Most liked posts in thread: What's new Pussycat too?

I must say the Music Construction set sounds great, love to hear the results now you finally worked out how to get it running.
It maybe that the boot loader checks if other drives are online, to stop say a Happy or Bitmaster copying it or simply the SIO is over loaded
P.S Have not over the years such copy protection been defeated ?, Seems Odd that with modern Disassemblers and Emulators that the boot disk cannot be reverse engineered, and the Program patched. At least for older programs where the copyrite is no longer valid.
I remember that the O.S Controller card had an alternative O.S that could trace the data that was loaded from track and sector, I guess similar to that the 1050 Happy 7 supported.

 

Glad its doing something good, over here its business as usual, totally unpredictable, hottest day on record one day the blooming cold the next.

Not so fun when you have arthritis

 

That sounds and interesting addon, I hope you post a nice write up or Blog on it 's use and features, always better from someone rather that those selling the device.
Have fun whilst you find out all that it can do

 

Hi, Klyde, it's been an age since I got up to speed with "What's New Pussycat" and I'd temporarily forgotten about your Speccy - how have you got on with a replacement keyboard membrane? Do you want me to order you one?
Let me know how you are doing and I hope you and Isabelle have had a decent vacation and the weather has improved... that photo you sent of the scene out of your Elancourt window made me suddenly think you had dropped in on us here in HULL(!)

 

Proper chucking it down...

 

Never thought of that Andy but you’re right, the sellers are also selling BBC Micro versions on eBay as well if you feel the need for a Beeb joystick, price is a bit rich for me but they are there nonetheless.
If you let me know how much for the extras I’ll sort something out, I don’t want you out of pocket on stuff that wasn’t in the original deal.

 

LOL! Cut Rich some slack, Graham...
That could take a few weeks!!
Brilliant looking condition, Vyper - you must be tickled pink with that acquisition.
Hope you didn't pay too far over the odds but whatever - I know Paul Woakes' work is worth it.
Matt speaks highly of this game too - it's very very smooth action.
CLASSIC, FELLA!

 

Yeah it’s proving irksome but I think the 6502 is failing, it only boots intermittently on my working Oric-1 and when I Isolated/disconnected it from the power rails on the PCB then the Voltage Regulator went back up to 4.9V before that it was only 3.6V.

 

They had a disk version of Dropzone for sale too but it went for £67 in the end.

 

I’ll have to check that one out Matt as I’ve not heard of that one before.

 

Yep Matt; Along with Richie gets my vote.

I've a little request to make as you keep your eyes down on AA. if there is any release information, on Sophia2 can you let me know, not sure if I'll get a message or not. Thanks Fella

 

No Problem Andy

If it helps I know they have all the boards available or they did have I should say. seem to think that they were fairly cheap like $20 for analogue $25 for digital but may warrant investigation email :-
bestelec@bestelec.digitalspacemail8.net
Happy to hang on for a bit as I'm in no great rush to pay my customs 'FINE' just yet.

 

@Vulcanman One of my 1050's started acting up with loading and saving and formatting, progressively worsened until now, were it powers on and the drive spins up and just stays spinning. I swapped a couple of chips in it, but then my 1200XL went down, so I hadn't bothered to fix it until I have a computer to use it with. I did just order an Atarimax Happy upgrade that arrived a couple of weeks ago, which I am hoping will resolve the problem, but we shall see. This is the same drive that the PSU circuit went out on a few years ago and I had a thread up on Atari Sector at the time about it. I replaced the large capacitors and the diodes in between at that point which repaired it.

But it will still wait until the 1200XL is repaired. I haven't felt like working on anything for a few months now, and didn't have much time anyway. But as winter approaches, with my seasonal business that's the time I have more time for my hobbies. And in fact, the business is slowing already (after a couple months of high activity after a slow down due to Covid earlier in the year) and I will be getting back to my 800 very soon, I'm in the mood again.

 

Glad you sorted out the drives speed, and better still ditched the naff Disc's always going to be a problem going forward as most are about 30 years old if not more.
I've tended to find that discs that don't work in say a BBC drive with 80 tracks will work at 40 and so on. the exception being the HD 51/4" disc's ment to staore when formatted 1.2MBytes on a PC, these don't seem to play ball with any lower capacity drives at all .

 

Hi Matt
Yes they are the one for the 800, plugs into the original 6520 Socket, with the additional 6520 placed alongside, towards the Pokey, forces the use of PokeyMAX for stereo the board has space for an additional 6520/6821 plus additional decoder out lines, and All the Portlines. Port A, B, CA, CB
But you will be limited to only the address spaces in the D3xx range excluding D300-D30F (original 6520)
And addresses D380-D3FF as I believe Incognito uses these for some of it's additional features.
As I've used 16Byte blocks you can add an additional 7 devices, (128Bytes of space /16Bytes = 8 blocks minus one for original 6520) One additional 6520 on board if wanted leaving 6 mounted elsewhere. The 74LS138 which used to reside on the personality board has been replaced with a surface mount chip on the Incognito, you could still solder to this for D600, D700 but not sure if they are used, certainly D100 is used by the CF card interface.
The 800XL, 1200XL, 65/130XE all designed to plug into the original LS138 socket, adding a very small board with an additional 138, you can select which address block you wish to decode with this. Default D3xx but need a wire jumper or DuPont connectors to change.

 

It sounds great! I can't wait!

 

Andy.
Firstly, the Syscheck II will go out to you on loan tomorrow and secondly I might be able to lay my hands on the Atari graphics demo disk you enquire about...somewhere. If I get chance, and my back doesn't give up, I'll try and trace and send you an ATR. Cheers. Ouch - sorry to hear about the steep import duties, Graham - it really is a kick in the clingle dangles, mate. They hit you every which way and it really does take the shine off our purchases.

 

Ruddy hell, mate.
With a couple of these fitted, I reckon you just might be able to fly to Alpha Centauri...and back!

Excellent project. I shall get my finger out this very afternoon and give old Richie's CPC464 a ruddy good dusting down from the retro cupboard where it is stored amongst my other family heirlooms, cat biscuits and supply of pain killers for shafted backs!

Wee video to follow, 464 fans!

 

Wow, that is terrible, though if my government isn't stealing in the same way, there are plenty of ways they do. For example, the old owner of Chevy Blazer I purchased did not renew tags and license on it for 5 years...guess who got stuck with all the back taxes and fees to get it legal again.

 

Wow how can that be that you are liable, or is it something that should be checked when you buy a vechcle, some friends of that have purchased a car from a dealer, involved in a road accident; the police checked the car, it was a ringer and had been stolen several years before, they'd had it for maybe 6 months. It was lucky they purchased from a dealer as they ended up with paying them back and having the car conviscated, as a dealer he was also investigated as to whu they had missed that the car wasn't what it should have been.
Another friend about 5 years ago ourchased a car tuened out it was the front on one car and the back of another, and the whole roof from another. Again they eventually got there money back as it was from a dealer.
If any had been a private purchase then your stuffed, it's down to you to check.

 

I was shocked that I was liable too. But this is a State of Oklahoma law and I never came across such a thing in any other state I lived my adult driver life, including Illinois, Wisconsin, California, Texas and Oklahoma where I have had vehicles licensed. I haven't dealt with vehicles that had expired tags from a previous owner in every state, but I have in a couple and you weren't responsible for anything in the vehicles previous history.

 

Sods law i'm away and can't check out the demo's
but home in a few days

 

I lived in Canyon Lake,Texas for 11-12 years, right in-between Austin and San Antonio. But yes, Texas highways have higher speed limits than most (not all) states, and many more personal liberties and freedoms in regards to fire-arms and a lot of other things that many states either outright deny or require classes/training/licensing/taxes that for most people is too much trouble or too expensive; exactly the way the state government likes it. I'd still be in Texas if I didn't own land and a home in Oklahoma now.

But Oklahoma is mostly like Texas, but it's a much poorer state due to decades of mismanagement so if they can stick it to you for more money in some ways they do. But they just went the opposite way with fire-arms in the past two years. Before you did have to be licensed for conceal-carry (which is a one-day class and $50-75 dollars for the class and another $25 for the license, so no too bad), while that is still available and required if you want your fire-arm to be concealed, the law has changed to free open-carry and no license needed for the person, though the guns must still be licensed. Before if you had a licensed gun, but no conceal-carry license, the gun could not leave or be used off your own property.

And of course, if you are an up-standing, law-abiding citizen who buys guns through legal outlets and not the black market, like criminals use, then you have to pass a national back ground check before you can purchase the fire-arm.

 

Yea I know all about the back-ground checks etc, as I'd been in discussion with Paul, whom thought it easy to get a licence in the UK.
In UK Law the checks are onerous, but I feel that they should be, however I'm a little surprised at open carry that's more like Texas, But also a good deterant . (Well I'm kinda guessing at this point)
New York appears to be a state that makes anything difficult....
It's extreamly difficult to judge the best way to go in regarding firearms, allowing access to all at least evens the playing field, I.E. citizens are at least equal to criminals , in the UK the balance falls in favor of illegal firearms and the criminals that own them.
I'd alway er on the side of a handgun in a knife fight.
Same with a handgun and an Assult rifle
Same again an Assult rifle and a I'll call it a sniper rifle but single shot very accurate at range Rifle.
but I could continue until we get to multiple wathead Nuclear missiles ...
However still topped by a strike from a meteor hitting earth as history has shown...
Dirty Harry is lost in this 'race' if you can call it that.

 

Hi Matt
Pleased it's arrived safely. Working on the decoder again to fit 800, looks like there will be a need to change the usually green cap's between the PIA & Pokey otherwise have to use stacked sockets, which then gets in the way of the aluminium casing. There wouldn’t be a problem on a 'naked' board; on a robotic vehicle though.