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According to lft, there are three approaches for creating music on the Atari VCS
- Stick to the very few matching notes, or
- Alternate quickly between the very few matching notes, or
- Ignore the problem.
Given that creating music on the Atari VCS nowadays also requires coding skills, the solution is often option 3. But a few weeks ago, a miracle occurred, and suddenly even two trackers for the Atari VCS were released.
- TIATracker by Kylearan - a Qt-based desktop program that comes with a powerful own player that supports self-defined instruments and envelopes
- Slocum Tracker by igorski81 - a browser-based web application that creates output for the most widely used Paul Slocum Sequencer Kit
You can also find more VCS trackers on the battleofthebits.org site. Both new trackers are very interesting and promising projects and are already usable. So get your hands on them, provide feedback to the authors, and get something done for Sillyventure. In addition, Kylearan held an excellent seminar about music and trackers for the VCS at Revision:
"The state of the Atari VCS 2600 music scene is very underdeveloped, despite the fact that it is one of the oldest platforms actively used in the demoscene. In addition to the severe and weird limitations of the hardware itself, there's also a dramatic shortage of tools accessible to musicians. As a consequence, music is hard to come by for a coder, and musical styles are often more uniform and limited than they need to be. In an attempt to improve this situation, we present TIATracker: A new sound routine for the VCS and an accompanying tracker for the PC which tries to support both musicians and coders in dealing with the specific limitations of the platform. This talk will start with a brief recap of the audio capabilities of the VCS. Then, an overview of existing audio routines and tools, both publicly available and proprietary, is provided. This is followed by a discussion and some statistics about how all this might have influenced the culture and quality of music on the VCS. Finally, TIATracker is introduced. It brings ADSR envelopes, variable pattern lengths individual to each channel, funktempo and more to the VCS, and its PC user interface targets non-coder, non-VCS musicians with tools like pitch guides, combined waveform instruments and overlay percussions."
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The Atari 2600 Video Computer System (VCS) is unique and exciting. This tutorial aims to show interested people the history of the Atari 2600, explain the hardware design decisions, and how they impacted the way of programming - making programming the Atari 2600 a unique experience and challenge. And I show and explain examples that illustrate how programmers adopted the machine's limitations and strengths to create better graphics over 30 years. The following picture from The Argyle Sweater nicely brings it to the point. Thanks a lot to Scott Hilburn for the permission to use it.
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At Revision in April 2015, Heaven gave me his Atari 130 XE and his Atari 65 XE with VBXE 2.0 installed. The first one had broken down at the party. The second one has a VBXE built-in but not an adapter cable to connect it to a TV. While the Atari 130 XE worked fine after cleaning and re-soldering, the VBXE machine had an Atari ST monitor connector and a complex switch built in. I sat down for hours and traced the different signals through the wires, buttons, and connectors. I found that the way the wiring was, the connector could simultaneously serve as FBAS-SCART and RGB- SCART, depending on the switch position. But I didn't have a proper plug for the connector, so I had to order one. I had to learn that there are different types of 8-pin DIN plug with slightly different pin arrangement. None fully matches the Atari ST monitor connector.
Months went by, and finally, I got a working plug. Still, I was frightened by the thought of soldering SCART cables with 21 pins into the damn tiny DIN plug, not knowing where color meant what and which pin is actually which (plug vs. connector, front-view vs. rear-view, ST plug vs. VBXE pinout, before the switch vs. after the button....). And guess what: How right I was.
Today I was in the mood and decided to give it a try. After Three hours of soldering, measuring, desoldering, measuring, re-soldering, and dozens of mapping lists and diagrams, I finally made it. And then, when the cable was complete, I tested it. And it didn't work at all with my SABA CRT. So I started measuring, desoldering, and re-soldering and checked the diagrams repeatedly. Then I tried the 2nd CRT (Goldstar). It gave a very dark b/w picture and no VBXE picture at all. The 3rd CRT (Grundig) showed the same result. Meanwhile, I was 100% sure that the wiring was OK.
CRT number 4 (Schneider) then gave a clear picture with greyscales - in red. IN RED ?!?! Back to the board, did I swap luma with red - no, I'm not that stupid. Phew, no, I'm not. The 5th CRT (Sony Triniton) presented a distorted picture as it didn't detect that the input was on RGB, not FBAS. Finally, I grabbed my (almost) last available CRT: The Phillips that had just left my living room before Xmas. I plugged it in, and WHOA - it f-cking worked. It just worked and looked perfect. The cable had been correct from the start, but it took 2 hours to find the TV that could handle RGB via SCART. Priceless. Merry Christmas, Heaven, you'll get your present soon! Here's what the CRT battlefield looked like.
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I finally escaped the real-life daily job business and had a great week with the sun, beach, and DIS6502. Don't you believe that? Check the commits. Again, much of the monolithic plain C has been transformed into readable classes with clear interfaces and dependencies. Now I understand the code well enough to implement the new load/save for the new workspace structure.
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Features:
- The download now contains a "TheCartStudio.exe" for Windows users. This wrapper program has proper icons, a version and location test for the Java Runtime, and the required Java parameters to ensure enough heap memory is available.
- The download now also contains a "TheCartStudio.sh" for Linux users. This script provides Java with the required parameters to ensure enough heap memory is available.
- The download now also contains a "TheCartStudio.app" for Mac OS X users. This one is still very experimental and is not yet tested as I don't own a Mac OS X machine. But I wanted to get this version out now.
- Online help has been revised. New sections and diagrams now explain the workflow and creating and flashing workbooks. Also, the different options to add files directly or via Maxflash Studio and MegaCart Studio are now described.
- The selected line in the extended menu now uses black text and a more constant, darker flashing. This reduces bending and artifacts on CRT TV.
Fixes:
- Player missile graphics of the extended menu are now disabled correctly before an entry is started. That was an issue, for example, with Flop Magazine 56 Intro.
- An exception that occurred with ATR files that do neither have a boot manager menu nor are DOS 2.5 disks is fixed.
- New Atari software version 2014-04-07 included. It includes a fix for the CAR or MyPicoDOS when loading OSS modules.
- The "-createSampleFiles" command now correctly creates separate folders "ROM-Correct", "ROM-Size-Too-Small", "ROM-Size-Too-Large".
- Console output for error messages is now routed to "System.err", so the command line can adequately distinguish between information and error messages.