Atari PC4 286/16Mhz with goodies has arrived!

[leech]

8 minutes ago, The Usotsuki said:

That lessened over the years, until by 5.0, I think only IBM, Compaq and Toshiba actually rebranded the binaries, and at least Compaq stopped after 5.

Yeah, I thought it only fitting to put IBM PC-DOS 7.1 on my PS/2s   I think the Atari DOS that comes with the PC4 is 3.30.  I want to find the full GEM suite to run on that.

[82-T/A]

33 minutes ago, leech said:

Oh, I've played them throughout the years, just never got around to winning any of them.  I was thinking the screenshot was from the C64, which is the version of Curse of the Azure Bonds that I played on at a friend's.  He said I got further in a few hours than another friend had in weeks of playing it... then again I grew up playing D&D and know how to construct a party

 

I may indeed sit down and play them on the ol' Atari PC4, pretty sure none require more than a 286 with VGA.

 

Ok yeah, I wasn't sure. I haven't beaten many of them either, personally.

 

I've beaten Pools of Radiance and Champions of Krynn. I've gotten to the very last battle in Curse of the Azure Bonds, but the whole game screws up after the last battle. There's like 100s of enemies, and all kinds of really bad dudes. I can kill them all, with all of my party still alive, but then the game is all jacked up, so I end up never really getting to finish it.

 

But I've never beaten any of the others. Pretty much the same for the overwhelming vast majority of the games I played as a kid, like both Starflight games.

 

But yeah, you don't need anything other than a 286 and VGA. The fight scenes may be a little slow, but you can increase the message speed.

 

 

Also, if you've never heard of this, highly recommend getting one of these for your now IBM (Atari) PC:

 

https://www.retrokits.de/index.php/tandy-nano-v1-1-isa-soundcard-dht/

or

https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/tndlpt-tandy-compatible-parallel-sound-card/

 

You are probably super aware of this already, but most of the 80s games used the PC speaker... which is the worst of all possible computer systems ever in the 80s. Single voice BOOP sound. Tandy had 3-voice polyphony. And someone was slick enough to redesign the Tandy sound system on an ISA card, and provide it in a way that it can be used on an IBM PC. You get way, way, way better action and sound effects on all of those games.

[leech]

12 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

 

Ok yeah, I wasn't sure. I haven't beaten many of them either, personally.

 

I've beaten Pools of Radiance and Champions of Krynn. I've gotten to the very last battle in Curse of the Azure Bonds, but the whole game screws up after the last battle. There's like 100s of enemies, and all kinds of really bad dudes. I can kill them all, with all of my party still alive, but then the game is all jacked up, so I end up never really getting to finish it.

 

But I've never beaten any of the others. Pretty much the same for the overwhelming vast majority of the games I played as a kid, like both Starflight games.

 

But yeah, you don't need anything other than a 286 and VGA. The fight scenes may be a little slow, but you can increase the message speed.

 

 

Also, if you've never heard of this, highly recommend getting one of these for your now IBM (Atari) PC:

 

https://www.retrokits.de/index.php/tandy-nano-v1-1-isa-soundcard-dht/

or

https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/tndlpt-tandy-compatible-parallel-sound-card/

 

You are probably super aware of this already, but most of the 80s games used the PC speaker... which is the worst of all possible computer systems ever in the 80s. Single voice BOOP sound. Tandy had 3-voice polyphony. And someone was slick enough to redesign the Tandy sound system on an ISA card, and provide it in a way that it can be used on an IBM PC. You get way, way, way better action and sound effects on all of those games.

Ha, in my PC4 I have an Awe64 with a 24mb wavetable add-on... so the soundcard has more ram than the system (currently 5, still need to upgrade the sipps to simms and put in 8mb)

[82-T/A]

16 minutes ago, leech said:

Ha, in my PC4 I have an Awe64 with a 24mb wavetable add-on... so the soundcard has more ram than the system (currently 5, still need to upgrade the sipps to simms and put in 8mb)

 

Yeah, sorry... I just meant that for the games that generally only use the PC Speaker, the Tandy sound is better when it's supported. You can install these cards and take advantage of the 3-Voice Polyphony.

[Clint Thompson]

So I've got an update (semi-NSFW) with a ton of things that have happened over the past week or so.

 

First thing first, after fiddling around with some settings 3 dozen times over the course of like 2 hours, the PC4 finally detected the original hard drive!

 

That was exciting because I've been really curious what was originally on the machine's hard drive knowing this was pulled from Atari's Sunnyvale offices.

In the end, it looks like it was primarily used to test or compare the PC-to-ST game ports, as all the games are very specific in that regard.

 

Sadly however, most of the drive is shot. I was able to load some things but unfortunately Win286 was a bust, as with many of the other games.

 

 

My excitement was high just to see this screen loading but quickly dissipated with discouragement after nothing but read errors.

 

Outside of the dozen or so games pre-loaded on the machine (STUN Runner, Weird Dreams, Test Drive, Lombard Rally, Alien Syndrome, Sim Earth, Leisure Suit Larry, etc,) all ST port games mind you, I ran across this GIF Image viewer with a few choice images included. All files on the HDD were dated between 1988 with the latest (that I could see) being late 1991. There was one called CYBER but wouldn't load. I had wondered if by some rare chance it was related to Cybermorph for the Jaguar but I doubt it. I'm sure there were other CYBER-something games in that time period, but the POD file names is what made me believe it was somehow related.

 

Anyways, Metallica!

 

 

Would this even be a legit DOS machine from the late 80s/early 90s without some saucy GIF action? I gather not...

 

 

I can't help but find it all kind of humorous and somewhat expected further legitimizing the time period lol

 

 

The games on the other hand, I was able to get Weird Dreams to work fully without errors. Most the rest loaded initially but gave errors soon after.

I suspect the drive may be bad of course but there is a NORTON folder on the drive and LAPLINK software installed so it looks like maybe a virus had

chewed the contents to bits as well. I have reason to believe the drive is actually infected, more on that in a minute...

 

 

 

 

I'd never played the game before but it seems cool!

 

Alien Syndrome wouldn't load past the wiggling logo on startup and Test Drive I think required a passcode....

 

 

 

Long story short, the drive only ran for a few hours before it got so bad that I couldn't even list the directory anymore. I learned a little too late that it also had a D drive partition which had Ultima on it as well. During all of this, I used a few of the primary DOS disks and tried to install Windows from one of the disks as well, but it wouldn't have it. So I shut it down for the night (at 2AM lol) and looked forward to messing with it more later.

 

Fast forward about 3 days and this finally arrived!

 

 

Not only did it work first try but did so without having to change any settings! Kind of upsetting I waste so much time with the other Bulgarian device that is seemingly most likely defective at any rate. Who knows, either way, I'm glad this is in and working now. Back to the virus situation though. May it be by sheer coincidence or there actually may be a virus on this machine, both the original DOS disk and Windows setup disks are no longer readable. So I'm like, great... the drive is failing right when I get a CF drive in to install all this software. But I was able to load DOS from the CF and play MTV Remote Control from the FDD just fine, so I'm not really sure.

 

I did clean the FDD with some swabs but no luck with the same disks. MTV Remote Control continued to play fine.

 

Now to find time to install the sound card, drivers, etc. and put it all back together as the machine it was intended for being!

To compare all these ST ports to their PC counterparts! (and choice GIF viewing select images, naturally... )

Edited July 23, 2022 by Clint Thompson

[leech]

22 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

So I've got an update (semi-NSFW) with a ton of things that have happened over the past week or so.

 

First thing first, after fiddling around with some settings 3 dozen times over the course of like 2 hours, the PC4 finally detected the original hard drive!

 

That was exciting because I've been really curious what was originally on the machine's hard drive knowing this was pulled from Atari's Sunnyvale offices.

In the end, it looks like it was primarily used to test or compare the PC-to-ST game ports, as all the games are very specific in that regard.

 

Sadly however, most of the drive is shot. I was able to load some things but unfortunately Win286 was a bust, as with many of the other games.

 

 

My excitement was high just to see this screen loading but quickly dissipated with discouragement after nothing but read errors.

 

Outside of the dozen or so games pre-loaded on the machine (STUN Runner, Weird Dreams, Test Drive, Lombard Rally, Alien Syndrome, Sim Earth, Leisure Suit Larry, etc,) all ST port games mind you, I ran across this GIF Image viewer with a few choice images included. All files on the HDD were dated between 1988 with the latest (that I could see) being late 1991. There was one called CYBER but wouldn't load. I had wondered if by some rare chance it was related to Cybermorph for the Jaguar but I doubt it. I'm sure there were other CYBER-something games in that time period, but the POD file names is what made me believe it was somehow related.

 

Anyways, Metallica!

 

 

Would this even be a legit DOS machine from the late 80s/early 90s without some saucy GIF action? I gather not...

 

 

I can't help but find it all kind of humorous and somewhat expected further legitimizing the time period lol

 

 

The games on the other hand, I was able to get Weird Dreams to work fully without errors. Most the rest loaded initially but gave errors soon after.

I suspect the drive may be bad of course but there is a NORTON folder on the drive and LAPLINK software installed so it looks like maybe a virus had

chewed the contents to bits as well. I have reason to believe the drive is actually infected, more on that in a minute...

 

 

 

 

I'd never played the game before but it seems cool!

 

Alien Syndrome wouldn't load past the wiggling logo on startup and Test Drive I think required a passcode....

 

 

 

Long story short, the drive only ran for a few hours before it got so bad that I couldn't even list the directory anymore. I learned a little too late that it also had a D drive partition which had Ultima on it as well. During all of this, I used a few of the primary DOS disks and tried to install Windows from one of the disks as well, but it wouldn't have it. So I shut it down for the night (at 2AM lol) and looked forward to messing with it more later.

 

Fast forward about 3 days and this finally arrived!

 

 

Not only did it work first try but did so without having to change any settings! Kind of upsetting I waste so much time with the other Bulgarian device that is seemingly most likely defective at any rate. Who knows, either way, I'm glad this is in and working now. Back to the virus situation though. May it be by sheer coincidence or there actually may be a virus on this machine, both the original DOS disk and Windows setup disks are no longer readable. So I'm like, great... the drive is failing right when I get a CF drive in to install all this software. But I was able to load DOS from the CF and play MTV Remote Control from the FDD just fine, so I'm not really sure.

 

I did clean the FDD with some swabs but no luck with the same disks. MTV Remote Control continued to play fine.

 

Now to find time to install the sound card, drivers, etc. and put it all back together as the machine it was intended for being!

To compare all these ST ports to their PC counterparts! (and choice GIF viewing select images, naturally... )

Whoa!  Mine had basically nada on it besides DOS.  Curious if we could get some data recovery tools to work on it?  Being an MFM hard drive, that might be tricky... also shame if it started getting worse... any way to boot from a floppy and copy as much as you can to a CF card?

[leech]

Also to note... how else are you supposed to test out your fanvy VGA / SVGA without some pr0n?

[Clint Thompson]

8 minutes ago, leech said:

Whoa!  Mine had basically nada on it besides DOS.  Curious if we could get some data recovery tools to work on it?  Being an MFM hard drive, that might be tricky... also shame if it started getting worse... any way to boot from a floppy and copy as much as you can to a CF card?

I don't know the actual differences between RLL and MFM but this one is a Seagate RLL drive with what I assume to be an RLL controller card, as it also lists SCSI support for some reason.

7 minutes ago, leech said:

Also to note... how else are you supposed to test out your fanvy VGA / SVGA without some pr0n?

Haha yeah... but there was Leisure Suit Larry!

[leech]

https://hackaday.com/2018/10/10/recovering-data-from-a-vintage-mfm-drive/

Looks like the main difference between RLL and MFM is the encoding.  My suggestion is to get a parallel port zip drive, boot from a dos floppy disk and see if you can get as much data off it as possible.  Games that don't load can then be replaced by working copies.  Maybe get a working Windows/286 out of it too.  I think I should put MSDOS 5.0 on my CF card and then install Wondows/286.  Though I can't think of anything that really needs windows that will work on a 286.

[Clint Thompson]

Yikes! My 3D SuperScape numbers are lower than I ever remember seeing lol

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by Clint Thompson

[leech]

21 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

Yikes! My 3D SuperScape numbers are lower than I ever remember seeing lol

 

Ha, is that with the Paradise VGA?  Do  you have the utility disk thing installed?  Saw one on ataripc.net.  Not sure what it does.  I'll have to see what the ET4000 scores.

[Clint Thompson]

2 hours ago, leech said:

Ha, is that with the Paradise VGA?  Do  you have the utility disk thing installed?  Saw one on ataripc.net.  Not sure what it does.  I'll have to see what the ET4000 scores.

I haven't checked the VGA utilities, I'll have to look. Only thing I have loaded when needed is the mouse.com driver for now and yeah, it's the onboard Paradise VGA. No intention of adding an additional card if I don't have to.

[leech]

7 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

I haven't checked the VGA utilities, I'll have to look. Only thing I have loaded when needed is the mouse.com driver for now and yeah, it's the onboard Paradise VGA. No intention of adding an additional card if I don't have to.

I only did as I one of the games I had tried said there wasn't enough video memory, or something.

[Clint Thompson]

2 hours ago, leech said:

I only did as I one of the games I had tried said there wasn't enough video memory, or something.

Hmmm... appears the VGA utilities on his site are gone. No idea if I actually need it though.

 

I ended up motivated enough to install the Sound Blaster and download, unpack and install Windows286.

Win286 is pretty bad lol that looks like 320x240? but the PC4 surprisingly runs LL5!

 

 

 

 

 

[wierd_w]

Iirc, win3.0 could run in 'real mode' on 286s. Needs a special flag to force it.

[Clint Thompson]

20 minutes ago, wierd_w said:

Iirc, win3.0 could run in 'real mode' on 286s. Needs a special flag to force it.

You’ll have to forgive my memory and ignorance but what does real mode do?

 

I was able to get 3.0 working finally.. 

 

 

[wierd_w]

It stays in segmented memory mode, because the 286 cannot leave protected mode without a reboot (officially).

 

The inability to go in and out of protected mode is a deal breaker for 386 enhanced mode, which is what windows 3 really wants to live in.

[leech]

8 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Hmmm... appears the VGA utilities on his site are gone. No idea if I actually need it though.

http://www.ataripc.net/pc4-286/ms-dos-system-disks-and-pvga-utilities/

 

I wasn't able to get this to work:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/strip-poker-professional

 

Gave me an error about the video memory if I recall.

 

Granted you have a different bios, wonder if you have more video ram than I do.  No idea of how to tell.

Edited July 24, 2022 by leech

[Clint Thompson]

7 hours ago, leech said:

http://www.ataripc.net/pc4-286/ms-dos-system-disks-and-pvga-utilities/

 

I wasn't able to get this to work:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/strip-poker-professional

 

Gave me an error about the video memory if I recall.

 

Granted you have a different bios, wonder if you have more video ram than I do.  No idea of how to tell.

Thanks! Downloaded and will have to see if it is of any use.

 

The game says it's SVGA? I'm guessing it's exceeding the VGA standard, unless your card supports that?

[leech]

5 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

Thanks! Downloaded and will have to see if it is of any use.

 

The game says it's SVGA? I'm guessing it's exceeding the VGA standard, unless your card supports that?

Yeah, the card I put in is a 2mb ET4000.

[leech]

@Clint Thompson

Hey, next time you have your system open, can you check the crystals you have?  Mine is the 12mhz AMD, and I am wondering if I need to swap something besides just the CPU if I want to upgrade to a 16mhz system.

If I were a betting man, I would guess that the KOYO 24mhz one is for the 'turbo' mode and the 16mhz one under it is for the 8mhz AT (turbo off) mode.  So in theory if I say swapped the 24mhz one for a 20mhz, then the cpu would run ar 10mhz (which I theorize is what is expected by the cpu upgrade I have in the IBM) and if I put in a 32mhz one I could swap the fpu / cpu for 16mhz equivalents.

[Clint Thompson]

Looks like 32mhz and 16

[leech]

6 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

Looks like 32mhz and 16

Awesome, exactly what I thought! 

[zzip]

On 7/23/2022 at 4:21 PM, Clint Thompson said:

So I've got an update (semi-NSFW)

Eh, How bad can it be??

 

On 7/23/2022 at 4:21 PM, Clint Thompson said:

 

Ahhhh my eyes!    NSFW is right

[zzip]

On 7/23/2022 at 4:56 PM, Clint Thompson said:

I don't know the actual differences between RLL and MFM but this one is a Seagate RLL drive with what I assume to be an RLL controller card, as it also lists SCSI support for some reason.

RLL has more sectors per track.  26 vs 18 I think if memory serves.    You could also format some MFM drives as RLL for extra storage.     Some RLL controllers were SCSI devices.   

Think of it this way..    drives now generally have controllers integrated in them, but back then drives were a lot dumber, and needed an external controller and thats what the MFM/RLL provided.  SCSI could talk to drives with internal or external controllers.    It all made for a big mess