ICE-T

[atari8warez]

hi guys, I am having some problems with this term program. It's the first time I am trying it out (never used it before).

 

What happens is:

 

It loads normally on my 130XE , displays the 80 column emulated screen and i can move through the menu items with my cursor keys. The problem happens when i select one of the menu items (by pressing the ENTER key) the program freezes and I have to RESET the Atari to recover. If I try one of the menu items again the same thing happens. Effectively I can't select any of the menu items.

 

Also, I can go into the terminal screen OK and even connect to a BBS using APE Telnet but when I press Shift-ESC to go back to the main screen the program freezes again.

 

I just couldn't figure out why this happens, any ideas ????

 

Thanks

Ray

[Lord Thag]

Because Ice-T is busy investigating sex-related crimes on TV, and can't be bothered to respond right away

 

Ok, that was bad, I admit.

 

More to the point, are you loading the program via the SIO2PC link to the pc, or from an actual disk? If it's via pc link, have you tried a different image? Maybe you just have a corrupted file, or there is a problem with the serial communication.

 

I use an old TRS -80 model 100 for mobile work. I have a serial link to my PC, and was getting all kinds of weird errors like that. Turned out to be my USB/Serial adaptor driver.

Edited September 23, 2007 by Lord Thag

[Beetle]

Which version do you use?

 

- Ice-T 800 (V1.0)

- Ice-T XE (V2.7 or 2.72)?

 

on the 130XE you should run Ice-T XE (it needs 128k).

 

I'd suggest try another disk or image, too. I never had such problems.

[Jess Ragan]

Because Ice-T is busy investigating sex-related crimes on TV, and can't be bothered to respond right away

 

If you hadn't made the joke, I would have!

 

I prefer Bel-ZAR, myself. It runs pretty reliably... the only time it's crashed on me is when Hulk Hogan had it in a headlock.

[atari8warez]

Which version do you use?

 

- Ice-T 800 (V1.0)

- Ice-T XE (V2.7 or 2.72)?

 

on the 130XE you should run Ice-T XE (it needs 128k).

 

I'd suggest try another disk or image, too. I never had such problems.

 

Hmmm, I didn't pay attention to the version but if I don't hold the OPTION key down when booting, it displays a message about memory and refuses to run, so I guess it's the XE version but I will double check that.

[+warerat]

Which version do you use?

 

- Ice-T 800 (V1.0)

- Ice-T XE (V2.7 or 2.72)?

 

on the 130XE you should run Ice-T XE (it needs 128k).

 

I'd suggest try another disk or image, too. I never had such problems.

 

Hmmm, I didn't pay attention to the version but if I don't hold the OPTION key down when booting, it displays a message about memory and refuses to run, so I guess it's the XE version but I will double check that.

 

I think if you run this from SpartaDOS you have to do a KEY OFF before you run it.

[Ross PK]

Lol, I thought of Ice T the rapper too. I was hoping that the topic was going to say that he has an A8.

[atari8warez]

I think if you run this from SpartaDOS you have to do a KEY OFF before you run it.

 

Hmm, never thought of that. Yes I am running it with SpartaDos. Forgot all about that KEY OFF stuff. If my memory serves me, it disables the keyboard buffer, right? Should try that.

[ZylonBane]

I'd recommend using FlickerTerm 80 instead of Ice-T, but then, I'm biased.

[Beetle]

Flickerterm? You don't like your eyes, do you?

[ZylonBane]

The trick to Flick80 is that you have to own a monitor with high-persistence phosphors. An old green or amber-screen is best. Use one of those and the flicker is reduced to a mild shimmer that you barely notice after a few minutes.

 

Granted, these days you just use a PC instead, but it worked pretty well at the time.

[atari8warez]

Flickerterm? You don't like your eyes, do you?

 

Actually Beetle, ICE-T isn't a lot better in terms of straining eyes (mine anyway) without a 80 column hardware.

 

In any case no matter what I did I wasn't able to get it working. It just locks-up for some reason. Tried using different .ATR, turning the keyboard buffer off with SpartaDos etc. Strange, every other software I tried runs fine with my 130XE, not ICE-T, guess the rapper doesn't like me

[Beetle]

You use it with SIO2PC for electric connection, or do you have any other RS232 hardware?

I can send you a version that is tested good, if you like.

 

And regarding readability, Flickerterms way of displaying 80 columns by interchanging 2 charsets 25 times/s is very eyestraining. The chars even touch each other so its even harder to read.

Ice-T goes another way. I uses narrower chars, 4-Bit wide and still 1 pixel to seperate the chars from each other.

No flicker at all, and no touching chars. OK, on machines not upgraded to s-video, the artifacting makes it a bit harder to read, especially when using NTSC (i'm in PAL land, you know). But if you use a sep. chroma/luma display on a s-video upgraded machine, the image is very good to read and does not strain your eyes. If you don't have one, try another color scheme, some work better, whit on black is worst.

I've been chatting on it for hours on my a8, connected to a 1084s as well as on my Laptops TFT screen. The 1084s even does it a bit sharper.

 

Let me know if you want to give Ice-T another try. Some more tips are:

 

-the XE extra RAM has to be empty, dont use a RD before

-delete the ICE-T.DAT file, it might have stored a nonworking config

-you have to rename the R: handler suiting your RS232 hardware to RS232.COM

-use it with DOS2.5 or MyDOS 4.5x, they work with it, i don't know about SpartaDOS

[Beetle]

Here is a screenshot of my 1500XL, short before i took it apart for the first paint.

I didn't have a mem upgrade in it at that time, so i was stuck with Ice-T 800.

With a transfer speed of 4800 Baud, it ran fine.

 

 

Eyestraining? Come on, this is perfect readable, without any 80 column extra hardware.

[atari8warez]

Here is a screenshot of my 1500XL, short before i took it apart for the first paint.

I didn't have a mem upgrade in it at that time, so i was stuck with Ice-T 800.

With a transfer speed of 4800 Baud, it ran fine.

 

 

Eyestraining? Come on, this is perfect readable, without any 80 column extra hardware.

 

Wow, that's more readable than my 40 column display on TV or on monitor. Didn't know an Atari can display text this clear. Lot of color artifacts on my TV and my monitor, make even the 40 column kinda muddy. So I guess an S-Video upgrade is definitly in order to spend more than an hour in front of the monitor. At the time I wasn't aware the improvement was this dramatic so have never done it.

 

Anyway, I would like to give another try to ICE-T, already done 2 of your seggestions (no RD and rs232.com), will try the .dat file thing and try to run it under Atari Dos. Wouldn't mind trying another image file either.

[atari8warez]

Here is a screenshot of my 1500XL, short before i took it apart for the first paint.

I didn't have a mem upgrade in it at that time, so i was stuck with Ice-T 800.

With a transfer speed of 4800 Baud, it ran fine.

 

 

Eyestraining? Come on, this is perfect readable, without any 80 column extra hardware.

 

Wow, that's more readable than my 40 column display on TV or on monitor. Didn't know an Atari can display text this clear. Lot of color artifacts on my TV and my monitor, make even the 40 column kinda muddy. So I guess an S-Video upgrade is definitly in order to spend more than an hour in front of the monitor. At the time I wasn't aware the improvement was this dramatic so have never done it.

 

Anyway, I would like to give another try to ICE-T, already done 2 of your suggestions (no RD and rs232.com), will try the .dat file thing and try to run it under Atari Dos. Wouldn't mind trying another image file either.

Edited September 27, 2007 by atari8warez

[ZylonBane]

And regarding readability, Flickerterms way of displaying 80 columns by interchanging 2 charsets 25 times/s is very eyestraining. The chars even touch each other so its even harder to read.

That's 60 times per second, not 25. And the characters actually never touch each other, precisely because alternate columns are displayed on alternate frames. This allows use of the full 4-pixel width, resulting in much more well-defined characters.

[Beetle]

You're right, they don't actually touch. But the most left pixels of character of the odd frame is right beneath the most right pixel of the even frame. If they were displayed in the same time, they would touch. Sorry if my 10th grade school-english didn't point out exactly what i meant.

 

And since your NTSC Antic outputs 60 frames per second (you're right again, i assumed PAL), and the charsets alternate on every frame, that makes 30 Hz for the charset-flicker.

Here on PAL systems it looks even worse, because the charsets flicker with 25 Hz. I could read it, but after approximately 30 minutes my eyes would fall out of my head

[itaych]

hi guys, I am having some problems with this term program. [...]

Hmm. How about I release the source code, and let you guys try and fix the bugs? Anyone interested in this?

 

(I can't do any of it myself, the best I can offer is to answer to any questions you might have about the code while debugging.)

 

-itay

[Beetle]

hi guys, I am having some problems with this term program. [...]

Hmm. How about I release the source code, and let you guys try and fix the bugs? Anyone interested in this?

 

(I can't do any of it myself, the best I can offer is to answer to any questions you might have about the code while debugging.)

 

-itay

 

Hello Itay,

 

kudos to you for this great program! I'm surprised to 'see' you here. Is it still possible to register Ice-T?

 

Sourcecode is always good, although i can't code anything but some BASIC. But here are some guys who can pretty good

 

Greetings,

Beetle

[itaych]

I'm surprised to 'see' you here. Is it still possible to register Ice-T?

Trust me, your surprise is probably nothing compared to my astonishment at seeing people discussing Ice-T over ten years after its last release!

 

And I guess that as long as I can breathe, I can still accept money

 

But to be more serious, the plain answer is that there is no real benefit for registering. I never made a "registered" version of the software (it was hard enough to maintain the mess of the source code under the 8-bit's file managing tools without having two versions to worry about). There are only about 20 registered users, Ice-T was never the money-maker I hoped it would be

 

Anyway, let's wait and see. If we get people breathing new life into this project there might be a point in asking for donations. Or, perhaps it could be sold as a cartridge, depending on whether anyone is interested and can pull it off.

 

-itay

Edited October 6, 2007 by itaych

[+Stephen]

I'm surprised to 'see' you here. Is it still possible to register Ice-T?

Trust me, your surprise is probably nothing compared to my astonishment at seeing people discussing Ice-T over ten years after its last release!

 

And I guess that as long as I can breathe, I can still accept money

 

But to be more serious, the plain answer is that there is no real benefit for registering. I never made a "registered" version of the software (it was hard enough to maintain the mess of the source code under the 8-bit's file managing tools without having two versions to worry about). There are only about 20 registered users, Ice-T was never the money-maker I hoped it would be

 

Anyway, let's wait and see. If we get people breathing new life into this project there might be a point in asking for donations. Or, perhaps it could be sold as a cartridge, depending on whether anyone is interested and can pull it off.

 

-itay

 

Wow - great to see you hear Itay. I've been using the Ice-T XE 2.72 for several years now. There's a few die hard 8-bit fans that still do telnet BBSing with them on a regular basis. It would be great to see some upgrades / enhancements.

 

Stephen Anderson

[doctorclu]

I would love this! I use both Ice-T (XE) and Flickerterm depending on the need.

 

Ice-T (all of them) are quite good, but more features would be nice. And better ANSI graphics emulation would also be nice. And now that 256K machines are more and more common, we can have more fun with it.

 

So if you could release the source, that would be fun to look at.

[classics]

A few years ago someone asked me to pack ICE-T so it would boot from a 1mbit cartridge, you can find it here:

 

http://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/forum/viewtopic.php?t=246

 

I'd also love to see any new development of ICE-T.

 

Steve

[itaych]

So if you could release the source, that would be fun to look at.

Very well, here's the source. It is intended be built using the ATasm cross-assembler. If you have a Win32 machine the assembler executable is already in there, if not (or you're worried about exes) get the latest from the svn at Sourceforge and build it for your machine. I've successfully run it on a PPC-based Mac as well as my Windows box.

 

Simple instructions: In Windows you should be able to build this by simply unzipping and double clicking on build.bat in the Build directory. The result will be named icet.obj in the bin directory.

 

Mark, the author of ATasm, was kind enough to add a "-mae" command line option, that makes ATasm recognize MAE-style local labels. In MAE, any label starting with a "?" is considered local. Regular (global) labels automatically delimit regions, which is a different behavior from MAC/65. So, if you have a code segment like this:

 

label1
  ldx #0
?lp
  sta table,x
  inx
  bne ?lp
label2
  jmp ?lp ; error!!
label3 
?lp
  jmp ?lp ; not an error.

There are two different "?lp" labels, but note the ambiguous call after label2, which would cause a build error. If this is still unclear, please feel free to dig up MAE's documentation for more details. For all other issues regarding the format of the assembler, seek the documentation for ATasm at http://atari.miribilist.com/atasm/ .

 

Read the various .txt files lying around, they will give some good background information.

 

There is currently no distribution license for this code. Until I can think of something more intelligent, everyone is free to tinker with it as long as your results are given free of charge and not sold.

 

And before anyone asks, indeed, the code is not perfect. There are "cmp #0" (the horror!!) instructions scattered throughout, and the code is not the tightest. I wrote most of this in my early teens, give me a break . I didn't fix anything because I wanted to release code that will generate a binary-identical object file to what I released in 1997. (The original is in there, so you can diff it with your result.)

 

Any further questions, post them here and I will try to answer them the best I can.

 

-itay

20071008IceT_XE_v2.72_AtariAge.zip