+David_P Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 Background: Many moons ago, David & Sandy Small wrote and article for ANTIC magazine where they pointed out the Bit3 board was a fantastic programmer's tool, as you could output 80 columns of text to that display while ANTIC did its thing on the main display. (http://www.atarimagazines.com/v2n8/missionaccomplished.html) The XEP-80 could be used in a similar fashion, but they are getting increasingly hard to find. There's an additional bonus beyond debugging, though - multiple displays could be used for multi-player games, run off a single computer. Obviously, most external display generators are text-only (or text and ATASCII or ASCII only), but that still provides additional capabilities - for example, a two player poker game, where each can see their own hand and the betting (and possibly even a simple AI player as well). I did find a vendor offering a TTL device (built around an ATMega) that provides TV output (NTSC or PAL). It's the Batsocks Tellymate - http://www.batsocks.co.uk/products/Other/TellyMate.htm . The kit sells for £10.50. Any interest in establishing an Atari community around it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 The Carina II BBS I ran eons ago actually supported use of an XEP80 as a secondary display. The XEP was used to show you the output the user was seeing (which was great when 80-column computers connected, such as an Atari ST, and the forum supported ANSI), and the main display allowed you to view and edit information about the user, all without interrupting what the user was doing (rudimentary multitasking!) It was quite slick at the time. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svenski Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 Pics Al, or it didn't happen Sounds like a pretty decent setup you had there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 I did find a vendor offering a TTL device (built around an ATMega) that provides TV output (NTSC or PAL). It's the Batsocks Tellymate - http://www.batsocks.co.uk/products/Other/TellyMate.htm . The kit sells for £10.50. Any interest in establishing an Atari community around it? That font looks awfully familiar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fibrewire Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 I've used two monitors with my Bit 3 board. I've only used it for Atari BASIC stuff, but debugging in 80 columns while viewing ANTIC output in real time (Mission Accomplished) sure would be handy to have in Altirra. Apparently MAC/65 was patched to do just this with the Bit 3, so I guess I'm off to ebay... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 I suspect that was a custom patch for the Smalls, and might not have made its way back into the default codebase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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