sideburn
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Posts posted by sideburn
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1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:
A friend ran a BBS on his Atari so I added full support for ATASCII to my MusicTerm program for the C= 64. The ATASCII movies were pretty cool:
We had the same thing on Commodore BBSs, though with full color support:
My MusicTerm program worked hand-in-hand with my 64-Net and 128-Net BBS software to enhance the C= online experience with:
- realtime music at 300 baud
- BBS controlled font, including animated characters (a caller to my BBS would see the ? rotating on its axis)
- sprites
- ability to play online games with joystick
- BBS controlled mini-buffers that held text, sprite data, or animated character data
More info, and a video, in this blog post:
I added support for ATASCII when I lived in Corpus Christi - there weren't that many boards online, so people called all of them and ATASCII support was a big hit with the Commodore owners. When I moved to Houston there were so many boards running that people segregated based on brand. I found that out the hard way when I called a few Atari BBSes and the other callers were royally pissed off when I posted the number to my Commodore BBS.
That’s awesome
atascii on the c64! Nice one.
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3 hours ago, zzip said:
Didn't really know what we were getting into at the time. My friend got an XM301. It was the Winter of 86, very snowy, so we spent a lot of time indoors BBSing. He was also listening to the A-ha "Hunting High and Low" album at the time, the one with "Take on me", so to this day that music brings back strong memories of getting into BBS and winter and fun times.
The online world revealed itself slowly, we would call any BBS whose number we could find that was in our local calling area (we were smart enough to not run up his parent's phone bill) We'd discover user group BBSes, BBSes with Fidonet and similar (to exchange messages and email wtih people in other regions of the country), BBS games (Doors) like Trade Wars, ATASCII movies, Pirate (and other illegal activity) "Leet" boards wh3r3 3ub3r0n3 t4lk'd lik3 thiz. Text libraries with jokes, recipes and conspiracy files (what a combo!)
I soon had my own XM301 so I could visit things from home. Soon 300 baud wasn't enough becuase I could read faster than it could display text
I do have to say that the ATASCII boards were the best! Even after getting an ST + PC, their BBSes never seemed to do much more than use their capabilities to add a little color to menus and add cursor positioning. The ATASCII BBSes usually had much cooler looking screens and animations.
There were also the national online services like Compuserve and GEnie, but they charged a significant rate by the hour. I eventually joined GEnie when I had my own income
Incidentally, Atari 8-bit did have a dedicated online service with graphical interface called GCP. I wanted to try it, but never did. Looked like it was fairly ahead of its time:
Yep funny how the music reminds you of those times. I was calling all over the world pirating with my war dialed calling card numbers. Also I remember the first online service I called was Prodigy.
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2 hours ago, Tillek said:
At least you didn't get that knock on the door from the Secret Service and have all your childhood Atari gear end up in some evidence locker for all time like what happened with some of my friends back then.
Only one guy I knew was ever able to get his back successfully, and by the time he did, the 8-bit era was pretty much done.
Wow I never heard anything happening to anyone in my circle. The sketchiest thing i had was someone or something called my modem landline and made weird clicking sounds when I answered. It freaked me out. And I went outside and cops were driving around my street. I was panicked.
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58 minutes ago, bf2k+ said:
For me it was the FBI on a Sunday morning... but they were looking for someone else who had been using codes to connect to my BBS...
Oh wow. A spoiled “friend” of mine when I was about 13 was running a major pirate BBS called “The gecko BBS”. He had racks of Ataris including a 1200xl all hooked up somehow to a bunch of 8” floppy drives. What always boggled my mind is I was way more tech savvy than him with electronics and computers. There was obviously someone on the side helping him out but he kept that all hush hush when I would pry.
he had everything on the pirated software side of things. I think his rules were upload one / download 3.
he was a typical snarky “SysSop” with a power complex.
always wondered what happened to him… and his bbs…
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17 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:
Super easy to fix them, it's usually just the reed switch, and sometimes the silicon that controls it for the XM.
The 1030 isn't much different.
I opened it up to check the capacitors and they are fine. Only two tiny electrolytics. The rest is all chips and a transformer and relay. This was NOS sealed i the box so never used.
It’s totally randomly clicking the relay and / or completely disapearing we’re the software can’t see it anymore.
seams like it will be a tough fix. Especially without a schematic.
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😂 what luck and bad timing haha. I had a 1030 also as a kid. Never heard of the XM til now. The 1030 launched my small criminal underground business as a neighborhood software pirate and phone phreaker back then 😆.
A funny story was I though I was being clever by war dialing calling card numbers so I could spend hours downloading games from a European bbs without then going on dads phone bill and I came home one day to him freaking out over his 200 page $300.00 phone bill. We were both very confused lol.
After I got a chance to secretly look at the bill I saw it was hundreds of pages of .10c toll call charges to the calling card phone number! 🤦♂️
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I think its the modem crapping out on me... I got it the other day new sealed in the box and it worked but i kept getting garbage characters while online. I was blaming the 2600 network but now th modem is just randomly hanging up and picking up. i can hear the relay clicking on and off... its failing in XE term too now.
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No idea. It turns out that disk image just had games on it and I couldn’t get the exe to see the modem.
i got 2.1 instead and it works but something is flaking. Modem keeps hanging up randomly. Trying to isolated down to if it’s the modem or the software. Back to xe term.
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Thank you! (8 years later lol)
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7 hours ago, bent_pin said:
We need more ascii art
ATASCII!
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Just got a modem from Brad at Best Electronics!
Heres a little video of my experience lol
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Wow it’s been a year already since I discovered and posted 😭
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2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:
Each device need to have it's own ID, probably they are both set to device 0, the default.
There should be a switch (maybe inside the SH204) which allows you to change the ID to 1,
then you should be able to boot the US with the SH204 also attached and copy the files you need.
The us is on 1 and 2 connected to my Stacy. It’s not the ID that is the issue it’s the connectors. There’s no way to daisy chain them.
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1 hour ago, TGB1718 said:
ICD Pro should be able to do it, it's free
Personally I would copy anything you need to the US, boot ICD Pro from floppy and reformat
the whole drive creating only C and D.
During the format, it will map out any bad sectors, worth doing on an old drive.
inwanted to do that but I couldn’t find a way to get both the US and the SH204 mounted at the same time to do a backup. -
Hey all,
I’ve got a working SH204 but it’s got 4 5MB partitions and drove c,d,e, and f. I’d like to delete e and f and combine them into a single 10MB partition. Is this possible and what software would I need?
I also have and UltraSatan with the PP driver software that I used to setup and partition that drive but not sure if it would be compatible.
the reason I have the SH204 physical hard drive is for my 520ST because it has minimal ram and the ultrasatan doesn’t work with it because it consumes some ram itself to run software.
it seems the HDUTILS might be able to do it but I do t really want to spend $55.00 just to redo the partitions.
If there’s an alternate method I would love to get some info.
thanks
-Tavis
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The drive wasn’t spinning up. Took it apart and cleaned the connections and now it’s good to go
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Hi all,
I just got an SH204 drive and using the ADHI 3.02 driver disk, I am able to format the drive and as it is formatting the dialog has a progress bar and bad sector checks and no bad sectors appear but once the format completes and it goes to do the partitioning an error pops up saying that the drive was formatted with another version of HDX and I am hosed.
When i try to run the partitioner myself, I get the same error.Any idea what the issue may be? Everything else seems ok.
-Tavis
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I want to try making a dedicated cartridge for this. I have some 27c32 EPROMs as well as some 28c64’s.
can someone tell me where I can get a cartridge PCB and what type of eprom I can use? And any other things I need to know in order to make a cartridge ?
thanks
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On 12/17/2021 at 5:25 AM, gilsaluki said:
Doing biz w/ Bradley for almost the entire time he's been selling. Always delivered, but Gawd!, that Atari tape. I hate it! Cannot lie to my spousal unit about what's inside the box. Once used a post office box because of that damned tape. When is he gonna run out of that tape?
I just asked him if he sells it. $175.00 per roll. Original factory OEM 12” rolls.
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1 minute ago, kheller2 said:
The AM2732A is listed as supported.
Hmmm.
USB to USB-C issue?
But I can successfully program the 27C64’s
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20 hours ago, HiassofT said:
I'm afraid the TL866 II Plus won't do the job - the AM2732 needs 25V programming voltage, but max the TL866 II can supply is 18V.
The original TL866 A/CS should work fine (it can do up to 25V)EDIT: scratch that, original TL866 only goes to 21V so won't work out of the box either
so long,
HiasBut I can do a “C” type without issue always? 27C32 for example?
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21 hours ago, SoundGammon said:
Glad I kept my ProBurner!
Woh that’s cool.I want one.
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I got the AM2732's in today but my programmer will only READ and BLANK check the chip. it fails to program it.
I had the same problem with the 2764's but I was able to program 27c64's
Any ideas what the problem might be? I have several chips and they all have the same issue.
Programmer is the TL866 II Plus.
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5 hours ago, TZJB said:
I just found out that you can easily use a 2764 to replace a 2732 by duplicating the 4KB data into the upper bank. Then connect pins 1,2,26,27 & 28 together and orientate into the socket with pin 3 to pin 1 of the socket and the corresponding pin 26 to the socket pin 24 which is VCC 5V. All the other pins then line up with the correct signals. You do need enough room for the overhang but I just tried it successfully with a US Doubler.
Wow. I would not know where to begin without some visuals. Did you edit then binary in an editor and did you have to change settings on the programmer?
atascii on the c64! Nice one. 
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what is was like getting online in the 80's!
in Atari General
Posted · Edited by sideburn
The local ATT number my modem repeatedly dialed to hack out calling card numbers was a .10c toll call I wasn’t aware of. I came home from school one day to my dad staring at a BOOK sized $300.00 phone bill. We were both very confused (while I was keeping my illegal activity a secret). I said “ahh it’s my modem, I’ll pay for it” and he scoffed at me like how am I gonna pay for it. Unaware i was making $5 a pop selling floppies with games not available in the USA yet that I downloaded from Europe with my calling card #’s 😂