what about consolidating several upgrades into one ?

[andy_bernstein]

This topic is more directed at Analmux since he is such a genius at unleashing the hidden powers of the A8. Since there is this Additional GTIA upgrade coming soon, is it possible to combine the My Ide cart, the second GTIA upgrade and (hint hint) let's say a 7800 Maria chip into one cart ?

 

Six months ago, I had planned to create a portable XE Machine but have since upgraded to an Apple Powerbook G4 which runs the A8 flawlessly through emulation (cool to show Numen to your friends at Starbucks Coffee / Coffee Bean !!!). Anyway, I have gone back to BASIC and am programming small programs to get my feet wet before programming a game I'd be proud to show you. The possibility of using the additional GTIA chip (for a second screen effect) plus a Maria chip would give us even more tools to let our favorite ATARI computer "show off".

 

By the way, I never was able to find the AMY Sound Chip. If anybody knows hot to get one and sync it with an A8, please let me know.

 

AB (Atari user since 1983).

[deathtrappomegranate]

If Atari had produced an A8 with a Maria chip...

[+davidcalgary29]

...it would have been the 7800 with the keyboard attachment!

 

But seriously, I thought that the AMY chip was too unstable to work with the 8-bit architecture in '85 and '86, and development was dropped because of that (and, of course, all of the attendant legal wranglings over the chip at the time).

[deathtrappomegranate]

...it would have been the 7800 with the keyboard attachment!

 

[analmux]

This topic is more directed at Analmux since he is such a genius at unleashing the hidden powers of the A8. Since there is this Additional GTIA upgrade coming soon, is it possible to combine the My Ide cart, the second GTIA upgrade and (hint hint) let's say a 7800 Maria chip into one cart ?

 

I'm afraid the Maria chip has the same problem as the Amy chip: Maria won't work stable in an A8 (not 100% sure now).

 

But if it would be possible, then you can install a double Maria as well , as it is a single chip circuit instead of the Antic-Gtia cooperation in the A8. Another problem: Maria uses more DMA. But if you give Maria its own RAM that problem can be solved.

 

About a combined upgrade:

 

Other people asked about this some time ago.

It should be possible to make a Double Antic-Gtia and a Double Pokey, MyIDE, etc.etc. in an extension unit.

 

In fact that's what I'm building myself:

An atari 8Bit motherboard inside a PC-tower, with Triple Antic-Gtia and octal SID + harddisk and 1536 kB Ram. And another important feature: the two extra Antic-Gtia circuits have their own 6502 for high-speed graphics AND the eight SID circuits have their own 6510 (from C64) and 64 kB for playing samples. It's for my 24 channel synthesizer / 8 channel sampler I'm building. So it's an 11-multiprocessor system, giving an effective speed of 20 MHz.

 

But for me this is a hobby project. If many people would like this I need help from others. Jetboot Jack for example can provide Gtia & Antic chips for both PAL and NTSC models. But if this project will grow this big I'll need people like Super-Genius and Classics for producing boards.

 

-----

mux

[andy_bernstein]

Dear Mr.Atari,

 

Count me in if you ever produce either a cart or an upgrade board (Double Pokey, Triple-GTIA, etc...) that would plug through the Cartridge port (or through the Extension port of the 130XE for that matter).

 

Right now, I'm in touch with Patrick F. for an upgrade to an NTSC 130XE with all the clever tricks from his web page. Beyond that, as you have noticed, I'm definitely looking for a developer station and an upgrade board would be wonderful.

 

The more common and available this upgrade board will be, the easier it will be to have the motivation to program games that use it. There's nothing worst than create a game than only one person (the creator) can play !

 

AB.