Stephen

I finally have a dedicated Atari workstation set up. It looks pretty cool. The 130XE and 1050 drive sit on the upper keyboard drawer. The PC keyboard and mouse sit on the lower keyboard drawer. I am running the Atari on a Commodore 1084S monitor, and the PC on a NEC MultiSynch (need an LCD panel but don't have the spare cash at the moment). So I finally tried Boinx on my 130XE, but it will not run. Will this game be able to run on an NTSC machine? If not I will have to convert one of my 800XLs to a PAL unit. Guess I'll have to do a memory upgrade as well, then I can view the new Polish demos on a real machine. BTW - the intro music did play, and it sounded great. Stephen Anderson

Wow drac030 - that's quite an in-depth analysis of the various file systems. I'm amazed at what I am learning about the little Ataris, 23 years after I got my 1st 400! Stephen Anderson

Cool coincidence. I was just playing Preppie and Preppie 2 on the Atari emulator on my XBox (I still have my original Atari gear all hooked up BTW). Share any stories you can recall from back in the day - especially about what it was like developing for the machines. Stephen Anderson

Holy crap - my brother & I each had one of those ET trays. Too bad they are long gone. Stephen Anderson

It's been a while since I used Sparts, but I think the correct syntax is a space between the drives, not a comma. Try a COPY D1:*.DOS D2:*.DOS and see if that works. Stephen Anderson

This one is very nice - particularly the smooth bassline. Stephen Anderson

LMAO - that's great. I haven't seen any Atari porn since the late 80s. Stephen Anderson

No - I believe that any time the RIOT timers or TIA are accessed, the machine sets the clock speed down to 2600 speed (1.19MHz). Stephen Anderson

That's one kick ass avatar you have there. Reminds me of a dude I used to work with. We all tried to keep our distance Stephen Anderson

Nice collection you have there. Sadly, all of my Atari stuff (minus the Jag) is put away for lack of room. I'd love to have a dedicated gaming room one day, where I can have all of my systems hooked up at once. Now that I think about it, I am still missing my heavy sixer. Damn - I will have to find that tomorrow or it will continue to bug me. It's easily accessable though. Stephen Anderson

Very nice. Never thought the POKEY was such an awesome sound chip. Stephen Anderson

Those screenshots look amazing! Can't wait to test this on the real hardware. Stephen Anderson

Thanks for messing with that. It's not a bad approximation. I much prefer your Thermostat 7 dirty edit. Very clean sounds. Have you considered doing any stereo RMTs? I have never done any music work, but I might take a look at RMT sometime. I'd love to test this on my real hardware, but I'm on a 60Hz NTSC machine - the timings all messed up. The songs play too fast. Stephen Anderson

I believe is a common problem when the Jag is hooked up via the RF cable. Can you try hooking it up via composite (if it is not already)? If you are hooked up via the composite and still getting the interference, I am not sure what is wrong. Stephen Anderson

The 32-in-1 OS is Steve Tucker's latest OS mod. It replaces his previous 4-in-1 Warp OS. The stereo pokey just adds another Pokey (sound chip) into the machine. Some demos use it to give 8 channels of sound instead of the 4. Stephen Anderson

Sorry for the confusion - I am not really sure what the REV C and REV D markings on the mainboard mean. All 800XLs came with REV B of the BASIC ROM. REV C was the latest Atari BASIC. 800XL board layout has all the components labeled. Have fun with those Ataris and good luck with the modding. Stephen Anderson

As you noted, the socketed XL is much easier to modify. I have heard that the 800XL used 2 different keyboards, although I have only had the cheap membrane styles in my 800XLs(one socketed, one not) and 600XL. Other than that, I believe they were all the same. Oh - if you will be doing any programming, you should consider swapping out the REV B BASIC for REV C. Stephen Anderson

This is just my opinion, but if you really want to modify an Atari, I would say go to town on the 1200XL. The keyboard feel is excellent (again, just my opinion) and the inside of the case is full of space. You also have the 4 function keys, and 2 LEDs which are not on any of the other 8-bits. As soon as I get a little spare cash, I will be modding my 1200XL. I plan on adding: - 256K upgrade (I know the 1MB SIM upgrade is out there, but I already have the 81256 chips) - Steve Tucker's 32-in-1 OS - a MyIDE interface with an internal HD - Super Video mod - stereo Pokey - if necessary, Bob Wooley's PBI add-on Oh - while inside the 1200XL, you should also enable the 5V line to the SIO connector so the SIO2PC adapter will work. Stephen Anderson

Emkay - you've been getting some awesome sounds out of the little 8-bit. Do you think you could do a reasonable conversion of this MOD? Stephen Anderson cftheme.zip

Well, let's not forget the best part of D2K - Plasma Pong. Call me crazy, but that's what gets about 90% of playtime. Stephen Anderson

In addition to Glenn's advice, I would like to add that a good flux will make a world of difference to any soldering job. When I was working at a place stuffing, wave soldering, and repairing PCBs, we used a great liquid flux. I wish I could remember the name, but it's been 8 years since I had that job. All I remember was that it was water soluable. I applied it from a small bottle with a needle applicator - the exact same bottles you use to apply acrylic glue. If you use a flux that is not water soluable, I recommend a tooth brush and some 90% or greater isoproply alcohol to clean up the rework area. A 33 watt pencil tip iron with a good (and CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN) tip is what I use for these types of repairs. I prefer the iron clad tips, but only for longevity. I cannot stress cleanliness enough for soldering. Keep a damp sponge handy - a quick swipe is all that is needed to clean the tip. And keep solder on it to prevent it from burning up. Stephen Anderson

As far as I know, the only differences are a maller case, and 16K of RAM as opposed to the 800XLs 64K. Stephen Anderson

OK - same disclaimer goes for this next page. /*This technique will calculate the intensity value and from this the ideal ROM entries for that colour. This can then be matched to the actual ROM tables to find the nearest match. Note that the intensity value used here is the largest of red, green, and blue. */ void display_lookup (r, g, b) unsigned char *r; unsigned char *g; unsigned char *b; { int x, y, n, nearest, ndist, tdist; unsigned int intens, rt, gt, bt; long m; for (y=0; y<240; y++) { for (x=0; x<256; x++) { ndist = 1024; if (*q > *r) intens = *g; else intens = *r; if (*b > intens) intens = *b; if (intens > 0) { rt = (*r << 8) / intens; gt = (*g << 8) / intens; bt = (*b << 8) / intens; } else rt=gt=bt = 0; for (n=0; n<255; n++) { tdist = abs (red_lookup[n] - tr) + abs (green_lookup[n] - gt) + abs (blue_lookup[n] - bt); if (tdist < ndist) { ndist=tdist; nearest = n; if (ndist==0) break; } } rt = (intens * red_lookup[nearest]) >> 8; bt = (intens * blue_lookup[nearest]) >> 8; gt = (intens * green_lookup[nearest]) >> 8; if (rt<0) rt = 0; if (rt>255) rt = 255; if (gt<0) gt = 0; if (gt>255) gt = 255; if (bt<0) bt = 0; if (bt>255) bt = 255; m = (65536 * bt) + (256 * rt) + gt; plot (x,y,m); r++; g++; b++; } } } Of course, all copyrights belong to original owners and all that jazz. Stephen Anderson

Hmm - the PDF file has security settings, and is password protected. I just typed in the source. No guarantee it works or is typo free. There is much room for improvement, but honestly, this is not the way to do it realtime. Use the lookup tables like they suggest. void init_rgb_map () { int n,x,y; float xflt, yflt, sc, radius, alpha, beta; for (n=0; n<256; n++) { x = n/16; y = n%16; xflt = (float) (x-7.5) * (1.0/7.5); yflt = (float) (y-7.5) * (1.0/7.5); yflt = yflt * (1.0 - fabs(xflt/2.0) ); xflt = xflt * COS30; /*Determine which triant it's in */ if ((xflt<0.0) && ((yflt < 0.0) || (yflt < -(xflt * TAN30)))) /*triant A*/ { blue_lookup[n] = 255; green_lookup[n] = (float) 255.0 * ((1.0+yflt) + xflt*TAN30); red_lookup[n] = (float) 255.0 * (1.0+(xflt/COS30)); } else { if ((xflt>0.0) && ((yflt < 0.0) || (yflt < (xflt * TAN30)))) /*triant C*/ { red_lookup[n] = 255; green_lookup[n] = (float) 255.0 * ((1.0+yflt) - xflt*TAN30); blue_lookup[n] = (float) 255.0 * (1.0-(xflt/COS30)); } } else /*triant B*/ { radius = sqrt (xflt*xflt + yflt*yflt); green_lookup[n] = 255; beta = atan (yflt/xflt); if (beta < 0.0) beta += PI; alpha = beta - PI / 6.0; if (alpha < PI/2.0) blue_lookup[n] = (float) 255.5 * ((float) 1.0 - ((float radius * sin(alpha) * tan (PI / 6.0) + radius * cos(alpha))); else blue_lookup[n] - (float) 255.5 * ((foat) 1.0 - ((float) radius * sin(PI-alpha) * tan(PI / 6.0) - radius * cos (PI-alpha))); alpha = 4.0 * PI / 6.0 - alpha; if (alpha < PI / 2.0) red_lookup[n] - (float) 255.5 * ((float) 1.0 - ((float) radius * sin(alpha) * tan(PI / 6.0) + radius * cos(alpha))); else red_lookup[n] - (float) 255.5 * ((float) 1.0 - ((float) radius * sin(PI - alpha) * tan(PI / 6.0) - radius * cos(PI - alpha))); } } } Stephen Anderson

I'm downloading it now. I will post the source file here as soon as the download finishes. Thanks for posting the entire manual. I have the new version 8, but I don't have any of the older ones. Stephen Anderson