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

Nice find with the controllers!

As to your other half, if you want to scare her with a practical joke, tell her that you and I have decided to make a trade and that you'll have a suitcase full of vintage electronics to swap with a suitcase full I have and ask for her to carry it along and "swing by" and exchange with me...her

 

She's a bit of a nerd herself so would probably be up for that and want to know what was in the cases

 

She can never know what is in the cases

It's for 'local' people....(See if Matt watched The League of Gentlemen)

 

Its a UK TV comedy series and not the Sean Connery film

 

Like the lads say, Matt, so glad it made it through intact, buddy.

You can't beat the real deal and this 7800 (ex-Al's) looks a lovely example - enjoy, fella.

Get blasting!

 

Nice Matt. It's a really good shooter, still pretty amazing what our little Atari's can do after all these years.

 

You have been playing the original, FREE, ABBUC 2020 edition, right?

I may never even get beyond the 4 levels of the ABBUC version, let alone all 8 in this final release version! But I will try! I've yet to even make it half-way through level 2 of the ABBUC version! Not that I've had time for gaming the last few months, nor could I have since my computers are disassembled for upgrades and repairs for the last few months too!

 

Nope, haven't played any version yet, Matt, just watched the clip on You Tube, buddy with the aerial and ground targets/opponents.

Looks well programmed, slick n smooth.

Wonderful that guys are still making quality releases for our old Atari classics so thanks for flagging this up.

 

If you want to see something really cool, check out Flob! Some great game mechanics.

 

Some cracking kit there @M.D.Baker loving the Jag kit on show…^10

 

Spot on Paul. Enjoy all the bits you have bought Matt. You must have enough projects lined up now to last you a few years!

 

Oh, yeah, I suppose I should share pictures of my birthday present from my mother and brother...A nice new electronics tool kit.

 

Many many happy returns, Matt - Happy Birthday, mate. Just back from my Uncle Harry's 87th birthday booze up down the pub with Bev, me dad and his missus and the crew. Super to see your folks celebrating and treating you too. Cheers, fella - all the best!

 

Thank you very, very, very, very, very, very very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, verily much...very much.


Only 34 years to go until my 87th. I should be so lucky to make it that long...assuming I even want to be in this world any more by then. To Hell in a hand-basket I tell you!

 

Nicely, put, birthday "boy"!

It seems not 5mins since we were all in the flush of "yoof"... now look at us:

barely a non-white hair or non-false tooth between us.

Before you know it, we'll be pushing 70/80.

I have a feeling though that we won't go "quietly into the night".

We all need to book our rooms into the old folks retro home for retired recycled teenagers and go bananas with our old kit, waggle a few joysticks and show the care workers that we can still get the occasional high score/sparkle in our eyes when a new 8bit software release comes our way.

Keep on keeping on Matt and co.

Who's boffday is it next?

 

Half of my customers are on ill-health retirement, or what we call Social Security Disability. A quarter are just retired elderly, and the other quarter are the younger still-working group. Of course I charge the ones on disability less than those working, and the regular retired just depends, some are wealthy, some are on a tighter budget. But if two lawns are about the same size, but one has an old mobile home on the property and one has a 10.000 square foot brick estate house, they'll get charged for it.

I've been blessed so far health wise. Except for it being easier for me to injure myself from over exertion, I'm working my body just as hard today as I was 20 years ago. I just have to keep moving while I can; father time could catch up to me at any given moment and my body could start giving out. Case and point, I was mowing the side of a hill at a commercial property a couple of days ago, and I went to re-adjust myself on the mower seat, for a better center of gravity, and I managed to pull muscles on my left rib cage, and I now have to be very careful not to cough or laugh or lean the wrong way or the pain is excruciating. If I manage not to do those things, I feel mostly fine. So I forget and...THE PAIN! Hopefully It'll heal in days or a week. But it may be a long-term lingering issue I have just given myself. I didn't even know I could pull muscles where I pulled them!

But it turns out that some of my physical issues that I thought was due to over-working and over-straining my body was not the case. I was having chronic left shoulder and lower back pain up until a few weeks ago. I thought it was caused by work. I was waking up with back and shoulder pain so bad it felt like I had just done a day's labor instead of being about too! I was laid up for three days a few weeks ago, and I got progressively worse instead of better!

I finally got back to work with lots of pain killers. But I started thinking about it, and I always have trouble finding a comfortable position to sleep on my bed. So I thought it was hard work followed by not enough rest from restless nights. I decided to try a pillow-top for my mattress for a little added cushioning. Well, it turns out that all that chronic pain was a direct result of my mattress! Now for the last three weeks, I can put in a full day's labor, and I don't hurt, just tired, and I'm sleeping better and I have not had one morning since I got the pillow-top mattress waking to back and shoulder ache! I feel 10-20 years younger just from getting a good night sleep on a now good bed!

 

My back has never been the same since about 7-8 yrs ago, Matt, I suddenly leaned back on a swivel chair and the bloody chair's back rest went...and so did I.

Did myself a very nasty injury at the base of my spine and that re-flairs from time to time so I just hope those inter-connecting rib tissues do heal nicely and successfully for you but as you point out, at our ages, it could be just the beginning of a whole lotta world of pain still to come, bud.

Like they say, no one ever said it was gonna be easy (this thang called old age).

 

The manual for my Tektronix 5301N arrived. Sort of...I'm going to keep it because most of the basics cover my oscilloscope too, but the 5301N/D10 is a single beam and the 5301N/D12 (my actual model) is a dual-beam (later models are renamed 5110 and 5112). But, I wisely decided to order a a CDR version from another vendor as well ($20 for manual, $10 for CDR), which is the proper pin number for my machine.

The physical manual was supposed to be for the same pin number, but the one I got came with a note that it was substituted, for the 5110 (5103N/D10) model manual, which is identical in every way to my model, minus a second beam in the tube. But I'm going to keep it as obviously the well-used manual I thought I was getting the seller doesn't have, for whatever reason, and I have one that is like-new condition here, and 90% correct.

But it should be spot-on for the repairs and restoration my oscilloscope as hopefully don't have to replace the CRT, and the boards I do need to work on or replace (as in totally missing and I most likely will have to make from scratch) should be identical schematics and parts. These manuals aren't just user's manuals, but Field Service Manuals and Engineering guide/references too, all rolled into one for academia, not the consumer, or that is, the consumer is known to be more sophisticated in these cases anyway.

I'd rather refer to a real manual with ring binding so it lays flat, and fold-out schematic sheets, then trying to scroll up and down a screen or wasting paper and ink to print out, which would end up costing far more than the manual I bought anyway. This way any deviations between the manual and the PDF manual I can print out and insert in the physical manual.

The manual is in mint condition except for bent tabs on the edge of section pages. I assume once amongst many handed out to students and this one was seldom used, though it was used as there are a couple penciled in "professor" notes in the first pages regarding sections and what they cover. So at least a teacher had opened it's pages at one point.



When I'm forced to rely on PDF's, I go to drastic measures sometimes, like the Atari 7800 schematic I printed out across four pages and then taped them together into a poster size print out. My glass display case makes a pretty good make-shift back-lighted drafting table. (like I had until it was stolen from storage) I figure I might as well include a couple of shots of my current display case set-up, since I've installed some mirrors and staging foam (which will be painted or covered eventually)
I just noticed in the pictures that my Atari Lynx has fallen over...

 

As they say, "one man's trash is another man's treasure"...I've finally acquired a good CRT screen for vintage gaming. Though it's a bit bigger than I wanted, I was thinking 17"-20," and I really want a Sony Trinitron as they do have the best picture hands down. But another wise saying is "beggar's can't be choosers" and for free, in spectacular condition, I won't complain. This isn't even a work related junk haul-off, but it's one of my neighbor's. I saw it across the street from me where all the neighborhood rubbish bins are placed for emptying. So I decided to grab it with my wheel barrel and take it to test if it worked. It did. So I cleaned it up and set it up.

But it does take up a lot of real estate on the desktop. Of course I specifically made a deep corner area for a CRT of decent size. But it means re-arranging my 1200XL system altogether, which is sitting in stacked chaos at the moment. I'll also have to move my Epson deskjet and my antique drafting light.

Sorry, no game screen shots yet, all systems are currently down for upgrades or repairs I haven't finished yet. I'll keep it there until I either get a slightly smaller Trinitron, or fix my CBM 1084S monitor. Then it will go into storage until I have a proper man-cave to set it up in with some vintage consoles.

Anyhow, more specifics. It's a Sanyo 23" flat screen with video/S-video/Component inputs, stereo sound with simulated surround. It has both 4:3 and 16:9 screen ratios available, 4:3 being native and 16:9 is letter-boxed.

 

When you say "ripping out" I'm not sure if you mean creating them with sprites, character sets and map editors, or locating them in games and extracting them and changing them. But I've often thought it would be very fun to do some pixel art with such applications instead of just the standard paint programs. But then I've been waiting until I at least know a bit of Basic or other language code to at least use my creations in a demo if not a game.

I've wanted to offer up my artistic services to some of the home-brew developers, some of them could have used a good pixel artist to really make their creations shine, but I've always seem to have so much going on in my life that I'm not sure I could be depended on to get the pixel art done on the schedule they may want, etc.

Basically between this type of stuff and learning to program and set up batch files to use SpartaDOS to it's full potential with system's that have special start-up procedures and on and on, trying to expand my hardware tinkering interest into software tinkering interest since I've at least got some skilz for graphics.

My plan has been to get this list of hardware repair and upgrade projects completed, with everything in good working order, nothing left to do on that front and then pivot towards software tinkering with smoothly working hardware with all the bells and whistles, with smoothly working system software to create a system environment advantageous to learning to program, and game and graphic development.

But that's also because my intention is to do it all on the real original hardware and not use modern PC and apps for development like most in the community do these days. I insist on using the real hardware I love, with it's real software made for programming and development back in the 80's, Just like our game programming heroes did back in the day, as well as the best that has come out for the Atari since, like some better sprite and character editors and better versions of languages.

But I also want to have it better than them as far as the OS environment and 2021 version of SpartaDOS and the best languages to choose from and best pixel art apps and sound/music apps for development that have been created between then and now, that run on the Atari, not a PC.

Kudos to those who like taking advantage of modern tech to make development of Atari software much easier and stream-lined and more convenient for them. But I just can't see myself enjoying creating for the Atari without using the Atari to do it. Because to me it's all about more and different opportunities to use the actual hardware I love hands-on.

 

Loikes it, Rich,

Plenty of Lynx goodness in there - get skegging!

 

I can see the picture Andy

 

That helps big time, Daz. Can see your goodies now - very narce indeed.

Rich is a very generous guy and you should get stacks of enjoyment out of the boards.

Everyone's a winner again.

 

The original was a piece of cake. It's one of the few games I completed back in the day, which is saying something as I completed very few back then. And I've completed it two or three more times in the past 20 years, the latest some time since I returned to the scene in 2016. I've completed a handful of other games I always meant too, but never did BITD too. I still have many more to finish. Like Infiltrator. It seems like such a cool game, but only once in my life did I actually survive the jet combat part and safely land to start the action and espionage part which looked really cool with 3/4 overhead perspective but I didn't live too long to see much. Infiltrator and I still have a date with destiny...

 

Ruddy hell, Matt.

Some incredible additions, reshufflings and brand new retro-revelations in this post.

Far too much for me to do it justice in a 1min reply before I fly out the house for work as I munch my cornflakes!

Exciting times once more with all the rejigging going on - ACE!!

Will comment more later - excellent additionals acquired!