(re)build a *NEW* Atari Computer?

[peteym5]

The people who were originally prospecting to do this decided to wait until some components and upgrades become available. There are already a large surplus of Atari computers and components available used on Ebay or new from B&C and Best Electronics. Most of us do agree it is more feasible to upgrade or add onto an existing computer and attempt to build new ones from scratch. If you were to build a new one, people would expect it capable of doing more, run faster, have better graphics, along with running the original software.

 

Some people had some good ideals about porting everything onto a 'fpga' chip, but do not take into account the work. I suggested doing things one component at a time. Do a CPU, Audio, and Video on 3 separate FPGAs and have them capable of being plugged into existing Atari motherboards. That way you can sell the upgrades to existing computers and have the logic to someday do the one chip thing.

 

I think the best is to expand Atari via external add-ons.

I would like to know your opinion on device to double horizontal resolution at the expense of framerate (50/60 ->25/30Hz)

-kind of horizontal flicker fixer.

Feasible? Does something like this exists already? Would it make sens to you ?

 

Is this something you know how to build and looking to see if people will buy it? Does it somehow take the video signal from the Antic and compress it to half the screen and then displays a 2nd part of the signal? If you double the resolution, you probably be better to look to output to a monitor/HDTV rather than a tv. The closest thing I can think of is the Duel Antic/GTIA upgrades which overlaid 2 pictures on top of each other. The other thing is Video board XE that supposably being made, that also overlays.

[GameEngine]

The closest thing I can think of is the Duel Antic/GTIA upgrades which overlaid 2 pictures on top of each other. The other thing is Video board XE that supposably being made, that also overlays.

 

I think now that idea to append / interleave horizontally two frames into one is not worth being investigated. Doubling the horizonatal resolution would be good if Warner went for it with Atari 1200XL but today noone is interested (rightly) in productivity applications for 8-bit computers.

 

Videoboard XE seems like a nice project but like the above idea it is hard to imagin that if done back in the 80's by Warner or Tramiels (at lest this one would be feasible back then) 8-bit Atari would be able to compete with 16-bit machines which were coming. We already have the line of Amiga computers which everyone consider successors to the our Atari.

 

I think Dual Antic/GTIA (&Pokey) upgrade is what I like the most. I consider it relativelly easy (for Warner very easy), cheap (no new ASICs) and doable in '82. It would would make 1200XL worth the number. To me missing link in the evolution. Does anyone have a prototype? Was it shown to the community? Anyone willing to sell? I would be very glad if PCB ready to be populated which fits into 1200XL or ST520 is made (my choice of cases to be able to avoid cheating using SRAMs, FPGAs etc.)

[peteym5]

Well one of the things I had been proposing with ASICs is doubling the horizontal resolution for text modes and going 4 times as high with multicolor modes and that is if someone can successfully do the Antic/GTIA logic on a FPGA in the first place. I would even throw in interlacing to double the vertical resolution. However like we have been saying, there are many obstacles to overcome.

 

I think one thing that hurt the Atari and Commodore companies is that they kept making new models of computers that could not run software from their earlier models. The ST could not run XL/XE software. Every Commodore 8-bit model had to have its own unique software. Some even said this was the Tremials style of thinking, even some Atari 16-bit models had problems directly running earlier models software. I'm glad these people never made it to IBM, Apple, or Microsoft.

 

The Amiga might have been an improved Atari 8-bit, but like I say, it isn't because it could not run any of the 8-bit software. Backward compatibility has always been important in the industry. The Tremials never seem to realize it and one of the reasons why they managed to crash two corporations. Commodore was doing better after he left, but they could not fully recover in time to have the Amiga compete with the Growing IBM PC and Apple Mac market. Also no way the ST was going to gain a strong foothold in the business market.

 

I think if anyone successfully creates a FPGA Antic/GTIA Video chip with enhancments with a 65816 cpu, it would show us what could have been done if the right people took over Atari back in the 8-bit days. This is a route many people would like to have seen. You would have a better machine capable of running all the old software. If you don't think that was true, then you should look at the history of your Windows PC.

[UNIXcoffee928]

Just for amusement's sake, here's the Atari Approved Vendor's List, from the VAX.

 

I ran across it while studying an interesting page on vector generators here.

 

Since the Atari vector-based coin-ops were very close to the Atari 8-bit in their overall architecture, it seems to me that an Atari vector generator board could be interfaced to an 8-bit, to be able to drive an XY monitor as a secondary display. Now this would be REALLY cool.

 

Anyway, I found it amusing that a simple web search for Atari avl provided the list as the first hit.

 

 

L8R,

 

UNIXcoffee928

[JamesD]

Well one of the things I had been proposing with ASICs is doubling the horizontal resolution for text modes and going 4 times as high with multicolor modes and that is if someone can successfully do the Antic/GTIA logic on a FPGA in the first place. I would even throw in interlacing to double the vertical resolution. However like we have been saying, there are many obstacles to overcome.

You can't just say double the resolution. You have to look at what a VGA monitor or TV (digital?) will support.

 

[i think one thing that hurt the Atari and Commodore companies is that they kept making new models of computers that could not run software from their earlier models. The ST could not run XL/XE software. Every Commodore 8-bit model had to have its own unique software. Some even said this was the Tremials style of thinking, even some Atari 16-bit models had problems directly running earlier models software. I'm glad these people never made it to IBM, Apple, or Microsoft.

I think a break from 8 to 16 bit was required. The most that could be done with the 8 bits is crank up the clock speed and add hardware that most software isn't going to support anyway. The Enterprise 64/128, Amstrad CPC 64/128+, MSX Turbo R and Apple IIgs all made efforts to provide more advanced 8 bits but just how much further could anyone push the 8 bit hardware?

 

Atari had released several 8 bit models that fit the market at the time they were introduced. Even if there had been another updated 8 bit Atari I don't think it would have competed well. It would have required new hardware that would have had no support.

 

Commodore had reason to introduce incompatible machines. The Vic was far too limited. The 64 was too expensive to produce to compete with the Spectrum at the time the 116/Plus 4 was designed. The 128 did have compatibility but the result was that nobody wanted to support the 128 enhancements because they would loose all the 64s as a market. The C65 was a better machine but got the axe because they thought the machine was too late and could only compete with their Amiga's.

 

The Amiga might have been an improved Atari 8-bit, but like I say, it isn't because it could not run any of the 8-bit software. Backward compatibility has always been important in the industry. The Tremials never seem to realize it and one of the reasons why they managed to crash two corporations. Commodore was doing better after he left, but they could not fully recover in time to have the Amiga compete with the Growing IBM PC and Apple Mac market. Also no way the ST was going to gain a strong foothold in the business market.

The leadership at CBM/Amiga axed every significant hardware project that would have given it an advantage in the marketplace in favor of trying to duplicating the success of the C64. Multiple CPU boards, DSP sound, better graphics... all got the axe after Tremial. I'm sick of people trying to vilify the Tremials while ignoring the mismanagement that went on before or after their involvement in these two companies.

 

I think if anyone successfully creates a FPGA Antic/GTIA Video chip with enhancments with a 65816 cpu, it would show us what could have been done if the right people took over Atari back in the 8-bit days. This is a route many people would like to have seen. You would have a better machine capable of running all the old software. If you don't think that was true, then you should look at the history of your Windows PC.

It may show what could have been done but that doesn't mean the outcome of the company or the machine would have been much different. Without a driving force for faster CPUs to compete with Intel and Motorola the 8 bit was doomed. Even the Apple II line that far outsold the Atari 8 bits came to an end in spite of an updated machine. And lets face it... the 65816 doesn't support high level languages nearly as well as the 680x0 and 80x86 CPUs.

 

And given some of the changes proposed here... I don't think they were where the market was headed and would have left the machine with many of the same limitations. Double width modes just wouldn't compete with other machines on the market.

[supercat]

The 128 did have compatibility but the result was that nobody wanted to support the 128 enhancements because they would loose all the 64s as a market.

 

I thought at the time--and still believe--that Commodore seriously erred in the design of the 128 when they failed to allow a 99%-compatible C64 mode that could use things like the enhanced disk drive communication hardware. The video design was also a severe disappointment. For productivity purposes, RGB was superior to composite video, but having two video outputs was a pain. I would think Commodore could have added a 16x8 lookup table to the video chip to allow the 16 normal colors to be mapped to 256 Atari-style colors. Games could have exploited this on the C128 while still running reasonably well on the C64. Further, I would think it should have been possible to use dithering to allow the VIC-II output to be displayed in RGB. But all that's long in the past now.

[peteym5]

You can't just say double the resolution. You have to look at what a VGA monitor or TV (digital?) will support.

Probably better to consider new upgrades output to HDTV, RGB, S-Video, or digital TV now. The days of NTSC and Pal format might numbered. Before diving into building a new video board, it probably be better to watch how this VideoBoard XE does on the market. See if anyone writes any software for it.

 

Commodore had reason to introduce incompatible machines. The Vic (20) was far too limited. The 64 was too expensive to produce to compete with the Spectrum at the time the 116/Plus 4 was designed. The 128 did have compatibility but the result was that nobody wanted to support the 128 enhancements because they would loose all the 64s as a market. The C65 was a better machine but got the axe because they thought the machine was too late and could only compete with their Amiga's.

I cannot disagree with you about the Vic 20, but I think they could have use the 64 as the basic design like Atari did with the XL and just changed the memory the 16 and added the eproms for the +4 (AKA-60). Both companies probably blundered by not making it easy to internally upgrade memory. The 128 fall into the same category as the XEs coming onto the market almost the same time with 16bit machines and the IBM-PC had become a stable businesses wanted.

 

I'm sick of people trying to vilify the Tremials while ignoring the mismanagement that went on before or after their involvement in these two companies.

 

The Tremials did get ousted from Commodore, something to do with the stock market. When they came to Atari, they pulled Atari out of the video game market that was a big source of revenue. I agree Atari was mismanaged. For example, they contracted a few video game titles based on movies like 'ET' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' that they had to pay royalties on and those games did not sell. Did Commodore improve with the Amiga? The Amiga should have competed better with the PC and Mac. It was out years before the PC had VGA graphics and sound cards. Everyone was looking for a one computer standard and the IBM compatible PC won out over everything. With the help of Microsoft, almost everything else got killed off. The Apple Mac survived because they have a big tie in with education. Now computer can just emulate to run the others software.

 

Other things I think killed Atari and Commodore? Did anyone ever make a good business application software package for their machines? Neither company used TV advertising. The ST was inferior and not compatible to all the other 16bit machines. Because the Tremials pulled Atari away from the game market, they could not compete with Nintendo or Sega after. Commodore had the Amiga at too high of a price to be competitive with the business or game market.

Edited November 18, 2007 by peteym5

[UNIXcoffee928]

The closest thing I can think of is the Duel Antic/GTIA upgrades which overlaid 2 pictures on top of each other. The other thing is Video board XE that supposably being made, that also overlays.

 

I think now that idea to append / interleave horizontally two frames into one is not worth being investigated. Doubling the horizonatal resolution would be good if Warner went for it with Atari 1200XL but today noone is interested (rightly) in productivity applications for 8-bit computers.

 

...

 

 

Yes, however being stuck with 40 columns has always been a handicap, when it comes to programmer's editors. With double the horizontal resolution, the editing of programs would be enhanced, and this would likely be an incentive for programmers to write new stuff.

 

Actually, while on the subject of editors, I'm very surprised that there is no port of the vi editor for the Atari.

 

Regarding the overall topic, I would say that such a thing as double-width is better left as an expansion OPTION. Enhancements are great, but they breed incompatibility issues amongst the overall user-base.

 

 

While it is an unpopular idea in this thread, I support the concept of original Atari hardware on a card, rather than a whole new box. Here's why:

 

1. The more physical boxes that you have, the harder it gets to find a physical place for them in your working environment. Do you really have space for another box, monitor, keyboard combo?

 

2. This card should be full-length, PCI, and contain the original components from the entire product line. These components should be switchable with a physical switch & a software switch, to allow for exact compatibility with any of the systems.

- It should have at least one 850 interface, 1050/XF551 drive circuit, all 4 joystick ports, both cartridge ports, two SIO interfaces, and a DIN monitor Jack. Some of which can be built onto the card, others which can be accessed via a small breakout box attached to the card.

 

- Drive-bay breakout (like a Soundblaster-Livedrive) should be supported, for the ports that should logically be in front (9-pin DINs from the joysticks & one 850, for ease in serial experiments, should be on a 5.25 blank). Cartridge ports should be on 3.5 blanks. All drive blanks run back to the card via ribbon cable. The integrated electronics should have a cable for each, on the top of the card, to allow the user to mount actual drive mechanisms in the drivebays to have easy access to both 3.5 & 5.25 Atari disks.

 

- It would be a good idea to have each system's bus interface on the breakout box coming off of the card, behind the computer.

 

- An LED should be next to each component in the breakout box and the drive bay blanks. This way, the user would know which components were active, based on the system selected (400/800/XL/XE).

 

- The standard screen output should go to an S-video in on a capture card, or optionally be fed to a separate TV/LCD display device.

 

 

This is my take on what should be attempted with physical hardware, if such a project were to come to fruition. This way nothing new has to be invented, it is all stock Atari parts.

 

The only additional parts are the physical card, which is cheap, and less than 4 ICs to act as the interface for the card to the host system. This would include a component/device that would store the system state/mode, and the necessary ICs to allow the PC to see the card.

 

I wouldn't worry about PCI becoming extinct tomorrow. If a card was built to these specs, it would be trivial to port it to a new hardware interface protocol in later variants, once it has been shown that such a thing can be done at all.

 

 

Now, realistically, it is unlikely that this or any of these hardware ideas will ever get beyond the talking stage, but talking is good. Here's why:

 

- We already have excellent software emulators that provide these capabilities to a very good degree. These emulators require no money to be thrown at them. Any Atari hardware will eventually end up costing you, if you retrofit it in any way.

 

But the concept of a standard hardware breakout box is a good one.

 

An emulator could be added to to recognize all of the features of the breakout box. The cost of building a breakout box is FAR less than building ANY Atari, on a card, in a box, whatever. In this case, we would only be buying connectors, and very inexpensive components.

 

On another note, it is odd that no one has hooked up an XEP80 to their PC's serial port. This I believe will be started as a new thread, since it could be accomplished in short order.

 

 

 

 

L8R,

 

UNIXcoffee928

[TMR]

The Tremials did get ousted from Commodore, something to do with the stock market. When they came to Atari, they pulled Atari out of the video game market that was a big source of revenue. I agree Atari was mismanaged. For example, they contracted a few video game titles based on movies like 'ET' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' that they had to pay royalties on and those games did not sell.

 

That wasn't why they didn't sell... in fact, they did sell and quite respectably too all considered, but in nowhere near the numbers that Atari had hoped for. From memory, they actually mastered more Pacman cartridges than there were 2600s, that's either arrogance or stupidity but it's a fine line as to which...

 

Other things I think killed Atari and Commodore? Did anyone ever make a good business application software package for their machines?

 

Yes in both cases, but making a good package doesn't mean it'll be the best selling package. The C128 also had a Z80a onboard to give CP/M support and thus compatibility with a huge swathe of more serious software that was pretty much a standard, but it didn't help in the slightest and CP/M as a standard (i use the term loosely, it's not as simple as it sounds) didn't for too much longer after it's release.

 

Neither company used TV advertising.

 

Both companies did, it just depends on the territory you're talking about; Commodore had William Shatner as their spokesman in the US for a while and Atari used popular comedians Eric Morcambe and Ernie Wise for the 2600 in the UK for example, later on the adverts i remember became a bit... well, generic but there were television adverts for the Amiga and ST in the UK certainly.

 

Because the Tremials pulled Atari away from the game market, they could not compete with Nintendo or Sega after. Commodore had the Amiga at too high of a price to be competitive with the business or game market.

 

Again, depends on territories and Jack looked at how Atari was leaking cash because of the crash and turned it away. At the time, that was the only step he could take that would appear sensible and whilst it might not have been the best step in the long run (and lets face it, that's damned hard to tell) the initial response Nintendo got when starting to promote the NES in the U.S. backs him up.

 

And i'd say you were underplaying the Amiga and indeed the ST's impact on the games market, for a lot of territories the big consoles weren't the NES or SMS but the SNES or Megadrive/Genesis; certainly in the UK we shifted a huge number of Amigas and it won awards for best selling machine over a couple of years... and very few people were using it exclusively to word process! =-)

 

What killed the Amiga was Commodore's failure to keep things moving and a want to just sit back and coast; if the AAA chipset had been launched when it was supposed to be and the hardware had been increased in CPU power significantly rather than the '020 strapped into the A1200 things might have been different... perhaps.

[peteym5]

Most of my observations and history reports came from the American market. I know Atari and Commodore were advertising in Canada, but not in their native coutries. When I was referring to the television advertising I was referring to the later years when Jack Tremial took over Atari and Commodore did not push the Amiga on US television. Yes the ST and Amiga were excellent game machinges. I agree Commodore should have played their cards better with the Amiga. If they did, you will be seeing commercials with PC vs MAC vs Amiga. Not am not saying the ST was a poor machine, but I was comparing it against the other computers from 1985 to 1990. The other thing that wiped out these earlier machines was the development of the VGA technology on the PC.

 

Atari did over manufacturing of chips, cartridges, and computers. Thats why we still have these things flooding ebay, and warehouses full of Atari stuff. Probably one of the reasons why we can build a dual Antic, GTIA, and Pokey board. Jack Tremial creating the XE was a smart decision to sell off the surplus, but could have included one or two low cost enhancments over the XL. Many people do question his decisions that delayed the 7800 project. That it did not include the pokey chip inside and releasing it and the XEGS after the NES and SMS were already there. Nintendo was already pushing their system on American TV and most people were never aware the 7800 and XEGS even existed. Just to say Atari had a long list of mistakes before and during the Tremial era.

 

Regarding the overall topic, I would say that such a thing as double-width is better left as an expansion OPTION. Enhancements are great, but they breed incompatibility issues amongst the overall user-base.

 

If anyone is to build an Antic/GTIA compatible ASIC. it can easily have switchable options by including a few extra registers in the Anitc/GTIA memory area. If you look at the memory map, you will see there are locations available. It can easily be made to run all the old software.

 

However we have a huge surplus of parts to cheaply upgrade existing computers. Has anyone considered a 65816, Antic, GTIA, and Pokey on an attachable board? That goes into the Atari computer or attaches to the expansion/cartridge port?

Edited November 18, 2007 by peteym5

[mos6507]

The leadership at CBM/Amiga axed every significant hardware project that would have given it an advantage in the marketplace in favor of trying to duplicating the success of the C64. Multiple CPU boards, DSP sound, better graphics... all got the axe after Tremial. I'm sick of people trying to vilify the Tremials while ignoring the mismanagement that went on before or after their involvement in these two companies.

 

 

The reason the Tramiels get so much criticism is that people (at least here) have more of an emotional investment in Atari than Commodore. Obviously there was a fair share of mismanagement at Commodore.

[mos6507]

What killed the Amiga was Commodore's failure to keep things moving and a want to just sit back and coast; if the AAA chipset had been launched when it was supposed to be and the hardware had been increased in CPU power significantly rather than the '020 strapped into the A1200 things might have been different... perhaps.

 

The Amiga's long-term future was going to be faced with a series of challenges. In the last days, the Amiga was swimming upstream against prevailing trends in PC hardware development. The AAA chipset would have been nice, but obviously the trend in the industry was towards 3rd party graphics cards and retargettable graphics. It's sad in the sense that the charm of the Amiga way of doing graphics was bound to come to an end, but inevitable nonetheless. Just look at what happened to SGI for pursuing an all-proprietary formula for too long. No matter how good the chipset was to start out with, it was bound to become obsolete eventually no matter how tweakable it was. So right there and then, the consumer draw of the machine was going to be as short-lived as the excitement level surrounding any new graphics card release.

 

Also, the Amiga operating system's lack of memory protection (and virtual memory) was going to become a liability over time. Nobody's ever been able to bolt on memory protection while maintaining backwards compatibility to AmigaDOS. They would have been faced with an OSX situation of having a classic environment sitting inside the sandbox of whole new OS.

 

And to top it off, Motorola was going to abandon the 68K architecture. So they were going to have to port to PPC just like Apple did.

 

So even if they did all these things, they would eventually be stuck with porting AGAIN to Intel just as Apple recently did as the PPC fell behind. I don't see how C= could have navigated through all those pitfalls to keep the Amiga alive. And even if they did, what they'd wind up with is pure software running on commodity hardware (locked by BIOS DRM) just like Apple. All the quirky coolness (however "obsolete" it would have been by now) of the Amiga would be gone.

 

We've reached a point of specialization where no one computer company can create an integrated system from scratch. It's no wonder that the closest we've seen to that lately has been a failure (PS3).

[mos6507]

On another note, it is odd that no one has hooked up an XEP80 to their PC's serial port. This I believe will be started as a new thread, since it could be accomplished in short order.

 

The XEP-80 is a pretty horrible piece of hardware. Even though I had one I usually just let the screen scroll on AtariWriter+ rather than firing it up.

[peteym5]

On another note, it is odd that no one has hooked up an XEP80 to their PC's serial port. This I believe will be started as a new thread, since it could be accomplished in short order.

 

The XEP-80 is a pretty horrible piece of hardware. Even though I had one I usually just let the screen scroll on AtariWriter+ rather than firing it up.

 

I never seen a XEP-80 personally, but I still would prefer some type of internal upgrade inside of the Atari computer, along with upgrading graphics. Why would anyone just want an 80 column upgrade in this day of age anyway? If you were serious about word processing, terminal programs, and other business applications, wouldn't you be better with a PC or MAC? Most of us probably want better graphics for better games.

Edited November 19, 2007 by peteym5

[GameEngine]

Most of use probably want better graphics for better games.

 

Yes. Days of 1400XL, 1090 and XEP80 are gone. I would like to see the old hardware to be pushed to its limits and beyond. Looking at Crownland and Yoomp! we are almost there for original XE and XL sereis. Now, since many say dual (multiple?) ANTIC / GTIA configurations were what designers envisioned from the start I would like to see hardware like this in action as well.

[peteym5]

I like the Dual Antic/GTIA concept myself. Now from what I have gathered from other posts and members on this forum, it has to be on its own separate board with an independent bus and memory. Possibly you can have the memory accessed with the Freddie chip, the same way you do bank switching on a 130xe. A few had suggested a Maria chip from the 7800, but it would be the same deal with being on its own bus and memory since it does DMA and bus access differently. There was some mention about S-RAM, but I think there have been memory expansion upgrades that use 30-pin SIMMS floating around and maybe have a memory upgrade with an option to use alternate video. Have both video circuits use the Atari video out. We know that the Antic/GTIA can be disable just by setting DMA ($D400) to 0. Maybe you can do dual or multiple GTIA/Antic with Maria on separate busses, but that depends on how much work you want to go into building one of these circuits.

 

I know I probably going to some negative replies to this ideal. I have been seeing posts regarding Maria chip in an Atari computer, few thinking it can do the same thing as the 7800 did, being able to run the 2600 games. They wonder why Atari couldn't do it with the 8-bit and the thing is the Antic/GTIA chips are much more capable than the TIA and Maria addressing requirements overlap what is already used on the Atari computer. Doing it on a separate board is the only way you can keep your computer functioning as the original computer and being able to turn on the chip with a register settings.

Edited November 20, 2007 by peteym5

[frogstar_robot]

I know I probably going to some negative replies to this ideal. I have been seeing posts regarding Maria chip in an Atari computer, few thinking it can do the same thing as the 7800 did, being able to run the 2600 games. They wonder why Atari couldn't do it with the 8-bit and the thing is the Antic/GTIA chips are much more capable than the TIA and Maria addressing requirements overlap what is already used on the Atari computer. Doing it on a separate board is the only way you can keep your computer functioning as the original computer and being able to turn on the chip with a register settings.

 

 

Over in the 2600 forum, there is a thread regarding a serious (as in work has been done) flashcart/sram/ARM processor addon for the 2600 (Chimera). It will be usable as the kind of flashcart we've come to know and love but the on-board ARM/SRAM can also function as a co-processor that feeds pre-rendered data to the 2600.

 

If mos6507 and friends get this sorted out, I could see an 8-bit PBI version of this thing. You'd basically have a much faster processor with it's own dedicated ram that could drive the existing chipset. That chipset can likely do more but is hindered by how much the 6502c can do in a scanline/VBI's worth of time. There'd be a library of ARM code to adapt and leverage and it will work with existing 8-bits. If new 8-bit motherboards are contemplated, it could be built-in.

 

Course, let's not ask mos6507 for this. He has work enough to do on his project. I'm just saying that his finished product may be adaptable and a good starting point for a hot-rodded A8 variant.

Edited November 21, 2007 by frogstar_robot

[mos6507]

Course, let's not ask mos6507 for this. He has work enough to do on his project. I'm just saying that his finished product may be adaptable and a good starting point for a hot-rodded A8 variant.

 

I think the next platform down on the list that would benefit the most from this would be the Vectrex since it's also a system where the CPU is heavily burdened in maintaining the display. The A8 chipset I think has a lot of unused bandwidth and few games have even taken full advantage of banked memory, let alone simple enhancements like an extra POKEY. The A8's main problem right now is not enough people being interested in coding for it (even if you include the 5200 into the mix). It had its "homebrew" scene back in the 80s and 90s since it was always an open platform so there isn't as much novelty coding for it as there is for a heretofore closed platform like the 2600.

[peteym5]

Over in the 2600 forum, there is a thread regarding a serious (as in work has been done) flashcart/sram/ARM processor addon for the 2600 (Chimera). It will be usable as the kind of flashcart we've come to know and love but the on-board ARM/SRAM can also function as a co-processor that feeds pre-rendered data to the 2600.

 

If mos6507 and friends get this sorted out, I could see an 8-bit PBI version of this thing. You'd basically have a much faster processor with it's own dedicated ram that could drive the existing chipset. That chipset can likely do more but is hindered by how much the 6502c can do in a scanline/VBI's worth of time. There'd be a library of ARM code to adapt and leverage and it will work with existing 8-bits. If new 8-bit motherboards are contemplated, it could be built-in.

 

Course, let's not ask mos6507 for this. He has work enough to do on his project. I'm just saying that his finished product may be adaptable and a good starting point for a hot-rodded A8 variant.

 

I have tried to go through and read up on this ARM/Chimera thing, If you wanted a co-processor improve the graphics, you can have something that can quickly update the Antic/GTIA registers. Like do one update per main board clock cycle. With a Display List Interrupt, you have to push your CPU registers to the stack, load up and store new values, and restore the registers. With the process, you can only change 3, maybe 4 Antic/GTIA registers on the first scanline. Takes about 6 cpu cycles to change one register. If you can do something that can rapidly change these registers, you can significantly improve the on screen colors, multiplexing, and other effects normally done with a DLI. I know theres other tricks with changing these registers per scanline, but they eat up more CPU cycles. If a co-processor did what a DLI does, it would keep the main CPU free and improve the speed. This is one of the ideals also regarding a 65816 and faster main CPU upgrades by doing instructions down to an equivalent of 1 clock cycle.

 

I think the next platform down on the list that would benefit the most from this would be the Vectrex since it's also a system where the CPU is heavily burdened in maintaining the display. The A8 chipset I think has a lot of unused bandwidth and few games have even taken full advantage of banked memory, let alone simple enhancements like an extra POKEY. The A8's main problem right now is not enough people being interested in coding for it (even if you include the 5200 into the mix). It had its "homebrew" scene back in the 80s and 90s since it was always an open platform so there isn't as much novelty coding for it as there is for a heretofore closed platform like the 2600.

 

I personally would have like to have seen a few more games that take advantage of banked memory myself. I am working on something that can potentially use 320KB. Games that require large databases or large scrolling screens can certainly use banked memory. However I have mentioned it a few times, the main upgrade a game maker would look for is something that improves the graphics itself. More memory and better sound does not give you much if you are still limited by what the Antic/GTIA can do. I personally think upgrades like Videoboard XE or Dual Antic/GTIA are going to be attractive to game makers and graphic programmers.

Edited November 21, 2007 by peteym5

[griz]

My two cents : I would be very upset to see classic hardware butchered to make a new product. I would much prefer enhancements/modifications to existing hardware or making all new hardware. Every time I see a 1200XL that's turned into a PC a part of me dies. Love the idea of furthering the hardware's potential though and can respect the difficult challenges in doing so.

Edited November 26, 2007 by griz

[peteym5]

My two cents : I would be very upset to see classic hardware butchered to make a new product. I would much prefer enhancements/modifications to existing hardware or making all new hardware. Every time I see a 1200XL that's turned into a PC a part of me dies. Love the idea of furthering the hardware's potential though and can respect the difficult challenges in doing so.

 

I am not in favor of a hybrid Atari and PC myself and emulating portions of the hardware. Many of use want to keep the 6502 based or directly backward compatible to the 6502 based machine. With the PC, Atari800Win PLus does everything in the software and don't see any major advantages over components on a PCI card. The only PC component I really favor attaching to the Atari computer are modern Harddrive devices because those old floppies take up alot of room and become unreadable over time. Many of us just want to keep the Atari around to play old games. With a Harddrive, you can keep it much longer and does not take up much room. I like the latest release of the MYIDE inside of the computer, be cool to combine it with 32 in 1 OS.

 

It is interesting in seeing what people are coming up with for upgrades. I admit I like the design concept of Videoboard XE because it does not interfere with the existing Atari hardware and graphics until the software activates it. I am not sure you can say the same about Dual Antic/GTIA and it seems to require more CPU usage to do anything with it. The stuff I read about Videoboard XE state it runs independent and requires very little from the main CPU.

 

What exactly is this flashcart/sram/ARM processor going to be doing for the Atari 2600 and is it something that can be used for the Atari 8-bit. Been trying to scan trough the 2600 forum and what people are saying can be confusing. Do you think we have to build a who new motherboard or PBI addon. Is it something that can be added as a separate board also?

 

 

I am going to stop pushing any ideals about making a new video ANTIC/GTIA for awhile because no one seems interested in making them and not many interested in putting them in their computer. We get resistance about the ideal along with people saying its a lot of work and can be costly.

Edited November 27, 2007 by peteym5

[+Philsan]

I would buy a new, little (like a Spectrum) Atari with the specs of 130XE plus Turbo Basic XL (and normal Basic), SIO2SD, SIO2PC (USB version), perhaps 320 or 576 KB of RAM.

I am not interested in other hardware enhancements, in particular video ones.

Edited November 27, 2007 by Philsan

[peteym5]

Well a few did say putting it into a smaller case, consolidate some of the chips. Problems are the costs of doing a new system from scratch. Many of us are leaning toward upgrading existing Atari computers with IDE interfaces, more ram, and maybe a CPU enhancement. I am personally a developer and just want to see where this Videoboard XE goes before doing anything.

[PacMan]

I thought I'd just add my two cents worth of insight or whatever you'd like to call it =)

I started a company 1983 developing games for the 8-bit Atari systems. It was (is) a great system, it could do almost anything we wanted it to do and we created a lot of great games at the time. The Atari system was still state of the art and the hardware capabilities were great for that time.

 

Moving on to today.......

 

Now I simply can not understand why you would want to add features to an old system to make it more capable. It will be an expensive way adding features to a basically "tired" system, and you would have basically zero users for it, thus you would have no developers for that system. I can understand that the technological challenge of doing it would be thrilling (I have been there myself) but I can not see any use for it what so ever.

 

Instead why don't we come together and specify the basis of a great, FPGA based, retro gaming system with brilliant graphical capabilities, a powerfull, inexpensive CPU core, amazing sound capabilities etc etc. I believe that this is basically what we want and some great tools to support it. I really enjoy both playing and developing those old games so this would be the ultimate retro gaming platform.

 

/Pacman

[peteym5]

Hey Pacman (Jack O'Neill) I should mention I liked Stargate SG-1 up to the point where O'Neill left. I never felt it was the same with Ben Broader. I Richard Dean Anderson as MacGyver also and cannot wait to see the Mythbusters do the Macgyver Episode.

 

I have stated before I probably just wanted a few extended graphic capabilities but still have it play all the old games. I don't wanna get to the point of suddenly giving it VGA abilities where you can just do games on a PC. Maybe stay with a 256 color palette, and do 320x192 16 color mode at the most. Maybe have some extra sprites along with player/missile graphics. Build in Dual or Quad Pokey with some extra sound stuff ontop of it.

 

I am not sure how much further you got with your Antic video, but it seems further than what most people have done so far.