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I promise this is the last of my Z-Machine threads. The two others are: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/353724-the-incomplete-works-of-infocom-inc/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354888-infocoms-z-machine-atr-generator/ So, without further ado, here's the source to the interpreter: https://github.com/jindroush/atari-inform-interpreter And, please, don't be mean to old man who haven't written in 6502 assembly for more than 20 years (and does not have any Atari hardware anymore!) 😇

Millions of kids have said "my family bought me an Atari for Christmas" but when Wade says it, it has a whole different meaning!

I take some video footage and post it tomorrow of Berserk running...humanoids must not escape!

I believe this is a first again! SALT 2.00 was discovered by John Hardie on a disk belonging to a former Atari employee. The file is an executable but you can probably easily make a cart from it: http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-salt-200_41742.html

Opened up the sealed copy of Fatal Run 2600 Pal this morning and it plays fine.

So, SNES dev here, and I figured I'd chime in on this one because it's a topic that comes up a lot in SNES dev servers. First, my credentials... So if the SNES is so popular, why isn't there more homebrew for it? I think there's a number of reasons... This is sorta a very typical mindset I see a lot: people who would otherwise be interested in SNES dev are more attracted by the established audience for Genesis or NES homebrew, versus the somewhat unproven market for SNES homebrew. Another common mindset is just not being impressed with the hardware compared to the Genesis. On the Genesis, you get a relatively fast CPU, with a ton of registers, and a nice pipeline for writing C code, which are all pretty important for people writing code. I've also seen it echoed more than a few times that all the various graphic features/limitations and edge cases are actually a pretty big turnoff (8 graphics modes, with their own rules about layering and priority, then you've got color math and windowing etc. and let's not even get into mode 7) versus the Genesis which has a much more straightforward and simple graphics chip. And then of course sound basically turns into low-level networking coding, which is a herculean task compared to getting audio out of just about any other system. With all of that on top of the more established tools pipeline on the Genesis, it seems like most coders who aren't particular about which 16-bit system to develop for end up gravitating towards the Genesis. Semi-related, it's worth pointing out that a lot of people try getting into SNES dev by starting out with Super Mario World romhacks, and apparently Super Mario World is a really easy game to hack new levels or graphics into, but once you start trying to go crazy and do assembly-level hacking on it, it's actually a bit of a nightmare. The engine is very slow and hard to work with, and you're locked into a very specific subset of hardware features that aren't all that impressive. A lot of SMW hackers seem to end up giving up on the idea of doing any kind of homebrew because they either mistakenly believe making a homebrew would be even more difficult (it's actually easier), or mistakenly think that the hardware is far more constrained than it actually is. As for documentation though, I actually think the SNES is in a pretty good place. Fullsnes is pretty much a definitive manual for anything you'd probably want to do: https://problemkaputt.de/fullsnes.htm And then the SFC development wiki does a pretty good job breaking this info down in a slightly easier to navigate format: https://wiki.superfamicom.org/registers The nesdev wiki has a nice section for the SNES, I particularly like this visual breakdown of the various ROM layouts: https://snes.nesdev.org/wiki/Memory_map And of course the various dev servers have a pretty wide knowledge base to tap into, we're all pretty eager to help anyone interested in getting into this system. My first time seriously coding in assembly was doing a music engine on the Atari 2600, which is a much simpler piece of hardware for that kind of task (it only becomes hellish once you start trying to draw graphics). It took me probably about a year to get comfortable with it. The SNES is like an extended version of the same CPU architecture, so I was able to go into it with a head start, but even so, it took another year or so just to wrap my head around the crazy memory map. Then it's been about 3 years so far just to develop the base-level game engine...granted one of those years was spent figuring out how to do mode 7 perspective planes from scratch because nobody had ever documented how to do it on the actual SNES before. So yeah, it's definitely a time commitment! If I hadn't specifically wanted to play around with all those crazy SNES hardware features and just settled on making a Genesis game instead, I'd probably be on my second game by now. Oh, as for the OP topic, would a SNES Maker tool be what it takes? Maybe, but I'm also not sure it would be beneficial. I know at least some people completely shy away from Gameboy homebrew because GB Studio productions come across as "cookie-cutter", which is a bit of a shame, but all-in-one tools like that tend to produce results along those lines. An SNES Maker tool would likely increase the quantity, but I don't know if it would be the quality people are looking for. SGDK is a much more basic framework than NES Maker or GB Studio, as far as I'm aware.

Popeye worked fine today

I wanted to point out, if anyone was wondering, a DecentXE keyboard works and looks great in an XEGS:

Stock related notes for those not following along- Wade has been spending Atari money to pay off debts while acquiring many things, taking part ownership in many things (Playmaji, Antstream, etc). Part of the reason the #'s are bad. Reinvestment in the company. At the same time- Wade locked out U.S. investors for over 18 months- completely de-listed Atari on the Nordic market, dropped Atari's listing tier in France to a lower level- and purposely limited news, etc- to drive the stock price down. Why? Because during that time- he attempted a 'friendly' takeover of the company. He wanted his price per share to be as low as possible of course. He failed. And the attempt cost him millions. So-he bought shares on the public market until he reached a legal limit - just under 30%- at which point if he crosses that limit of shares he is REQUIRED to do another takeover bid- which again would cost him millions and he would fail. Instead- he then launched a convertible bond sale- of which he bought most himself. He can turn those bonds into Atari shares- but again can't yet- so he will hold the bonds for a few years- the limit legality passes- and at that time he converts them to shares- putting him just over 50% ownership of Atari. So- as we speak- he effectively if not actually- has full control of Atari. Combine his commitment / investment- with his acquisitions & progress- it is clear he is moving the company forward. (his last interview a couple days ago he *repeatedly* mentioned Atari acquiring more companies). To that note- I purchased another 28,000 shares a couple weeks ago...and have intentions to continue piling up my own % again and again... just like I have been doing for many years now. SO yea- those that understand all that...this price is a bargain. Just buy enough at a time to make the $50 foreign charge not matter.

Another Atari prototype found by John Hardie! Not much is known about this one... It may just have been canned very early on in favor of 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe written at the same time. Available here: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-three-d-tic-tac-toe_34595.html

No, I'm testing games this week on launch day firmware ie games I checked today like Fatal Run and Popeye will not need an update, they will work. Not tested games in that published list a few weeks ago were just that, they were games we didn't have carts or roms for at the time of putting the list together, many of them in theory should and will work. Tbh I sat and checked nearly 200 original carts today and every one worked apart from real sports boxing which boots but has a weird graphical glitch. Basically everything normal in terms of official original carts I will just expect to work....apart from oddments like pitfall 2. With this confidence I want to now concentrate on homebrew.

So it finally arrived in Germany after 3 weeks of shipping. Great game!

TL;DR I don't know, it's late...

Hi everyone, dad664npc aka cryptodad has been developing PiStorm on the Atari for several months now and have gotten to the point where it is performing well, albeit needing a Pi4. The current offerings are 68000/68010/68020/68030/68040 - FPU can be added to 68020. Two virtual IDE drives are available, and just recently, ET4000 graphic emulation has been added, having 1MB of VRAM so resolutions upto 1024x768x256. SCSI emulation is being worked on at the moment. This project really needs additional devs. It would be fantastic to get networking up and running. The Amiga PiStorm community is absolutely massive, many users/supporters and contributors... But the Atari side has only 1 active developer and 1 active tester! We really need the support of the community! Please, can we get some interest in PiStorm in our beloved Atari community going? Github: https://github.com/gotaproblem/pistorm-atari Come join the pistorm-atari discord channel - https://discord.gg/XFEBA8QDzQ Thank you all!

At one point we were discussing Brazil ... the thread is 72 pages long and I couldn't find what I was looking for with search. My apologies. But, I said one of our partners had done a cool activation in a mall in Brazil. Here are some photos.

Hopefully the 7800 version of Berzerk / Frenzy will work just as well

I use the cable supplied in the box to do updates.

I love the whole idea of the PiStorm, and had been wondering why we hadn't seen anything like this as of yet for the ST...until I saw some of the replies on this thread. Why the snobbish attitude towards it? The PiStorm has a lot of advantages over many other drop-in replacements or emulation boxes, the biggest of which is that it allows you to continue using your original ST system while upgrading it with much faster speeds and other QoL improvements. Is it relying on emulation? Yes, but does that really matter? I'd be happy to lend a hand to the project if I had the expertise to do so, but unfortunately I don't even own an ST at the moment. it would be great if some others are able to lend a hand, and I hope uji isn't discouraged by the responses he's gotten so far.

I'd really like to see @Tommy Tallarico and maybe @jaybird3rd take a shot at this. No excuses or deflection, but a real, honest apology. I doubt it's coming, because it would mean they would have to acknowledge doing some not-so-nice things, but if they tried, lots of people would listen. 7. Free Tacos. (You knew it was coming. )

Looks like the standard 40 pin IDE connector won for the vote. I have rendered the final card in this latest photo. I am keeping the 44pin IDE connector on there as well for additional connection options. I have gone through the traces on an unpopulated IDE board I have and compared them to my schematic I have hammered out probably 10 times. I did find a few errors or missed connections, fixed those so all seems good now. I have ordered a prototype run of 5 boards today. Should see them in the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow I will order the components I don't have in stock. Keeping my fingers and toes crossed all will be good.

Where did Wade's money come from, and for how long is this kind of behavior sustainable?

As I understand it, the hotel and token licenses are not at all related. Token was a licensing deal with ICICB. New leadership did not like how they executed, cancelled the deal. Full stop. Hotel is also a licensing deal, with a different entity, GSD Group. Don't know where they are at the moment, the pandemic blew up their timeline. Some articles conflated the ICICB termination with the hotel license. It was confusing. There were some virtual casinos, and other metaverse projects I believe within the ICICB umbrella. Those are all terminated.

"Honey, this ATM just called me an asshole." - Stephen King

I still like the last RTC solution you made with the external battery @Shift838. The battery replacement is simple and you don't need a Dremel.

Here is the Next Generation of upgrades for SIO2WiFi, WifiModem and FujiNet This is my next update that will be using the Nextion Displays that will allow you to setup your WiFi Access and configure many settings All though the use of a Touch Screen... You Saw It Here FIRST

We interrupt this thesis on game system palettes to bring you an important announcement. Pre-orders are live for the next two Evercade games! https://songbird-productions.com/product/evercade-goodboy-galaxy-witch-n-wiz/ https://songbird-productions.com/product/evercade-demons-of-asteborg-astebros/

Updated menu to 0.9.6, removing the annoying overlay, adding software 64 columns driver and couple of other fixes. See the first post for updated binary and full release notes.

Yes. Welcome to the club.

It's not just based on a Stephen King story but he got to direct it too, and allegedly prepared for that task by consuming vast quantities of cocaine. AC/DC did the soundtrack because they're his favorite band. It's a total vanity project. But yes, it's fun and it's very 80s.

An Emelio Estevez movie, featuring video games, that I haven't seen???? It's on prime video for $9.99 to buy. Is it worth it?

Since I tend to use many rethorical devices, - some old and wellknown, some invented-on-the-go, this isn’t that, this isn’t me trying to sneak in critic of Atari-productions… Since AA-etiquette & Netiquette has been brought up here, this is just a(nother) typo… … sorry folks…

https://www.a8preservation.com/#/software/release/4661 recorded with an Technics TR-RS737 -> AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio Controller (Onboard) -> Audacity 2.4.2 (cut and amplified) -> a8cas-convert 1.3.1 For some reason the A side cas file has a odd data length header which causes a boot error on the emulator. If the cas is converted back to wav and than played as a audio into a real tape deck connected to an 800XL the game starts fine. B side works. Protector.cas Protector.flac ProtectorB.cas ProtectorB.flac

I think it's a pretty good litmus test that if page numbers are the barrier to entry on snes development for you, you have much bigger problems haha. A "hold your hand documentation" snes dev doesn't exist because 1) the official dev manuals exist. 2) tutorials, wikis, demos exist. 3) Emulators with open-source code exists. 4) There is an active snes dev community that can answer your questions. 5) Retro dev was never meant to be easy; it has a steep ramp-up, it has extreme restrictions on performance, storage, bandwidth, etc compared to more modern systems - but once you get past that it's more level sailing (assuming you some sort of background in application development and understand good coding design and practices, version control, etc). There is an expectation that you need learn these concepts and understand them well. In the grand scheme of things, given all that exists for you to start development, 8+ month to ramp up time to a decent/comfortable level isn't an issue. If that sort of time investment just to ramp up scares you, look to more modern systems for development. That kind of documentation only helps out beginners - once you ramp up, it's not that useful IMO. That sound harsh, but it sort of weeds out serious people and people that just want to "mess around". I'm a professional embedded software engineer by trade. You would think in a professional environment, that sort of documentation exists. Most of the time, it does NOT. If you need to understand things in detail, you need to dig through the source code yourself, scrape up documentation here and there, etc. This is my job on the daily. Maybe I'm more thick-skinned about this, but this is the real world. If you really have a dream of making snes dev projects, there are real world requirements that you need to step up to. But also, there ARE a community of people willing to help (compared to the professional world, not so much haha). People you can talk to/chat with. Making friends and not alienating people really goes a long way (hint-hint). Also, people in the snes hacking scene have been doing this for decades. People with zero programming experience, zero assembly knowledge/experience, etc. They ramped up. And, if you feel overwhelmed.. and have zero experience in retro dev and all that it entails, you can always get your feet wet on a lesser system (like the NES, or SMS) - it'll teach you the basics. This whole; I have this childhood dream and want to pump out my retro dev game in a year.. is just mostly unrealistic without some sort of previously experience in the related field. Anyway. I just wanted to point out that on the surface - not having this holistic tutorial driven documentation as the reason why snes dev is not flourishing appears to be the problem. I know that's the perception, but that's not actually correct. Specifically, because people by example have demonstrated over the years that they will give up anyway - even with that help in ramp-up time. Because they lack the fundamentals of all the things that go into development because just coding for the console (build scripts, environment tools, tool chains, etc) - concepts like data structures, code organization, etc. Or they just realize that it's a bigger/more complex issue that they had anticipated. It's more than just; can I write 65816 assembly and can I write an HDMA table. It's much more than that. Is that kind of "single package documentation" beginner intro tutorial a "nice to have"? Sure. It's convenient, if you're a complete beginner (which I would say that SNES system probably isn't a good choice for that anyway). Is it required? Definitely not.

Hey Marty McFly actually played his guitar.

Playing Congo Bongo 5200. So, it's basically Qbert meets Froger?

Haha, I mentioned the movie elsewhere recently as I also just bought it like a few weeks ago. I want to say he was also in the one where he gets sucked into an arcade to fight some demon thing... Nightmares, I think?

😂 Right. Last thing we need is tiny 69s all over our Revolution games. Okay, well, surely QC stamps are worth collecting?

I got the box today. In all honesty I'll probably sit on it for a couple weeks. I'm not quite 3/4 done making my addition to it. What I took: - Power Lords ad - Space dino Demon Attack cart - Minstrel's Legend magnet - Nice Frog Bog overlay to swap out with one I've abused What's going in: - Pitfall II cart for a console that is not Intellivision. Commodore? I don't remember because I can't play it. - Triforce vinyl decal for somebody's car window - A set of handmade reversible Pac Man ghosts. I need to make faces for the orange one and sew it together, and I haven't even started the pink one yet. X-Ray is still in there. I'm tempted to take it, but I'm not sure what I could swap for it is comparable - I've got the source code disc from a DVD game Bill F. worked on called Spycraft. He was donating a bunch of archives and arcade cabs to the Strong Museum and didn't think they would want it, so I took it. Maaaaybe? Anyway, I'll update once I finish the ghosts and get this big 'ol beast out the door. Kudos to whoever alphabetized the loose carts and overlays.

Yes, but if you had invested it in crypto, then it would have been worth $3.4 million... er.. $600k... no $4.55M!!! er wait... $200k.. um.. and now it's $0... And your crypto site is now bankrupt and people are going to jail... Hope you enjoyed the ride!

If you calculate what all these old Atari games and systems would have sold for in 1981 in today’s money, and then look at how much money you would have today if you invested the average AtariAger’s collection’s value in some mutual fund instead, it’s kind of mindblowing. As a fun exercise, I just calculated approximately what my 2600 collection would have cost if I bought it new instead of at garage sales. It’s a little over $10000. Just adjusting for inflation it would be about $36000 in today’s dollars. But according to this article: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/heres-what-10000-investment-sp-500-index-fund-1980-would-be-worth-today-2018-02-08 if the people who originally bought it had invested instead in an S&P500 index fund, it would have been worth $760000 in 2018. According to this analysis the value of an S&P 500 index fund has grown by 66% since February 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/697624/monthly-sandp-500-index-performance/ So overall $1.2 million dollars. Which is a lot more impressive than the ~$1500 (to be generous) my collection is worth.

Hasn't been done yet, I have just over a week before I have to leave for PRGE, so PRGE-related tasks are my highest priority at the moment. ..Al

Atari has some strong licensing partners in Brazil, but I don't know if there is a distributor for the 2600+ in country yet.

My favorite 2600 is the 2800. If you're starting out though, the 7800 is the most flexible console and borrows the look of the 2800 if you like it.

Ha, I had a sealed Fatal Run 2600 in my hands today. I have put it to one side to ask if it can be opened. The 32 in 1 works just same as the original machine where you cycle power on and off to get to the next game

There is no change to the release date of November 17th. All launch day stock has been manufactured and is on route to distribution centers in US, Europe and Australia right now. There is additional stock being manufactured for the US market currently which is landing in early December in time for holidays. The launch day machines hardware design and software version was locked many months ago. We are now taking the feedback posted here and elsewhere, continuing our internal testing and having discussion with the likely result being a future software update to improve the experience.

New drinking game; every time Kirk mentions authentic and snes sub-forum in a post...

The latter is actually the FlashROM 99, so that should help sort it: the FinalGROM 99 is the FINAL cartridge you will ever need.

Just ran across this online, and thought it would be nice to see in the realm of Intellivision Amico and some of its enablers. I'd really like to see @Tommy Tallarico and maybe @jaybird3rd take a shot at this. No excuses or deflection, but a real, honest apology. I doubt it's coming, because it would mean they would have to acknowledge doing some not-so-nice things, but if they tried, lots of people would listen.

Just a new demo of my implementation of Night Knight, shows the design of the other stages and more sprites.