phoenixdownita

What happens once ps6/7/8… or Xbox 720/two/parallel… come out? I mean, in general I read reviews/articles sometimes years if not decades after they were written.

@SainT after CJ tease I gotta ask … are we there yet? I really need my vidgrid fix … oh wait I have a working JagCD… never mind … 🙂 I really hope we can have Simone working as well … I remember it failed on conversion, any luck with that homebrew?

Y and O are not even close vs the “vinger” which at least is a mistake by same key just one row too low (asdf.. vs zxcv..) … but you do know you can reread it and re-edit right? And no your finger did not move too fast, it’s true mistakes happen but no need to make up excuses, and don’t swear to anything as we are at it.

I read that https://burn-osx.sourceforge.io/Pages/English/home.html can be still used. You should be able to just open the .cue files with it (many dumps are in cue/bin format). For the DC you need to burn dreamshell4 (same as above) and that allows you access to the SDreader, that you attach to the serial port. I can’t remember if “teh romz” have to be in a specific format for the sd … way back when you were able to find many DC games downgraded to fit a MIL-CD usually by removing or heavily compress any and all animations, so that’s another way too (make sure your DC can boot MIL-CD … if it can boot dreamshell you are good, va0/va1 mb can do it while va2 not so much [sticker bottom of DC tells you that]).

https://www.atarimania.com/list_utilities_atari_search_84.111.115.32.50._S_U.html for many TOS versions and languages then split with ROMSPLIT as found at https://atari.8bitchip.info/astopensw.php I am not sure the Mega non STe already have the required address decoding for a 256KB TOS .... actually you may need specific decoding logic

From the look of it the switch was controlling a 16mhz booster that has probably been removed. Check https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=3825 It needs shifter pin 39 and supports a wire for gnd/vcc switching 8mhz/16mhz … so pink and yellow wires would have been soldered to the booster board, in your case the modder even added the led to show which speed was on. Given I don’t see the booster anymore you can just isolate the exposed wires end with electric tape and leave them be in case few years down the road you want to add a booster back in, or remove switch/led and wires to clean it up (but you will have holes in the back).

It looks like you have 2 mods, one to patch the blitter plus one controlled by a switch it appears. The switch based one seems to deal with a 16mhz clock from/to shifter (pink wire). Grey wire looks like ground, not sure if red is VCC, and unclear where should yellow go (not obvious to me that yellow and pink should connect, the led+resistor connection should turn on/off with the switch likely to indicate the mod is on/off).

When it comes to gaming I go back to this video quite often: but also The first is interesting because at a certain point there’s a frame counter … the second because it does show some games better on the ST. The early 3d games were faster on the ST but then again 10 frames per second were not always even achieved (sometimes half that number) so not sure they aged well without acceleration. Given the speed modest advantage the experience was more pleasant on ST for those but not by much. For a “mini” only thing that makes sense are games, productivity apps are barely functional compared to modern alternatives (Cubase included that still is a thing, for the GFABasic crowd that too is still a thing on Windows) so no real point to bother with licenses (which would require sw form of the dongles as well for some).

Well it seems there are Mac binaries built for Hatari so … https://download.tuxfamily.org/hatari/2.5.0/

@Snowbound1996 Any news to share on the repair status? We know at present I can’t buy (wife said no for now at least), still… I remembered I have a MiSTer so played with the ST[e] core, which is fun but not the same. Some things are way better like switching TOS very easily, RAM, color/mono and Viking even, some not so much like keyboard layout and tactile feeling of the whole shebang. Anyhow I am fascinated by the developments of this awesome deal you had, curious to see how many can be salvaged and which one … hopefully all of them.

The MiSTer has an ST/STe core and it implements the MegaSTe variant but as per doc the cache is not implemented for RAM but the cache enabled mode turns on turbo bus RAM access (twice the speed). This is the link for MiSTer: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/AtariST_MiSTer (it does not mention the turbo bus but the MiST core does https://github.com/gyurco/MiSTery [cache control selects turbo bus speed] but I am not sure if the MiSTer version supports it as well, for now I assume it does). How close is the core to a real MegaSTe? I mean in 8MHz mode it is what it is, in 16MHz+Cache it kinda is very responsive [I tested with TOS 2.06]. I am pretty sure there are inaccuracies and some SW may not work but besides that how is the general behavior vs the real deal?

As long as you use RGB output the Atari STs are sw switcheable 50/60 so PAL vs NTSC matters very very little … many RGB monitors accept both afaik, and for sure many modern RGB to HDMI converter accept both (even in US I was susrprised how TV accept 1080p50 no issue, the 720p50 was more of a hit and miss but haven’t tried in a long time, can’t remember ever trying 480p50). So now get on it … chop chop chop you are missing out ☺️

Nvm on the 1040 STe ... wife disapproves ... no go for me. Apologies!

PM sent for the 1040 STe.