Shawn Jefferson

I took a look at the old thread on csa8 I had mentioned, where Bob Woolley said that he had created a dual ANTIC upgrade as well. He said that he overlaid two screens and mixed the signal somehow. He also stated that you didn't get additional players. So why can't you get four more players/missiles with a second ANTIC/GTIA pair? What is the techical problem with this? Ps. The Atari is a hobby machine now and I think that anything someone wants to do with it is great! If someone were to build/design a simple dual antic/gtia upgrade and other people want to design software for it, knock yourself out. Whatever floats your boat, after all the only reason we still even have our Atari 8-bits is for fun.

Yes, it was, but I was disappointed. My friends c64 version had more digitized speech!

Bob Woolley mentioned once in csa8 that he did a mod like this to add a second ANTIC with its own memory. It's cool, but the problem is that any software would have to be written specifically for it (right?) and the fact that not many people would make the mod themselves...

If you don't get it, don't buy it!

I think you can still buy those from B&C computer visions, can't you? Check out the price at B&C and watch your max bid!

I've coded enough to realize that attempting to render a continuously scaling and rotating game world using character graphics would result in the most mind-bogglingly ugly game ever. In fact, it would look like this-- No thanks. Hmmm, I don't think you understood what emkay was getting at.

There certainly is a SM125 monitor since I have one, but I don't know the difference. Probably not much.

I picked up two of these units last week and will get rid of this one. The machine works, but the keyboard has some yellowing of keys and is a little dirty (I haven't tried to clean it too much yet, but I will.) Anyway, I'll probably sell it via eBay, but I thought I would see if anyone is looking to trade something I want for it. The monitor is the monochrome one. I'm primarily looking for Atari Lynx and 8-bit stuff. Hardware wise I still need to get a hold of these models: 400, 600XL and XEGS. Almost all 8-bit cartridges too, 810, Indus, Rana disc drives I am also looking for. PM me if you are interested in a trade for this.

As an aside, I was at the last Atari meeting in Victoria. The club still exists as there are a few hardcore Atari fans who are keeping it alive. They tend to talk about all sorts of things, and their PCs alot, but I made them talk a little about Atari last time. I've going to bring my 1200XL in to the next meeting since one of the guys there said he has never seen one. They mentioned they had the whole Bellcom PD library which I wouldn't mind getting a hold of, as well as whatever else they might have squirelled away. Anyway, Atari lives on in a few places!

Only software specially written for two pokey chips will produce stereo sound. It looks like there are a few stereo demos and even a game or two out there though. I'm planning on doing this upgrade in the near future. I'll let you know how it goes.

I just picked up a 1040STf and would like to take a look at Time Bandit again (my cousin had it back in the day.) You can write out an image on the PC for a ST disk?

I think it depends on where you buy it from and what condition it is in. I think that in terms of price (highest to lowest) would be: Atari vendor, eBay, personal sale I'm sure you are aware of the pros and cons of buying from these places. I'd say probably $50-100+ US depending. I got my 800 for $35.00 Canadian dollars from a personal sale, but the machine is yellowed (smokers) and the case has a one broken screw post. It works though. I've picked up 1050 disk drives for $15.00 Canadian at the local thrift store, and sold one on eBay for $51.00 USD. YMMV.

Ok, I had some time the last week and put a PAL Antic chip in one of my 800XLs. It seems to work except I am getting a open paranthesis "(" in the 38th byte position on the screen all the way down. If there is data in memory for the 38th position, I get some sort of ANDed/ORed data instead of what should appear (so it IS reading from memory, but getting corrupted somehow.) I ran various programs and it seems that no matter the mode, the 38th byte position is always corrupted. This makes for interesting text scrollers. If a screen does not use a mode that loads 40 bytes from memory, then no corruption is seen. The NTSC chip worked fine (I tried it first), but I think I will try it again and see if it is still working. Anyone have any suggestions or insight? I'm thinking it may be a problem with the Antic chip itself maybe? I don't have another for testing at the moment.

Copyright law and the legal system aside, the chances that someone is going to sue you over one or two 20 year old games that are no longer in production is slim to none. Unfortunately, when someone contacts eBay about a bidder that is illegally selling someone else's work, they have to act since even a tiny risk of lawsuit is too much. I would be suprised if they didn't pull it. The fact that some auctions get through is proof that eBay is trying to be lenient with this sort of thing... they probably understand the risk is minimal so don't go out of their way to find these auctions. Regardless, ratting CPUWIZs auction out was IMO, very poor taste.

That is true for trademark, but NOT TRUE for copyright. Someone can pop up in 20 years and still sue you for copyright infringement. Its a common misconception about copyright that you have to "defend it or lose it." Trademarks are different than copyright. Yes they infringe either way. It is still illegal... you just may not have to pay any penalities if the copyright holder does not wish to persue you. Without a license signed, the copyright holder could persue the matter down the road (with whatever success or failure the lawyers can wrangle.) Let me put it another way: if you contact the copyright holder and tell them you are going to release their software in a cartridge, there are three things that may happen: 1. the author says "yeah no problem, go ahead!" Cool, you're good to go, although I have too much to lose not to get it in writing. YMMV. 2. They say "no way." 3. They don't respond to you at all. You are only legally able to release their stuff in case #1. As to the situation where you cannot contact the copyright holder for whatever reason. I don't think that would stand up in court either... copyright law clearly states the term of the copyright. Almost everything you wrote is wrong.

I only have a few Lynx games, and I admit to not being an avid game player. That said... California Games: Graphics and sound are pretty good. Everytime I fire this up I play surfing about 10 times, and BMX about 3. I never, ever play Footbag (seems really boring and hard.) Skating looks like it might be ok, but I can't keep my stupid guy on the board. Too hard. Did I mention surfing? It is very good. Easy to learn, but enough depth to come back to again to beat your previous score. Pull off the quadruple 360! Did that, pull off the triple 360 back toward the leading edge of the wave. Blue Lightning: This game looks great and the tile sequence is very cool. Unfortunately the game isn't that much fun for me. I end up just firing blindly and moving all over to avoid missles. A better game player might have more fun, being able to deal with the frantic nature of some parts of the game. I think I have made it about three or four levels in. Qix: Too hard! I have this game on the 8-bit computer and I could always get several levels into the game. On the lynx I'm lucky to get three levels in. I don't like the controls. I don't like pressing the button to start drawing. Perhaps this was the way it was in the arcade... I didn't play the arcade Qix. Gauntlet 3: I was expecting to see the old gauntlet characters when I bought this game. Nope, you have a stupid assortment of funny characters to play with. The game isn't too bad though. I guess it would be better with two players, unfortunately I don't have anyone to comlynx with. Rampart: This is a good game. It took me a couple of tries to figure out the controls and the best way to rebuild the castle, but once I did that... the game is very good. I find it pretty hard, but not unusually hard. I never played the arcade version, but I saw it quite a bit. Why hasn't someone done an 8-bit port of this game? Chips Challenge: This is a neat little puzzle game. There's a few things I don't like about it though. The controls are touchy. I find that when I'm walking past some water, fire or bombs I have a tendency to accidently press diagonally when I wanted to press down. This may be a shortcoming of the lynx itself though or my joystick technique (I notice this problem with Qix too.) Some levels are dead easy, while others make you do a mind-numbing 10 minutes of simple maze manipulations and one hard thing at the end. It's annoying as hell to have to redo the 10 minutes of boring stuff to get to the one thing you didn't figure out last time around. I've put the game down in disgust because of this, but I always pick it up later when I'm refreshed! Klax: Excellent game, great graphics and sound. I don't even mind the vertical lynx configuration with this game although it is hard to adjust the contrast properly. I find the game gets hard very quickly though, and I don't understand the difficulty choices at the beginning (I bought the game loose, no manual.) This is a game I would break out once in a while to play. I wouldn't spend hours playing it though... but I bore easily of these type of games.

CPUWIZ could have put all the names in a hat and drawn out the person who could buy the game from him for $50.00. That would have eliminated the potential for someone to say that he was just trying to make money using someone else's property. Don't get me wrong, from what I've seen of CpuWiz on AA, he seems to be a very generous guy, sending people free stuff all the time. I don't think he needs to stop making the cartridges if he is ok with the moral implications of doing so. Just don't complain when eBay acts to protect itself, fully within the law. Cpuwiz knew/knows the policies and regulations of eBay maybe more so than anyone else here.

This argument does not change the fact that copyright infringement is illegal. Lawyers are well paid for many reasons. Criminal lawyers are well paid, but that does not make it right to kill someone, or steal their car. I'm sure they do get in a huff about that too. That's not how it works. You need to have permission *before* using somone elses work. CPUWIZ seems like a knowlegeable, nice guy, but he surely knew that selling these games was illegal, and because he is so smart I am sure that he knows they were against eBay policy as well. He took the risk. Not long ago there was an instance where some AA members got an eBay auction shutdown. I believe the seller was selling a CD full of 2600 games. Is this only difference the volume of copyright infringement?

It would have to emulate the graphics and sound hardware of the 2600... which I don't think it is fast enough to do. So the short answer, IMO, is NO.

So anybody contacted IBM about releasing/licensing MULE?

I wasn't aware there was a "copyright office" or that you needed to file for a copyright. My understanding is that a trademark and a patent you file for, but you don't need to file for a copyright. This text is copyright automatically just by writing it. Wow, seems we are both right. I just found this place: http://www.copyright.gov/records/ and did a search for M.U.L.E., sure enough IBM has registered their copyright... which is just a formality... they didn't need to do it, it just creates a public record of the copyright.

I've been successful buying Atari PSs from Ebay for less than what a new one costs at Best or B&C. However they are used and you take your chances with eBay. Just keep your eye on what a new one costs and don't buy one from ebay that is going to be more with shipping.

I was surfing around and came across this site, and started reading this article about the history of the 8-bit line: http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/atari8bit/ It seems to have a few technical errors (AFAIK.) "However once it hit the market, it was soon found that much of the vast array of Atari software already out there would not run on the 1200XL." I haven't had much difficulty running software on my 1200XL, with the exception of the titles that require the 400/800 OS. (This isn't really that many, hardly "much of the vast array" I'd say. ALL XL/XE computers have this problem. "The 600XL was the replacement for it's venerable 400, but now included a regular keyboard and the ability to expand up to 48k. The 800XL replaced the original 800 model, coming with 64K and expandable to 128K." The 600XL could be upgraded to 64k, AFAIK. The 800XL *could not* be upgraded to 128k without doing some hacking (soldering) and even so, I don't recall seeing 128k upgrades for it. 256k seemed to be the common third party upgrade. Atari didn't design the computer to be upgraded. "Unfortunately, the only thing ever released for this new port was the ram expansion cartridge for the 600XL." Not really incorrect, but rather it should be explicitly stated that Atari did not produce anything for the PBI. Other company's did. "The lower end of the line, and considered more of a gaming computer (as all previous low end Atari models were), the 65XE came with 64K of memory and no expansion bus." We now know that in some European countries the 65XE DID have the ECI. "The 130XE came 130K of memory, some enhanced memory access circuitry (which was never really used), and the expansion interface used in the XL series (Parallel Bus Interface) was dropped." 128k of memory. The "enhanced memory access circuitry" was used to address the additional 64k by the CPU and ANTIC independently.

CC65: http://www.cc65.org/ A cross-compiler for several 6502 based systems. Well supported and constantly being updated/improved. Specifically Atari systems supported are the 8-bit computer and possibly soon the Lynx.

There doesn't seem to be too much out there... Here's what I've found: Bastian Schick's page (This is where you can get the dev tools for the lynx to program in Assembly and C. The C stuff is a custom version of cc65. I Personally don't like K&R syntax so I haven't used it. There is some work going on to get a lynx target in the "real" cc65 package maintained by Ullrich von Bassewitz, www.cc65.org but I have no idea when or if that will ever be released.) www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Byte/4242/lynx/ Lynx programming for Dummies. This explained (at least to me) some things that I still didn't understand after reading the above pages. http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gd1113/lynx/kurs/ Matthias Domin's page. Not a lot of information, but some tools. http://home.t-online.de/home/Matthias.Domi...in/lynx_eng.htm