morelenmir Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 That's Phaeron old son, Phareon!!! There has been a bit of talk about doing the plotter - but I think it, like proper Happy/Indus functionality is going to require custom chips be fully emulated so perhaps a bigger jJob than Avery is looking for right now. Who knows though! I think USB printing might be a bit much, but the plotter would certainly be cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted May 17, 2014 Author Share Posted May 17, 2014 I don't even think the plotter roms are out there.. For me its more of a fad than a real need but you know Avery, he loves his emulated stuff, who would ever have thought of real SID noise from the Atari, a wonderful little add on by it seemed like 10 mins and Avery had emulated it..Brilliant. Who knows about the plotter but its all great stuff..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 The emulated devices are Altirra's most attractive aspect for me - to be able to play with these pieces of hardware I could never have in the material world... Amazing. One day I REALLY hope we see an 'easy' drive like the "US Doubler" fully emulated, the "Happy" seems an impossible dream but until then all the flash roms and super cartridges that have been very much up in the discussion lately - absolutely amazing and fascinating. Avery is a virtuoso. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
576XE Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 2Phaeron Thank you again!!! I just could telnet to real IBM AIX server with ICE-T VT100 terminal emulator. I show this to my colleagues and they are very very impressed!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caterpiggle Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 Hey , Altirra does offer Happy or US Doubler features ! 128 Kbps per seconds, 288 RPM on Altirra that is the fastest as possible. I don't understand why you continue to talk about this subject ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 (edited) It offers a pseudo-support - to a greater or lesser extent. It is not a question simply of the speed of data throughput. Altirra does not fully emulate the custom chip in the Happy or any of the others that had them like the IndusGT and code cannot be uploaded dynamically to the drive emulator as it would be on a real drive. Therefore the custom utilities you can find for these physical drives do not work with Altirra - they report they cannot find the Happy or USDoubler for obvious reasons. Apparently this is a VERY tough ask and Avery is not interested in pursuing it right now or likely ever, which is of course totally fine. I just keep hoping the mood might take him and he'll have another look at the problem. I think as much as anything else the cost is prohibitive as he has said before he would need to buy a real Happy to start the work. I keep hoping though!!! I talk about it because it is something that interests me Caterpiggle! Just like you and the plotter... I must admit the plotter interests me too!!! Edited May 17, 2014 by morelenmir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caterpiggle Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 Because I have the real hardware , 1020 with me. It is really cool behavior , the way it printing out. It does not print in horizontals. It is either print, down , up , left or right depends on the graphics display. It take really really long time to print the simple graphics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 (edited) That is VERY cool!!! I once saw a plotter working at my secondary school. It was fascinating just to watch. I would love one myself. Here's hoping Avery might give it a shot at some point - emulate it by drawing authentically to the screen at the appropriate speed, line by line. Edited May 17, 2014 by morelenmir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caterpiggle Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 I have to wait the response of the author of Altirra , Phearon and see what he will have to say about 1020 Plotter emulating ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 Any idea when there will be a final, both the blog and this thread go on for ever Hey, c'mon now. It's not like this is the new GUI thread. Bit of an issue -- in addition to some late hours at work, both my laptop and my SSD just died. I had a partial backup and so I didn't lose any source code or the Perforce depot, but I did annoyingly lose some little things like my XEP80 disassembly. It'll take a bit to rebuild my dev environment on my spare laptop. In the meantime, the current test release is most likely what I'm going to re-release as 2.50 final -- probably will push the minor Corina EEPROM fix to 2.60. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kr0tki Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 Hey, I've made a disassembly of the XEP80 ROM myself back in 2012, maybe you'll find it handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted May 19, 2014 Author Share Posted May 19, 2014 Sorry to hear about the losses Avery, glad its not dented too much, looking forward to the final. And yes, typical Jon, making the longest thread and yet the bloody thing isn't out yet Talk about a tease Just pulling your leg Jon.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 Personally I love reading the Altirra threads: no problem with it going on forever. I hope Avery never stops adding things to it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted May 19, 2014 Author Share Posted May 19, 2014 Amen to that (not that I'm religious) I'd love to see some 'fun' things added but I already asked Avery a long time ago so I won't repeat the request, he remembers every thing Roll on everything Atari 8bit.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guus.assmann Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 About 1020 plotter. It contains a 6805P3 processor. This is made by Motorolla and they claim it cannot be copied. This is actually not true, with some tinkering it's possible because of a bug in the self-programming algoritm in the processor. And I happen to have a couple of these processors. Still it's quite a job to get them read. And then the processor instruction set is different from the 6502. Emulating the plotter in software is then one thing. But how to treat the output? Should it print to screen or to another plotter with HPGL? About 1050 and emulation. I'd really love to have the 1050 emulated in such a way that I can put an OS-file into the emulator. This would help me in the development of an OS for the drive. And I need that to get a 1050 enhancemet up and running. Even with single stepping a WDC65C02S the stuff doesn't behave and I don't understand why. Just my 2bits Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 (edited) FASCINATING - I would like to see this myself! Ideally I would like Altirra to be able to act just like this, a digital platform that could with the proper programming replicate the ability to physically mod the hardware. It already does this amazingly with the debugger directly accepting output from a cross-assembler like Xasm/Eclipse. Alas... As I understand these things there is a big difference between making a thing ACT like an 8-Bit and making it BEHAVE like one... A subtle but important difference. First of all, for the novelty of it I would LOVE that ability to digitally emulate the plotter - drawing on the pseudo-printed-page/screen with the same speed and motions that a real plotter would. Once that is working I would have thought it would be easy to translate those instruction in to whatever page description language plotters use today and then push it out to the appropriate windows software driver. I'm guessing that putting an OS-file in to the drive emulator is pretty much what a physical Happy or Indus would do in its normal operation? Edited May 19, 2014 by morelenmir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 ...a digital platform that could with the proper programming replicate the ability to physically mod the hardware. It already can - if you learn C. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 Fair enough!!! I am personally growing to hate OO and C++ so any C positive thing is very much okay in my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
576XE Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 the ability to physically mod the hardware... Are your say that 3D Printers coming?!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 Or replicators. 'Tea, earl grey... dual-pokey please'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caterpiggle Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 Hello guus.assmann , I did not even know Atari 1020 Plotter has it's own CPU to handle the print output. "Should it print to screen or to another plotter with HPGL?" What is HPGL ? USB Plotter ? No, most of us owning USB either Inkjet or Laser Printer as modern. So Altirra has to be tread as in InkJet or Laser USB Printer for output. Of course, translator from "virtual Atari 1020 Plotter" into either InkJet or Laser USB Printer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaeron Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 Well, good news is that I have my dev environment up again and can build Altirra. The bad news is that my old laptop only has VGA output and can only drive a 27" 2560x1440 monitor at 2048x1152 over analog. I feel like Mr. Magoo. Atari devices commonly have embedded microcontrollers, but it typically isn't a problem for emulation because these devices don't allow you to upload code. If they don't allow you to upload code, then it's easier just to emulate the behavior of the code instead, which also avoids the need to have the original firmware. Altirra emulates the 810 and XEP80 this way and right now there aren't known programs that can tell the difference. A number of the upgrades for 810 and 1050 drives, do, though, and that means full CPU+hardware emulation is required. It's more like the situation on the C64, where the 1541 drive allowed code upload and so people hacked the heck out of it -- and quite a lot of stuff only runs with full 1541 emulation. Unless you have a printer language fetish, it probably isn't worthwhile to convert the plotter commands to another printer/plotter language... image or at most VML/SVG output makes more sense. For that matter, the plotter just takes regular P: output, so except for a few of the control commands that require escape sequences, it should be possible to write a program to translate the plain text output to graphics. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caterpiggle Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 Are you saying that Atari 1020 had it's ROM filmware like Indus GT , 1050, ETC to run the devices ? Like Atari OS 16K on XL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caterpiggle Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 I never seen any Atari 1020 ROM on the Net. I would try to find 1 .... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caterpiggle Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 I am sure someone who also try to obtain the codes from their real hardware Atari 1020 thur EPROM device or reader machine ? I will ask my friend if he can read the code from my Atari 1020 chip on his EPROM reader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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