x=usr(1536)

September 12

7 hours ago, JPF997 said:

No need to act so smug

Oh, that wasn't smugness. It's not really in my repertoire. I'd classify it more as mild sarcasm with a hint of self-effacing delivery. Sure, those two things could be considered to be odds with each other to one extent or another, but such is the nature of humour.

In any event, buying properties (or the rights to them) that are going to sit unused just ties up capital that could be used for other things. For an organisation the size of, say, Warner Bros., this isn't a big deal, but at Atari's scale it doesn't make sense.

One thing I do wonder about is how well an Atari-manufactured VIC20 / C64 / Amiga mini or similar would be received by both the Commodore and Atari camps. Somehow, I suspect that it would make the discussion around the modern VCS look like Shakespeare's sonnets by comparison.

September 12

1 hour ago, JPF997 said:

I mean I don't get why you're so resistant to the idea of Atari buying a former rival when it would probably cost them pennies to do so, even if it's not that profitable it's always good to own more retro content

That's what we refer to as a 'poor business decision'. Companies generally try to avoid making those if they're concerned for their long-term viability.

1 hour ago, JPF997 said:

but really the big prize I want them to go after is the remnants of commodore, the c64 and amiga mini's proove that there is still demand for that type of content and it would be cool if Atari owned it (at least I think it would be ).

While we're at it, I want a pony.

@TrogdarRobusto: will the 2600+ have pony support? If so, I think I've found the USP that might just persuade me into a preorder.

September 12

17 minutes ago, Tickled_Pink said:

If you were looking for ST exclusives then you'd have to look earlier in the ST's lifetime. Programmers got to grips with the ST quicker than they did the Amiga because it was an easier machine to program. So, many of the games that eventually came out on the Amiga were initially ST-only titles. But then, once they'd become more familiar with the Amiga, they'd want to push the envelope and see what that machine could do, which often meant developing games that the ST couldn't handle easily.

Not to mention that architectural similarities between the two systems eventually encouraged lazy ports, something that affected both platforms and in some ways started a race to the bottom in terms of software quality later on in the systems' lives.

10 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

The Atari ST has a library of over 2500 games, it's easily the largest game library amongst atari systems, no one can tell me that there aren't some cult classics that should be re released hidden amongst all those games.

How do you propose to overcome the issues behind licensing them? The majority of software for the ST was third-party, like pretty much every other system in existence.

Personally, I'm not really itching to play the ST versions of Star Raiders, Moon Patrol, Super Breakout, etc. Thing is, those are the ones most likely to see a first-party release since they were first-party titles to begin with. Everything else has a (possibly significant) cost attached to it just to get it to market.

September 12

Memos to self for future testing:

Gigantic images (e.g., 1MB+)
Mount an atrfs filesystem via FujiNet
Show atrfs mounts in Finder sidebar (may be macFUSE limitation)
Loopback atrfs

September 12

So far, I've been able to create a blank image, mount it, and both write to and read from it. File deletion also works, as does renaming. 'Open in Terminal' even works properly from Finder's context menu, which is huge for my typical workflow. Here's what I'm seeing:

1536@lolbox A8 % atrfs --create --name=blank.atr /Volumes/blank 
1536@lolbox A8 %

The image is successfully created and mounted at /Volumes/blank with the following files:

1536@lolbox blank % ls -al
total 5
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 1536  staff  1024 Sep 11 21:05 .
drwxr-xr-x  7 root  wheel   224 Sep 11 21:05 ..
-r--r--r--  1 1536  staff   302 Sep 11 21:05 .bootinfo
-r--r--r--  1 1536  staff   384 Sep 11 21:05 .bootsectors
-r--r--r--  1 1536  staff   135 Sep 11 21:05 .fsinfo
1536@lolbox blank %

And the contents of .bootinfo and .fsinfo are:

1536@lolbox blank % cat .bootinfo
Boot information
Boot sectors: 3
Load boot sectors at $0700-$087f
Init with JMP $0714
Run after load at: $1540
Max open files: 3 [default] (DOS 2 and compatible only)
Number of drives supported: 2 [DOS 2 default] (DOS 2 and compatible only)
DOS 2 flag for DOS.SYS: $00
DOS 2 DOS.SYS starting sector: 4
1536@lolbox blank % 

1536@lolbox blank % cat .fsinfo 
File system information
Sectors: 720
Sector size: 128
File system type: Atari DOS 2.0s
Total data sectors: 707
Free sectors:       707
1536@lolbox blank %

Trying to do things the FS doesn't support (non-8.3 filenames, extended characters, etc.) are trapped properly with error -43.

I'll need to do some further testing with other than the default images, but so far this looks great! Thanks again!

September 12

Good news: it builds! Thank you!

I'm working on getting macFUSE to recognise and use atrfs. This is being based off of the way that the sshfs package does it, which is to place the binary in /usr/local/bin/, set it 755 / root:staff, and install the man page to /usr/local/share/man/man1/sshfs.1, 644 / root:staff (no ACLs or extended attributes, etc. on either one). Granted, mentioning the man page right now is getting ahead of things a bit, but figured I'd note it just so it's there.

September 12

56 minutes ago, PowerDubs said:

I stayed in the Nomad 3 weeks ago- walk right into the hotel lobby, restaurant, elevators to your room. Nothing trashy about it whatsoever, and you have to walk out the backside to even see the casino. Perfectly fine for a kid.

https://www.thenomadhotel.com/las-vegas/

There is plenty of great stuff in Vegas- just do your research and have to pay more than the standard fare.

At which point you (and the kid) are basically confined to that hotel, because Vegas doesn't cease being Vegas based on where you stay.

September 11

Sweet, it's the Barbara Feldon release!

:-D

September 11

8 hours ago, pcrow said:

Yes, obviously that include will need to be removed. I should conditionalize that on Linux, as well as the use of the RENAME_REPLACE flag on the rename operation.

Edit: I've pushed that change. I just define the flags as zero so that they never match any bits if it's not Linux.

Using the new Makefile:

1536@lolbox atrfs % make
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c atrfs.c
atrfs.c:365:97: warning: format specifies type 'unsigned long' but the argument has type 'off_t' (aka 'long long') [-Wformat]
   if ( options.debug ) fprintf(stderr,"DEBUG: %s %s %ld bytes at %lu\n",__FUNCTION__,path,size,offset);
                                                                  ~~~                           ^~~~~~
                                                                  %lld
1 warning generated.
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c special.c
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c info.c
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c mydos.c
mydos.c:1402:97: warning: format specifies type 'unsigned long' but the argument has type 'unsigned long long' [-Wformat]
   if ( options.debug ) fprintf(stderr,"DEBUG: %s %s extend file %lu bytes\n",__FUNCTION__,path,size+offset);
                                                                 ~~~                            ^~~~~~~~~~~
                                                                 %llu
mydos.c:1674:26: error: use of undeclared identifier 'RENAME_NOREPLACE'
   if ( r==0 && (flags & RENAME_NOREPLACE) ) return -EEXIST;
                         ^
1 warning and 1 error generated.
make: *** [mydos.o] Error 1
1536@lolbox atrfs %

September 11

49 minutes ago, Stephen said:

I disagree. If Cindy wasn't so damn selfish and would have just spent more time promoting him, he would have been bigger than Justin Bieber and Eminem combined. Have you not been hearing this for the past decade or two?

Don't forget the mutual breakup. All things Margolis are now in the rear-view mirror, disappearing into an ever-shrinking dot on the horizon to the rear. The future looks only like this:

September 11

1 minute ago, TrogdarRobusto said:

The only way a lot of these titles make it to market is in this ecommerce, limited production model.

In a market where producing and selling 500 copies of a title is a smash hit, expecting any major retailer to give up shelf space for that is just unrealistic. Boutique shops selling 5 or 10 copies apiece, sure, that's workable. But not Wal-Mart, Target, or Kohl's.

Something that people seem to gloss over is that the days of million-plus-selling cartridges are over. A thousand units would be phenomenal in this day and age, and the economies of scale at that level just aren't there to make it practical to carry them outside of niche distributors. And, like it or not, we're also in an era of streaming and downloadable content. While I don't want to get into the usual ownership arguments that discussion of those delivery methods tend to devolve into, it is worth noting that physical media (and not just games) is on the decline. It's not dead yet, but the signs are there that it's on the out.

One thing that would make for an interesting device would be a flash-based multicart, programmable from the device it's used with. Load it up with downloadable ROMs, flip through them at your leisure, take it with you to friends or relatives with the same device to play with / against them, and also enable features like saving high scores and game progress, etc., on the cart.

September 11

5 hours ago, Crazy Climber said:

Sounds terrible 😄 🤣 guess the face-lift was a bust...

Well, blowing up the older hotels and replacing them with new ones over a period of a couple of decades did refresh the Strip somewhat. I'll give it that.

The main thing is that, well, it's Vegas. Take away the gambling, booze, and hookers and you're left with Salt Lake City only with three times the population. Nothing against SLC (or even Utah in general), but vice is Vegas' USP. Without it, it's just a moderately-sized desert city.

September 11

1 hour ago, Crazy Climber said:

Its been awhile for me too but last time I was there it seemed like they were building a ton of theme park style kids stuff. Someone told me they were trying to change the image, make it more family friendly, etc... Anyone been there recently, is it a "kid zone" now? I can't see how it would be possible but then again, thats a lot of revenue they miss out on 😆

We were there last month for a conference. The image change is... Superficial. I wouldn't exactly call it a 'kid zone' by any stretch of the imagination.

If you're staying on (or near to) the Strip, after you check in at your hotel you will have to walk through part of the casino to get to your room. I can't think of a single property in that area where this isn't the case.

As part of walking through the casino, you also get to walk past the bars. This is great for watching some really inexplicably bad behaviour.

If you're really lucky, you'll get to see hotel security dragging someone out who couldn't abide by the rules after getting drunk.

Vegas has a massive homeless population, along with drug problems, aggressive panhandling, and petty crime. The Strip isn't as sanitised by Vegas Metro (police) as it used to be. Needles on the sidewalks and in the gutters are not uncommon.

Don't forget the somewhat-clothed strippers and hookers. They're still out on the strip, drumming up business.

Oh, and the city's running out of water. Again.

September 11

So relieved to see these circular discussions rehashed yet again. The thread was way too on-topic there for a minute.

September 11

6 hours ago, pcrow said:

I applied the defines as suggested in the thread on that issue.

Out of curiosity, is libbsd required to build atrfs?

The macOS defines are definitely present in the header files, but here's what I'm seeing:

1536@lolbox atrfs % make
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c atrfs.c
atrfs.c:365:97: warning: format specifies type 'unsigned long' but the argument has type 'off_t' (aka 'long long') [-Wformat]
   if ( options.debug ) fprintf(stderr,"DEBUG: %s %s %ld bytes at %lu\n",__FUNCTION__,path,size,offset);
                                                                  ~~~                           ^~~~~~
                                                                  %lld
1 warning generated.
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c special.c
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c info.c
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c mydos.c
mydos.c:20:10: fatal error: 'linux/fs.h' file not found
#include <linux/fs.h> // RENAME_NOREPLACE
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.
make: *** [mydos.o] Error 1
1536@lolbox atrfs %

Which makes sense, since the linux/fs.h header file doesn't exist on macOS.

September 11

5 minutes ago, famicommander said:

The lack of analog video output really is a bad oversight. The light gun-only 7800 games are listed as tested working, but that cannot possibly be true because those games aren't going to work on an HDMI display. You need an analog CRT display for old school light gun technology to work.

I'd need to double-check which light gun titles were marked as compatible, but IIRC some of them had a joystick mode. It's possible that those were the versions that were tested.

September 11

17 minutes ago, pcrow said:

My assumption is that the problem would be the use of the fuse3 headers. If #include <fuse.h> works, but #include <fuse3/fuse.h> doesn't work, that would be it. There's a define in the makefile that you can comment out, and it will try an older version.

Unfortunately, it still errors out. FWIW, this is with the Makefile that was checked in about 5 hours ago and use_modern_fuse=yes commented out.

1536@lolbox atrfs % make
cc -g -O0 -W -Wall  -DFUSE_USE_VERSION=25  "-DFUSE_INCLUDE=<fuse.h>" -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -c atrfs.c
atrfs.c:289:11: error: no member named 'st_atim' in 'struct stat'
   stbuf->st_atim = atrfs.atrstat.st_atim;
   ~~~~~  ^
atrfs.c:289:35: error: no member named 'st_atim' in 'struct stat'
   stbuf->st_atim = atrfs.atrstat.st_atim;
                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
atrfs.c:290:11: error: no member named 'st_mtim' in 'struct stat'
   stbuf->st_mtim = atrfs.atrstat.st_mtim;
   ~~~~~  ^
atrfs.c:290:35: error: no member named 'st_mtim' in 'struct stat'
   stbuf->st_mtim = atrfs.atrstat.st_mtim;
                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
atrfs.c:291:11: error: no member named 'st_ctim' in 'struct stat'
   stbuf->st_ctim = atrfs.atrstat.st_ctim;
   ~~~~~  ^
atrfs.c:291:35: error: no member named 'st_ctim' in 'struct stat'
   stbuf->st_ctim = atrfs.atrstat.st_ctim;
                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
atrfs.c:365:97: warning: format specifies type 'unsigned long' but the argument has type 'off_t' (aka 'long long') [-Wformat]
   if ( options.debug ) fprintf(stderr,"DEBUG: %s %s %ld bytes at %lu\n",__FUNCTION__,path,size,offset);
                                                                  ~~~                           ^~~~~~
                                                                  %lld
1 warning and 6 errors generated.
make: *** [atrfs.o] Error 1
1536@lolbox atrfs %

September 11

Forgot to show how the plastic retaining tabs for the keypad / fire button PCB was repaired despite having already taken photos of it :-D

Cut a thin strip (approx. 4mm wide) of aluminium from a 1/16" x 1" strip. That strip was cut in half, and the two resulting pieces were bent into an 'L' shape.

This was then adhered to the rear of the plastic retaining tabs and the underside of the case with E6000 adhesive after cleaning all surfaces with rubbing alcohol.

Seems to be pretty solid so far. May do the same on the other side as preventative maintenance.

September 11

3 hours ago, pcrow said:

ATRFS uses the FUSE library to implement a file system in userspace. This works on most Unix-like operating systems. I developed it on Linux, but it should work on MacOS if you install the right software (I welcome help on making this work smoothly).

Regarding macOS: this may just be an issue of making sure that the makefile knows where the FUSE libraries, etc. reside. So far, I've done a fair bit of work with manually pointing includes to where those are, but I get a significant number of build errors after that point. I'll post (in a spoiler) the output of that build a bit later on.

3 hours ago, pcrow said:

Build instructions for MacOS, including installing FUSE.

The 'Installing macFUSE' part is easy:

Download the current version of macFUSE from https://osxfuse.github.io/ and install, or:
Install via brew with `brew install macfuse', or:
Install via Macports with `port install macfuse'.

Any of those three methods should install all necessary components and create a preference pane in System Preferences for macFUSE.

Don't install osxfuse; it's deprecated. macFUSE is its replacement and is what should be used.

As for the build instructions: have the current version of the XCode commandline tools installed.

That's about as far as I've got with it since I can't get it to build successfully :-D

September 11

51 minutes ago, leech said:

I was thinking libretro based.

Ugh. I hope it's not.

September 11

Just now, Flojomojo said:

@x=usr(1536) I think you have that backwards. Trademarks are registered and need to be actively used and defended. Copyrights are implied and asserted by the author/artist for free but can be formally registered too — and you can sit on a copyrighted work as long as you want until the statutory limit runs out. Not fighting with you, just clarifying what is my layperson understanding.

Understood, and you are correct. Apologies for the misunderstanding to anyone who may have read my post earlier.

September 11

19 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Because they have been talking to the Stella developers who are posting in this very thread for months. We don’t know what they’re using for 7800.

It might be possible to make some educated guesses as to what's providing the 7800 emulation based on compatibility and completeness of emulation, but until either units have shipped or Atari reveals that information we just won't know.

My guess is a7800 or a similar-but-separate MAME-derived build, but that is total speculation on my behalf. We know it's not a Windows-based machine, so any Windows-only emulators (such as Prosystem) can be eliminated right off the bat.

September 10

51 minutes ago, christo930 said:

Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't seen a bunch of plastic Chinese crap with PHILCO printed all over it

Permit me to oblige:

https://www.amazon.com/Electronics-Philco/s?rh=n%3A172282%2Cp_4%3APhilco

And:

https://philco.us/en/

Seems like they're a subsidiary of Philips these days, but it looks as though they're the downmarket subsidiary for devices Philips doesn't want the parent company's name to be on.

FWIW, Bell+Howell (amongst others) are also in the same boat. From being the company that made some of the most significant advances in early motion picture technology to now selling as-seen-on-TV repackaged tat at inflated prices, it's a shame to see how they ended up.

September 10

Did it raise their stock price to a point where you can cash out and be a hundredaire?

September 10

5 hours ago, DirtyHairy said:

Sorry, that does not compute for me. I take pride in all the people in the community that enjoy using my work for free, as I intended.

When it comes to companies that are using my work to increase their profit by selling it without having to pay: why should I be proud of that? I merely accept that as it is a byproduct of the license that I choose. I much rather had if they were paying us. And if they don't even publicly acknowledge that it is our work that is powering their product and earning them money, then I don't take pride, but offense.

Agreed, and without reservation or question. Having said that:

This strikes me as an opportunity for Atari to both talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to the community. Apart from crediting Stella and its contributors for being and creating the software that made their product possible, they also have an opening to meaningfully contribute back to the project. What form that would take would have to be determined by the Stella team and Atari, but as a start the one thing that Atari could do is create a community liaison position so that there's someone who can act as a POC between OSS projects and the company.

@TrogdarRobusto: again, your thoughts on this?

Profiles

Forums

Blogs

Gallery

Events

Store

Community Map

Posts posted by x=usr(1536)