I’ve done an extended writeup of a little project I’ve been working on and off on for the last few months. Extending the video modes of an old Atari ST in new and interesting ways. Going from 4 colors to 16 might not sound much with today’s tech, but for us oldies this is pretty fascinating ;)
Atari · Code · English · Retro · Uncategorized
1 minute
update 20-07-20: Since a few weeks back I no longer use any macOS systems, being Linux only nowadays. Because of that I feel that I can no longer keep this service running, due to not being able to verify that things are working or being able to quickly correct them when they’re not. Hopefully the Hatari project can in time setup automatic CI pipelines for macOS too. For a few years now I’ve helped out the excellent Hatari Atari 16/32 bit emulator project with macOS builds.
Atari · Development · English · Retro · Uncategorized
1 minute
The tale of high density Atari mystery
The Atari ST, like other computers at the time, had Dual Density disk drives with 720KB of storage. DD for short. Since High Density (1.44MB) appeared shortly after, Atari used such drives in the more top of the lines models Mega STE and TT. Additionally, us enthusiasts and hardware hackers added HD capability to the regular ST and STE range since it was neat to store twice the amount of data on suitable disks (and it worked pretty well cutting a hole in DD disks tricking the drives into thinking they were HD, even though the magnetic layer is slightly different).
Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized
6 minutes
Fountain of Youth - the two month update
Today it’s exactly two months since I started on my "Elysium Basis" regime. Since quite a few of my friends have asked me to write an update on my thoughts about it - here it is. I’m still of the opinion that I have more energy. I’m also confident in the "smoother skin" effect, although I’m unsure as to whether it’s because it actually is or if I just, for some reason, experience it to be.
English · Transhumanism · Uncategorized
2 minutes
“it’s better to burn out than to fade away” (From Neil Young’s My My, Hey Hey - and known for being quoted by Kurt Cobain in his suicide note) I remember my teenage years well. I also remember voicing the opinion above, along with other things along the lines of “life ends at 30”. I’m 42, almost to the day. I have no intention whatsoever of fading away. I consider myself a transhumanist, and I spent some time being a board member of the Swedish subcategory of Humanity+.
English · Transhumanism · Uncategorized
3 minutes
Mega STE 1.44 HD floppy, FPU, fan and RTC upgrades
A few weeks ago I acquired a computer I never had the chance to play around with when it was new, an Atari Mega STE. It’s the culmination of Atari’s 16 bit line of computers, very compatible with the ST(E) range yet much more expandable, usually coming with a SCSI adapter and HD (1.44MB) floppy support. Besides the expandability, it can run at 16Mhz, with cache, compared to 8MHz for the rest of the ST(E) computers.
Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized
3 minutes
Atari Mega STE battery replacement
The Atari Mega STE might be the best machine of the 16 bit era. It’s very compatible with the regular ST(E) range, but in addition it can be run at a higher clock speed (16MHz, with cache) as well as a very nice case where it’s easy to access things like memory, the built in SCSI hard drive etc. Most of the Mega STEs came with 1.44 HD floppy support as well (mine didn’t, something I’m rectifying right now).
2 minutes
How to config an Airport Extreme from Linux
This weekend is a long weekend in Sweden - and of course I’m away from home, hacking away at the infrastructure I’m far away from. During that hacking I needed to change a mapped port in my router, and suddenly realized I couldn’t. I use the latest Airport Extreme (it really has the best performance, throughput as well as wireless stability) and the only machines I remote into are Linux (Ubuntu 16.
Airport · Apple · English · Uncategorized · Wine
2 minutes
This last weekend me and many others were participating at the third incarnation of the STNICCC Atari ST conference. The first and original one was held in 1990 - where sadly I didn’t attend - and the second one was held as a reunion in the year 2000. Back then they joked about meeting up again in the far far away future of 2015. … and that happened. Me and two others from my old demo crew had written a brand new demo that we showed at the demo competition, and additionally I had been asked by the organizer to do a talk on the latest findings with regards to two of the Atari ST’s more magical demo tricks - overscan and sync scroll.
Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized
1 minute
Atari ST chiptune plugin for VLC
update 2018-02-09: VLC 3.0 has just been released. Here’s a compatible version of the plugin (same source revision as before). update 2017-03-18: Link updated with fresh build (VLC 2.x). A few weeks ago I spent some time with the excellent sc68 software written by Benjamin Gérard (Ben/Overlanders). It’s a suite of software that can faithfully reproduce the workings of the YM2149 sound chip in the Atari ST and convert/play songs made for it.
Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized
1 minute