What next?

[Irgendwer]

Having several projects in the drawer, I like to know which one will be most appreciated.

I cannot guarantee that the one with the most up-votes will be my next one, but let's see...

[xxl]

I am voting on this proposal - "Hardware: Low cost, cartridge like solution for the SIO port for publishing software"

This opens up a lot of new possibilities:
- generator of external IRQ
- external audio source (with its own volume control) mixed with POKEY
- unlimited data capacity (microSD)

 

---

I thought about it before:

 

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by xxl

[+CharlieChaplin]

There can never be enough games... 

 

Hardware? I already have enough, my wife thinks. 

 

For a cart-like SIO solution there are e.g. these things:

- SDrive-micro

- SDrive-Arm

and most-likely several other solutions.

But if you find something for 20 Euro or less to publish single cart-like games... 

 

[Wrathchild]

@Irgendwer "for publishing software" - can you expand upon what that means?

 

[Edit] Ah, I see, from CC's post, something to standalone distribute on?

These often seem overkill, you can make an UNOCart without an SD slot and so in a normal case and fit a lot on that and effectively its a supercharge beast, but in bulk a run of boards, micros and cases might be possible at £20 a piece. Trouble these days is the supply chain of the STM32F chips

Edited September 30, 2021 by Wrathchild

[Mclaneinc]

I voted new games, they are always welcome, paid or unpaid...

 

I like most of the options but I personally only want 1 item hardware wise and it's none of these and I'm slimming what I have down as what I have is covering all the bases.

 

Also, I can't justify a spend on stuff, especially after filling the car up after 4hrs queuing for petrol..

 

I say do what will give you the most out of it in pleasure and maybe a small (hopefully large) profit..

[+CharlieChaplin]

How about a SIO-plug with a small circuitry and one chip inside, that boots just one game from the chip ? Lotharek sells SIO-plugs for less than 6 Euro...  (problem though would be the same as with carts - updates or bugfixes would most-likely not be easy for the customer).

 

[_The Doctor__]

PBI Card and SIO cart may require some nifty productivity and entertainment/game software to fully show off and utilize the capabilities of these wonderful devices, that would also serve to show everyone how to use/program more for them - setting the bar for quality and what to expect!

[Wrathchild]

That's not to say VBXE and UNO (and Tomek to that matter) haven't shown what is possible but the number of programmers around to make such things aren't that many.
AVG is also capable of a fair bit, so the h/w most users seem to have should suffice and basically boils down to people taking the free offerings such as PoP and run it via cart or cart-emulating-cart or SIO2xx.

Also I now see FujiNet as more than capable SIO device for targeting new s/w for.

[Irgendwer]

1 hour ago, Wrathchild said:

@Irgendwer "for publishing software" - can you expand upon what that means?

Having a low-cost physical media for distribution of software.

Disks are running out of supply, offer various loading speeds.

Carts are quite expensive and also more costly to ship.

 

I have a solution in mind, to get rid of the drawbacks of these media types...

 

[Wrathchild]

Write a website for purchasing digital downloads

 

[Mclaneinc]

2 minutes ago, Irgendwer said:

Having a low-cost physical media for distribution of software.

Disks are running out of supply, offer various loading speeds.

Carts are quite expensive and also more costly to ship.

 

I have a solution in mind, to get rid of the drawbacks of these media types...

 

Sounds interesting

[+ZuluGula]

I voted for CPU accelerator, because nobody has working solution yet. But I would rather see simple, inexpensive, external plug in RAM expansion like sys-check (but without the extras), @ctirad RAM 320XE/XL or recent @zaxon creation. And of course more games.

[drac030]

The poll lists things which I either already have (CPU accelerator, 80-column solution, audio expansion) or can write myself (the software part) or do not need (pretty much the rest). This leaves me without options to vote for

[+Philsan]

What you enjoy most.

 

But I would like new games.

 

 

[Faicuai]

50 minutes ago, drac030 said:

CPU accelerator,

We don't have (yet) real, milestone-acceleration products (8Mhz, 20Mhz, those are just stop-gag speeds).

 

When we talk about 100Mhz, 200Mhz or even 400 Mhz... at genuine 6502 code-level, that's when we'll go to places...

 

Or even better, a plug-and-play, multi-core, high-performance CPU card that goes on Slot-3 (or CPU slot) on the 800 or PBI (on the XL/XE), with on-board HD storage, dedicated GPU, digital video+audio, WiFi, local access to host's keyboard, SIO, I/O ports, and capable of running user-choice of Altirra, Apple and C64 high-quality emulation, at any speed-multiple supported by auxiliary CPU.

 

That's just the tip of the iceberg... 

 

[Wrathchild]

Didn't we just see that with hooking up to a Pi and using the Atari as a joystick?!

 

The lines between when is the Atari still an Atari get blurred quickly.

[Faicuai]

3 minutes ago, Wrathchild said:

Didn't we just see that with hooking up to a Pi

Was Altirra running on the Pi? Could you boot it from an SIO-device attached to the A8 host?

 

If not, I won't spend a nano-second of time on it.

[+ZuluGula]

When I talk about CPU accelerator, I'm thinking about something that will make playing Karateka enjoyable. I don't need more.

[drac030]

16 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

When we talk about 100Mhz, 200Mhz or even 400 Mhz... at genuine 6502 code-level, that's when we'll go to places...

For me 10, 20 and 40 MHz are enough (these are the options I have now). Especially that with 16 MB flat memory you get additional gain by avoiding bank switching, you can setup code in the memory as it suits you, lookup tables, if necessary, can be 64 KB or a multiply of that etc. Long story short, once you learn to use the memory past the address $FFFF, there is no return.

 

By the way, there is a problem finding RAMs which are fast enough to cope with 65C816 CPU running at 20 MHz. At 40 MHz even SRAMs can have a problem. And you are speaking of 400 MHz. Well, this could certainly be solved, but forget about deterministic timings and the principle that 1 clock cycle = 1 memory access; therefore also about cycling, delay loops and such old techniques.

[mdivancic]

New games seem the most logical, most of the hardware already exists in some form (your idea of cheap may be different from mine). The light gun has very little use unless someone starts writing games for it.

[Faicuai]

18 minutes ago, drac030 said:

And you are speaking of 400 MHz. Well, this could certainly be solved, but forget about deterministic timings

Well, in such case we may consider moving to a common plug-and-play framework where ALL HW and SW upgrades converge, and serve ALL purposes at the same time (e.g. a fully-equipped expansion board for the 400/800 and XL/XE), as described above.

 

This will reduce development costs (and time), support ALL user interests (new SW titles, more speed, productivity, better networking, etc.) while minimizing or eliminating the need for developing separate HW components that require internal surgery, or skills that a large portion of the audience may have not honed-in.

 

And, most importantly, let this "framework" run in the user's A8 host of choice, for the ultimate hassle-free retro-experience. Imagine: would like to run any session of SDX or a dedicated GUI? Advanced networking? Faster rendition of older titles? Exploring OTHER 8b-bit platforms from your A8 keyboard? Access to all your legacy or existing peripherals, those that most of us have collected? No problem, ANYONE could enjoy it!

 

I admit it is much easier-said-than-done for sure (and probably fart-fetched)  but worth every penny. A 2+2=5 type of upgrade, with benefits all over the place.

 

 

[Beeblebrox]

More games with production values and amazing gameplay like Flob, which can have the option to take advantage of all the fast storage hardware mediums a lot of us have (ie Side3) and memory expansions a lot of us have (256k up to U1mb). More adventure and indie games utilising the ability of these storage mediums alongside the great compression algorithms to speed things up. 

Edited September 30, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[drac030]

23 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

a fully-equipped expansion board for the 400/800 and XL/XE

Just let me know, when you will have this built and coded around.

 

23 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

would like to run any session of SDX or a dedicated GUI? Advanced networking? Faster rendition of older titles? Exploring OTHER 8b-bit platforms from your A8 keyboard? Access to all your legacy or existing peripherals, those that most of us have collected? No problem, ANYONE could enjoy it!

Most of this is already theoretically possible even now, with existing accelerators. The "only" problem is that we are not Microsoft with unlimited budget to employ enough skilled programmers full-time. Once you remove this little obstaculum, that vision will have chances to become reality.

 

And by the way, re "faster rendition of older titles" - you probably have no idea, how much "older titles" rely on delay loops. For one example, phaeron's XEP80 driver - if it does not work at 20 MHz, you think it will at 400? Accelerating the CPU opens a can of worms most people do not expect to see creeping out. "Advanced networking" - will the TCP stack write itself? Exploring other platforms - will the support code write itself? Etc.

Edited September 30, 2021 by drac030

[Faicuai]

31 minutes ago, drac030 said:

Just let me know, when you will have this built and coded around.

Sure!

 

I will lit every candle and go to every Church I find on the road... I promise. 8-))

 

32 minutes ago, drac030 said:

you probably have no idea, how much "older titles" rely on delay loops.

I actually do. In fact, you may be surprised... ?

 

However, when hitting such glass-walls, best approach is definitely NOT-conventional. Better to fully virtualize the execution environment and play with it, with some basic means to interact with some of the A8-host resources (eg. peripherals, keyboard, etc.).

 

To me, this 20/40Mhz old-cpu accelerator concept sounds like dead-on-arrival, for the most part, and for the very same reasons you are exposing (fully agree there).

[ivop]

IMHO every CPU accelerator is dead on arrival. If you want to play with a high speed CPU and the Atari custom chips, put them on a breadboard and bit bang them with an ARM CPU. That's as much an Atari as putting a 400MHz FPGA in a real Atari.

Edited September 30, 2021 by ivop