, maybe on a dead BBS in its file section or something.
It might be a wild goose chase, but maybe trolling some of the older remaining telnet BBSes might turn something up.
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Have you contacted Matt Singer directly? He has a LinkedIn profile here: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-singer/31/a42/592
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Anyone ever play the old Atari ST BBS door game "Assassin"? One of my old favorites. You can still play it today on The Grove and Dark Force BBSes.
Anyway, I would love to get in touch with the game's authors. I think I may have found Wayne Myers on some social networks (though he hasn't responded to messages), but no luck with Kevin MacFarland. Anyone know/remember them?
--Josh
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I found a nice review of FoReM ST from a 1987 Analog magazine: http://archive.org/stream/analog-computing-magazine-58/Analog_Computing_58_1987-10_Adventure_Issue#page/n39/mode/2up
Favorite part:
If I had to pick a favorite feature (aside from the amount of control given to the SYSOP), it would be support of VT-52 cursor and color codes in messages and text files. With the VT-52 codes, it's possible to do animation and color changing, which can call attention to your messages. VT-52 animation seems to be the "in" thing on ST BBSs right now, and that may be one reason for Forem ST's popularity; it's one of the few with this feature.
I'd love to find an archive of VT-52 animations, but I haven't seen any since my BBSing days. Anyone else?
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Just curious, is anyone out there running a FoReM BBS (either FoReM XEP or FoReM ST)?
Also, any of the 8-bit BBSes have any ATASCII animations? I remember once many years ago I had a disk with OASIS software, and it included some animations.
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I never got close to beating this game, but I loved to play it back in the day. Just fired up it up again over the weekend, but couldn't get past the first jump. It's been a long time since I last played.
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Got mine for $99 through Tiger Direct, after Atari sold all their stock to some hard drive manufacturer. Came with Cybermorph, White Men Can't Jump (and 4-player adapter), Alien vs. Predator, Attack of the Mutant Penguins, and Raiden. We went to Kay Bee shortly after and they had a bin of the Jaguar games clearanced for $5 a piece. Picked up Val D'Isere, Checkered Flag, Supercross and NBA Jam TE.
I think Cybermorph, Tempest 2000, and NBA Jam were the most-played games in my house.
Funnily enough, my 2-year-old son has begun saying "Boom shaka laka." Not because of NBA Jam, but still. One of these days I'll get out the game and let him hear it there.
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Ever since I got fired up about Wikipedia killing off old BBS door game articles, I've been looking through what's left of my old Atari files and stuff.
Today I came across a real gem: a textfile I wrote very early in my BBSing career (probably 1992) about why I loved Atari computers and still had hope for the company. As an added bonus, the textfile even gave me the date I started calling BBSes and a short story about who helped me get started (A local sysop who was also an officer of our ACE-St. Louis computer club).
I posted the textfile here: http://breakintochat.com/blog/2012/12/24/why-i-love-my-atari-computer/
Man, I wish things had gone differently with the Falcon and the Jaguar. Oh well, I always loved underdogs.
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Must have been tough, getting the Jag and being euphoric in 1993, only to see it going downhill with too many half-finished games released and third-party-support nowhere to be found. Christmas 1993 to mid 1996 is not a long time, it must have felt like going from the hot spring directly to Antarctica.
Yes, it was. I was an Atari fan, and even though I was a kid, it was clear that Atari was an underdog and that the company had made many missteps. Still, the Jaguar seemed like a clean slate, and a chance to reclaim some former glory. So, yeah, it was hard when it didn't work out the way I hoped.
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Our library included Cybermorph, trevor mcfur, tempest 2k, nba jam, syndicate, flipout, and a bunch of others. I didn't realize there was Myst for the Jag. I'll have to check into that.
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Or another twist, perhaps you could use a real Atari plugged into a PC's serial port that is configured to forward over TCP.
I also wonder how much lag you can have on your internet connection and still maintain a serial connection.
Sure. You're still talking about a null-modem connection, right? Socat would let you do that.
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My twenty year reminiscence
in Atari Jaguar
Posted · Edited by Kirkman
I was 14. My dad had taken me on a trip to ToadFest in Maryland in November, where I got to try the Jaguar. Little did I know he and mom were working to obtain one for us.