x=usr(1536)

Very cool! A few questions: Why only decode 320K? I'm guessing that it's using the RAMBO method of adding 256K to the board, but the whole 512K (or more) should be possible unless there's something I'm missing. Does this arrangement allow for user-selectable OSes? The lack of a cartridge port and PBI is understandable given the form factor, but are these something that could be possible by way of breakout cables or similar? Echoing everyone else's opinions, they should be there if it's feasible. Really nifty, and I've been pondering something similar myself. Nice case, BTW

Just mentioning it since it may impact hardware selection: IIRC, he's in Germany. 220V and PAL FTW.

This post says Baseball; this post says Home Run. FWIW, there's always been some confusion on part numbers as to whether they start with C followed by the number zero or the letter O. As a result, it sometimes helps to search for both C0 and CO, or to just drop the Cx prefix entirely.

One other thing: in the seller's photos, the machine is connected to power, but not a TV, and the power switch is flipped to the on position. My guess is that the buyer did this so that he could claim that there's no power LED lighting up when the machine is turned on, figuring that the likelihood of an eBay employee knowing that the machine doesn't have a power LED is slim to nil. Connecting it to a TV would give the game away, though. Any idea as to what's going on with the connector on the power adapter? Was it heat-shrinked or similar to prevent the plug head coming out of the end? I realise that it uses interchangeable plug heads to account for different jack sizes, but that's just unusual.

Stellantis! Oh, wait...

Uh, no. You put the thread out in public. By doing so, you're inviting commentary from the public. If you received commentary other than what you hoped to receive, too bad. That's just the risk involved with inviting opinion: it may not always be what you want to hear. By that logic, it seems as though critiquing your posts is off-limits. Again, when inviting public opinion you're not safe from that. As others have stated, the issue isn't the subject matter, but rather how it was presented - and there are ways that the thread could have been started that wouldn't be likely to ultimately devolve into the mass of bickering, argument, and acrimony that we've seen play out again and again in threads like these. Nobody's making up rules. They're stating an opinion, and, ultimately, trying to give you the benefit of their experience. Related to that: Perhaps looking to see if there's a germ of truth to the replies you're receiving rather than taking them as personal attacks would be something worth considering. Here's the thing: you're receiving pretty much the exact opposite of the 'soyboy culture' to which you are referring. People are being straightforward with you and not softening their commentary; they want their point to be clearly understood. Humour is used to soften that blow somewhat. Sure, it can be snarky at times, but so what? There are far worse things in life to have to deal with than some sarcastic guy sitting in front of his keyboard. Besides, he's probably wearing only a stained pair of tighty-whities and is shoveling Cheetos open-palm into his mouth as orange corn-based styrofoam snack crumbs rain down into the depths of his keyboard from above, irretrievably jamming the 'j' key to the point where he has to press it so hard it crunches in order for it to work. Roll with the punches and worry about things that are worth worrying about. There is one thing I am genuinely curious about, however: When I wrote this, what did you think I was referring and/or alluding to? Again, genuinely curious.

Needs background music.

He's also Soylent Green!

The trick lies in learning how to group and lead the ghosts: they don't really behave like they do in any other Pac-Man game. Once you can get into the swing of how to make that happen, the game becomes a lot less brutal and it becomes easier to reach the pinball playfield. My recollection is that the ghosts have something of an affinity for homing in on you, but if you can get them at the right distance and change your direction, they'll change their direction of pursuit and it becomes possible to group and lead them. Making use of the tunnels also helps with this. Here're a couple of posts from earlier in the thread on the subject:

OK, that clears things up a bit. Thanks. A few comments: It looks like there's a bit of muddling going on re: terminology, which was part of what was confusing me. A Denial of Service attack is abbreviated DoS (lowercase 'o' intentional); DNS is completely different and is used to convert domain names to IP addresses. If I'm understanding correctly, you were receiving a high volume of phone calls intended to basically busy out your business number. Is this correct? One caveat: I am not a Commodore guy by any stretch of the imagination. So far, I've managed to get c1541 to attach the disk image and extract arkanoidaird/dns to the local disk for inspection; x64sc has loaded and run the program in question. Neither of these programs were installed on my machine until about 30 minutes ago, so there's some learn-as-you-go for me here. I think I now see where DNS was being used interchangeably with DoS: the 'DNS!' shout-outs shown in the directory structure likely refer to Dinasours1338, who look to be a C64 cracking group. Their name also appears at the end of the ARKANOIDAIRD/DNS file. This is about as far as my knowledge goes with respect to this end of things, because I just flat-out don't know enough about the C64 cracking scene. I realise that this is probably obvious to anyone in the C64 world, but I breathe Atari Anyway, I ran the executable and it went as far as the screen that I think you were referring to: There was a pretty solid synth string sound playing on that screen, but hitting space got past it and started the game itself. The game ran, but the synth string continued playing in the background; it also wasn't clear if the graphics were correct or not. It is possible that the crack had some knock-on effects on the rest of the game; that has been known to happen. FWIW, the piece of music that initially plays during loading before that screen comes up is taken from an Atari 8-bit game, but I cannot for the life of me remember which one. From watching videos of a few of Dinasours1338's demos, however, it seems to be something of a signature of theirs. Here it is being (briefly and incompletely) used in an Atari menu disk: Moving on: I haven't found anything referencing a Facebook page, so am not entirely certain where that appeared. As for the caller: I'm still not understanding the suicide aspect. Was it that the caller was threatening to commit suicide, or was trying to reach a suicide hotline, or something else? Was there more than one caller? Either way, it feels like the crack and the calls are unrelated unless there's something I'm not aware of that ties them together.

Kermit. After he took his fall down he stairs, things changed. Some say that was the beginning of the end for the company. Agreed. Criticism is one thing, but this thread comes across as an invitation to shit on someone just because it can be done.

While I'm far from unsympathetic towards your situation, this isn't something that affects you, AtariAge, Atari, or Stella uniquely. Attacks like this are happening everywhere, every minute of the day. Can you explain what is meant by this? I have a strong cybersecurity background, but cannot follow what it is that you are describing. What is meant by 'disturbing theme'? Please describe your understanding of the DNS attack. 'Details of your post', 'suicide poster', and 'suicide caller' are not clear in this context. When you say 'calls', are you referring to phone calls or something else? Happy to help as much as is reasonably possible, but the way that the incident is being described makes it impossible to understand.

Nope, you're correct. I mixed DOS3 block sizes and sector sizes together in my head. Apologies for any confusion.

My suspicions that this is an Aliexpress converter in different clothing are strengthening. No definitive proof is possible without comparing the internals of both the Apollo and Aliexpress units, but the following image (taken from https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805525735745.html) is interesting: Omit the AV/SP/PC, PIP, and MENU buttons and the RESET, MODE, and P.P buttons appear in the same sequence on the Apollo; there's even a gap in-between MODE and P.P where the MENU button doesn't appear on the Apollo. The button functions also line up, at least based on the descriptions of what they do. Finally, the SVGA port appears to be in the exact same orientation and location on both in relation to the buttons. For $5, I decided to splurge and ordered one. It'll be here in two to three weeks. If anyone has one of the Apollo converters and is willing to open it up, I'd love to do a comparison once the Aliexpress unit gets here.

Speaking of cheap Aliexpress converters / upscalers: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255799928860391.html It would likely be very easy to remove some unused components, add in the appropriate cables, and rehouse it in a project box. Not a bad return on about €4 of investment. Compare the sequence of the buttons on the Apollo to the ones on the Aliexpress unit. They seem to have the same order, and other things about the form factor line up. Really want to see the inside of the Apollo unit. Hopefully it's taking its video input from luma and chroma, not composite.

This isn't a device I've ever heard of before. FWIW, the same seller also has a C64 version available called the Apollo 64; my guess is that the Atari and Commodore versions are identical internally since both machines output the same video signals. I'd really like to see the internals of one or the other, preferably both. Not much is coming up in searches for either one, and repurposing a cheap Aliexpress converter and charging €129 for it is not outside the bounds of possibility.

Just FYI: running atrfs without any options says that debug is -d. No mention is made of --atrdebug.

Been doing some testing of various sizes of disk images. So far, this has meant 1440, 2880, 5760, 11520, and 23040 sectors at 128, 256, and 512 bytes each. Spreadsheet attached with results; secsize.zip contains the test images. Images were created with `atrfs --create --name=number_of_sectors.atr --sectors=number_of_sectors --secsize=128|256|512'. Can't create (yet) images with sector sizes above 512 bytes; I'm guessing that this will change once DOS3 support makes it in. Mounting of images was done with `atrfs --name=number_of_sectors.atr /Volumes/number_of_sectors'. Messages in the spreadsheet occur after attempting a mount with those parameters. Upon successful creation of an image with no mount point specified, it might be a good idea to exit cleanly rather than allowing the `fuse: no mount point' error to appear; this may cause confusion for some folks since the image was created despite not being mounted. The addition of a --i option would be appreciated. Think of it as working akin to ffmpeg's -i option in that it would display information about an image; usage would be something along the lines of `atrfs --i --name=whatami.atr'. Or maybe just `atrfs --name=image.atr' with no other options specified? secsize.zip atrfs disk capacity testing.xlsx

What tests have been conducted so far? It's possible for there to be problems without anything getting hot, FWIW. Sorry, minor brain fart on my behalf: the regulators on XLs and XEs are in the PSU. Apologies for giving the impression they're on the motherboard. You may want to try a USB adapter rated for at least 2A. See https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/atari-xl-xe-usb-power-cable/ for the appropriate cable.

Power supply and / or voltage regulator. It sounds like the FujiNet (or something else) is drawing down the XE's power to the point where the GTIA is being weird when it's connected. FWIW, I did catch that you're using the same PSU with both machines. To eliminate the PSU as a possibility, you'd need a second known-good one to test with. Having said that, it seems more likely that the VR (as a starting point) may be getting flaky. Also, check voltages on the main ICs (not just the GTIA) with the FujiNet both connected and removed. If they're under 5VDC at any point, at least you know it's a power issue. Is this FujiNet one that was handbuilt or did you buy it from a retailer?

Makes more sense now Thing is, without a recent PPC build of macFUSE it's a moot point, since atrfs requires macFUSE in order to mount and manipulate images. Might want to ask around on the various Apple-centric PPC forums out there to see what would be involved in making it happen.

Maybe. Try building it and see. My gut feeling is that there will be compiler / library issues. Out of curiosity, the last version of OS X that supported PPC was 10.6, and that was well over a decade ago. Why are you looking at it as a target?