80s_Atari_Guy

In the context of the thread, this is meaningless. Just a throw away comment that has no relation to the discussion.

Every single one of my Xbox One, and PS4 disks have had not one, but many updates. Some, like Drive Club on PS4 and Forza 6,7 on Xbox, have had many gigabyte updates.

This is happening across ALL major high street stores, especially here in the UK. It's not limited to just games shops. In the UK, we have a shop called Halfords, which sale car parts, bikecycle parts, batteries, paint, cleaners, etc.. My local Halfords is massive, and sell everything you can think of. What annoys me is that I can't buy almost any part for my car without them asking for my car registration plate first, and they will not sell me, for example, windwipers without my car reg. I'm told it opens the till, which is complete bollocks. I've told them to f*ck off and I will buy wipers online. We have Argos, a kind of everything seller. I picked up a USB portable HD they had on-sale. I got to the till and it's "Can I have your email address ?" Why ? "We send you a copy of the receipt" Why would I want that, I just want the HD. "It's for your convenience" No, it's YOU fishing for my details so you can sell them off, or send me a lot of shit that doesn't interest me. Now can I pay for the f*cking drive or not ? My local Pets-For-Home. Takes dog food to counter. "Do you have a account ?" Why ? I just want to pay for my dog food. "It saves you money, and you get special offers" Do I save money on my dog food ? "No, but you can save money of lots of other things" Such as ? He mentions lots of f*cking expensive shit that I couldn't afford even on sale, such as luxury dog beds, and dog food costing more than a daily food shop. There are many many more shops I could mention that do this, but I don't have the time to type it all down. It's happening, and most of these high street shops have only themselves to blame if they go under.

I wasn't talking about tape speed, which I'm fully aware wouldn't introduce a second frequency. I was talking about hum, buzzing, noise, etc.. generated by the analogue audio equipment. The second frequency would be the hum, buzz, noise, etc.. Don't worry about it. I know what I was on about, and this is now way off topic.

On PS3, Gran Turismo 6 had about 22 patches which are on Corporate servers, they're not on public servers for anyone to freely download. So, how would you go about getting those patches, in say 20 years time ? GTA V Retail DVDs on PC, despite coming on 6 DVDs, only contain about 70% of the entire game. The rest is downloaded as you install the game. These aren't patches, this is part of the actual game. Again, in 20 years time, how would you go about getting those files ? Denuvo, on PC, hasn't been fully cracked yet, with a few games going back to 2015 that are still waiting for cracks. Sure, they could be cracked. But the motivation has to be there, as well as the talent. But not everyone wants cracked games for preserving, in the future I would think most people attempting to preserve today's games would want them preserved with copy-protection intact Good luck with that. No, but they might want you playing a remaster. Look at Steam and Skyrim. Bethesda and Valve, made it harder to find and buy the original Skyrim, rather than the Special Edition. It took users on Steam to post direct links to the original. Corporations could use Copyright to stop anyone playing today's version, forcing you to use the remaster 10 years later. Also, what right would you have to play today's games in 10 or 20 years time ? Copyright today, is much stronger than it was in our time. Sure, you own that nice shiny DVD or Blu-Ray disc, but the code on the disk would still be in Copyright with it's original owner.

Is SDrive Max, much better than sio2sd ? Or, could sio2sd make use of these files ?

Xbox 360 on Xbox One, is in the hands of Microsoft, it's not in the hands of the public. Microsoft, at any point, could just pull the whole thing and never release their code - and there would be nothing we can do about it. It's impressive what Microsoft have done with backward compatibility, but it's still Microsoft's, it's not open source. The original Xbox, has only just begun to be emulated to a point where a few games can be played - 17 years on from it's release. The PS4 has only been hacked to firmware 4.05, and who is still running that ? The Vita has only been hacked to 3.60, and the second your Vita gets a sniff at net access it will force update. The Xbox One remains un-hackable. Is there a "Will" to hack and preserve current gen ? What about games where a portion of the code sits on a corporate server ? You can't compare the past with the present. Copyright laws from the past are much more relaxed than they are for current gen. No-one is going to get shut down running Pac Man in MAME. Yet, imagine running Horizon Zero Dawn on a PC, today. While the emulator would always be locked in a legal grey area, the system files required to run the emulator will always be copyrighted by Sony. Then there are patches. Many might make or break the game. Some might be zero-day patches that are simply game-breaking if not downloaded. If we can't get access to those patches then preservation is useless. And what about the size of these games, especially once they're free of optical drive limits. I can currently take a handful of Blu-Ray burnable media and store the last 40 years of system roms/games/bioses etc... How do we store these current gen, multiple gigabyte games ? I would love to be able to play current and future gen games in say, 20 years time. But Corporations today have far more control, and far more power at their disposal than they did in the past. They have the power to shut down servers, stop issuing updates and patches, etc..

I heard they made a female-only version of Joyboard, called Ironing board. I don't think it went down too well.

Thanks for the answers, luckybuck. The XF551, is a Atari Drive ? Didn't realise you could use Atari drives. I have two 1050 drives working perfectly, would these be ok ? Or is it specifically the XF551 ?

Brilliant torrent. Currently seeding until about 1am UK time - will seed more tomorrow. Apologies for the questions, I have read almost all of the 49 pages. These images are direct copies of the original disks, including the copy protection ? With the correct hardware, I could write myself a original disk and have a 1:1 perfect copy of the original ? I was thinking of getting the SuperCard Pro, and backing my own disks up. Any recommendations for a compatible 5 1/4 " drive ? I have some disks not yet in the collection. When I get the funds and time to get a SuperCard Pro, I will back them up and upload them here. The Disks I have are Atari Smash Hits 1 - 7. I see the list is currently missing 2,3,4.

Thanks for the pic. That doesn't look too difficult, to be honest.

MAME - Bomb Jack - 45210. Not great, but I was only testing a overlay for MAME.

Thanks for all the interesting replies. I guess it is experience gained over the years that has made me better at those older games. One other thing, after having another think about it, I was a very active kid. If we had days like we have had this week in the UK (really hot), I would always be looking at doing something outside. Football, cycling, running, tennis. I could never concentrate on gaming while the weather was good. While today, even in very hot weather and lots of work to do, I could fire up a game on my PC, or my retro machines, and quite happily play away without wondering about what I could be doing instead. Bizarrely, my react times are much better, despite them being much worse in other things I used to do like sports. Probably more to do with the fact that I never gave gaming up, I kept at it for all these years.

What I meant was, if you are getting a 2nd frequency from problems with the equipment, or the recording, would software (used to correct the recordings) recognize the two frequencies ? Sorry if it sounded confusing, I was just interested. I do lots of VHS restoration, and when you capture VHS recordings, if you also capture noise (a separate frequency) once digital it's no longer noise, just pixels. So you can no longer separate the noise from the recording, only use plug-ins to smooth-over the noise which then slightly blurs the final recording.

I'm 48, and over the years I have got worse at the usual age-related activities such as running, sports, snooker, darts, football. These are things I used to do regularly when I was much younger. And yet, when it comes to gaming, I feel I have not only got much better, but my attention span is better - I don't give up so quickly, or get bored so quickly. This could be in part due to PC gaming, and many games getting much more complex over the years, especially in the 90s and early 2000s. I used to play lots of first-person shooters, sniper games, all games requiring fast reactions, and to be mentally focused. Perhaps these games work the mental muscle, and it becomes stronger allowing you to focus more without losing concentration and getting bored ? I don't know, perhaps I'm talking nonsense ? lol. Just as a few examples. I can now complete Bruce Lee, on my 800XL, in a single sitting and without getting bored. Same for Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum, a real sod of a game in the later levels - But I can complete this without resorting to save states in a emulator. Perhaps, back the 80s, loading games was often slow and tedious. And, during that tedium, I wasn't so focused when I eventually got to play the game. Perhaps the boredom of loading games meant I wasn't in the right mood when the game eventually loaded. Couple that with, perhaps, disappointment in the game ? A poor arcade conversion of a arcade game I recently played ? One thing I definitely remember is that, as a kid in a family that didn't have the money as other friend's families, I had to settle for what we could afford. So my first computer was a ZX81. But I got this pre-owned, just as all the cool kids got a ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, or a Vic 20. I eventually got a 16k ZX Spectrum just as the Spectrum kids got a 32k upgrade, so all the games were now 48k. By the time I got my 32k upgrade, those in well-off families got a BBC Micro, or a C64. So I think my gaming skills lacked because I knew there was always something better out there, and rather than settling for what I had - I focused too much on what I didn't have or couldn't afford. So fast forward to today, and I can play anything. Either using emulators, or the real thing. PC games are running on amazing hardware - I7 8700k, 16Gb DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GTX1080 FE, etc.. And while that is not the best, I can play any PC game at max details at 2k. Even if I had a couple of generations older hardware, I can still play the latest games, albeit at lower details. I mean, I can now fire up nearly any game, on real hardware, in a blink of a eye. All using modern hardware like HxC, Flash Floppy, Divide 2k, etc.. So there isn't any long lengthy waits, or load errors from cheap tape decks or dodgy media. Perhaps it's that instant, any game I want, on tap, without that wait, puts you in the right mood from the start ? Does that make any sense ? Is it perhaps the simplicity of these, often primitive, games that make them easier ? I'm obviously more used to much more complex games, especially compared to Atari 2600 games. Apologies for the long post. I'm just wondering if there is anything more complex here, or is it just something simple ?

I think my main problem would be my eyes, I'm long sighted. I would be too afraid of soldering across adjacent solder points that are too close together, so I end up soldering pins together. I have decent equipment, a good solder station with adjustable heat settings, and lots of different tips. I just don't want to ruin a lovely condition Lynx Mk1, many don't come in the condition mine is in.

A couple of questions. Are the screens still available ? What price would it be to the UK ? And could a moron (Me) install it ? Or is this for more experienced people ? Awesome screen, by the way.

I would never lube my floppy, I would wait until it's hard before lubing commences,

Didn't some tapes, to avoid the tedium of long loading times, have a separate audio track that played while your game loaded ? It's been a while since I used tapes on my XL, but I'm sure I remember some of the red-artwork Atari tapes had a audio track. But darn like you said Paul, they were slow.

But Retro was talking about Internet, and Internet speeds, and monthly allowances. You can still buy big-budget titles on Blu-Ray discs because they are still wanted by many, NOT because they still want a physical item, but because they don't have the Internet speeds, or monthly allowance to download, say, Forza 7. Not only do you need the Internet speeds, monthly allowances, but you also need the disk space. This is why, big-budget titles like the Forza titles, Gran Turismo, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc.. these will always be available in physical form. There is will never be a digital-only release, of a massive-gigabyte major release, across the world. It won't happen this gen, and I doubt it will happen next-gen unless some Countries have MAJOR overhauls of their Internet. Heck, I know people still on 2Mbit ADSL. Even my own Fibre 32Mb, is slow compared to most Country's internet speeds.

It's funny, only the other day me and a mate were discussing which of the main 8-bit machines still had not had a more modern way of loading tape images. and we both agreed that the Atari 8-bit machines were the only ones left without a modern tape loading hardware. All the other major 8-bit machines have had tape loading hardware released. From Tapuino for Commodore machines, to TZX/CASduino and now Megaduino, we have many ways of loading tapes for many machines. I wonder if it's the way the Atari loaded tapes via the SIO cable ? Or, perhaps, the lack of tape images ? I have only been able to find about 50 tape images, even in massive TOSEC collections.

Wow, don't hear of many 8852's. Isn't the 8852 similar to the 8833 Mk1 ? I have my A8 XL connected to my CM8833 via Scart, my BBC uses TTL so can't try that one. Scart looks good, but it's not RGB, it's composite. Would love RGB Sophia, but fitting it is beyond my skills.

I love reading this stuff. I have many old tapes on many different platforms (Including Synthesizers) and have always wondered how to do this reliably. Are they still 2 distinct frequencies once they're converted to digital ? In the analogue domain, you would have 1 frequency for the recording, and one from a mechanical problem. In the digital domain, would software be able to tell which is which ? Genuinely interested.

What screen would you guys use with a Pi1541 ? A Pi 3.5" touch screen ? Or use the Pi's HDMI and a small LCD TV (6/7/8") ?

Get a original Gameboy DMG 01, mod it with a white backlight mod, a bivert mod. and Pro sound headphone mod. Then grab a everdrive and a micro sdcard = Heaven. It's so damn hot here in the UK that, at night (12am - 1am) I now sit ontop of my bed and play on my modded Gameboy original until I can't keep my eyes open. Love it.