Atari-Forum

It's interesting that the games are complete in their boxes. A lot of people got rid of the boxes. I haven't seen any old computers on Antiques Roadshow. These disks will be nearly 30 years old so it will be important to verify that they still work. If disks are kept in a cold or damp environment th...

Has anyone seen this CD by the strangely named 8-Bit Arcade? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Classic-Atari-Games-Greatest-Themes/dp/B00P7Y3YZC These are totally unlicensed\unofficial remixes I think. It's very strange because it has tunes like 7 Gates Of Jambala, but 99% of the tunes have been turned into ...

That's a very nice cabinet. I would like to build a cabinet myself but instead of using MDF like some flat-pack cabinets and having to paint the thing many times because MDF absorbs paint like a sponge I would rather use Melamine Faced Chipboard (MFC), but how do you cut that cleanly without special...

That's excellent! Thanks Thomas for releasing the source code to such a great demo.
The border routine is stable even in the interpreter.
Nice use of the SPOT command!!

I was offered an MF30 a number of years ago, but declined it due to the fact that the power supply was broken. I would be concerned about the reliability of 20+ year old (40-200Mb) IDE hard disks to be honest. They're really past their service life. Also how would the power supply hold up to multipl...

I would suspect that the ROMs are at fault. I am not familiar with the STs physical ROM chips but I have seen arcade guys on YouTube with hardware to calculate checksums for EPROMs. That would tell you if they are bad or not. If either of them are bad then you should replace them with known working ...

What are the states of the following pins?
HALT: pin 17
BERR (Bus error): pin 22
I am thinking that HALT will be low and BERR may be high.

As mpattonm says it would be wise to check the clock signal first.

Interesting document. The Protector looks a bit like Disk Doctor except The Protector has additional features for encrypting sectors.

I have found this document:
http://www.vorc.org/document/YM3456.htm

This document should be saved\mirrored or added to a central repository for YM info.
I have copied it to my site just incase.

The document describes YM5 format and says the YM4 is obsolete now.

Thanks for the helpful advice. I've never seen that Cybernetics demo before. Definitely a lot of food for thought in those demos.

I have attached the tune in .YM format. It was saved in YM6 format using SainT. I had to zip it to upload it here.

Thank you Zippy! There are 3 bytes of difference between your file and mine: 000015E8: 4E 23 000015E9: 75 FC 00001B9E: 16 00 I shortened mine to 7071 bytes and made that change and voila. The tune is actually in the SNDH archive: Mad_Max\Demos\C64-Conversions\Pro_BMX_Simulator_A.sndh I remember look...

Hi there, I have never written a polygon fill routine in 68000. I used the Amiga Blitter to draw lines, but not fill mode. I have written an polygon drawing utility in C# to help evaluate ways to do this, but the results aren't very encouraging. A simple triangle in a 320x200 display might have 433 ...

I have attached a zip with the demo screen, an unpacked version and the source code disassembled with Easy Rider. I have extracted an 8k block from the start of the tune onwards and tried to write a minimal play routine (REPLAY.S) but it doesn't work . If anyone can fix this then please let me know....

Ace demos Thomas! PAL.TOS is a fantastic effect. There is a similar plasma effect on an Amiga demo using rambo.mod maybe by The Silents.
That would be a super effect to convert to STOS.

FIRE.TOS looks good too.
I never thought to block up that effect.
It's good to see that font again put to good use.

Protracker removes the lower border on the ST\STE.
If you were using a CRT there would be a Vertical Hold control which could adjust the position of the screen a bit.
There isn't usually such a control on LCDs.

Sad news indeed. Deepest sympathy to Ben's family and friends all over the world.

Deflektor is one of the best computer game tunes ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0WsS0ksF30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7InCguYyimA
An hour of music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Wnt58xeXM

Has anyone checked the serial number ranges for the different ST models and when they changed over to use the newer DMA chips? Did Atari use both types throughout the whole production run of the STE (1989-1992)? It might be nice to get the upper and lower bounds on the serial numbers for the followi...

STOS BASIC has the field instruction: FIELD#channel,length1 AS field1$,length2 AS field2$.... Field allows you to define a record which will be used for random access files. This record can consist of up to 16 alphanumeric fields and can be up to 65535 bytes long. PUT#channel,r Writes the record cre...

STOS 2.6 with Compiler version 2.7 doesn't seem to support forward declarations. That is: the compiler will throw an error if an array is used but declared in a later line number even if the array is initialised error by using a goto\gosub. I don't know about writing compilers, but this seems like q...

A question that does arise, though, is this - how can I shrink a sprite for when it's drawn in the distance? Or am I reduced to having a "normal" object sprite entry and a "small" sprite entry for when it's in the distance, using up more memory space in so doing? You could use t...

Very nice! Definitely looks good. Points to note: 1. The STOS compiler has a problem at line 820 with undeclared variables: dim curloc$(4),xt(4),yt(4) dim wall$(8) The code works in the interpreter because they are initialised by goto\gosub the compiler doesn't detect that. Question for anyone (Char...

I'm sure it was reviewed in an issue of ST Format, but I can't find it quickly. It looks like a very good upgrade kit. Maybe documented on a Sewer docs disk? There is an advert for it here: http://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_res/atari-st-user-issue-88_3.jpg "All Aries RAM upgrade boards come pac...

Good old Leonard! A translation from Google Translate:

I do not remember at all, but the sources are available. Looking at YmMusic.cpp in readYm6Effect I see that bits 6 and 7 form a 2-bit code:
00: SID
01: Digidrum
10: Sinus-SID
11: Sync-Buzzer

I think that is documented already.

I get this effect when my STFM and when any PS2 (Fat or slim) is connected to my Samsung 40" LCD TV. In this TV there is an old analogue tuner which is now no longer required because analogue transmitters are switched off and a Digital Terrestrial TV (Freeview) Tuner. I assume this interference...