Atari 8 bit demo, unbelievable....

[johnsarcade]

Most 1050's still work too, I got two.

I guess he probably wanted to build a "Happy" in it. With a "Happy" the 1050 is about the best drive to get for the A8s.

Happy? Never heard of that. Was this around back in the day?

https://www.8bitclassics.com/atari-1050-happy-upgrade.html

[level42]

I just made some comparison screen shots. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one is RF and which one is S-video.......

[johnsarcade]

I just made some comparison screen shots. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one is RF and which one is S-video.......

Wow! I can't hook S-Video up to my PVM though, right?!?

[level42]

Two more....



Oh and this IS the SAME B&O television

[level42]

I just made some comparison screen shots. I'll leave it to you to figure out which one is RF and which one is S-video.......

Wow! I can't hook S-Video up to my PVM though, right?!?

Mmmmm, yes I do think so. The only thing that can be missing is RGB IIRC. Post a picture of the back side of the PVM and I can tell you for sure.

[level42]

Yes the Happy was THE hottest item to get BITD, at least here in Holland. Only "rich" guys had them. It's an add-in board for the 810 or 1050 drives. It speeds up transfers but most important (well back then) was that it made it possible to copy protected discs

I never bought one BITD, couldn't afford it. Out of frustration over that I bought one a couple of years ago, www.atarimax.com was still making/selling them but I don't see them on his website anymore.

It is dead easy to install. Just get out the processor and ROM and pop in the Happy board into the empty socket (IIRC).

http://www.atarimax.com/happy/happy_install.pdf

[Little_Rabbit]

Hi Guys,

Thank you so much for this discussion, and for the link to the John's video about the 800XL !

I haven't been for that long in the small arcade collectors world, so I didn't even know that the guy who makes the "John's Arcade" videos could be on Dragon's Lair Fan !

Hey John, I really love your videos in general (I mean not just this one about the 800XL). Your uninterrupted flow of words shows so much energy, so much passion that it's every time a pleasure, every time refreshing, something making you stronger in a way  !
(sorry for my bad English, I'm not sure I use the right words to express my feeling...)

And that particular video about the 800XL was so cool ! I love your game room John, and now I understand why : we have the same background ! Like you, I have hundreds of 800XL floppy disks full of arcade's hits, and other gems of video games ! Like you I dedicated my teenage period to the ATARI computer world. I ended up studying computer science, and even made a carreer in video game industry : you're perfectly right when you say we were damn lucky to own such a great machine ! The BBS were not existing in France at that time (phone calls were very expensive, even for local calls, and we had "Minitel", a specific French thing, some kind of terminal including a modem to connect to dedicated servers...), but we had other ways to exchange programs. We were not really considering ourselves as pirates, because most of those programs were just not sold in France (maybe in a very few shops in Paris, but nowhere else ).

I never heard about ATASCII ANIMATOR ! You did a terrific job considering the limitation of the character set ! ^-

Looking at your video was recalling me so much memories !... And you know what is the icing on the cake : the recurring attract mode of Pole Position we can hear on the background !

Serioulsy John, if you're visiting France one day - I'm pretty close the "Châteaux de la Loire" ), we must meet and see each others. I'm sure we could talk for hours about arcade and ATARI 800XL memories .

Kind regards,

Little_Rabbit

PS : I confirm your image will be much better with the composite video cable

[level42]

Hey Little Rabbit....did you/do you have SECAM 8-bit systems ?

[johnsarcade]

Hi Guys,

Thank you so much for this discussion, and for the link to the John's video about the 800XL !

I haven't been for that long in the small arcade collectors world, so I didn't even know that the guy who makes the "John's Arcade" videos could be on Dragon's Lair Fan !

Hey John, I really love your videos in general (I mean not just this one about the 800XL). Your uninterrupted flow of words shows so much energy, so much passion that it's every time a pleasure, every time refreshing, something making you stronger in a way  !
(sorry for my bad English, I'm not sure I use the right words to express my feeling...)

And that particular video about the 800XL was so cool ! I love your game room John, and now I understand why : we have the same background ! Like you, I have hundreds of 800XL floppy disks full of arcade's hits, and other gems of video games ! Like you I dedicated my teenage period to the ATARI computer world. I ended up studying computer science, and even made a carreer in video game industry : you're perfectly right when you say we were damn lucky to own such a great machine ! The BBS were not existing in France at that time (phone calls were very expensive, even for local calls, and we had "Minitel", a specific French thing, some kind of terminal including a modem to connect to dedicated servers...), but we had other ways to exchange programs. We were not really considering ourselves as pirates, because most of those programs were just not sold in France (maybe in a very few shops in Paris, but nowhere else ).

I never heard about ATASCII ANIMATOR ! You did a terrific job considering the limitation of the character set ! ^-

Looking at your video was recalling me so much memories !... And you know what is the icing on the cake : the recurring attract mode of Pole Position we can hear on the background !

Serioulsy John, if you're visiting France one day - I'm pretty close the "Châteaux de la Loire" ), we must meet and see each others. I'm sure we could talk for hours about arcade and ATARI 800XL memories .

Kind regards,

Little_Rabbit

PS : I confirm your image will be much better with the composite video cable

Thank you for the kind words, Little Rabbit! And, thanks for watching the videos.

This thread is really making me want to bust out the 800XL!!!

BTW -- there is a 14" PVM on Craig's List locally for $60. I think I will go get it so I can have a dedicated PVM for my retro consoles and computers and I can leave the other one on top of the Dragon's Lair!

[Tyrem]

A demo. Never heard of demo's ?

we even have some demo guys here from good old Atari ST.

[Etienne MacGyver]

BTW -- there is a 14" PVM on Craig's List locally for $60. I think I will go get it so I can have a dedicated PVM for my retro consoles and computers and I can leave the other one on top of the Dragon's Lair!

great deal, thats 47 euro's for a professional grade monitor!

And it will save you all the hassle.

Oh and don't forget all the dissapointed spectators at the dragonslair machine while your'e at the desk using it for the atari 

[level42]

Good idea John,

The PVMs have a great pitcure but for me the biggest drawback is the sound. I had a 20" PVM very shortly but it was not 100% OK and I got a JVC professional monitor instead. This has a medium resolution tube (which is pretty rare) and has an incredible picture. I had hoped to use the tube for an Amplifone set-up for my Gravitar, but the thing is too modern (dual focus) so I doubt it will work and I guess I'll use it as a test monitor.

BITD I had the sound of the Atari connected to my stereo system in my room and that rocked...really loved pumping up the bass during DK

The B&O MX4000 TV I got thanks to RobinHolland is my prefered display for the A8s now. It has everything (Composite,S-video, RGB through SCART on both connectors) and the picture quality is one of the best I've seen on a TV. Also, it's a big CRT diagonally, but REALLY shallow, so it takes up relatively small footprint. Stereo sound is very good too, although not as good as a seperate (good) stereo set of course.

I also still have a Commodore 1084 monitor (=Philips CM8833) which also still rocks, but picture is a bit small for my old eyes It's a great testing monitor for the arcade machines because it has RGB in too.

The PVMs and especially the JVC pro monitors go for good prices here too (marktplaats) Etienne it's not hard too hard to find one. The 1084s went for something like 10/20 euro some years ago but they seem to get a bit more rare now and also a bit higher priced.

[Little_Rabbit]

Hi,

Hey Little Rabbit....did you/do you have SECAM 8-bit systems ?

Yes, I have a few ones. I'm sure I have a SECAM 130XE, brand new in its box, never used . I must have an XE Game System as far as I can remember, and possibly a 600XL or 800XL, I do not clearly remember (my collection is such in a state of "mess" !...).

But in my opinion, the SECAM versions of the ATARI 8bits are really bad :-(. They are bad because the color adaptation is rather poor : for some reasons, the engineers who designed the conversion reduced the number of bits for the luminance to 3 bits instead of 4 ! It means you only have 8 levels of luminance for a given hue, instead of 16 :-(. The GTIA mode allowing the nice shading with 16 levels in PAL is reduce to 8 in SECAM :-(. And, if it wasn't enough, the color palette doesn't really match the original colors. For example, if you compare Pole Position on the PAL system with the SECAM system, the color of the grass is not the same :-(...

In my opinion, the SECAM version is the Third World version of the 8bits ATARI computers .

I also have a board for the ATARI 800 that ATARI France designed at the time the ATARI 800 was sold. Because the 800 was PAL only, and French TV sets were SECAM only (rarely with PAL compatibility at that time), they designed this board to get some kind of RGB SCART output. I say "some kind" because it was a really poor system. It reduced the 256 colors palette of the ATARI 800 to... 8 colors as far as I remember ! :-(( Actually, it used I think 3 bits of the luminance to directly use them as R, G and B input !... No need to say there were absolutly no corresponding colors !...

[level42]

Interesting stuff ! I saked because some Atari hardware developpers were discussing SECAM on the A8s on facebook.

The 800 "solution" sounds what they did with the 2600....the Secam can only produce 8 colors where the PAL can do 104 or so and NTSC 128...

[Little_Rabbit]

Hi,

The 800 "solution" sounds what they did with the 2600....the Secam can only produce 8 colors where the PAL can do 104 or so and NTSC 128...

ATARI VCS different palettes

I might be wrong, but the pictures I remember generated by an ATARI 800 with this RGB adaptor were very different what does a SECAM VCS : only vivid and primary colors like would display micro-computers such as an Oric 1, or a TO7 for example.

You intrigued me with this 8 colors thing on the VCS... I read several articles today about that, including some discussions on ATARI Age, and I do not agree with what they say (or at least my memories of the VCS do not match what they say ). I have to do more investigations, take pictures and count the colors available on the SECAM VCS... I agree the colors didn't match at all the original ones, but I'm convinced there were more than 8 colors... For example, on the Centipede title screen, you have the ondulating centipede. The NTSC/PAL versions feature a rainbow color effect with I guess 128 colors or so. On the SECAM console, the rainbow effect was only made of shade of grey. But that's at least 8 levels of grey, and since we also had other colors, it's already more than 8 colors .

Anyway, it's true that SECAM territories were particularly disadvantaged back in those days !...