tschak909

Anybody here well versed in HTML5/JS/CSS?

-Thom

In what is possibly the most insane bring-up of PLATOTERM to date, I have successfully done a bring-up on the NES/Famicom! (especially as NES does not have a native bitmap mode, I had to make one.) All it needs is some hardware in-cart to do the network and keyboard I/O, all doable! 

Need a working 5.25 DS/DD drive, if somebody has one I can buy. (Teac FD-55B, Tandon TM100-2A, whatever)

The fine folks at @ZeroPageHomeBre showed the first working breaths of the #FujiNet for the #Atari2600, which extends #PlusCart with powerful networking. Shown here playing #FujiNet 5-card-stud from the Game lobby! #retrogaming #retrocomputing

(yup, that's right fellas, cooperative cross-platform networking and gaming, even on the Atari 2600!)

It feels like everything I post, even explicit calls to help with #FujiNet documentation, just goes into a void, with maybe a like, which feels like "Gosh, he's working so hard, it's pointless, but just look at him go." ... sigh.

#Atari8bit #FujiNet users, have you tried the game lobby yet? Played a game of 5 card stud? Is there anything we can be doing better? #retrogaming #retrocomputing

PROTIP for every home-brewer, hacker, archaeologist, etc:

PUT YOUR STUFF UP ON GITHUB. MAKE IT PUBLIC FROM DAY ZERO.

You may run out of time.

You may get bored.

You may get hit by a fucking bus.

And what you have done, will be lost.

Don't leave things to be lost. Post them; PAY IT FORWARD.

Studio producer Anthony Marinelli posted a video showing his use of the Synclavier digital music system in the context of the movie Wargames (1983).

I can not understate how much of a joy this system was to use. It gave those of us lucky enough to use it a degree of power than only became commonplace in the mid 2000s. 

Well, I had to test the development environment, somehow!

(apologies for the audio, new filter chain, and I only had time to record this ONCE)

As part of @Ian Fi and myself rebuilding the GRiD Development Environment from batches of GRiD server hard drives, I needed something to test that the development environment that could compile Pascal, PL/M, Fortran, C and Assembler was working as expected. Then I thought about the sentry remote weapon system scenes that were cut from the theatrical release of James Cameron's Aliens (1986) film, which used GRiD Compass II 1129 laptops. GRiD had developed a set of working displays in GRiDBASIC for the film. These were never released, but now that the same tools are working again, I recreated them.

Video:

GitHub Here:
https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C

Release with raw Hard disk image here:
https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C/releases/tag/UA571C-V1.0

Calling all #AtariST hardware and firmware hackers

It should be possible to make a version of #FujiNet that uses the ASCI port, to act as a full fledged network adapter and virtual disk drive adapter.

What is #FujiNet? Watch this video here for the #Atari8bit version.

The Virtual disk drive should be a no-brainer. It is the no.1 use case for the current installed base of FujiNet users, being able to access disk images directly from the network beyond or from a local SD card storage has proven to be the biggest win. It is useful within 30 seconds of coming out of the box.

The Virtual printer is the no.2 use case, and it provides a complete PDF rasterizer, emulating a variety of printers, so that you can quickly print something on modern printers by just opening it up in the web interface.

There is a WiFi modem in the firmware, how this would be exposed on the ST, would be up for debate, so I won’t go too far into it.

But the most powerful aspect of the #FujiNet comes from its network adapter functionality, which is designed in a way similar to a mainframe channel processor, in that the #FujiNet handles all the network protocol arbitration, and presents a nice clean and simple I/O channel that the target computer can sample at its leisure.

One of the problems with accessing the modern Internet, has to do with lackluster support for modern encryption. Offloading this onto the FujiNet fixes this problem completely, and #FujiNet has support for protocols like TLS(SSL) and SSH out of the box. There is also support for JSON and XML parsing of the channel, which means that coupled with the encryption support, modern web APIs can be directly accessed by FujiNet equipped machines. Wins all around.

All of this, in a device with an average target price between $60 to $80.

So why not see if we can bootstrap an effort? There are already efforts underway for the #ColecoAdam, #Apple2, and #C64, in addition to the #Ataribit version which has been in production for over a year, and has over 2000 happy customers.

What say you all? Come to our discord, https://discord.gg/7MfFTvD and let’s talk about trying to make this a reality. -Thom

my god, the number of retro console dumpster fires that just keep raging is nothing short of insane.

Does anyone know of any Polish #Atari8Bit forums that can be joined to start a discussion on #FujiNet?

A week later, and I am STILL mirroring pigwa. Sheezus.

"Baby, I've been...breaking glass in your room again... LISTEN!...."

IRATA.ONLINE - one on-line service for #retrocomputing, many platforms. 13 seperate emulators running each version of #PLATOTERM, connecting, and participating in a #PLATO teleconference, with screen share and chat. No voice-over, had a cold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9f8Vy9g7yM

One code-base, many targets. All the 8-bit systems supported by IRATA.ONLINE and PLATOTerm: https://i.imgur.com/JIh8vds.png

I need to write a Javascript implementation of a PLATO terminal. The terminal is graphical, and thus would render into a canvas tag. I already know I need to do a websocket proxy. Any pro JS coders have suggestions on toolkits?

VCF East was a success. There were approximately 50 people or so in the room, and it was video'd, so I am waiting for it to magically pop up onto youtube. I managed to squeeze about 2 hours of content down into 1 hour, without rushing or cutting off, which, surprised the hell out of me.

Next IRATA.ONLINE Google Meets are on Saturday and Sunday the 14th and 15th. Details on http://www.irata.online/

Status update for NES Wizard of Wor:

More Wizard of Wor NES graphic work. http://i.imgur.com/dS6gBmc.png and http://i.imgur.com/yCAV5KV.png

Rewriting Dodgeball completely for the 6th time...

aargh, need help looking at the collision code for Dodgeball. Need another direction. sigh.

Am currently working on collision code for Dodgeball. Current approach of flipping velocity/direction almost works...