Things I couldn’t find elsewhere

Retro

How to generate a square root table

Well that headline looks weird. I mean. You click √ on your calculator. Or you type Math.sqrt() or something similar. But what if you’re writing code on ancient low spec systems and there’s just no way you can take the time to actually calculate the square root? And even generating a lookup table somewhere else and importing it into the system is a pain due to storage space requirements.

Atari · English · Math · Retro · Uncategorized

3 minutes

The Atari Mega ST keyboard - finally exposed

When people talk about the Atari ST range of computers, most mean the common form factor of the times where the computer and keyboard were all one unit. This was true for most of Atari’s machines - but for a few exceptions. The Mega ST, the Mega STE and the TT went for a more “business look”, which apparently meant separation of computer and keyboard. The Mega ST computer has a fantastic “pizza box” style, while the Mega STE and TT share a common … something else.

Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized

5 minutes

Sizecoding & custom packing

Update 2021-07-14: Ben of The Overlanders commented on my Facebook post that there was yet another optimization possible on the depack-routine. I have edited the source listing below. This weekend yet another instance of the very popular Atari ST retro computer happening Sommarhack took place. Due to Covid-19, this year as well as last have been online-only events though. I decided to participate in one of the competitions, the 256 byte intro.

Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized

7 minutes

PLCC 44 PROM programming with TL866

Even the retro world is moving away from the regular DIP packaging sometimes. The Atari Falcon, and third party ROM boards from Exxos, use the 27C4096 PROM in PLCC packaging to hold TOS (the operating system). The TL866 with its DIP40 socket cannot obviously handle these, but a quick search shows us that there exists many adapter packages available to purchase that will sort out various types of popular socket formats.

English · Retro · Uncategorized

1 minute

TL866 firmware updater macOS support

I own a TL866CS IC programmer. Wonderful device - I truly recommend it (and I assume its successor is even better). It’s been known for many years that the company who made them had one hardware revision, and limited the CS revision compared to the A revision purely in firmware. That limitation has of course been hacked for almost as long as the device has existed. Someone going by the name “radioman” detailed many years ago how the bootloader could be reflashed from CS version to A, after which the original software and firmware updates will see the device as the A model in all aspects.

Apple · Code · Development · English · Retro · Uncategorized

1 minute

GrafX2 SDL2 version for macOS 64-bit

update 21/7: I’ll make regular builds of this, and hope to have it completely automated soon. They can be found here (link might change in the future): original post: 12 hours ago SDL2 support was merged into the popular retro graphics program GrafX2. Here’s a fully distributable macOS x86_64 binary (only tested on macOS High Sierra) built from that. Thanks to evil/DHS for letting me know of the new SDL2 support, even before it was actually merged ;) (If you try to build from source yourself there are edits I’ve done on my local branch to make it build and include the support libraries/frameworks.

English · Retro · Uncategorized

1 minute

Atari ST wakestate nudger

I’ve added yet a new little description to Projects - a circuit and modification to “nudge” wakestates on Atari STs without needing to power cycle.

Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized

1 minute

Atari ST wakestate nudger

Back in the day, those of us who did advanced video tricks on the Atari (opening borders, hardware scrolling on hw without hardware scroll) knew that there were differences between systems, and sometimes on the same system. After some trial and error you built in some compensation which made things work “always” on all systems. Today we know that a lot of this comes from the fact that the GLUE and the CPU, while both running at 8MHz, can be offset from one another 0-3 cycles (since the master clock everything’s divided from is 32MHz).

Atari · English · Retro · Uncategorized

3 minutes

Atari ST new video modes

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

Hatari macOS nightly builds

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