Shawn Jefferson

Not cartridge images, just EXE files (multiple) or disk (ATR) images. Cartridge images would have to be reworked (if possible?) because of the different bank switching schemes. I received my 1MB version last week and it's pretty cool! I've only played with it a little bit so far though.

I emailed him too. I think he was just trying to rip someone off. How do you just pluck 1450XLD out of the air? He must have known that it was a rare piece of kit and then figured he would plead ignorance later.

Have you done the SuperVideo mod? That made a big difference for my 800XL. Whenever I want to play a Gr.8 (F) game, I unplug the luma and plug in the composite and just switch my Commodore monitor to Comp. Takes about 5 seconds. I guess you could build a Y-cable-switch thingee to switch between Composite and Seperate video and eliminate the cable switch step. If you have to unplug cables at the back of your monitor to make the switch I can see how this would save you some time and aggravation, however with my setup I have a very short DIN to female RCA cable on the back of the computer; very easy to reach. If you have a TV that accepts S-video and composite, can't you have both hooked up at the same time and just switch your TV into either mode depending on what you are playing? (never tried that)

Quick someone hack that screen into the program, and make an ATR while you are at it!

Releasing the binary for evaluation on an emulator was a nice gesture and goes a long way to changing my mind about your business practices. Thanks!

I read on csa8 that the collision detection bug is a bug in the Atari800 sources and should be fixed soon.

It may be that I can't read polish, but I can't find a download link on that website.

That does look pretty cool! How did you get ahold of the original prototype?

I have a set of cables for a P:R: connection (the cables that go to the modem and the printer) laying around my house and before I toss them out I thought I would offer them to the first person that is willing to pay the shipping for them (from Canada.) PM me if interested. I took my P:R: connection apart to build a SIO2PC cable! I should have just sold it on ebay and bought a spare SIO cable. Doh!

Steven is selling the hardware only, what you do with it is up to you and your own conscience. It doesn't facilitate piracy in the manner that the Happy disk drive upgrades did, it just gives you a different way of running your Atari 8-bit software. Personally one of the big reasons I bought one, was so that my daughter could play some educational games on the old Atari in an easy manner. She likes Alphabet Zoo right now and it's a little hard for her (or mom) to boot up the sio2pc laptop, boot APE and find the image and then load it, etc... much easier to pop in a cartridge (which disables BASIC for you) and select (A) from a menu. An added bonus is that I get to play with it as well!

I agree with that! You can overwrite it anytime you are bored with the titles, too. I'm waiting for analmux's dual antic/gtia upgrade to hit the streets before I pass judgement on the best hardware/software released in 2003.

I just ordered a 1Mb MaxFlash cartridge and I've been reading over the documentation and the source code (cool, we can actually look at the source!) and this thing is VERY COOL. You can make your own multi-carts for less money than some other people are selling them for. You can make a MULE cartridge. You can put a disk game on the cartridge, and with the 8-Mb cartridge you could probably put four disk games on cartridge too. There's a forum established for people to share ideas and cartridge images. Maybe some enterprising individual will put Ultima IV on a cartridge and patch it to save to disk just the player information! That would be cool and is probably not out of the realm of possibility. I held off on the multi-carts offered earlier at Atariage, but when I saw this thing I had to have one! The setup is very easy and I think almost anyone can create cartridges with the supplied software-no programming knowledge required. Buy one now (while their cheap!)

The 5200 is just the 8-bit computer in a different case, so a lot of knowledge is out there already of the graphics modes and sound capabilities. From what I gather the 5200 has limited RAM so some things are more easily done on the 8-bit computer...

I think that David is talking about text adventures with a static graphic displayed for each "room" like all the SAGA adventures, so Ultima IV and Apshai wouldn't qualify. I never really got into those type of adventures when I was a kid, but I did play a bunch of the Scott Adam's ones.. but never finished any. It's hard for me to say which would be the best.

They would be made as fast as possible. Even then that's not as fast as we'd like. The generated code would be a solid stream of LDA/STA/LDA/STA/etc. Sorry, I see how you would do this in your standard: insert NOP "codes" into the picture file to pad out the kernal so that color changes occur in the correct places. That would also allow quite a good compression ratio I would think!

Your proposed standard doesn't seem to include any information about where the changes are to be made, or are you thinking that all the changes are made in the horizontal blank? Mid-scan line changes would somehow have to include some kind of timing information as well, which means that it may be easier to include a fully formed kernal with the picture file itself (you can always compress it for smaller picture size.) I think that using this type of picture in a game (with mid-scan line changes) will have to be "hand coded", unless it is just for a static picture (title, highscore screen)

I know, I was just making a little joke. I think that its very cool that people are writing emulators for the 8-bit and keeping the Atari alive. If you can charge for it and make some money, or at least break even, more power to you!

If you will read my message carefully, you will see I also said color registers (as in playfield color registers too.) That may not be quite so ridiculous would it? GED does just that, mid-scanline. This would be one way of getting more colors per scanline, as well as using ORed players.

If you assume that we have free will, then all futures are possible even those that are not perfect.

9 color per scan line is the five playfield color registers and the four player missile color registers, but if you want a different 9 color on any line (or even one color different) you need to use DLIs. To get more than the 9 colors per scan line you need to write a DLI kernel that stuffs color registers (or player position registers) mid scan line, which then forces you to be careful where you make the changes and very carefully pick which colors you use in each part of the scanline. Just to clarify the discussion about rembrandt and MCS... hopefully.

You guys and your pesky morality. You could just make a limited release of the game without obtaining permission first. Companies such as Sunmark and B&C do so, I assume, under the assumption that suing them would be a waste of time over a game released to a dead market.

The 1400XL and XLD have parallel buses, but I don't think you need worry about people trying to run a double GTIA/ANTIC combo in those models particularly. Can't someone offer a send in your computer and get GTIA/ANTIC installed service? They could do ram upgrades and stereo sound upgrades at the same time as well. Although that might eat up a lot of power...

That's a very common problem with the Lynx II. Search the threads here in the Lynx form, it comes up every couple of months. IIRC, something to do with a transistor Q12 (?) burning out. That's the main on/off switch in the unit. You can check it easily with a jumper. Check the threads... I don't have time to post all the details, sorry.

Whats the problem? Other people release unlicensed software/protos all the time: Sunmark, B&C, etc...