[Indirect reference using Atasm]

Not really an assembler limitation but the CPU itself.

 

I used AtAsm - firstly, though it's fairly close to Mac-65 there's at least a couple way better cross-assemblers in common use (ie MADS)

Next up - make sure you're using a later less buggy version, I remember having problems with an earlier one some time back.

[Modern Power Supply to replace the bricks of old]

Yeah - a transformer is formulaic (is that a word?) in that the resultant output is a function of the ratio of windings so shouldn't change.

Though I guess if insulation was shedded it might.  If a winding was severed it'd probably just stop working altogether.

 

But in my own experience - the problem I have with one of my trapezoid shaped AC adaptors is that the plastic has cracked and broken which can expose hazardous voltages - my fix has been to duct tape the thing to hold it together.

[Images generated by RastaConverter]

If you're only hitting 80 degrees you must be going OK with cooling or the workloads aren't fully utilising the CPU.

I did a build for someone with a Ryzen 9 of similar spec, watercooled and it hit thermal max fairly quickly on benchmarks.

 

Mine is just running a Hyper 212 with 2 fans and hits 100 fairly quickly when fully loaded.  But ease off and it can still chew through a bunch of work near 80% and stay reasonably cool.

[Images generated by RastaConverter]

Most of the turbo speeds on that are 2.8 GHz, so it won't necessarily be real quick.

 

My new build is an i5-14600KF - 14 cores (6P, 8E) - the additional thing with the big core count modern CPUs is that they'll run hot when really busy and just start throttling back at 100 C.

[Essential Homebrew]

Not that I know of - but it's another one that's exceeding what I'd have estimated.

[Essential Homebrew]

Plenty to mention but recent (last 15 years) standouts also include Ridiculous Reality, Bosconian, Time Pilot, Scramble, Bomb Jack/Jake, Marbled.

The 4 arcade conversions I mentioned exceeded what I'd have expected our machine to be capable of by a good margin.

 

Hopefully soon we can add Galaga to the list.

[DecentXL Modern replacement keyboard for Atari 600XL and 800XL]

Nice.

Though I'm not sure about these relocated keys.  Break should be out of the way a bit so you don't hit it accidentally.

Control, I suppose that makes 1 handed operation easier.  But Caps Lock - a key you can go days or weeks without using.  I suppose the entire revision does move things closer to PC standard and make muscle memory habits going from emulation to real thing less mistake prone.

 

[THE400 Mini]

What would add appeal is if you can break out of the factory environment and do general system emulation on it, without modifying the hardware itself.

 

I just don't know about these things - I bought one of those C64 joysticks on eBay over 10 years ago and have barely touched it.

It's nice and all to have a remake of the old case but equally you could just get something 3D printed and put a Raspberry Pi inside it.

[Atari is releasing a new 400?]

That's a bug - if you select a subforum the drop-down collapses back and you can continue creating but if it's the top level you have to click the instance of it that appears above.

If not a bug then possibly browser specific behaviour (which should also be called a bug)

 

But yeah, in any case it's a bit annoying that we have 3 or 4 threads now talking about practically the exact same things.

[Strange POKEY behaviour when writing AUDF1 via X register]

Your program, for 10 frames, is constantly doing INX then storing to the AUDF register.

This is occurring so fast that you'd not hear a slow clean sweep but something resembling white noise.

You'd also get jitter thanks to screen DMA and VBlank interrupt which contributes more to the "noise".

 

To get the sweep you want, you'd probably want to wait 1 frame after each INX and store to AUDF.  You might find it a bit slow though, on NTSC a bit over 4 seconds for a full low to high frequency sweep.  To do it quicker you could use waits on VCOUNT.

[Games of The400 Mini]

So, Yoomp!

 

Let's hope they're paying for the use of modern releases intended as freeware.

[THE400 Mini]

I think highly unlikely it'll take cartridges - possibly the 5th USB port is under the door, otherwise probably at the back?

Looking at the spacing of the USB ports I'd estimate the computer would be about 19-22cm wide.  An Atari cart would be narrower than the door but too tall to fit under it.

Emulation somewhat devalues it, FPGA or custom remake would be preferable but then we'd probably be talking 3-4 times the price.

Though the ability to use the system with HDMI video would be appealing, likely the system price wouldn't be too much more than aquiring VBXE or a Sophia 2.

[First impressions of Star Raiders/A8]

I played Star Raiders first probably around mid 1981.

Before that I'd played Star Ship on the 2600 which was probably the closest game to it at that point in time.

 

I did work experience in 1983 with a department that had a mainframe and they had the Star Trek text game.

I did make the connection to SR at the time but didn't realise the Trek game served as inspiration.

At the time I saw Star Raiders, Battlestar Galactica had probably just finished it's first run on TV so with Zylons/Cylons the connection among SR and the 3 movie/TV shows was fairly apparent.

 

[Swapping ANTIC in NTSC to run PAL software, using Lumacode]

It's an input and needed because the PAL colourburst doesn't have the direct ratio to system clock as on NTSC (which is 2:1 vs PAL at 5:2)

[Swapping ANTIC in NTSC to run PAL software, using Lumacode]

The modern day VBXE has 2 crystals so yes, you shouldn't need another if doing a standard change.

Mine is an older one so I had to source my own.

What are you going to do with GTIA though?  In theory if you feed it from the NTSC Antic it should generate video with PAL colourburst encoding and work OK on some devices.

If you swap in an NTSC GTIA - I'm not sure what you should do with the PAL pin that otherwise gets the colourburst - possibly it's just NC on that chip.

[Death of the Right Side Garbage]

Cool - I think I've seen that before somewhere but didn't realise it was using the PM in the border trick.

[Atari 400 800 SALT Diagnostics Orange cart Cartridge Diags TE15644]

Could also put on an Atarimax flashcart though I think it needs to run as a diag mode cart so the procedure might be a bit different.

[Sophia 2 demos?]

With VBXE all the read functions of GTIA remain on the original chip.  Only the graphics generation is replicated.  Stuff like collision detection relies on GTIA.

[Death of the Right Side Garbage]

For an encore / extra you could stuff the PM registers manually, change positions etc and have them outside the 240 scanline area.

Though it is a for show type of thing with not a lot of practical value.

[Any basics that do better random access files?]

The choice as it was is likely a memory saving thing.  Having to buffer large parts of the FAT or keep seeking back to it is inefficient vs streaming the links with the data.

It's easy to look back and say they should have done the other - but also remember the likely target system for early disk systems had 24 or 32K Ram.

[Death of the Right Side Garbage]

So, I'm guessing that there's some timing code in there + the right instruction sequence to ensure we have the wanted pixel data on the bus when Antic is doing that last graphics fetch?

 

How about the last scanline in hires?  Is there a fix being implemented to stop the screen warping on a real machine?

From memory you just set DMACTL to turn off the display at the appropriate time to get rid of it.

[Images generated by RastaConverter]

Looks like the luma values are all too close.

Possibly some level adjustment in a decent pic editor could help that.

[Help to identify these Atari PCB/boards]

For sure - the notch in the short side and pin header look exactly the same.

I have a drive here but there's a bunch of other stuff needing fixing before I can mess with that again.

[Help to identify these Atari PCB/boards]

Both boards don't look to have much in the way ICs so I'm guessing probably something to do with audio, maybe a discreet audio generator from arcade or pinball.  Or possibly even video generation.  Or maybe even earlier and discreet logic rather than a CPU for the game itself.

I plugged part of that serial "SK1.CF.1 277-604A" into a search with no luck.

 

The newer smaller looking boards - I'm not sure even those are for a computer.  Isn't the 800 PS board the only 8-bit daughterboard that doesn't have an edge connector?  Plus it's not a regulard rectangular shape.

 

Pic 3 - the green board has (c) 1981 so might be from an arcade game of the era.

 

 

 

[Sophia 2 demos?]

Not sure but I'd guess probably not.

A picture with luma graduations would in theory use 2 palette slots e.g. for colour $34 and $35.

On a normal machine both colours would look the same but you'd waste a PF type or PM object in the process.

That is unless the program just groups both together and decides based on some threshold (I doubt that also)

 

But that aside, an option for 16 lumas in processing would be worthwhile.