CES demo

[Brian R.]

Back when I got an Atari 1050 drive the seller also gave me a few dozen floppies. At first I could only get the autoruns to work. But just yesterday I found a disk with a program called "Load It" that is allowing me to run the programs on nearly all of the disks.

 

On one I came across what appears to be a CES demo for Atari computers. It alternates between a robot walking on a dashed green line and a ship in space. In between is a logo screen. The graphics and sound are actually rather impressive.

 

Anyone know anything more about this demo? What year was it used?

[AtariDude]

Is this the one that you are mentioning?

 

http://www.bozjokes.co.uk/Retro/RobotDemo.asp

[Brian R.]

Yeah, that's the robot. The one on the floppy is an exact match for that screenshot.

 

There's also the space ship. In between the robot and the space ship there's a screen with the flashing colors Atari fugi and it says either "Atari computers" or "Atari home computers," something like that.

[Albert]

I don't know much about this demo, but it's one of my earlier experiences with Atari 8-bit computers and I remember being pretty damn impressed by it. What CES was it shown at?

 

..Al

[Heaven/TQA]

1984? XANTH wrote the demo around that time... and as far as i can remember there is the slogan "power without the price" in there... so it was used arount that time...

 

but i am not sure...

 

hve

 

ps. it was the 1st demo which kicked my ass to do something similar...

[AtariDude]

I downloaded the demo that was on that page. It is a remake of the original with some other classic gaming characters. It was nicely done but unless you have DSL or something like it, you could be in for a long wait. It is 17 megabytes long.

[Curt Vendel]

Hi Brian,

 

That was the demo that was run at the Winter CES in 1985 when Atari Corp was showing publicly for the first time the new Atari XE line of computers and also previewed the ST's to some awed member's of the audience.

 

It was a spectacular demo's, I think if I remember it was done mostly in Graphics 9 or 11 mode, lots of shadings and metallic graphics, the Robot was cool and the spaceship was pretty neat too with the cute background music.

 

Speaking of Atari demo's, in 1982 Atari had a demo cart (later a disk since the carts were "disappearing out of the computers") for the Atari 400/800 computers....

 

Well, the demo was very cheesy with a kid walking into a schoolhouse, then a pencil writing letters on the screen and the demo tells about all of the features of Atari computers. An Atari employee decided to make the demo a little bit more "interesting" so it was turned into an "R Rated" demonstration where all of the text is replaced with statements about how much sex and drugs can Atari employees and Atari computers can do. I think B&C Computervisions even sells a copy of that demo in their disk software section of their website: www.myatari.com

 

Probably the best Atari demo was the ERIC (Electronic Retail Information Centers) These were dealer kiosks that had an Atari 800 on display and inside the cabinet was an 810 and an 850. The 850's R1: serial port was connected to a custom Laserdisc Controller that hooked up to a Pioneer 8210 Laserdisc player and the Atari 800 controlled the player and did a full interactive demonstration of the Atari 800's in real-life video and by using the keyboard you would select menu items to request info on programming, games, telecommunications and so forth.

 

This was developed by Harry Brown, Steve Davis and several other engineers in Atari's original R&D lab: Cyan Engineering. Later Atari would hired Alan Kay from Xerox (birthplace of the original Personal Computers: The Altos (10 years before the IBM PC), Ethernet, and the GUI (Smalltalk)... Well Alan came to Atari as its chief scientist and opened up several Research labs like ASRL (Advance Sunnyvale Research Lab) LALAB (Atari LA Lab), CARL (Cambridge Atari Research Lab), WCI NY Lab and Cyan fell into the fold as well...

 

I will post a new Subject in the group and let everyone look at something rather eye opening that was developed in Atari's LA Lab: Networking for the Atari 800's!

 

 

PS: I could actually use some help from someone who's well versed in assembly and Mac/65... I have all of the source code modules to a project Atari was working on for its Laserdisc module, to allow the Atari 800 to play Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, the 2 original boot disks I have are unreadable, but I have the code to create more, if someone is willing to help compile these then I would bring the ERIC kiosk to Phillyclassic 4 this coming Spring and everyone can play the arcade Dragon's Lair and Space Ace on an Atari 800, anyone????

 

 

Curt

[Brian R.]

Thanks for all the great info, Curt!

[Clint Thompson]

First...

 

The CES Demo is very awesome! I remember when I was working in my room back in days I would just let the demo run and repeat.. it was so cool! I also had some article on all the graphics that could be done with the new (antic?) chip they put in the Atari's.

 

I remember some face of an old guy and a desert... talk about some cool stuff for the 800 back when!!! That and loading ballblazer just to listen to the music (I love that music!)

 

On to Curts note about Dragon's Lair and Space Ace for the Atari 800!

How Friggin' cool would that be? Damn, someone hop on that , that would be killer!!!

 

Hopefully I'll be at PC4 in either case.... sounds like it's going to be a killer event... I gotta bring my cammy and record the whole damn thing

(I love making DVD's

 

You have any other detailed info regarding it Curt? or just know that it can run on the 800 etc etc?

 

I love this forum!

 

Clint Thompson

[ZylonBane]

I also had some article on all the graphics that could be done with the new (antic?) chip they put in the Atari's.

GTIA. Actually they weren't new to the XE or even the XL. Only early 400/800s were stuck with the CTIA.

[Curt Vendel]

Hi Clint,

 

Whats up bud!!! The Laserdisc system was designed to be connected to and controlled by the Atari 850 interface (or any other R1: device) so thoretically any RS232 device can control it.

 

I will be posting a great deal of technical data, the eprom BINary dumps from the controllers as well as some memo's on how to program apps to control the player.

 

Its a fairly good sized board (a little bit bigger then a 1050 disk drive foot print) but I'm sure given time it could've been reduced in size and since the Atari 5200 has all the pinouts for the SIO port, then rigging up an Rverter type device or a mini-850 type device from Atari to control the laserdisc module was probably what was planned as rumors circulated about a Laserdisc module for the 5200 and I have some notes I will add later that talk about packing the 5200 and a laserdisc player into a stackable modular system, so Atari was in serious preparations to do such a device, more to follow.

 

 

Curt