Neo-Rio

XE keyboard mylars and keyboard mushy-ness is fixable from Best Electronics. They seem to be sitting on a mountain of untouched Atari XE keyboards, and have better quality replacement mylars and "best touch" keyboard rubbers so that the XE keyboard becomes a joy to work on instead of the piece of tat they originally were. I recommend going this path for any XE keyboard owner. The XE series isn't all that bad, but they do require some modifications to make them better.

Amade a powerful wizard angry? Any more bugs?

Where to download the player?

It's kinda nice that there are companies like Athana still making floppy disks. Apparently the US nuclear arsenal controls still depend on 8" floppies

I haven't been paying attention, but I suppose since there are no FAT writes, then ATRs are only mounted "read-only" at the moment. Hmm. Probably a nice safety feature, but one that would be nice to turn off if needed. Say for example if I wanted to make an ATR file on the SIDE2 and then save files to it. Then export the ATR to PC later, for example.

It's not a single BASIC file. There are data files on the disk that need to be generated.

How hard would it be? I was just thinking that given the U1MB can mount ATRs from the SIDE2's FAT, surely it could write a fully provisioned blank ATR file for use on it as well? Would it be able to write just a bunch of zeros of a specified length? (to simulate different disk types) Then the user could just format the file with whatever DOS they want

Having a look at the code now. Line 20, 5670 has the clear screen, and line 21 is missing a colon between PRINTs - causing an error. 2560 has a GOSUP 5870 is missing quotes 7817 the SOUND command is missing a field? I guess there's still a few bugs. Will just have to figure out how to create the files needed for the game

How does one convert from TXT to Atari BASIC .BAS file anyway? Any conversion tools? I know the emulators will let you "print" out a listing via the ATARI basic list command, but how about the other way around?

Is it possible to create and mount ATRs on the SIDE2 with U1MB?

Hehe.... noticed something was going on with my SIDE2 as BOOT FAILURE screamed out on the screen after warm reboot. So far, no problems with the updates.

...and this is a shame really, because the A8 machines would have easily been able to do a decent port of this. Same for a lot of the 3D wireframe games of the time. The Ataris would have excelled at these. Stellar 7 should have come out on the Atari... but I suppose with Apple II emulation on the A8s this might actually be possible

I've just completed my first Atari 8-bit type-in (yay!) Uploaded here, this is from C+VG. There seems to be a lot of untyped listings from that mag that are listed as missing at Atarimania. It's "Wordfind". Some Hangman knock-off. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-wordfind_16993.html WORDFIND.BAS

Is there a collection of scans of Atari listings that need to be done? If so, perhaps we would have a way of keeping track of what needs doing. Also, is there some kind of PC-based IDE to enter Atari Listings? Some way of converting a text file into a listing?

After a lot of wrestling with a tape deck, I just dumped RoadRace/Bowler, and Conflict 2500 from tape. Emailed them to Allan, including instruction scans for Roadracer/Bowler.... but I may as well attach the cas files here too for anyone interested. avalonhill.zip

Can someone tell me why a cartridge can't be used to expand the available memory of an Atari, and why it has to be modded internally? I'm sure there's some technical reason....

Yes the coloured screen thing is a built-in screensaver No idea what's broken, but typically when fixing things you need to determine which part is blown and the de-solder and replace it. If you don't diagnose, you'll end up guessing and possibly replacing every part until you find the one that's damaged. Trouble with the XEGS consoles is that most chips are not socketed, so you have your work cut out for you desoldering the chips first, in order to solder sockets in. If you're new to Atari, and you've just picked up some old second hand kit - then Best Electronics should be your first port of call. Aside from a few things, B.E. seems to have all the spare parts you could want. Second port of call should be Lotharek if you're thinking of modding the Atari or using modern devices on it. Chances are, to fix the XEGS, you'll need to mod it anyway. If it is the ROM chip or MMU that's busted, installing an Ultimate 1MB memory card should fix the problem in addition to making the XEGS a LOT more powerful. If not, I'm sure somebody who has done the upgrade will have their old XEGS OS ROM and MMU to sell. If you use the keyboard a lot, the Best Electronics can sell you a brand new XE keyboard if you want, as well as Best Touch rubber cups that make the keyboard better to type on, and replacement Mylar in case any of the keys are not working. If it's RAM, you can get replacement parts from around the web - or perhaps ripping them out of an old Commodore 64C (heh!). Yes, the MT brand RAM has a bad habit of dying. I fixed an second hand Apple IIe that had 4 of those ICs blown on it.

It looks to me that the Atari line of computers suffered primarily because parents (the purse string holders), didn't want to buy their kids Atari computers because Atari was synonymous with video games. It must have conjured up images of their kids playing video games rather than using their computers for educational or "serious" computing. Also, the Commodore 64 came along and smashed the Atari. Commodore had no connection to games (initially), and what games existed were much better ports than on the Atari (for the most part) Also, Commodore never messed with their BASIC, RAM, and KERNAL ROMs meaning compatibility between systems was never an issue as it was for the Atari 8-bit line. It just seems like Atari hung in a little while as the C64 developed it's userbase. After that, it was all downhill for the Ataris -sadly.

BUMP again. Wanting "Eggnapper" to get fixed. It seems to work until the game starts, at which point it hangs with a white square at the top of the screen. Reason for this request is that I used to work with someone who's friend was the coder of this game, and he always talked about it and how silly the game's plot was. Would like it to work on my XE

Seems to work. ... and I've got the hang of the page swapping with the joystick now (down first, then button) I guess there's only two things on my XEGS+1UMB+SIDE2 wishlist now, and not sure if ever possible. - Being able to mount disk(s) on the XEGS without the keyboard (currently with XEGS mode on, booting an ATR from side loader drops out to the XEGS game ROM) - Some way to play 400/800 games on ATR that require the older OS ROMs via U1MB and SIDE2 (OSB has no PBI, hence ATR mounting is impossible)

Thanks so much for your hard work on this! The U1MB BIOS is really really nice Will be happy to test once you have something.

I see that this does work, but it's..... awkward... primarily because in trying to do the movement I often accidently mount a disk I didn't intend to when hitting the firebutton. Usability gets a thumbs down - even though it works.... it's just that it works as well as trying to pull combos in Street Fighter II I'm thinking that a diagonal move would work better - just to keep the left/right keyboard/joystick users happy. Perhaps keyboard users can have a special keys for page changing? ...and the XEGS doesn't have PBI. Not sure about what would happen if I flipped the OS back to the XE/XL ROM, and tried mounting disks on the XEGS. Will try it out.

Hey flashjazzcat, Can I make some suggestions for more XEGS friendly updates to the SIDE loader? Would it be possible to use the START, SELECT or OPTION buttons to set drive and tag volumes? I say this because an XEGS without a keyboard has no hope of using the keyboard to play multi-disk games like Gauntlet, for example. Also, it would be nice if left/right joystick movements jumped "pages" in the game launcher. Otherwise lists of games that are 200 entries long take forever to scroll down in. Maybe use diagonal movements to move between the icons at the top of the screen? Or maybe use the SELECT button for this? UPDATE: Just discovered that trying to mount and run an ATR from the SIDE2 with no keyboard in the XEGS in XEGS mode will start Missile Command!

There's so many games that *could* have been released for the Atari, but just never happened. A lot of the 3D games would have worked a treat on the Atari with it's faster CPU than the C64 where most of these games showed up. Elite, Stellar 7, The Sentinel, Stunt Car Racer, Starglider ...any of the Freescape games At least the Atari has Mercenary and Encounter.

Apparently you can use it as an Atari Hard Drive. You have SpartaDOS built in