The Obligatory 'Introduce Yourself Thread'...

[nativ]

nativ - there was an ST/e version being built, yes. In fact it was the first version. The idea was to let you build truecolour images from layer patches and to render out the changes incrementally using Photochrome. However it was put on the shelf when the Falcon version was started - the Falcon one being a bit more animation oriented. I also wanted to use the DSP a lot more for multiframe image processing but we had to get V1 of the product out before too much time went by.

Sourcecode for Falcon version - yes. For early ST/e version... good question - I had completely forgotten it existed. I'll make a point of trying to find it. Chances are it was backed up onto floppy though, and most of those are now unreadable.

There was a utility for recovering Atari floppy disks recently (IBM PC) you could try with that or try making a duplicate with Fastcopy ?

What were the feature differences between v1 & v2 of Apex? I think BSS Cortex/? website closed before I managed to buy a copy of v2.

[Moulinaie]

Hi everyone.

Doug here. I was pretty active (apps, demos, hardware) on the Atari platform in the 90's - and then went offworld for a hefty span... But I dusted off my old machines recently and getting back into it. Hoping to do some new stuff too, for fun of course.

Hi Doug !!

If I remember well, you helped me a lot in M_Player bringing me the fastest routine to convert planes to bytes in both directions. Then the TT version with no graphic card was useable.
I also modified the routine to use it in MP_STE to convert nibbles to 4 planes.

Welcome back,

Guillaume.

[dml]

Hi Guillaume! Yes I remember your great M_Player. Nice to see you and others here I recognize

[Moulinaie]

Hi Guillaume! Yes I remember your great M_Player. Nice to see you and others here I recognize

Your name still appears in the source code!
The routines are named doug_256 and doug_16..!!

Guillaume.

[calimero]

like great reunion !!

Here are pictures for Doug idea for Doom-like unique game that I made... (not sure if TGA will show EDIT: they wont )

and Hi Guillaume, THANKS for GREAT ST player!!!

[DarkLord]

With Doug and Guillaume working together, I fully expect a 30fps, 256 color, full
screen mode, playing all video formats, version of Mplayer soon, all on a bog
standard ST!

Seriously, I thank everyone involved for the outstanding work done to date.

[dml]

There was a utility for recovering Atari floppy disks recently (IBM PC) you could try with that or try making a duplicate with Fastcopy ?

Yeah - I tried that. It's actually pretty good, esp. if you scan the disks a few times from start to end before extracting single files. Spreads the dirt evenly However the floppies were stuck in an attic which had a water tank accident and they have spots of mould. So just putting them in a drive wrecks the drive. I got a couple of spare PC drives to see how many I could recover

What were the feature differences between v1 & v2 of Apex? I think BSS Cortex/? website closed before I managed to buy a copy of v2.

There really was only one 'version' of Apex - I think the 2nd release was some small changes/additions and bugfixes. Details are not very fresh in my memory but I am certain any changes were minor.

V3 was really the second major revision with everything redone from scratch - new fast truecolour windowing system, supporting big displays, hardware graphics acceleration, multiple images streams etc. But it only got as far as a demo. Still got it somewhere. Effectively a glorified desktop and image viewer!

[FedePede04]

There was a utility for recovering Atari floppy disks recently (IBM PC) you could try with that or try making a duplicate with Fastcopy ?

Yeah - I tried that. It's actually pretty good, esp. if you scan the disks a few times from start to end before extracting single files. Spreads the dirt evenly However the floppies were stuck in an attic which had a water tank accident and they have spots of mould. So just putting them in a drive wrecks the drive. I got a couple of spare PC drives to see how many I could recover

Hi i don't know if the disk are to old, but one thing i did back then, was cleaning the disk using isopropyl alcohol, it was a bitch turning the wheel of the disk, but it could be done,
but i don't know when the disk are old, and maybe the mold have soften (crumbling) the surface and ruind the felt. but you could test it, on one that you have saved.

[calimero]

There really was only one 'version' of Apex - I think the 2nd release was some small changes/additions and bugfixes. Details are not very fresh in my memory but I am certain any changes were minor.

V3 was really the second major revision with everything redone from scratch - new fast truecolour windowing system, supporting big displays, hardware graphics acceleration, multiple images streams etc. But it only got as far as a demo. Still got it somewhere. Effectively a glorified desktop and image viewer!

if you find this v3 demo, could you upload it here?

[Mendel]

Hi. I´m Mendel from Finland and I´ve recently agreed to swap one of my Amiga 1200s to an Atari STe with 4MB memory and Satandisk.

I will most likely be almost totally lost in the world of TOS but I´m looking to find everything that makes STe better than Amiga, at least when it comes to gaming. I want to try some of those exclusive games and the STe enchanced games... as well as some of the ST classics. I will probably have many questions when I reveive the STe so therefore I registered here. You´ll certainly hear more from me, looking forward to discussions in this community!

[Thorvald]

Hi, i'm Shawn from California, USA. I bought an Atari STe way back when they were sold at Federated and have enjoyed Atari stuff ever since.

[wongck]

Hi. I´m Mendel from Finland and I´ve recently agreed to swap one of my Amiga 1200s to an Atari STe with 4MB memory and Satandisk.

I will most likely be almost totally lost in the world of TOS but I´m looking to find everything that makes STe better than Amiga, at least when it comes to gaming. I want to try some of those exclusive games and the STe enchanced games... as well as some of the ST classics. I will probably have many questions when I reveive the STe so therefore I registered here. You´ll certainly hear more from me, looking forward to discussions in this community!

welcome, nice of you to swap and have a go at the Atari.
The STE has slightly better graphics and sound hardware as compared to the ST.
You will sure to enjoy the retro games.

[wongck]

Hi, i'm Shawn from California, USA. I bought an Atari STe way back when they were sold at Federated and have enjoyed Atari stuff ever since.

Hi ya, glad you're still enjoying it.

[DarkLord]

Welcome to the group, Shawn and Mendel!

Mendel, a little free advice. Use and enjoy your STe for what it is, a great retro
machine. Don't put so much effort into trying to make it better than any other
computer platform. The STe has enough strengths (and weaknesses) to allow it
to stand on its own, and be very interesing as is. Have fun!

[Anima]

Hello guys,

my name is Sascha, 41 years old, and I am reading this forum for quite a time. You probably know some of my creations for the Atari ST/Falcon.

- Most of these Light demos
- The TurboGIF viewer for the Atari Falcon 030
- The A8E Atari 800 XL Emulator

Recently I fortunately discovered the source codes for many demos or the STE on disks while dusting things off.

I have experimented with the great m68k-atari-mint tools ported by Vincent Rivière (many, many thanks for that) and I am now able to cross develop on the PC for the Ataris. Even DSP code can now be compiled within eclipse in the same project on Linux and Windows. If someone is interested in "cross" compiling DSP code please give me a note so that I can open a new thread about this in the appropriate forum area.

I have converted an old (unreleased) DSP 3D system demo source for the Falcon to the eclipse IDE and it compiles very well. The source is from the time when EKO released their great eko system demo. However, I wish I have more time to do things on the Atari but... you know: private reasons.

It's nice to see that many of well known Atari guys are here in the forum.

Cheers
Sascha

[nativ]

Welcome Sascha!

I remember the cool mod player

Love to hear anything about working on the DSP, and look forward to a possible? release of this old code! EKO Ruled!



/nativ

[dml]

Hi Sascha,

Great to see more and more familiar names here

I'm interested in your thread re: cross-compiling for atari and DSP 56k. I've been trying to set myself up a new dev env with Vincent's m68k cross-gcc package (which is great! already built some of my stuff successfully...) but have also been fiddling with a native env using aranym->hatari through a gemdos share, in order to be able to access old devpac code, BSS debug and the especially the DSP debugger. I'm open to ideas though so it's probably worth having a thread on this to see what people are doing.

cheers.

[wongck]

Welcome Sascha. Hope to see some more of your excellent work.

[BlankVector]

I have experimented with the great m68k-atari-mint tools ported by Vincent Rivière (many, many thanks for that) and I am now able to cross develop on the PC for the Ataris.

Welcome here, Sascha, I'm glad that you enjoy cross-compilation
Looking forward to your next prods!

[CiH]

Hi everyone.

Doug here. I was pretty active (apps, demos, hardware) on the Atari platform in the 90's - and then went offworld for a hefty span... But I dusted off my old machines recently and getting back into it. Hoping to do some new stuff too, for fun of course.

Wowness!

Doug is back in the house, welcome back on board mate!

[BlankVector]

Hello, all.
I remember that I didn't introduce myself here, so let's do it now!

My name is Vincent Rivière. I'm French and I currently live in Paris.
I'm a software engineer, mainly on Windows and Linux platforms. I'm interested in operating systems, low level programming and compilers.

I bought an Atari 520 STe in the early nineties, it was my first computer, and I loved it. I used it for programming and music. I learned hardware and TOS programming quite deeply, but I didn't make any prod. Then I stopped using Atari computers, so my Atari knowledge is limited to ST/STe.

A few years ago, I released GCC 4.x binaries to build Atari software from Windows and Linux (referred as the m68k-atari-mint cross-tools) and I still update them today. This provides a very convenient way to develop Atari software on PC, make tests with emulators (Steem, ARAnyM, Hatari...) then run it on real hardware without trouble.

Later, I joined the ACP team to produce the FireBee. Mainly, I ported the cross-GCC, EmuTOS and FreeMiNT to ColdFire. I also helped debugging the hardware, as much as possible.

Then I became the EmuTOS project administrator, starting from release 0.8.6. I mainly worked on bugfixes and cleanups, EmuTOS for the FireBee and the more recent EmuTOS for Amiga.

Today I'm not really interested in Atari hardware, but there is still some fun to have, mainly with emulators, so let's continue

[calimero]

this introduction thread is awesome!

[noblemaster]

Hi folks,

My name is Christoph Aschwanden. I'm Swiss and I currently live in Tokyo. I wrote some games for my Atari 1024 STE back in the days.

I remember I played some games I greatly enjoyed. The graphics were crude, but tons of fun. I wonder if some of those developers are here in the forums? One of the games was called “Caesar” by Heiko Hartmann, another one "Tauris".

And yes, my dad "Fredi Aschwanden" is the developer of the Medusa, Hades and now the FireBee.

[wongck]

Welcome noblemaster. Your dad is one awesome dude.

[grobda]

Hi all

I've actually posted my intro message in the 'new use 3 posts approved' thread so I went to edit it and of course i cant as its not appeared yet. I'll cut and paste it into this thread once its approved.