Recent posts

#11

News / Re: How to be useless

Last post by Petari - 26-02-2025, 19:01:34

And of course it just go on at AA - thread started in 2021 - and no proper explanation, solution. While I solved it somewhere 10-15 years ago. 5.25 drive on ST
 I wrote about danger of damaging PSG chip in ST when connect directly 5.25 inch drive - as some of them load some control lines much more than 3.5 inch drives, and that results in breaking of PSG chip, after what no floppy work. No word about it in AA thread.
 Well, if there is no problem with PSG line overload there is still problem of slower seek rate of 5.25 drives. And of course it has nothing relevant with 40/80 track switch. Seek rate in 80 track mode is simply higher because larger disk size, so need bigger movement. And I write this according to my experience. I tested with number of 5.25 inch drives, and all needed 6 ms seek rate .
 And yes, there is TOS function to set it to it, but only in later TOS versions.
 Seek rate setting  program by TGB1718 is not well written. For write to very low RAM, what needs supervisor mode XBIOS #26 is better - only one TOS call instead 2 . But that address depends from TOS version, so better to use XBIOS call for step rate set - present in later TOS versions.
 Of course, best is to just not mess with floppy drives now - too much risk for already fragile old Atari STs .
 Why I messed with 5.25 drives on Atari ST ? It was long time ago, before 2000 . Needed to transfer some SW, data with such floppies. Now I'm happy if see some 3.5 inch drive working.

#12

Software / Re: Puffy's Saga

Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 11-02-2025, 18:54:12

Thanks Peter...!  This game reminds me of Gauntlet II in places. 

#13

Software / Re: Puffy's Saga

Last post by Petari - 11-02-2025, 17:14:29

Solved work of blitter version with 1 MB RAM only (from floppy) - it needed some 50 corrections in code.
Hard disk v. with it needs 2 MB RAM min (as usual) - and there are state saves, as usual 
Unlimited health opt. too.
Page with DLs

#14

Software / Puffy's Saga

Last post by Petari - 10-02-2025, 14:06:13

 I made some corrections with 2 versions of Puffy's Saga .
https://atari.8bitchip.info/ASTGA/P/puffyss.php

#15

Software / Re: New game adaptations

Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 07-02-2025, 17:33:20

I know the text adventure games aren't for everyone but
there are some really great games there.

I played Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Zork to
death, back in the day.   

Thanks for doing them Peter.

#16

Software / Re: New game adaptations

Last post by Petari - 07-02-2025, 15:08:11

Did remaining Infocom adventures:

Border Zone
Bureaucracy
Cutthroats
Deadline
Enchanter
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Hollywood Hijinx
Infidel
Nord and Bert
Planetfall

Plundered Hearts
Seastalker
Sherlock the Riddle of the Crown Jewels
Spellbreaker
Starcross
Stationfall
Suspect
Suspended
Trinity
Wishbringer

Witness
Zork Trilogy (1-3)

All they work in color and monochrome mode .
Hardest part was finding floppy images of all them, cover scan pictures.

At atarimania are 2 more:  Mines of Titan  and  Shogun . I searched, and by all signs no Atari ST versions of them made. 

#17

Software / Interesting HDDriver discussio...

Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 01-02-2025, 22:36:40

This popped up over at Atari-Forum.

Pretty interesting stuff.

"HD Driver works on your 030+ Atari just by coincidence"

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=44646

#18

News / Re: How to be useless

Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 19-01-2025, 19:11:11

I have to admit that it's pretty surprising, as long as the ST
has been around, that there's still misunderstanding about TOS
and it's specifications for hard drive use.

All a person has to do is google for 5 minutes and the info is
all there...   

#19

News / Re: How to be useless

Last post by Petari - 19-01-2025, 13:32:28

And more crap from AA :  More bad answers

Forrest wrote:  " ... The ICD supports up to 16 (?) hard drive partitions, ranging in size from 16 MB to 2 GB. ... "
 Count of supported partitions depends from TOS, TOS version in first place. And it is known thing. Just not at idiot forums.
 Partitions sizes - same, max partition size depends from TOS and TOS version in first place. And no, no 2 GB partition size with ST, STE . 512 MB is max . TOS 4.04 supports max 1 GB partitions, but it is for Falcon, what has no ACSI port, so ICD driver works not with it.
 This is really about 1000-st bad posting about it at AA. What is goal of admin ? Big count of posts instead correct replies, knowledge ?  Just pathetic.

#20

Hardware / Re: And more idiotic blah at A...

Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 12-01-2025, 18:33:19

I saw that post. I thought it was funny when he said it wasn't one of your games,
because it was obvious that would be one of the first things someone would blame
it on.