So did you ever have an atari computer?

[number6]

@JimS

How can we forget "Computer Eyes" for the 8bit?

#6

[number6]

Actually, I did forget it. Until you mentioned it. ;-) How about the speech synth that used a TI chip interfaced to the joystick ports? Built one of those.... Or how about trying to do color printing by using multiple passes with 4 different ribbons on a dot matrix printer...
... the bad ole days.....

Okidata?

And before Yosemite evaluation board SAM, we had S.A.M. (software automated mouth) for the software end of audio.

Ah...and there was an 80 column screen through XEP80, that late hardware addition. Sadly s/w support was coming to an end for all things Atari at that point, and they never exploited it fully.

#6

[number6]

Yep, there were a lot of things never fully exploited... it was a lot like the Amiga in that respect. Plus it got stuck with the 'game machine' stigma like Amiga.

I remember looking at the schematics for the 800 and seeing i/o decodes with the same addresses as the Apple ][... I always wondered if they planned an Apple IO card expansion unit for the 800.  The parallel bus on the XL never did see much use either. Although I think the ATR80 plugged in there, but that was after I moved on to Amiga.

That's another thing of course. The whole thing was so open, that almost anyone who wanted to participate...could.

I still wonder if any of the Atari interrupt structure and tricks influenced Jay Miner in his future thinking about Amiga. I've never researched that.

Hmm..found a couple of interesting posts about Atari and C64 from the Jay Miner era.

http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?view=1042886350&category=news

Comment #6 about 256 simultaneous colors on screen through use of display list interrupts would be similar to what we saw as "Dynamic HighRes" on the Amiga. This pretty much froze all other operations on Atari, and I recall even mouse movement on Amiga destroyed the display.

Comment #8 would indicate some early bit manipulation to extend the color palette in exchange for a speed penalty...sounds a bit like what occurred with HAM modes on Amiga.
What do you think?
 
#6