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Retrocomputing

Questions tagged [atari]

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For questions about different versions of, and products for, Atari consoles and home computers.

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In 6502 assembly programming, there's a common trick (usually called the RTS trick) for performing indirect jumps by pushing the target address minus one on the stack and executing a RTS instruction. ...
cyco130's user avatar
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So the pinout on the Atari 2600 cartridge includes address lines A0-A12, and data lines D0-D7. But there's no R/W line exposed to the cartridge, yet cartridges that do stuff like implement bank ...
qwerty keyboard's user avatar
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My Dad once commented "Back in the 70s - when Wozniak was working at Atari - they were building games using electronics - not programming computers." As a Computer Science graduate without ...
hawkeye's user avatar
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9 votes
3 answers
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As a kid a favorite game was Space Invaders on Atari (I'm guessing it was a 2600, it was the late 70s to early 80s). In addition to fast reflexes I had a card up my sleeve that secured me high scores: ...
Buck Thorn's user avatar
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When Atari was designing the 800 series of computers, they needed a way to connect peripherals. To comply with FCC regulations on RF emission, it needed shielded cables. To achieve low cost of entry ...
rwallace's user avatar
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In the 1970s, FCC limits on RF emissions applied to 'anything that plugs into a TV', and were stringent and difficult to pass. Atari went to extraordinary lengths regarding this when designing their ...
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The original Atari 800 could have up to 48K of RAM installed through the use of memory cards. When the 800XL came out, it was now possible to have up to 64K of RAM by disabling the BASIC ROM. After ...
bjb's user avatar
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I recently noticed something in Neochrome as well as Larry Mears' "Instant Graphics and Sound" programs: Polygons have slightly different shapes depending on whether an outline is drawn or ...
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I have an Atari 1040 STFM that's been sitting in the basement for about 30 years. It doesn't power on. The power indicator light is not illuminated and there's a high-pitch noise coming from the power ...
Chocula's user avatar
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The Atari 3200 was a canceled project that would have produced a compatible successor to the 2600. Little seems to be known about it; about the best reference I have been able to find is https://...
rwallace's user avatar
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5 votes
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I recently bought an Atari SM144 monochrome monitor so I could play with an old Atari ST. It works to a certain degree, it turns on all good and I can play for a while, but after some time it gives ...
user3667111's user avatar
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I know that RF stands for radio frequency but what chip in the Atari handles the video output and does anybody know if something similar would work on a modern tv?
Chadley123's user avatar
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The Atari 400 and 800 came out in 1979. The hardware included the ability to overlay sprites ("players" and the smaller "missiles") over the display. AFAIK, this capability is ...
Nimloth's user avatar
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I am restoring an Atari STacy, and it is a notoriously hard device to open — I am planning to replace the floppy drive and internal CMOS battery in one go... but while I know the floppy is an Epson ...
0xF2's user avatar
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1 answer
579 views

The first commercially successful arcade video game was Pong in 1972. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_video_game the number of units eventually sold was about 19,000. (A lower figure ...
rwallace's user avatar
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According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source MOS Technology licensed Rockwell and Synertek to second-source the 6502 microprocessor and its support components. This makes sense; the 6502 ...
rwallace's user avatar
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The Atari 5200, released in 1982, had four controller ports, an unusual feature which as far as I know had never been seen before, and would not be seen again until the late nineties. The 1983 ...
rwallace's user avatar
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Atari floppy drives for the 8-bit series, the 810 and 1050 specifically, ran at 288 RPM rather than 300. I can't imagine why this might be, and my google-fu fails to turn up a reason. Worth noting ...
Maury Markowitz's user avatar
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In relation to this answer about the "English" control of the Magnavox Odyssey, I am wondering if the concept found its way into other games for later computers and consoles that supported ...
Brian H's user avatar
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There are versions of the Atari 520ST, and perhaps the 1040ST, that differ in having many discrete inductors attached at the I/O port lines for serial, parallel and floppy ports. The first image below ...
Brian H's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
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I have an Atari 1040STE. I'd like to use it with the Atari SM124 B/W monitor but I'm not sure it will work. It's my understanding that the Atari SM124 works fine with earlier Atari ST models, but when ...
Swisher Sweet's user avatar
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1 answer
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I'm am trying to make a batch script on the Atari Portfolio which uses DIP DOS 2.11 (pretty similar to MS-DOS 2.11). I need to put a blank line in my file and it won't work. I have tried echo., echo/, ...
Anston Sorensen's user avatar
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I just brought back to live my old Atari 800XL (it's has 30years with our family), any way, the video composite output is on black and white, I had another 800xl and works fine with that cable, so it'...
Enrique San Martín's user avatar
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3 answers
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Pong, the electronic ping-pong game invented by Atari in 1972, was the first really successful video game. In Britain, 'pong' was also slang for a nasty smell, and I remember reading somewhere, a long ...
rwallace's user avatar
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0 answers
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In 1974, Atari released a driving game called Gran Trak 10. The development prototypes had used real car steering wheels and pedals, but it was realized these were too expensive, so they were changed ...
rwallace's user avatar
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To be clear, I am not questioning that Steve Jobs spent a while working for Atari; that much is indubitably historical fact. Apparently he joined the company in 1974. Atari was founded in the summer ...
rwallace's user avatar
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56 votes
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In honor of today's landing of and sample collection by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on the asteroid Bennu: How did the arcade game Asteroids detect collisions between the screen objects (player's ship, ...
DrSheldon's user avatar
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In the magical mid-1990s, when we already had got our (second-hand) 486 PC and I had both a NES and SNES, I for some reason got my paws on an old Atari "XE Game System" (8-bit, 1987). It had ...
V. Colker's user avatar
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Hard Drivin' is a classic Atari video game released in the arcades and then ported to many home systems. How does the game engine work? How is the world data handled, how is collision detection done ...
user's user avatar
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3 votes
4 answers
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I am working on designing a 8 bit computer and I was considering adding support for a Atari 2600 controller. I know it uses a D-Sub9 connector, but is there anything special about it? What I mean is ...
benjamin black's user avatar
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60 votes
8 answers
15k views

I was interested in a recent interview of Masayuki Uemura, one of the engineers who designed the Nintendo Famicom in the early 80s. During initial design phase of the Famicom, one of the first things ...
da66en's user avatar
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0 answers
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Atari licensed Digital Research's GEM graphic user interface for the ST. As https://www.filfre.net/2015/04/the-68000-wars-part-2-jack-is-back/ puts it: And of course in the wake of the Macintosh the ...
rwallace's user avatar
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9 votes
2 answers
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I found my old atari 130XE, full of dust. I have the power supply but I don't have connection cables and controls. I've searched in eBay, Amazon and such for controls and there are plenty of them. My ...
Ovidio Carlos Molina Chapa's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
564 views

I use the atari800 emulator v. 4.2.0 on windows 10 and linux in latest version. (https://atari800.github.io) I notice an annoying keyboard latency of up to 100-200ms (keypress-to-click and ...
elsni's user avatar
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50 votes
5 answers
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The answer recently posted to Did Atari make more money from arcade games or consoles? quotes a New York Times article from 1982 https://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/19/business/the-game-turns-serious-at-...
rwallace's user avatar
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9 votes
1 answer
915 views

Atari was originally an arcade game company, starting at the beginning of the seventies with Computer Space and Pong. In 1977, they entered the console business with the VCS a.k.a. 2600; in 1979, they ...
rwallace's user avatar
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13 votes
2 answers
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After Jack Tramiel was fired from Commodore and became the owner of Atari, I believe he offered jobs to a number of key technical people who followed him from Commodore. Who were the key people (if ...
Brian H's user avatar
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21 votes
5 answers
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Here we are some decades on from the C64, and other 8 bit computers. New ideas that resulted in some new graphics effect or mode seem to happen, though we may be near the end of all that. Took a ...
Spud's user avatar
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9 votes
2 answers
2k views

I know the real answer is to download cracked games but from the era before internet got afordable, I have a lot of community games which never reached the Internet and that I would like to rescue as ...
user2284570's user avatar
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11 votes
2 answers
961 views

I am hoping that someone here collects computer images from days gone by. Many years ago when I used my ATARI-ST I made two drawing I believe I used the art program NEOCHROME, or possibly DEGAS. The ...
LewinskyS's user avatar
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6 votes
2 answers
664 views

Back in the day I owned a couple Atari ST, I used a cartridge based program for writing video games. It was called "ACTION" Does anyone remember this program or even better, know where I can get a ROM ...
LewinskyS's user avatar
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12 votes
1 answer
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The classic game Breakout was developed in 1975-76; famously, the first version of the circuit board was designed by Wozniak over the course of four nights, though Atari subsequently redesigned it for ...
rwallace's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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I have acquired an Atari 130XE (no manual). It has a power cord and it powers up! However, there is no monitor/TV cable provided. Hopefully you can see the image I tried to attach. Where can I get ...
Dave's user avatar
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22 votes
4 answers
3k views

The Atari 400/800 home computers were well-established and quite successful in the games market by the time the Atari 5200 console was released in 1982. The 5200 shared the chips and architecture of ...
Brian H's user avatar
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8 votes
1 answer
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I have a kernel in my 6502 game that writes two dots to a sprite, so for example: ........ ........ .XX..XX. .XX..XX. ........ ........ Either 0, 1, or 2 dots can be on at a time. This is done one ...
trim's user avatar
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9 votes
4 answers
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Were external floppy drives for Atari ST and Amiga inter-compatible? For example, Commodore 1541* had its own serial bus protocol. But what about the external 3.5" DD floppy disk drive on 23pins D-...
Francesco B's user avatar
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7 votes
2 answers
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The Atari TT was based on the earlier ST line of computers but with a 32 MHz 68030 instead of an 8 or 16 MHz 68000. There were a number of extensions made (e.g. new video modes) and the memory ...
Alex Hajnal's user avatar
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12 votes
6 answers
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I want to create HTML5 versions of some classic Atari 2600 games and was wondering if there's any possible way to rip all sound effects from a game's ROM file. Until now, I've tried using Stella ...
user7710's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
602 views

I'm interested in the time, place and manner in which some historically important computers were introduced to the world. For example, the Macintosh was presented in January 1984 by Steve Jobs, first ...
rwallace's user avatar
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17 votes
3 answers
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Atari historians have been able to find documents and tapes of chips and hardware developed at Atari. E.g. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/154479-new-gtia-chips/ . Nothing like this is happening for ...
Valentino Miazzo's user avatar
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