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| I have a written part of my blog that I have at the retrochallenge BBS at telnet://lorance.no-ip.org on the subboard "bClu" However you can have pictures here unlike the BBS, so here are some pictures to back up my projects. ;) 
The Atari 800 that I use, the silver G4 12" that is being packed away for the Retrochallenge, and the Duo 2300 being pulled out of mothballs for the challenge. 
Amazing how close in size the Duo 2300 (top) is to the G4 12" | | |
| Just got a HD Radio. I wasn't sure if I would like it. The stations kept going in and out, espeically the Oasis. But KEGL and KLUV's stations have such great music I never heard, and without commercials. And then on KEGL 97.1-2 I heard... The Who - You Better You Bet... yeh, I think the radio is a keeper. :) | | |
| Well, my summary for the retrochallenge... loved it. Spent a lot of time on the Atari 800 getting on the retrochallenge BBS mainly. I've done a lot of playing of games on the Atari Jaguar, 7800, 5200 for the Atariage high score contests, and even emulated some Atari games I don't have through my Dreamcast. Ok, so this is not so different from my regular life. But it was fun hanging with all the other retrochallengers, and I hope to keep talking to people on the Retrochallenge BBS. My goal for this summer, looking at trying a C=64 for a month. A real departure from the Atarian that I am. ;) | | |
| This month has been fun, but I have not had a chance to update this site. Basically here are the things I've had a hand in:
Atari 800
-Been on the Retrochallenge BBS about every other day with it, logging in through the Prison Board BBS' telnet out (they are at telnet://rdfig.net option x at main menu)
-Got the MyIde800 (a prototype IDE board which there are two in the world) online again, if nothing else to play Hyperblast for the Atariage 8-bit high score challenge. For some reason games are not loading under the XE upgrade for the 800 and the MyIde + Flash cart I have... but then neither of those were supposed to work with the 800 to begin with. :)
Atari 5200
-Played Dig Dug and Galaxian for the Atariage 5200 High Score Club.
Atari 7800
-Played Ninja Golf and Mario Brothers for the Atariage 7800 High Score Club
Atari 2600
-Played Circus Atari and Kung Fu for the Atariage 2600 High Score Club
Atari TT030
-With Slor getting his TT030 with Spectre running for the Retrochallenge, I was inspired to get my running as well. Though my TT030 is not in the BEST shape. The internal floppy is still not working thanks to a hack a previous owner did on it. To make matters worse, the hard drive and backup hard drives, all wonderful 500 mb 1994 drives from Apple, both kicked the bucket while the house was being cleaned and things moved. It is my hope that maybe I can get a working drive from Slor before the Retrochallenge is over. I am really running out of good SCSI drives to run on these older 16/32 bit machines.
Dreamcast
-Used it to get on the Retrochallenge BBS (Broadband adaptor) and to emulate a 5200 to play Jungle Hunt and Centipede for the 5200 Atari High Score Challenge.
Amiga
-Amiga 2000 is working well enough. Figured I needed to make adriver disk to work with the Great Valley Products 68030/SCSI card I have in the computer in order to set up a new hard drive. Existing one is fine but basically full and full of things I don't want to get rid of and don't know how to back up.
-Amiga 3000 the better one seems to have taken battery damage to the video portion of the computer, so I tried building up the older motherboard of the two. Got it working with the other computer's hard drive, and then it seemed to forget it had a hard drive. I might have deleted something though. Don't know.
-Worked at a AMIGA USER GROUP MEETING this last week to figure out more on the Amiga 3000.
-While at the Amiga User meeting they passed on to me to tinker with...
-- A Commodore Portable SX-64
-- A Vic-20
-- A Commodore 64 (later model)
Interesting to say the least.
Newton MessagePad
-The Newton Community was looking for ways to get the ATA drivers working for many that did not buy it when it was available. I tinkered with my Newtons and the drivers THAT I PAID FOR and found that even with everything open it still does not work. :( A little purturbed on this.
And that is what I've been up to up to this point.
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| Well, a brief recap of recent retro events.
December 2007
Heard about the Retrochallenge on the mailing list after I accidentally wished some people an early merry Christmas. I liked the idea and planned on joining in.
2005 I had been really big in the challenge, and spent a whole month on my Atari 800 alone.
2006 I had asked about the next challenge, but youtube and movie making swept me away. :)
2007 I didn't hear a peep about the retrochallenge, but apparently one happened.
So interesting. So I found out about the winter challenge through blind luck I guess.
Spent most of December with the holidays and getting the house in order. After Christmas I worked on my 11 day vacation on the storage room, and finally...
January 1, 2008
The storage room is in order. I work on getting an Amiga 2000 and 3000 working. The 3000 works fine, a good component test machine. However, the 2000 has my attention since it has a 68030 upgrade card with simm slots that are unpopulated (room for growth), a serial card, and a Video Toaster. The computer was from a local community college (El Centro) and was found by a friend of mine in a dump. Apparently this was the school video editing and machine they used to display map and direction information on school monitors probably through the late 80's and 90's. When you go into the computer directory it automatically brings up a colorful display of campus information. Kinda neat. I clean up the computer, put it back together, and it does not work. I had to take it apart though since the computer battery was still on the board, so that had to be removed to keep it from damaging the board with battery acid. A bit bummed I called it a day.
January 2, 2008
First day back to work. When I got home, I worked on the 2000 some more. This time I took it completely apart, reset chips, cleaned it up with a toothbrush and removed all dust. Put the computer back together with only the basic setup and powered the computer on and it worked!!! (That accounts for about three hours of work right there BTW) Had difficulty getting the left click on the mouse to work which of course is the important button on the Amiga mouse. After trying it with the 3000 and then the 2000 again I learned the mouse had to be FIRMLY plugged in.
I decided to leave the serial board and Video Toaster out this time and stored them in anti-stat bags in cushioned storage boxes. Won't need those for a while.
Played with the 2000 and the 68030/memory/SCSI hard drive board and found that it is a particular beast. Eventually figured out its quirks. Looked on the 100 mb hard drive, found that I didn't understand about 83 mb of it, and the other 13 mb free was not enough for me, so will probably remove the drive, store it for later study, and build my own.
Also learned the Amiga would display to a video monitor, though in mono color. This is good, since this was not working before I cleaned up the computer.
Late into the night I learn that you actually have to register for the retrochallenge.. oops! Took care of that.
January 3, 2008
Registered to the retrochallenge forums and started posting. Got on the retrochallenge BBS. Wanted to post, but wanted to post with a retro machine. So after reading the Retrochallenge BBS a LOT with my aluminum Powerbook Mac G4 12" (my main machine and perhaps the most awesome computer I've ever rebuilt from a pile of parts) :) I attempted to get on the retrochallenge BBS with my Atari 800.
The Atari 800 is more or less my trusty machine from the 2005 retrochallenge. I say more or less because I have a few 800's I cycle through. The computer is a fine example of the current Atari 8-bit community. First it has the flash drive, powered by the MyIde.. which was created by my friend Mr. Atari in the Netherlands and in cartridge form from Atarimax.com (Good ole Steve Tucker the man whose made many Atari innovations available). Then we have the memory boosted from the 800's 48K limit to 320K/512K XE memory, thanks to a prototype upgrade from Warerat in Houston. Then I had the Speedier Module from Rick D at More Than Games, which allows my serial port speed to go from the typical 9600 baud limit of the 850 serial interface module to a self/port powered (no power supply in other words) module that allows for 19.2K baud. :) Nice nice. Add to that the nice keyboard of the 800, the nice quality video port that it had before Atari started cutting costs with the later models on that point, and the sexy sleak beige 1979 typewriter look and you have one awesome retro machine. ;) (For those born in the 80's and beyond, when it comes to home computers if we compared it to cars, the computers from 74-76 would be steampowered wagons and the ones from 77-79 would be model T's. My Model T is like one of those Hot Rods that you see with nitrus rockets attached...)
So I went to get the Atari 800 on the retrochallenge BBS. Normally I would have used the Lantronix UDS-10 serial to ethernet adaptor to make this happen. However, I have lent that the Darkforces BBS (ran on a Atari ST Mega 2 computer) since his module blinked out. So I'm left with two dialup BBS's in the Dallas area.
I called the Prison Board BBS at 972-329-0781.. this is a BBS that has extensive Atari and Macintosh BBS lists (hit X at the main menu, and then select a BBS list from there.,. these are telnet links.) Got on the BBS, got to the internet menu (X) and then got on the retrochallenge BBS. However for some reason, when I get on through the Prison Board the carriage return is really touchy. So touchy I can't log in. :( Bummer. All other BBS's I can get on through this BBSs, but not in this case. Will need to try another way. Maybe the Family Net BBS which I believe is 972-496-0650. (Had to peak at my BBS list at http://jybolac.atari.org)
I tried talking some other Atari users to join the Retrochallenge. One I'd like to get his Atari TT030 and mine in the challenge as a team running Spectre emulators. This could be interesting having more than one Spectre Mac (listed as one of the earliest Macintosh clones) in the same place. :)
January 4, 2008
Found I was added to the retrochallenge roster! I'm officially listed.
No luck getting no the retrochallenge BBS with the 800 through the Family Net BBS.
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