MapRAM

[_The Doctor__]

The 'MAPRAM' sections is for PBI coexistence and anything that uses it should not break it's PBI/14xx usage. Any device or software that does something that impedes this function is incorrect. It's not really a subject to fight over at all. In this case the bickering might better be over the severity and spirit of the offense.

 

I like XXL and Candle, while debate happens with both. Taking it personally is a trait few seem to avoid these days, so people tend to jump on whatever the other person has to say... just because they can. XXL and Candle have contributed to the Atari universe in seriously great ways. If either were to have stopped the community would have experienced terrible loss. XXL is behind the scenes on some of the best offerings for the 8 bit computer line, even if you are unaware of that fact. Candle has made some very impressive hardware, over time it certainly has made a difference. I think the incognito is the device that makes that mark, and it's subsequent updates to allow bit 3 helped me make that statement. TMP with his SubAVG is another Atarian of note in the current sphere. Each handle things slightly different. Eventually if the problem and idea is real, then over time they appear to see the merit in fixing it. Sometimes stubbornly, but we are not machines.

 

Let's just enjoy their efforts and hope they don't have to eat so m*ch sh*t that other desires and less annoyance takes them from what they appear born to do.

Edited August 20, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

Sure. It's great that everyone is doing something.

 

For now, the facts are:
1. I have a stack of things at home for Candle: several VBXEs, several U1MBs, a few SpectreAVs - among them 2 VBXEs, 2 U1MBs, 1 SIDE3.1, 1 SpectreAV - these belong to me.
2. The number of VBXEs and U1MBs on the market is several thousand copies.
3. I have one thing from Simius. I don't use Sophia 2, but it's in my desk for testing.
4. I have one thing from TMP - it's the AVG cart. It's very good, but I use SIDE3.1 with U1MB.
5. I don't have anything from XXL. Other than hearing that he wrote some games, I simply don't have anything that he made.
6. How many real PBI devices are there and how many people have them? Not many...

So... having been in the IT world for several decades, I choose popular things, not some ideologically correct or something.. I take the MapRam story with a laugh.

[_The Doctor__]

You do realize that incognito and U1M are in the PBI game, as is AVG(SubAVG pbi/eci)?

I have been a PBI user from the second they started making stuff to plug into it and the eci stuff later (interface/adapter card etc)...

MIO and BlackBox are the two item that remain installed though SUPRA had it's offering as well. I enjoyed the useful additions they had to offer, but they didn't follow the rules exactly either, as hogging up ID's was not the way to go.

Edited August 20, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[+Stephen]

8 hours ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

I agree with you. To be honest, I even prefer the screen aspect ratio, and 60Hz makes the image smoother. I'm trying to find contact with the authors of VBXE, who might also recompile the cores to have the NTSC palette right away.

Good luck with that - we (the Atari community) have only been asking for that for 11 or 12 years now.

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

10 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

You do realize that incognito and U1M are in the PBI game, as is AVG(SubAVG pbi/eci)?

 

Sure.  Both of them are modern complex devices that use PBI technology.

 

I'll emphasize that in the case of U1MB and AVG users, MapRAM only appears if some oddity brings up the topic of 2KB out of 1088KB available again. Which amuses me greatly.

 

10 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

MIO and BlackBox are the two item that remain installed though SUPRA had it's offering as well. I enjoyed the useful additions they had to offer, but they didn't follow the rules exactly either, as hogging up ID's was not the way to go.

 

The number of users of these devices is currently negligible.

[+MrFish]

2 hours ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

I'll emphasize that in the case of U1MB and AVG users, MapRAM only appears if some oddity brings up the topic of 2KB out of 1088KB available again. Which amuses me greatly.

MapRAM is only a topic of discussion when it comes to getting the maximum out of a 64KB system. Then 2KB can have some importance.

 

2 hours ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

The number of users of these devices is currently negligible.

Turbo Freezer 2011, RAM320XL & RAM320XE, and IDE Plus 2.0 are all more modern and prolific PBI/ECI devices in use.

 

[+MrFish]

3 hours ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

So... having been in the IT world for several decades, I choose popular things, not some ideologically correct or something.

This is not the IT world. We're a world-wide group of niche 80's technology users. While the machines are generally supplemented with hardware developed in more modern times (for the majority, based on convenience and ease of use), there are still a significant number of 80's to earlier 2010's tech devices in use, when taken together as a whole. Users of those devices shouldn't be marginalized any more than users of Ataris should be marginalized amongst 80's tech users as a whole (C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spetrum, etc.).

 

We're not all just trying to use Atari computers with the newest, most popular devices; a lot of us are still interested in the preservation and continued use of all the devices as well as the machines themselves. Having newer devices coexist with the older devices is important for the hobby to a lot of us, not just some ideological thinking. All of the older devices are still of practical use as much as the Atari 8-bit computers themselves are. 

 

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

6 hours ago, MrFish said:

MapRAM is only a topic of discussion when it comes to getting the maximum out of a 64KB system. Then 2KB can have some importance.

 

I grew up (since 1986) programming Atari, but I've matured. I finished a very good mathematical school and studies (Computer Science, Automation, Electronics at Warsaw University of Technology). Until the late '90s, we had the "art of programming." Since 1997, with the introduction of the Java language and UML, we have been dealing with software engineering - so for over a quarter of a century now. Maybe it's time for others to grow up too and understand what software design patterns are, because even though we use retro computers, that's what it's all about.

 

If someone wants to create applications for Atari:
- If they have a stock machine with 64KB, they can do whatever they want.
- If they have a stock machine with 64KB and want even more memory, they can create a cartridge version that will have additional memory banks.
- If they have a stock machine with 64KB and want even more memory, and don't want a cartridge version, they can make a floppy disk version.
- If they want the application to run on modern Atari with popular extensions, they should compile (or develop a version of) the application that will not take MapRAM into account, and will include an additional 1024 KB of memory.

 

Creating an application that uses MapRAM, and not allowing the market to have an application that will work on the popular Ultimate1MB, is simply talking nonsense and trolling.

 

Quote

Turbo Freezer 2011, RAM320XL & RAM320XE, and IDE Plus 2.0 are all more modern and prolific PBI/ECI devices in use.

 

IDE Plus works well with Ultimate 1MB.

 

 

Quote

This is not the IT world. 

 

Hahaha... How do you want to call it? Escape into childhood or away from wives? You can believe what you want, but this is definitely the IT world. The truth is that we also have many hobbyists and very talented people here, but without design patterns, designing software or hardware only causes frustration, and that for years. Perhaps if Candle had approached the subject more from a project perspective, there wouldn't even be a topic of compatibility with MapRAM, as it would have been taken into account. At the moment, however, the situation is that he didn't take it into account, and another principle comes into play. What counts now is not engineering, but mass product and its availability.

 

Quote

there are still a significant number of 80's to earlier 2010's tech devices in use, when taken together as a whole. Users of those devices shouldn't be marginalized any more than users of Ataris should be marginalized amongst 80's tech users as a whole (C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spetrum, etc.).

 

Maybe it's worth doing a Kickstarter then, gathering those tens of thousands of dollars for R&D, and developing a newer version of Ultimate1MB.

 

But seriously. There is much more dark matter in the universe than what we know, yet we ignore dark matter on a daily basis.

Here you talk about a mass of hardware that lies in closets and attics, or is turned on for two hours during family Christmas meetings.

 

Active users use popular extensions.

 

Quote

We're not all just trying to use Atari computers with the newest, most popular devices; a lot of us are still interested in the preservation and continued use of all the devices as well as the machines themselves. Having newer devices coexist with the older devices is important for the hobby to a lot of us, not just some ideological thinking. All of the older devices are still of practical use as much as the Atari 8-bit computers themselves are. 

 

Sure. I understand and respect that. Many people also have several Atari computers. Some are stock machines, and some are extended.

 

I'll remind you that the subject of the entire discussion is MapRAM. 40 years ago, nobody probably made a fuss about this address space. Today, there is a fuss about 2KB when there are extensions on the market that provide an additional 1MB of memory. So maybe there's no need to make a fuss, no need to push hardware developers to add changes, and no need to persuade thousands of users to do a special update. It's enough to write software in such a way that you can use a flag or directive during compilation and build two versions. This is entirely normal, and everything else is pathetic trolling of others.

 

In conclusion, I'll add that one can spend many years discussing why people mainly use the memory extension in the RAMBO profile, when Atari itself in the 130XE model introduced a profile that we today call Compy Shop. Nobody makes an issue out of this, because there aren't two personalities trying to promote themselves through such a conflict.

[xxl]

why are you so high. that u1mb can't handle 2KB under SelfTest is not its biggest problem. Take it easy.

 

MapRAM is a great example of hardware lock removal. You get 2KB RAM without installing RAM

[xxl]

1 hour ago, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

40 years ago, nobody probably made a fuss about this address space.

you are wrong as usual.
Adepts of the real tin scene could design a device called a freezer. what's more... real magicians could use this memory to read the contents of read-only hardware registers...

magic.

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

4 hours ago, xxl said:

you are wrong as usual.
Adepts of the real tin scene could design a device called a freezer. what's more... real magicians could use this memory to read the contents of read-only hardware registers...

magic.

 

Heh... Sure... My friends and I had a Turbo Freezer in the early '90s, but now, more people use Altirra to hack the Atari.

 

As I wrote earlier... 1. I don't think that a new update to U1MB for FPGA, adding those 2KB, will appear now. 2. There are enough U1MBs on the market to consider it a standard - definitely more than the Freezer. 3. If someone has 1088 KB, then 2KB is of little importance to them. 4. A developer should take market conditions into account, and if they are introducing a product to the market, it should be compatible with popular solutions.

 

If you start a statement with 'you are wrong as usual,' you undermine what you write next, because it's already untrue from the outset.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Like it or not, the U1MB has become a standard in the A8 world!

 

I do not own U1MB, but I also do not write tirades against it, nor do I produce software that is intentionally programmed in such a way, that it will NOT work with U1MB. Afaik, MapRam can be detected. So it should be possible to write software in such a way, that it refuses to work on computers with MapRam. Eye for an eye...

 

 

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

3 minutes ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Like it or not, the U1MB has become a standard in the A8 world!

 

I do not own U1MB, but I also do not write tirades against it, nor do I produce software that is intentionally programmed in such a way, that it will NOT work with U1MB. Afaik, MapRam can be detected. So it should be possible to write software in such a way, that it refuses to work on computers with MapRam. Eye for an eye...

 

 

 

Actually, here in Poland, when @xxl writes a game, his best friends from Atari Demo Scene legally convert it to be compatible with U1MB and distribute legal patches... What can I say? It's like kids...

 

 

[tep392]

In 2023, the MapRAM hack is a solution in search of a problem.