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Altirra 2.40 Final out..


Mclaneinc

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Hello Caterpiggle,

 

There are no ROM's for the 1020 plotter.

The 68705 processor has it's own Eprom build in.

And the firmware contains a bootloader program that can copy an Eprom into the processor.

So only the developers and maybe the company that delivered the processors to Atari may have the content. (ALPS is written on my 68705)

 

HPGL stands for Hewlett and Packard Graphics Language.

 

BR/

Guus

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Yup, that's what Avery was saying in his last post, that it would be easier to create a version rather than exact emulation IF he thought about the plotter.

 

I know some people want the 'total' Atari experience ie programmable Happy drives and the printer plotter but apart from the 10 mins of novelty play how much would this emulation actually be used.

 

This is a question and not a negative statement...I'm a lover of everything Atari 8bit..

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True drive emulation including firmware would be good for testing, and for running the miniscule amount of remaining software that's protected and not cracked.

Probably need a new disk image storage format for it. Probably plenty of work and some time of trial/error before it became accurate.

 

Something more useful might be a 1050 to PC type of option, allow reading of real disks direct from the emulator.

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Just re-reading this thread as I'm out of touch - Phaeron's turn of phrase a while ago: "As for the 1020 plotter... that is one wacky beast. Not sure where I'd even start with that sucker" has for some reason reduced me to very painful laughter for a few minutes - I have a 1020 sitting quietly on my desk at home - looks a pretty innocuous little thing to me! Appearances can be deceptive - and after all the other incredibly detailed work you've done with different processors, cartridge types, telnet protocols and the rest.... whatever's lurking inside this plotter must be pretty gruesome...

 

Anyway! If that is on the menu at all, that'd be fun and quite cute - although probably not terribly useful? Maybe someone highly artistic could make some incredible art - get it to do some sort of mock-dithering or something. I used to have bits of BASIC software that converted a bitmap image into little coloured in rectangular pixels drawn by the 1020 - took about an hour for it to print them, and a sure way of using up the ink in all the tiny pens in about 2 pictures.

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I'll have you know I spend at least twenty minutes each new release i download happily switching between hard-drive emulations and listening to that lovely hand-shake drone with every boot to SDX!!! ...ahhhh... RTime enabled....!!!

 

It WOULD be good to get a physical PC to emulator link-up. The only problem is 5.25 inch drives themselves are almost impossible to find now. At least where I have looked and not for crazy ebay-gouged prices. The first real PC I had back 1994 had a 5.1/4 drive and that little... so and so... did not work properly either. I got so tired of taking it back to the shop I demanded my money back for the whole thing! I;d stil like one though. Do you know where to get hold of them Rybags?

 

...and... A quick scan through ebay shows me - explicit-exclamation-of-choice - £150!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For a 5.25'' drive... Just. Wow.

Edited by morelenmir
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  • 2 weeks later...

No worries Serj. Phaeron had a computer failure a while back - so that will slow things down a bit I am sure. However he works at his own pace and six weeks is not terribly unusual between releases. I seem to recall waiting for longer in the past for new things coming out.

 

After, what is it now? At least 3 years work on Altirra? Maybe more behind the scenes? I don't think he is going to down-tools without letting us know!!!

Edited by morelenmir
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Serj, here's the quote from the man himself

 

 

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.

 

So I'd not worry, a dev rebuild and some down time, he's a busy man..

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  • 4 weeks later...

Not sure if phaeron is interested in adding this... But I just got an email from the a800 mailing list..

 

 

 

Hello all,

I just want to mention that the IPF library (former CAPS) supports now
loading of unprocessed, raw dumps. It is available as source for
linux/mac/windows and as windows binary from www.kryoflux.com. So you dont
have to wait until SPS processes your images but can use them instantly
(but you should send them still to SPS for verification and preservation).

There are also the first about 30 Atari 8-bit images processed as part of
dual format C64/A800 disks, eg Eidolon, Rescue on Fractalus, Lode Runners
Rescue, Ninja, SWAT/Panther compilation and more (but not officially
announced yet). So if someone wants to implement an Atari 8-bit floppy
emulator with IPF support as standalone or in our Atari800 emulator he
could get some test images provided he does not distribute these images.

Just as note: IPF-Support in Hatari is in the works too.

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Really? wow...

 

I managed to get IPF support in Winuaex (Amiga emulator for the xbox) when they released the code last year. However at least the Amiga images were possible to find. Apparently with the Atari images they don't want to share. But then we have APX. So I probably wont bother adding it to Atarixlbox (A800 emulator for xbox) since I already have APX support in it.

 

On the one hand we have APX with closed source (although there are specs) and freely available images, and IPF support which is open source and not freely available images. Crazy world.

 

Anywho I figured I'd mention it here just in case Phaeron thought it was worth adding and they did say they were willing to send working images (as long as they were kept private).

Edited by Shannon
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Sorry, but for various reasons I don't link third party libraries into Altirra. The IPF library has an incompatible license anyway.

 

It'd be possible to read IPF files with custom code, but it'd require emulating enough of the FDC to decode the data back to sectors, which is a bit of work. Because the Atari disk interface is high level, ATX suffices for almost everything. The main thing it lacks is extended/double density support, and it would be much easier to extend ATX to do that than to add a whole new format. It's not like the Atari ST where programs have direct FDC access or the Amiga where massive disk wackiness is permitted.

 

Actually, the most useful tool would probably be a standalone IPF to ATX/ATR converter. That'd immediately provide a bridge from raw imaging to all emulators.

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Thanks for the reply Phaeron.

 

Come to think of it they do mention dual format C64/A800 disks which is probably where such a complicated system is needed (for the C64). However like your said for our Atari 8-bit purposes it does not seem very practical.

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I am pretty sure the RAW support is only for MFM data clocked at 2/4us? This would not hold Atari FM data so is a moot point right now- you couldn't make RAW images of Atari disks as far as I am aware.

 

There are no Atari 8-bit IPF images that exist as far as I know - only Amiga/Atari ST and a few others have been done.

 

Now, it does support FM and FM XFD sector images, so you can image Atari disks now, just probably not (heavily) copy protected ones.

Edited by R.Cade
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