Stuff I Wish The XL/XE Had

[snicklin]

While a decent Ghosts n Goblins like game - I can only guess it's still only marginally better than Domain of the Undead in gameplay?

 

 

To be honest, the original game was awful and 'Domain of the Undead' (I never want to hear the music from this game again) is even worse. It's an iconic game, but not for its gameplay. I used to despise the latter game back in the late 80s, and I'd spent my £1.99 on the Atlantis cassette. They did a few other duds too.

 

As for "Ghosts 'n Goblins", a few people on here have tried to recreate the game with a full colour scheme and they've all failed. Essentially the Atari can't show enough colours at the same time. I remember there being one decent effort but then it was missing a main character if I remember correctly, or something key was missing which ruined the premise of what they were attempting.

[Thorsten Günther]

I have watched various videos sourced from the internet on a friend's Soniq TV - and it did seem to crash fairly often - like once a day when I was there - I assumed that it was probably a random glitch in the file, and would not do this for live TV.

The remote control was poorly laid out and I would not recommend this as a TV to buy.

 

Whereas I have a Samsung TV - but they do not provide any updates etc for it. It's one of the early ones that has internet connection possible with it - but is useless because Samsung doesn't provide any updated firmware for it. But it is a decent TV, and does have more features over the Soniq - which you paid for - naturally.

 

I have a Goldstar (or LG, as they prefer to call themselves nowadays) - after some updates, it doesn't seem to crash any more (I had it depict an all blurry, non-moving screen after switching on several times with the older firmware and nothing except for removing the power cable was able to fix it. And while it shows a picture after 20 seconds, one cannot run Amazon Instant Video (e.g.) during the first minute of operation. It also had issues recording onto an attached USB hdd with the older firmware, often only recording video without any audio.

 

In several ways, this IS a step backwards - CRT TVs simply worked.

[Thorsten Günther]

I have watched various videos sourced from the internet on a friend's Soniq TV - and it did seem to crash fairly often - like once a day when I was there - I assumed that it was probably a random glitch in the file, and would not do this for live TV.

The remote control was poorly laid out and I would not recommend this as a TV to buy.

 

Whereas I have a Samsung TV - but they do not provide any updates etc for it. It's one of the early ones that has internet connection possible with it - but is useless because Samsung doesn't provide any updated firmware for it. But it is a decent TV, and does have more features over the Soniq - which you paid for - naturally.

 

I have a Goldstar (or LG, as they prefer to call themselves nowadays) - after some updates, it doesn't seem to crash any more (I had it depict an all blurry, non-moving screen after switching on several times with the older firmware and nothing except for removing the power cable was able to fix it. And while it shows a picture after 20 seconds, one cannot run Amazon Instant Video (e.g.) during the first minute of operation. It also had issues recording onto an attached USB hdd with the older firmware, often only recording video without any audio.

 

In several ways, this IS a step backwards - CRT TVs simply worked.

 

BTT: I wish there was a way to have a DLI after each scanline in Graphics 0 - that way, we could have an APAC text mode which would be very useful for games.

[JamesD]

I think the XL line should have had an internal connector for RAM expansion. Then 128K or more could have been added, keeping the machine more in line with the Apple IIe to justify the higher price tag than the C64.
An 8 bit audio DAC. This would have made speech, and some other sound effects much easier to produce. It's also a cheap upgrade.

80 columns could be done in software already so I don't see that as a big deal. Edit in 64 columns and preview 80 columns.
A better option might be an additional higher res 2 color mode which would have allowed 80 columns or more in software, and it would be as readable as a character generator.
It would probably require a monochrome composite, or analog color monitor to display the new mode but people that wanted 80 columns or higher res graphics would have the option.

On a color composite display it could emulate a 256 color mode using artifacting like is being done on the CoCo 3.
Maybe Atari could have introduced a monitor that could be switched between mono and color to support it.

[ricortes]

All these were moments in time as some people have noted. CP/M would have been nice up until 1982 when MS DOS came along. ~Every CP/M manufacturer went out of the CP/M business by bankruptcy or switching to MS DOS. You have to remember Apple tried to get better market penetration with most of the stuff + what they already had in the Apple III line. The guy a shared an office with had an Apple III and I must admit, I considered it dull and uninspired. I think most of us would consider the Apple III a relative failure in the scheme of things.

 

We are a pretty select group in that we were into things like telecommunication just about since its inception. I don't know about everyone else, but when spread sheets came out I spent most of my waking hours at work using them. A '286 could barely keep up with data entry/recalculation so the 6502's available at the time just couldn't keep up. Ditto for telecommunication as speeds increased the older systems couldn't cut it. If you were on a C64 and you spent all your time downloading pirated software and playing video games, 64k memory and a 40 column screen were almost irrelevant.

 

Hand in hand with this was the ram shortage in the early 80's and expensive low capacity ram in the late 70/s to early 80's. Heck, I was one of clowns who specified what we needed for computation at work. Price was not a consideration since it wasn't my dime! I even remember the rumor back then that most of the ST sales in the USA were to PC manufacturers who took the ram out of a $500 ST to put in a $6000 PC. In all likelihood this was a false rumor but that was how crazy the market was back then. I wasn't about to struggle with $69 VisiCalc when for $300 we could get Lotus 123.

 

Not that I wouldn't love some of the enhancements to the Atari 8 bit. Enhanced Antic and GTIA to toss 16k or 32k on the screen. I still sweat ways of doing this in my dreams.

[fujidude]

In several ways, this IS a step backwards - CRT TVs simply worked.

 

Except... when they didn't. It's natural for memories of positives to be retained more than negatives, but there could be plenty of negatives in CRT land. Right off the bat, consider why Atari made the decision to set the default margin to column 2 instead of 0. Also, consider what happens to screen phosphors when static elements are displayed for extended periods of time. Hint, the reason the "attract" mode was set up. But... attract mode would not prevent screen burn in if you actively played a game or used software a lot that had static elements (especially intense ones). Furthermore, almost all CRTs had a curved display, which were more prone to catching glare reflection than today's flat screens. Yes, there were some tubes that were flat in one direction (vertical) but they were later in the game and relatively uncommon. And yes, there were even some tubes with totally flat displays, but they were even more rare (and expensive). Now, I cringe when I see curved TVs being marketed as something cool. True they are curved concave instead of convex, but it still causes a wider "net" to catch glare just the same. But anyway, I digress.

[kiwilove]

To be honest, the original game was awful and 'Domain of the Undead' (I never want to hear the music from this game again) is even worse. It's an iconic game, but not for its gameplay. I used to despise the latter game back in the late 80s, and I'd spent my £1.99 on the Atlantis cassette. They did a few other duds too.

 

As for "Ghosts 'n Goblins", a few people on here have tried to recreate the game with a full colour scheme and they've all failed. Essentially the Atari can't show enough colours at the same time. I remember there being one decent effort but then it was missing a main character if I remember correctly, or something key was missing which ruined the premise of what they were attempting.

Yes - using limited colours it will not have much chance of looking any good with such limited colour - and it would start looking better using DLIs which tend to be obvious in use. At first glance this may seem to be possible, but on closer inspection I'd guess it will affect other parts of the game and render it too messed up? The question remains - which a programmer may be able to answer? Could Ghastly Night/Domain of the Undead have been better programmed? So that it didn't respond so sluggishly but have a more positive responsive control system in place?

Yes - Ghosts n Goblins is one very tough frustrating game - but so iconic. It's follow up - Ghouls n Ghosts was so much better and an enjoyable game on the Megadrive and SNES consoles. Using two buttons makes a huge amount of difference - and that would be the way to fix it on the A8 - maybe using a Megadrive joypad?

 

Harvey

[+slx]

 

Can you amplify this a bit? I'm really curious about your TV!

 

What kind of TV? -- never had one that "crashes" or "loads" (maybe from rom). Never even have had to be reset after a power interruption. Maybe something that is connected to the TV is an issue?

 

TV's in the 80's went into standby mode, same as today. Earlier ones had to "warm up" the tubes. Our first TV was ~1952 -- one of the early "non-round" tube types!

 

 

 

One of my Philips flat TVs takes about 90-120s from turning on to accepting any kind of command from both remote and buttons, including a change of volume. It regularly freezes completely and refuses to do anything until the power is recycled. TV firmware is "bananware" at its best and after a year and a half updates cease and you're left with whatever Philips considers to be "not totally unuseable". The main culprits seem to be unwise decisions regarding boot sequence (user interface should boot before picture generation) and CPUs too small to handle all the features comfortably. (I also have a Philips TV that will accept commands to change channels after a short while but take ages to load the program guide because that part of the user interface apparently takes longer to boot/init.)

 

To make this less off topic, my primary observation was that technology isn't automatically moving towards the best solution available but rather towards what sells the most volume at the highest profit.

[+slx]

In several ways, this IS a step backwards - CRT TVs simply worked.

When uses intensively they tended to lose color/brightness over time and they were bulky and heavy. Most of my TVs are on a wall these days and while I found an extra slim B&O CRT for retro stuff it still takes up too much desk real estate for my liking. My son had a trinitron with "his" 130XE but swapped it for an LCD to have a little more desk space for homework.

[bbking67]

Hey the Atari 2600 was a crude computer that just worked too. It didn't even have a BIOS. Turn it on and boom--gaming. Now you have to boot the console, install the game and wait until it loads. On my PS3 games take forever to load it seems...

[Keatah]

One of my Philips flat TVs takes about 90-120s from turning on to accepting any kind of command from both remote and buttons, including a change of volume. It regularly freezes completely and refuses to do anything until the power is recycled. TV firmware is "bananware" at its best and after a year and a half updates cease and you're left with whatever Philips considers to be "not totally unuseable".

 

To make this less off topic, my primary observation was that technology isn't automatically moving towards the best solution available but rather towards what sells the most volume at the highest profit.

 

As long as people buy the stuff..?

 

 

The guy a shared an office with had an Apple III and I must admit, I considered it dull and uninspired. I think most of us would consider the Apple III a relative failure in the scheme of things.

Yes. The Apple /// was a big fail. They only sold 65,000 of the + variant. It was such a fail I even had problems getting rid of mine last month. No one wants them.

[fujidude]

Yes. The Apple /// was a big fail. They only sold 65,000 of the + variant. It was such a fail I even had problems getting rid of mine last month. No one wants them.

 

Not even you...

[bbking67]

well there are smartphones and dumb phones... some folks just want a phone phone so they get a basic phone. Same with TV's... the Smart TV's have an operating system of some kind (probably almost always some Linux based embedded system) that suffers from the same problems as every other operating system. There are TV's that don't have these features and don't have the same problems. My TV's are all dumb TV's and they all turn on fast and never crash... they take a few seconds until you can use them, but then again my old CRT TVs always took time to warm up--you'd usually hear them before the image came on. I'm not too nostalgic about CRT's--I just sent 4 perfectly working CRT's to the electronic waste depot. Mind you I kept my 1701 and two Amiga monitors (for now).

[ricortes]

hehe, more rumor and confirmed rumor. One of the things Atari did *WAY* too early was video phones. They anticipated Skype by maybe thirty years before the hardware and software was ready. Another thing published as rumor in magazines back then was the staff at Atari digitized a number of nude/pornographic images so they could be viewed on an 8 bit! Funny in that if Atari had survived and pursued these directions they could have a presence in the cell phone market and porno websites. Maybe it was better they died.<sic>

 

I'm getting/been there 'spacey' enough in my senior moments that I do wish there were a few more hacks currently available at a decent price for my 8 bit. Something like the 6809 hack but with something hotter and a little more current like an ARM based SOC. Just something you could mount in the processor socket to utilize the existing hardware: ~Quad core ARM with video for $20 bucks kind of thing with some provision for genlock or syncing displays. Technically we have that in that the Android flavor of Linux is the most popular OS in the world and mostly runs on ARM SOC. It has the games but mostly misses the joystick and keyboard feel of an 8 bit. I guess it would be no more silly then the PC evolving into built in video, USB, sound, et al, that we have today.

[russg]

You know I drooled all over the 1450XLD when it was announced, but in hindsight I think this computer would have been a huge mistake... it was expensive and included a crappy modem and speech synthesizer (the speech synthesizer is a gimmick in my mind). Atari screwed a lot of stuff up (in addition to everything they got right). For me, these are the things that would have made a difference (oh and I'm an XL guy):

 

1. A native 80 column capability using the Parallel bus - I know so many people who bought the vastly inferior Apple II for more money because they could use a word processor in 80 columns on their green screen. Please don't say XEP80.

2. Double density on the 1050 - The enhanced density thing was stupid. I can't rationalize it to anything other than that.

3. An Atari branded CP/M upgrade. If nothing else just to say you have it and you can run Wordstar (or whatever)

4. Enhanced graphics on XL or XE machines - imagine how things would have been different with some kind of enhanced graphics on the XL/XE (but retain backwards compatibility) Graphics modes with more suimultaneous colours would have done it, but enhanced sprites would also have been nice

5. An Atari branded monitor- dang I would have loved an nice matching monitor for my XL or even XE. Wouldn't have made much of a difference I guess, but I still want it

6. More PBI peripherals! I loved the MIO, but all Atari ever did with it is the 1064. That 1090 expansion bus looked sweet.

7. Something other than "hold option key to disable BASIC". Better yet give me DOS in ROM and an easy way to turn BASIC on when needed.

8. Some kind of networking capability that would allow daisy chained Atari computers to operate in a network for multi-player games, telecommunications, etc. They had Joe decuir... he knows this shit.

9. Faster SIO speeds. We all know the Atari is capable of far faster, so why limit to 19,200 bps?

10. Less Tramiel. Enough said.

 

 

I suppose the 800xl was all about cost cutting so nothing made it. well except DOS 3 and enhanced density. yay.

As for wish #7. SpartaDOS X is DOS in ROM cartridge. It has the BASIC ON, BASIC OFF commands.

And.... Here's a MyDOS 4.53 .ATR with BASICON.OBJ, BASICOFF.OBJ and binary load BASIC A, B, C

BASICS.zip

[Keatah]

Not even you...

 

Not even me.. In fact I'm returning to my original hardware, sentimental hardware, stuff I had as a kid. And that means the Apple II series. I want it all to fit in my truck all at once.

 

Most of the stuff I got on ebay after the 90's is excess baggage and I never really used any of it. Accumulated 3 damned garages' worth of the stuff. I'm keeping spare parts and things like that. But to collect (hoard, actually) 20 different printer interfaces and 8 kinds of clock cards is ridiculous and redundant to the point of getting in the way. Even if I paid like $2.99 for each of them.

 

I'd consider getting back into the Atari 8-bit lineup. The 400/800 was something I'd play with all the time back then when it was new. But for now Altirra's versatility and accuracy has me covered a thousand different ways.

[morelenmir]

At the risk of sounding trite, many of those graphical features mentioned can be got through fitting a VBXE - 80 columns, advanced blitting, more colours and so on.

[Keatah]

Is there software to support it?

[1050]

That's pretty interesting stuff there Russ, thanks for posting that. The 3 BASIC files themselves set RAMTOP to A000h value, open E: on the fourth CIOB channel (X = 30h) then close it to continue DOS loading the AOOO-BFFF region and then run at A000h. I didn't know you could open E: while it was already open on CIOB #0. Huh.

 

Sloppy (illegal) programming wins the day? Now you tell me. Oh, my bad - this is a FEATURE, not a bug.

I do remember not having much luck trying to switch to BASIC from MyDOS when my Atari was up and running, it would have been nice to have these files back then and have a decent run at it to see if this was the reason of my troubles. More stuff to work on when I can get back in the saddle.

[Lynxpro]

You know I drooled all over the 1450XLD when it was announced, but in hindsight I think this computer would have been a huge mistake... it was expensive and included a crappy modem and speech synthesizer (the speech synthesizer is a gimmick in my mind). Atari screwed a lot of stuff up (in addition to everything they got right). For me, these are the things that would have made a difference (oh and I'm an XL guy):

 

1. A native 80 column capability using the Parallel bus - I know so many people who bought the vastly inferior Apple II for more money because they could use a word processor in 80 columns on their green screen. Please don't say XEP80.

2. Double density on the 1050 - The enhanced density thing was stupid. I can't rationalize it to anything other than that.

3. An Atari branded CP/M upgrade. If nothing else just to say you have it and you can run Wordstar (or whatever)

4. Enhanced graphics on XL or XE machines - imagine how things would have been different with some kind of enhanced graphics on the XL/XE (but retain backwards compatibility) Graphics modes with more suimultaneous colours would have done it, but enhanced sprites would also have been nice

5. An Atari branded monitor- dang I would have loved an nice matching monitor for my XL or even XE. Wouldn't have made much of a difference I guess, but I still want it

6. More PBI peripherals! I loved the MIO, but all Atari ever did with it is the 1064. That 1090 expansion bus looked sweet.

7. Something other than "hold option key to disable BASIC". Better yet give me DOS in ROM and an easy way to turn BASIC on when needed.

8. Some kind of networking capability that would allow daisy chained Atari computers to operate in a network for multi-player games, telecommunications, etc. They had Joe decuir... he knows this shit.

9. Faster SIO speeds. We all know the Atari is capable of far faster, so why limit to 19,200 bps?

10. Less Tramiel. Enough said.

 

 

I suppose the 800xl was all about cost cutting so nothing made it. well except DOS 3 and enhanced density. yay.

 

As for DOS in ROM, what about having that included in ROM chips in the actual disk drives themselves? The drives would've required some extra RAM and a 6502 instead of a 6507 but that would've definitely been cool tech… More system RAM for the actual programs...

 

This won't be a popular suggestion but I'd say moving up to DB15 joystick ports. Sure, they take a lot of heat over the 5200's joysticks but it would've been a beautiful thing to have had 4 DB15s and the final version of the 5200 joysticks there were perfected but Atari Inc never released.

 

With the XL line, they probably should've moved up to a Motorola 6809 and kept a 6502 in for backwards compatibility and sound management.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

It's hard to argue with all the "what if's". Actually, Dos 1.0 was outdated at the time the XL series came on the market, so *if* Atari had made a choice to place the Dos in ROM, it would certainly not be 1.0, but probably 2.0S or a variant thereof. Not the worst possible choice. The self-test area could be put in better use for the DOS menu (or command line) as in Os++. That's a much better use for this area than for the rather pointless "selftest".

 

The problem is that a new GTIA would have required a development "from scratch", and apparently, Atari did not have the resources for that. Or rather, did not want to invest into it. Problem with wider PMGs is that somehow the cycles for the DMA have to be allocated - and there are none for the wide playfield. Thus, more colors or wider PMs would have required reducing the width, or disallowing the wide playfield.

 

As said, this discussion is somehow academic, and GTIA was obsoleted by DENISE, ANTIC by AGNUS and POKEY by PAULA. The advanced features you request are all there - or no longer needed.

 

 

PAULA is just a DMA sound chip; it's no YM2151. POKEY was obsoleted by Dual & QUAD POKEY as used by Atari Coin/Games in the arcades. Both Atari Inc and Corp should've switched over to variants of those chips and then stuck in an AMY as the icing on the top.

[Lynxpro]

 

Sure. All that. BITD, in practice, an arcade game for an 8-bit home system would be written once on the programmer's favorite machine - whatever it may be. And then it was cross compiled and patched to work on others. Or even ported by someone else totally not involved in the creation of the original. That's what porting was. Ha!

That's why there's usually one killer version that everyone likes on one specific machine. It's usually the machine where the game was first made. One version that rises above all and pushes the limit. While the rest of the ports look like afterthoughts. Once in a great while you'll get a programmer that is better and more enthusiastic about a game and a game will buck that trend and come out being better for having been ported.

Examples of not being better:

Star Raiders and BallBlazer on the Atari 400/800. Later versions stunk on platforms 10x more capable. And to add insult to injury, some weren't even ports but just used intellectual property, names, game environs..

Early in the Apple II's life CP/M was important. As the 8-bit stuff matured in the mid-80's CP/M more or less just faded away. 80-Columns wasn't enough, GUIs were on the scene and the Z80 was getting old.

I guess this is what you get when the new school engineers grew up programming microcontrollers as opposed to wiring up individual discrete parts. It's easy to spec out an embedded computer for running programs that does the equivalent of a 70's analog TV. Much easier than farting around with discrete parts. However worse the results may be.

 

Not a fan of the Z80 but Sega seemed to do well with it in the SMS. The MSX computers also did a respectable job with the shoddy CPU too.

[Bryan]

With the XL line, they probably should've moved up to a Motorola 6809 and kept a 6502 in for backwards compatibility and sound management.

The cost would have been insane. The 6502 was a $25-ish processor. The 6809 was several times that. A 6809 might have been nice for a 1090 card, though.

[jacobus]

You know I drooled all over the 1450XLD when it was announced, but in hindsight I think this computer would have been a huge mistake... it was expensive and included a crappy modem and speech synthesizer (the speech synthesizer is a gimmick in my mind). Atari screwed a lot of stuff up (in addition to everything they got right). For me, these are the things that would have made a difference (oh and I'm an XL guy):

 

1. A native 80 column capability using the Parallel bus - I know so many people who bought the vastly inferior Apple II for more money because they could use a word processor in 80 columns on their green screen. Please don't say XEP80.

2. Double density on the 1050 - The enhanced density thing was stupid. I can't rationalize it to anything other than that.

3. An Atari branded CP/M upgrade. If nothing else just to say you have it and you can run Wordstar (or whatever)

4. Enhanced graphics on XL or XE machines - imagine how things would have been different with some kind of enhanced graphics on the XL/XE (but retain backwards compatibility) Graphics modes with more suimultaneous colours would have done it, but enhanced sprites would also have been nice

5. An Atari branded monitor- dang I would have loved an nice matching monitor for my XL or even XE. Wouldn't have made much of a difference I guess, but I still want it

6. More PBI peripherals! I loved the MIO, but all Atari ever did with it is the 1064. That 1090 expansion bus looked sweet.

7. Something other than "hold option key to disable BASIC". Better yet give me DOS in ROM and an easy way to turn BASIC on when needed.

8. Some kind of networking capability that would allow daisy chained Atari computers to operate in a network for multi-player games, telecommunications, etc. They had Joe decuir... he knows this shit.

9. Faster SIO speeds. We all know the Atari is capable of far faster, so why limit to 19,200 bps?

10. Less Tramiel. Enough said.

 

 

I suppose the 800xl was all about cost cutting so nothing made it. well except DOS 3 and enhanced density. yay.

 

Great list, but I'd add:

 

11. a second joystick button

[thorfdbg]

 

 

PAULA is just a DMA sound chip; it's no YM2151. POKEY was obsoleted by Dual & QUAD POKEY as used by Atari Coin/Games in the arcades. Both Atari Inc and Corp should've switched over to variants of those chips and then stuck in an AMY as the icing on the top.

Actually, no PAULA, does to do any DMA. The DMA is the job of Agnus. But PAULA does otherwise the very same job POKEY does in the Atari - it is the serial interface controller, it is also responsible for receiving the floppy data (not quite as in the Atari). Otherwise, it is an UART.

 

Once enough memory is available, digitized sound can do everything a Pokey or a SID can do, provided a CPU computes the corresponding samples. So it was really the adequate solution for its time.

Edited December 10, 2015 by thorfdbg