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AtariAge and Atari

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21–30 of 72 posts

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#21
post #12

I love the Atari 8-bit computers. I don't want to start a flame war with C64, CoCo and Apple II folks because I love them too... But the early Atari computers, as opposed to the console and the ST, seems to be less remembered despite being so amazing.

My grandfather’s 800XL was my first computing experience, I have a soft spot for them.

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#22
post #12

I love the Atari 8-bit computers. I don't want to start a flame war with C64, CoCo and Apple II folks because I love them too... But the early Atari computers, as opposed to the console and the ST, seems to be less remembered despite being so amazing.

Ataris had the best graphics. The C64 had the best sound. CoCo had the most sophisticated CPU, and the Apple II series was the best overall and most expandable computer (but not particularly well suited for games - the good ones it had were due to absolutely brilliant programmers).

I think that would be a nice summary.

;-)

People this side of the Atlantic will also mention BBC, Spectrum and Amstrad.

Oh. Oric, Dragon, and a few others as well.

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#23
post #21
post #12

I love the Atari 8-bit computers. I don't want to start a flame war with C64, CoCo and Apple II folks because I love them too... But the early Atari computers, as opposed to the console and the ST, seems to be less remembered despite being so amazing.

My grandfather’s 800XL was my first computing experience, I have a soft spot for them.

I was a grown up when I got my XEGS. I love it.

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jay Miner was responsible for Atari 8 bit home computers and later for the Amiga.

Yup, the Amiga is more Atari than the later Ataris are.

I honestly like the STs better as computer designs. They are clean and general-purpose while the Amigas ended up being hurt by an overly complicated hardware that made it expensive for Commodore to keep up with PCs.

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#25
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a FujiNET for it. I bought one of these. About $60. The FujiNET is amazing. It works via the standard SIO subsystem provided by the Atari system OS ROM. Device independent I/O. D: DISK P: PRINTER ETC... Now has N: for network. This device makes Atari Basic Internet capable. People have written 10 line programs to do all sorts of Internet tasks. Multi player online games are possible and have been done. There are…

As a Commodore person, FujiNet (and thus SIO) is one of the things that I envy about Atari. https://np.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/10cktls... >

I’ve seen equivalents for the C64 and Apple II.

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#26
post #2

It looks like all the game ROMs now 404. Does that have anything to do with being acquired by Atari?

Probably. A friend of mine who is a big user of atariage.com told me they'd been “cleaning” a number of things up for months which all makes sense now ahead of the acquisition. Fact is if anyone wants Atari ROMs they are massively easy to find online, though. Heck, you can even find them on archive.org at this point.

Seriously, with the whole libraries of these 8-bit consoles being a few tens of MB zipped, and distributed across the entire Internet thousands of times, it is just ridiculous that any IP holder wastes their time trying to suppress this particular sequence of bytes. Frankly it's embarrassing that our copyright system doesn't already make them public domain.

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#27
post #21
post #12

I love the Atari 8-bit computers. I don't want to start a flame war with C64, CoCo and Apple II folks because I love them too... But the early Atari computers, as opposed to the console and the ST, seems to be less remembered despite being so amazing.

My grandfather’s 800XL was my first computing experience, I have a soft spot for them.

That was a fun computer. I got to play around with them at school which was actually my first computer experience.

The 2600 though, I just could never be excited by. I feel it could only be truly appreciated by someone in the actual late 70s, before anything better had ever been experienced. Once that ship sailed, with the NES especially, it could never really go back. But I'm sure people with fond memories of those days would disagree with me! (And youths these days will probably call NES and SNES barbaric and no fun!)

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#28
post #11

The Atari Jaguar homebrew community is still using statically-linked Linux a.out executables built around 1995 ( https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/4c449fab-8135-5057-7d2c-7b94... ), at least to some extent.

I would assume that this isn't by choice?

They have replacements for some of these artifacts, like rln for aln (linker), rmac for mac (assembler) or slightly patched GCC 3.4.6 + binutils 2.16.1a for the 68000 CPU, some being adapted from parent forks or related tooling whose source code is available (like a version of mac for the Atari ST).

However, these substitutes usually aren't completely interchangeable with the original tools. It also does not cover some of the more difficult bits to replace, like a toolchain for the custom RISC cores, which have lots of errata that the one toolchain not lost to time doesn't seem to compensate for (http://www.3do.cdinteractive.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3356...).

While I'm not a member of the Atari Jaguar homebrew community, I'm currently tinkering with an experimental reverse-engineering technique that might be of use to them (https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-origina...). Basically, I'm developing tooling that allows one to delink executables back into object files. In the near-term this should allow relinking these a.out executables into ELF executables and stave off obsolescence for a while, in the long term this should allow them to decompile/reimplement these object files one at a time until they Ship-of-Thesesus themselves out of trouble.

It's a bit of a side-quest for me since I originally developed that tooling for delinking PlayStation 1 video games in an effort to decompile Tenchu: Stealth Assasins, but these proprietary executables happen to be a fairly decent and well-rounded set of test cases to try it out on.

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#29
Happy for Albert to get a job, but I expect this to be the end of the site in the not so far future, given that Atari seems to be more about squeezing every last drop out of their old portfolio. The homebrew community can be forever grateful to the site though (well, to Curt Vendel and Glenn Bruner) for getting ahold of the original Jaguar Encryption keys so that homebrew CD games just work on unmodified consoles, so that's a pretty amazing legacy to leave.

What is the current Atari company actually doing? They seemed to have scrapped their crypto casino, their VCS seems to be a complete failure that made even less money than the Ouya, so that leaves the $1000 limited edition cartridge set, merchandise, and compilations of old stuff for current systems (Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is really good!)? Nothing wrong with being a nostalgia company, but I really wonder if they have anything new going forward, or if they are just going to maintain the brand to re-release old games?

Re: AtariAge and Atari

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, the Amiga is more Atari than the later Ataris are.

I honestly like the STs better as computer designs. They are clean and general-purpose while the Amigas ended up being hurt by an overly complicated hardware that made it expensive for Commodore to keep up with PCs.

Sure, I'm not evaluating their quality. Just pointing out design lineage.
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