Vamiga: Retrobright experiment 3.0

[dirkwhoffmann]

Since season 2 of the retrobright saga had a happy end, the question is, what should I do with the 5 liters of H2O2 I still have at my disposal?

Why not check it out on this guy?

[Alessandro1970]

Oh yes...

Are you thinking about VirtualST ?

...but it would be better a VirtualZX ...because there are no updated Zx emulator for Mac with a _virtual keyboard_ and a virtual keyboard for the Zx emulator is a must...

[Alessandro1970]

I was just joking, AtariSt was similar to Amiga, the software and the games were the same, maybe things were better on the Amiga ...
The Spectrum Zx although it had more memory available for basic and 3 Mhz for the faster Zilog Z80 processor, I don't think it was better than the commodore 64 both for the graphics and above all for the audio.
Comparing two isometric games where the Zx had some extra cards certainly does not shake the C64, let alone the other aspects:

[Alessandro1970]

...!
Barbarian Psygnosis Amiga:

Barbarian Psygnosis Atari ST:

[Alessandro1970]

Post scriptum:

My A2000 is always under the surgeon's knife ...

If it should be resurrected ... then and only then will I start the ACME bleaching method

[PakkunKinoppi]

The Sinclair "Zx Spectrum +" was wonderful, I had it before I bought the Amiga and it had a nice basic. Maybe a VirtualZx for Mac Os !!!

[mortinus]

Hi #Pakkun
There is this Zx emulator for MAC: https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux/releases

The pity is that this emulator is OPENGL and non-MAC OS friendly, for the rest, it has everything you need and runs the software very well.

It would require a port for METAL, an interface similar to VirtualC64 and above all the famous virtual keyboard for pre-assigned basic commands as rightly said #Alessandro

[mortinus]

ACME bleaching method ???

[Alessandro1970]

Ehm...
...!
This one

Or this one:

[mithrendal]

I like the savon d'huile de olive...

but I thought this thread was about Retrobritening.... No ?

For the ZXSpectrum we should make a separat Retroblackening thread. No?

Back to dirks test guy the Atari ST:
What impresses me most is that the key 'Alt' is named 'Alternate' here.

Can we also see the innards of this computing beast?

Also we could try to create some mixed liveforms. That is, swapping the motorola 68k from the ST into the A500MMSE and invers. Is this still allowed in germany ? The purpose would be soley for scientist experiments only ...

[dirkwhoffmann]

Can we also see the innards of this computing beast?

OK, let's see how this guy can be opened up...

After removing the plastic cover, it becomes complicated. I need to remove the internal power supply which is firmly connected to the main board. I think I read somewhere that you have to grip the heat-sink with a tong and then apply pure violence...

For lack of alternatives, I go for that approach... 💪

Well, that actually worked. Unfortunately, the heat-sink is pretty bended now 🙄.

Anyway, I can already see the board...

Here we go. Bare naked 😁:

[mithrendal]

Also we could try to create some mixed liveforms. That is, swapping the motorola 68k from the ST into the A500MMSE and invers. Is this still allowed in germany ? The purpose would be soley for scientist experiments only ...

The 68000 chip seems to be soldered to the mainboard. We will see no hybrids then I guess 😢..

[Alessandro1970]

Aren't there any co-processors ?
...only a 68000 ?

[Alessandro1970]

Is the ST Blitter present ?

[dirkwhoffmann]

Nearly everything seems to be soldered, even the cables for the disk drive. If I screw one of the cables, I can trash the whole motherboard 😬.

I'm proud to present the Atari's co-processor: The ST Blitter

On the positive side, this would be easy to emulate, even cycle-accurately 😂.

[Alessandro1970]

On the positive side Ahh, ok!

[KenDFish]

I know we're way off-topic here, but there is a cross-platform ZX Spectrum (and Amstrad/Schneider CPC) equivalent of VAmiga/V64: (https://www.retrovirtualmachine.org/en/).

It shares a lot of similarities with V64/VAmiga in terms of general features - it's gorgeous, has a ton of features and bridges the gap between emulation and the "real thing" :)

[dirkwhoffmann]

Indeed, this emulator is really cool. It even emulates scan lines 😎.

Is it an open source project? I've never heard about it.

This however reminds me on the girl in "Poltergeist I" 😬:

[Alessandro1970]

...mmmm
No virtual keyboard !!!
How can you find those Spectrum pre-assigned keys ?

[Alessandro1970]

...ten minutes to digit LOAD "" ....
There are tons of keyboard and an emulator without the virtual keyboard can be used only for playing some games... Spectrum + keyboard is different form the ZX48 one... ...it is a chaos !

The Amstradt CPC was similar to the ZX ?

[dirkwhoffmann]

May I ask a stupid question please?

What is this???

Is "The Operating System" really supposed to be the counterpart to the Workbench? As far as I can see there are no useful options besides "About". I don't find a command interpreter like the CLI, I don't find a way to edit a file (no editor???). So, if I can't type in a command and if I cannot even modify a text file, what is it that I can do with an Atari ST???

And why is it green as mould? 😳

[Alessandro1970]

That is the GEM ...that is the ST ahahhahah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1b9kUP0WtI

[Alessandro1970]

The retrovirtualmachine is not open source, it is donationware

[mithrendal]

Wait I know... This is the wimbledon grass court. What is missing are the net and the tennis players.
Maybe still wait a moment and the tennis players will come in from the sides ... no ?

Edit: this dan wood (amiga influencer on YouTube) video explains the ST (hardware software os gotek). https://youtu.be/lbW5ovQtWh8

[dirkwhoffmann]

Atari plastic seems to respond better to the Retrobright process than the stuff Commodore was using:

I guess, I should do the lower part, too 🤔. On the other hand, nobody else has a two-coloured Atari mouse I think.

[Alessandro1970]

My friends, not ready yet but from the repairing centre:

new battery:

...recap, this is my A2000:

[dirkwhoffmann]

Wow, it's back and it seems to work 🥳. And you've got the DiagRom installed which is a very good idea. I hope all the tests will go through.

I'm curious. What is that second board? Another treasure 😍?

I hope the second board is not an Atari. The ST is the most unsuitable device for left-handers that I've ever seen 😖. The mouse has to be plugged in at the bottom and the cable is too short to put the mouse on the left side of the computer. Atari, what did you think when you designed that piece of 🤢?

[Alessandro1970]

My A2000 is far from me.
Those photos are taken from the repairing center, that test is done before recap.
Tomorrow they will recap my A2000

[dirkwhoffmann]

Those photos are taken from the repairing center. Tomorrow they will recap my A2000

Oh, I see, the big surgery is tomorrow 😬. I wish your A2000 all the best.

[mithrendal]

I opened the A1000 to check the capacitors. No leakage visible. BTW I cleaned it a bit from 30 years old dust 😷. As I know now his exact birthday I will have to schedule a reminder into the calendar 🤓.

[dirkwhoffmann]

Looks great! Like a real computer 🤩.

I will have to schedule a reminder into the calendar

Yes, definitely. Also, you need to buy it a birthday gift every year. I could imagine that a Gotek drive is on the very top of it's wish list 🥳. It might be hard to get it installed in the A1000 though. I am unsure if there are special adapters as there are for the A500.

BTW, the Gotek would fit just perfectly in Alessandro's A2000. BTW, did it survive the surgery 😬?

[Alessandro1970]

...arrived just yesterday afternoon

[Alessandro1970]

As soon as possible I will assemble it

gotek fit? It is tiny little, some empty spaces remain around the disk drive bay

Do you know any gotek 3,5 “. That fit all the bay ?

[dirkwhoffmann]

...arrived just yesterday afternoon

Looks like brand new 👍. Great!

Do you know any gotek 3,5 “.

According to this video, the Gotek drive is indeed a little too small. But it still looks good though:

https://www.everythingamiga.com/2017/01/gotek-floppy-disk-drive-emulator.html

Regarding the firmware, you have two options:

1. Buy a standard Gotek (cheaper) and flash the Amiga patches manually.
2. Buy a Gotek that has already been flashed (more expensive, but easier).

I went for the second option (most pre-flashed versions are sold on eBay), because I didn't want to make myself familiar with all the flashing details. In that case, you can just replace the original drive by the Gotek and it will work (you might have to set a jumper to tell the Gotek if it replaces df0: or df1:).

[mithrendal]

I have just read that the gotek for the A1000 is not such an easy going thing for 🎂Birthday present... You basicaly have to select a kickstart.adf in 001 and turn on the Amiga 1000. The problem here is that the selector.adf disk itself (which is on 000) does require already a loaded kickstart. So we have in the case of the A1000 a "hen or egg" problem, or to say it with the words of a computer scientist this is a "deadlock" 🐞. Or in other words ....how can one select the Kickrom.adf in 001 when the selector program in selector.adf already needs it to be loaded ?

[mithrendal]

Don't tell me that this is no art ! 😎

What a beauty Denise is, isn't she?

[dirkwhoffmann]

selector.adf

Hmm, I have never seen a selector.adf on my memory stick. I use my Goteks in "direct mode" (is it called that way? Don't know, maybe "simple mode" or something like that) and only have files DskA0000.adf, DskA0001.adf etc. on the stick. The A0000.adf is the Workbench. I could image that you could use DskA000.adf for the Kickstart (which loads when you turn the computer on). After the Kickstart has been loaded, you should be able to switch to DskA0001.adf (via the Gotek buttons) and load the WB. But to be honest, I am the opposite of an Gotek expert. It's poorly documented and I was happy once I figured out how to use the "direct mode" or "simple mode" thing (I don't need the startup menu configuration which surely requires a Kickstart to be in place).

[dirkwhoffmann]

What a beauty Denise is, isn't she?

🥰 What a hottie with her blonde painted pins.

[Alessandro1970]

...the gotek is not yet arrived!
But the multi kickstart ...yes

[Alessandro1970]

...someone told me to switch mc68000p8 with a mc68010p10 because it is faster and has more instructions (support for quit with whload games), it is a cpu pin compatible that works at the same clock speed.

[mithrendal]

yes it is pin compatible. I wanted to have one when I was a kid. Costs about 70 german marks then. In the end I did not buy it. It was only a little bit faster due to some internal caching as I remember ... How much is it today ? ... What I needed more back then was memory. I had only 512k, but I did not buy that either. Or a harddrive... Had your 2000 a harddrive ?

Your ROM switcher looks cool ! 😎

[dirkwhoffmann]

Your ROM switcher looks cool ! 😎

Indeed. Switching is now just as easy as it is in emulators.

What I needed more back then was memory. I had only 512k

🤭 I had 1 MB in my A500 soon after I bought it, because a lot of stuff was not running with just 512k.

Or a harddrive...

Considering the price tag back in the days, I didn't spend a single though on buying one 😕.

I remember that I desperately wanted to have a copy of the HRM, but Commodore sold there reference books at incredible hight price. My parents said no, they won't spend so much money on just paper. Whenever I recall that story to myself, it appears to me more and more surreal. A kid that begs their parent to buy him a book 😂.

...someone told me to switch mc68000p8 with a mc68010p10 because it is faster

Don't you risk to loose compatibility with the 68000? Or is there a switchable piggybacked version?

[Alessandro1970]

Hard disk ...just arrived from a friend’s garage:

[Alessandro1970]

...there was also this:

[Alessandro1970]

...and this ...all free!

I do not know if these are in working condition! No gotek arrived ...cannot loadwb

[dirkwhoffmann]

Is it this one?

[dirkwhoffmann]

The 68040 runs at 25 MHz. This is insane 😂.

[Alessandro1970]

Yes, it is the fusion at 25mhz

[Alessandro1970]

Gotek is not yet arrived... so just for fun I have rised memory 8kb more (9 euro) of my old Canon X-07

[dirkwhoffmann]

Oups, what's that??? A calculator? A computer? 🤔 It's definitely not a (Canon) printer.

Gotek is not yet arrived

Still waiting? What are our parcel services doing all day? Somebody with a bike could deliver it to Italy in that time. Seems like the EU is approaching second-world status at a rapid pace 😕.

[Alessandro1970]

Great 4 lines basic with a beeper inside...🤪

[Alessandro1970]

Not yet the gotek!
But from Germany has arrived the p12:

Oh yes the clock will be automatically set at 7mhz like the mc68000p8 ...but it is a new one and the older one had a damaged pin after the recap and washing...