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mytek

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mytek last won the day on October 14 2021

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About mytek

  • Birthday 02/28/1956

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  • Custom Status
    Releasing Magic Smoke
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    Male
  • Location
    Santa Rosa, CA
  • Interests
    Electronics, Computers, Cryogenics, Embedded System Design

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  1. That's a good point, and would have been even better if they had offered an Atari branded matching S-Video monitor for a perfect fit. And to take it a step farther, the 1450XLD could of had a stereo Pokey chip and that new monitor could have come with a built-in stereo amp and speakers. Not a giant leap to do this, since they already were experimenting with monitors around that time, and had been using dual Pokey chips in arcade machines. And the Gumby DIY upgrade had already set the addressing standard that is used to this day.
  2. Agreed. But I look at it only as an example of what can be done with X+Y+Z, and not something I would prefer to use instead of just using Z (Rpi) which produces a great graphical presentation of the game. To me it's in the same realm as playing a movie on the Atari via a SIDE cart, which is a remarkable feat, even more so than throwing a Pi at it, but at the end of the day I'll be damned if I could stand actually watching the movie in this way, because it's really of such a poor quality that I feel like I've gone back in time to 8mm film (maybe even worse).
  3. That might be a special case since it's driving a very rare vector display. So that is an interesting use. Yeah I agree that this particular use case gets a free pass. And I own a Vectrix, so guess what I'll be checking out 😋 And something like the Pi Pico being used for the Pico Cart also doesn't really break the rules, since I look at that more as a microcontroller and not full computer like the Rpi.
  4. First of all this is about a C64 upgrade, but it could just as easily come to an Atari near you. So I was doing my usual browse this morning through YouTube videos and stumbled across this... So this guy was testing out what's called the RAD upgrade which is a cartridge type board that piggybacks to a Raspberry Pi board underneath, which essentially allows the Rpi to act as a configurable memory expansion up to 16MB for the C64. It can also do a few other things, but for the sake of this topic we'll just focus on the memory expansion aspect. So the guy doing the demo first boots up the Sonic the Hedgehog game, after first applying yet a 2nd Rpi as a emulated 1541 disk drive. Yes you heard that right there are now two Raspberry Pi's connected to the C64. Anyway after much fiddling and considerable time he finally gets the game to load and play and it does look great. Next he dispenses with the 1541 emulator, so we're back to the one Rpi on the RAD unit, and he loads up a version of DOOM and it looks like this... Nice 👍 Just kidding it looks like crap However it does play smoothly and doesn't appear to have much if any lag, so there's that. Now let's take a look at what DOOM on a Raspberry Pi all by itself can look like straight out of its HDMI port if it is the only computer in play (sans C64). Yes this really is nice 👍👍👍 So why in the hell would you want to add a Pi to your retro computer and play a game at such a greatly diminished video quality than what the Pi could do much, much better on its own? And this brings me to why I posted this here instead of over in the Commodore section. First of all I didn't want to catch a bunch of flak from the devoted fans of that machine And secondly as I see more and more modern day mini computer boards being used on our Atari systems as part of new upgrades, it begs the question of when has this gone too far, and wouldn't it be better to just use the mini computer to emulate the Atari experience and dispense with the retro hardware all together. It certainly would be more reliable, as well as smaller, and probably less energy hungry.
  5. I've never owned a 1027 printer, but from watching videos showing it in operation I would never want one myself. Besides it being very noisy in operation (in my opinion worse than any daisy wheel printer), it's erratic placement of characters when printing would not be acceptable in anything calling itself "letter quality". However Atari did produce a true letter quality printer in the XDM121, which was quite nice and very reliable based upon an actual interchangeable daisy wheel print head. I had one for a short time and posted about it... When FujiNet came out with its ability to print to the PC, emulating any conceivable printer that might have been used on the Atari BITD, I donated it to a friend that could really appreciate it. These are not easy to find in the wild, and I lucked out that I got the last NOS one from Best Electronics.
  6. Although I don't have one, I wonder if the newer Sophia 2 has a way to configure the output voltage level via software or a firmware change?
  7. All of the ST RGB monitors require 1V signals, whereas the Sophia puts out 0.75V same as what a VGA monitor expects. So yes Sophia needs that resistor change to boost it's output up to 1V.
  8. Thanks for the update 👍 Although his website still states that he does take PayPal, and even if he doesn't I would have appreciated a response from him to that affect. I don't really need those parts anyway, and was just trying to verify whether I was now a member of the "No Soup For You" club concerning Pokeys
  9. I just thought of one additional reason that Atari, not Commodore, should have bought MOS Technologies. Chuck Peddle. It was Chuck Peddle who was working at MOS that persuaded Jack Tramiel to create an 8-bit computer based on the 6502, hence the reason the PET came into existence, with the VIC and the C64 to follow. So it's kinda like one of those SciFi movies where someone goes back in time and stops someone from meeting someone else that changes the whole course of history.
  10. 2 weeks ago I placed an order for a Pokey chip from Best Electronics via email which has always worked well for me in the past. However this go around I got no reply. Here's the email I sent... I sure hope Brad is ok. Anyone else been in contact with him in the last couple weeks? I didn't exceed the 3 item limit I've been hearing about, and I've never bad mouthed him. And he's always gotten back to me either the same day or the next. And even though I didn't have my customer number, this has never been an issue before. Very odd 🙄
  11. Unless I'm mistaken, owning MOS's chip fabs was one of the main reasons that Commodore could undercut the competition with lower pricing. I would imagine so. Or at least it would have been considerably cheaper and faster when Atari R&D needed a new custom chip.
  12. I guess I'm the first one to download this. Anyway the SSTEREO2 is close, but still an apparently older THT version than what the OP has. BTW, I love the color of the solder mask on that board. Never seen a color like that used before. However I'd say the SSTEREO2 version in that download is the closest to the OP's board, minus the stereo/mono switch, and using a THT 74LS00 instead of the SOIC part. If I had a bottom view of the OP's board I'm pretty sure it would be easy peasey to match up the resistor values called out in the SSTEREO2 document. I say this because due to the different PCB layout and relocation of these parts, one can not simply assume that R1=R1, R2=R2, ect. between the THT version and the SOIC version. Edit: If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that R1=1K, and that the other two resistors with the same ID=220 ohms, and that the two capacitors with the same ID=0.1uF. SW1 is apparently the Stereo/Mono switch and is meant to connect to a DPST switch.
  13. @FastRobPlus is it possible to get a photo of the bottom side of the board? If you can do that at the same quality of the front view you posted I think I can come up with a schematic, and from that I should be able to figure out values for the resistors and capacitors.
  14. Opps forgot about that Someone really needs to fix that situation. We have all these ultra cool modern upgrades, but an SIO to USB Printer Interface isn't one of them. Although I heard that the newest USB-AKI can use it's USB port as a mass storage device with a USB Stick, perhaps that can also be made to work as a printer interface
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