Brand new hardware for my Atari 8 bit computers :)

[level42]

This arrived during my holiday:



OK guys, when was the last time you bought some hardware that came with a 5.25" floppy ?  

The little PCB on the left is a Happy. For those who don't know A8 bit stuff: The Happy was a hardware upgrade developped in the mid 80's to upgrade Atari floppy drives. There was one for the 810 (AFAIR) but the most wide spread was the one for the Atari 1050 Floppy drive. It sped the drive up (even further), added true Double Density and also made it possible to copy protected stuff. There are more nice features though.
The reason for buying this is probably more likely rooted in the huge jealousy I had in the 80's while I could not even afford a regular 1050, and later when I BARELY could, I couldn't afford a Happy....well it took some years, but now I've got one
Will be fun installing and using...

The cartridge on the right is a MyIDE cartridge, developed by "our own" Mr.Atari http://www.mr-atari.com (aka Sijmen Schouten, who will be at Eurocade with his wife) but build and sold by www.atarimax.com.
This adds an IDE port to the Atari 8 bit machine you plug it in, allowing to connect any HD harddisc, but even better is to use these great little Transcend carts (THANK YOU ETIENNE !!!). The Atari OS supports partitions up to 16 MB (which was HUUUUUUUGE for those days as a floppy stored only 128 KB). So I can make loads of partitions, copy floppies in there and well....play a lot of games from only one cart

Hope to have it running at Eurocade so you can all see why the Atari was SO much better than the C64.



 

[Etienne MacGyver]

Glad i could donate this  

will be a head to head competition next to Bela's C 64 setup  

[ckong]

Great device André.

It's great to see that retro console and PC hardware is still being developed. Just last week I ordered these two beauties:

for my C64: The Ultimate II floppy emulator - http://www.1541ultimate.net/content/

for my amiga 500: the SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator - http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html#SDCARDFloppyemulator

Soon I will able to play my C64 and Amiga games without the hassle of copying games to floppy's. Although it's still fun to make floppy game compilations ao once and a while.

And next week, when my pay check is in, I will get this: http://harmony.atariage.com/

And I also can't wait until this gets released: http://64drive.retroactive.be/index.php

I really love these kind of things.

[level42]

Yup it's great to see the oldies "talk" to today's technology

This is definitely the first game I'm going to try:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/184410-space-harrier-released/

[Spyridon]

I miss my Atari 800XL.  I had the Happy in my 1050 back in the mid 80's. Machine died on me and got thrown out a few years ago from my parents house.  Wish I still had it as I could probably have fixed it.  My favorite game was Blue Max.

[level42]

Blue Max is a brilliant game indeed ! I even loved the intro music. It was so cool because although the casual player may think it's a repetitive game, it really isn't, there's a real goal at the end...but it's a huge "road" to get there...I used to reach the end usually back in the day, haven't succeeded recently

The Happy is installed and running....funny thing is that some old "game disks" turned out to be specially created for it. You don't note that without the Happy, but with it the games really load in Turbo

Turbo....man what an 80's word that is....no-one uses it anymore

I got the MyIDE running too and both Transcend modules work fine. However, I still have to learn to set everything up. I downloaded a number of 16MB "file sets" (16MB is the max. partition size the A8 can handle, not bad for a machine that used to use 128k floppies) but I need an adapter to hook the Transcend modules to my Mac to put the files on them. I tried it through the A8, but apart from taking ages it didn't work right.

Anyway, the inventor of MyIDE (Mr.Atari) will be at Eurocade so we'll have THE expert around

[Belike]

Blue Max will run from floppy disk on my C64 setup at the show.

[level42]

Blue Max will run from floppy disk on my C64 setup at the show.

Please tell me when you enter "LOAD BLUEMAX.PRG,8,1" then I'll go get a cup of coffee and return when I finished it to be in time for the game to have been loaded  

We can compare 1:1 But I don't think there's a huge difference between the two BlueMaxs in gameplay. About this: does anyone have a low-res monitor that he can bring for those oldy computers ? I've got one, but it would be a shame to have to switch...

I want you guys to see Rescue On Fractalus and Bounty Bob Strikes Back

[Belike]

Blue Max will run from floppy disk on my C64 setup at the show.

Please tell me when you enter "LOAD BLUEMAX.PRG,8,1" then I'll go get a cup of coffee and return when I finished it to be in time for the game to have been loaded  

We can compare 1:1 But I don't think there's a huge difference between the two BlueMaxs in gameplay. About this: does anyone have a low-res monitor that he can bring for those oldy computers ? I've got one, but it would be a shame to have to switch...

I want you guys to see Rescue On Fractalus and Bounty Bob Strikes Back

I have "giga load" and some similar "turbo" stuff, you won't get back with your coffee in 10 sec.
I still have this retro TV, if nobody can bring something similar, I will try to squeeze it in the car.

[level42]

Mmm, no real need for that TV (although I like it's "iron curtain" look ) you'll need the space already

I've still got one or two TV's here.

About the Turbo on the 1541: not fair  

[level42]

Just ordered this:
http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280486191932&ssPageName=ADME:L:OU:NL:1123

The thing is that the Transcend modules have female connectors (because you connect them to a 40 pin male IDE port).
Now, I have one of those nice IDE2USB kits (somewhat like this:


that lets you connect any HD (IDE, SATA etc.) to a USB port. Very handy for temporary back-ups (PC field service work) etc.

However, these kits ALSO have female connections because they hook up to a (male) drive.

So....I needed a male 2 male 40 pin IDE cable. I think for 10 bucks incl. shipping to hear, it was cheaper and more comfortable to simply order one instead of building one myself...

With it, and some special software, I'll be able to fill the Transcend with loads of games....

[Etienne MacGyver]

And thats where the good old PC comes in handy...  just put it on the secondary controller port and start copying 

do you need an old pc to transfer the goodies to the modules ?
i have still plenty of them in my attic that i am cleaning out...

[level42]

And thats where the good old PC comes in handy...  just put it on the secondary controller port and start copying 

do you need an old pc to transfer the goodies to the modules ?
i have still plenty of them in my attic that i am cleaning out...

Extremely kind offer Etienne, but I prefer to do this on my Mac. The IDE2USG runs fine with Parallels.

[ckong]

Blue Max will run from floppy disk on my C64 setup at the show.

And bring the beautiful Berzerk Redux with you (http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=80567). I played it a lot on my C64 this week, it's great and very arcade authentic, at least as far as you can expect from a very old 8-bit.

[Belike]

Blue Max will run from floppy disk on my C64 setup at the show.

And bring the beautiful Berzerk Redux with you (http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=80567). I played it a lot on my C64 this week, it's great and very arcade authentic, at least as far as you can expect from a very old 8-bit.

Ooops, I don't have this one and I have no emulation stuff for my C64, just a few hundreds of good old floppy disks.
Can you help me out with it?