You did get those good letters, and looking back, got D: as well. Nice!! I had heard in the past that the SIO was kind of a precursor to the USB, but never realized they shared the same developer. It's pretty amazing what the SIO could really do and how much it made life easy for Atari 8-bit owners...
and so what uranus is a star - Rob
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Kruger
I did a little dive into the SIO and Joe Decuir was the smart guy at Atari. He said that in retrospect, he wanted a built in floppy drive on the 800 that was tied directly to the bus. The neat thing about the SIO, it was designed to be synchronous with a DATA IN/OUT clock. Although, that was never used and communication was done asynchronously and timing controlled by POKEY. Another interesting tidbit was that they capped communication speed to 19,200 bit/s even though they could go much faster. Supposedly speeds of 72,000 bit/s were achievable. The reason for capping at 19.2k was the analyzer equipment the engineer's at Atari were using couldn't handles speeds above 19.2k. That made me giggle...
I truly cannot imagine the 8-bit handling a data speed faster than 19.2 bps. That is totally mind boggling!!! Then compare that to the C64 1541 drive transferring data around 3200 bps...
and so what uranus is a star - Rob
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Kruger
That was the first thing that came to mind as well. The slow as molasses in January disk drive. It also reminded me of their modem speed as well. I think it could barely handle 9600 baud...
It's kinda funny that we never had a C64 and yet the speed of that drive popped right in mind when talking about how fast the SIO could theoretically run. My experience came from a friend that had one and waiting for games to load was painful. And reality it didn't need to be either, it was slow for backwards compatibility. But they could have easily left the compatibility in there and just added a mode that allowed modern hardware to detect, switch and zoom...
and so what uranus is a star - Rob
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Kruger
When I was in high school, our shop class had gotten a C64 and disk drive. And yeah, that thing was painfully slow. Luckily, we were using the C64 just to call BBS'. The shop instructor for the other side where the freshmen or sophomores were didn't like us using it and would come over and try and assert his authority. We would just look at him and continue doing what we were. He would storm off to our shop instructor and then storm back to his side of the shop. Dingus.
I still have my modded XF551 with the 3.5" floppy mechanism...
Z is for Zork... (you're gonna get eaten by a grue)
SpartaDOS was a beast. It pretty much handled whatever you threw at it. 256kB ramdisk, sure. 1MB ramdisk, why not. 16MB hard drive partition, bring it. 16kB ramdisk, sure, we won't discriminate. Floppy disk double-density and double-sided, easy-peasy. Some weird unconventionally formatted floppy, hmm... let's see, yup.
Z was most definitely for Zork. I could only think of two options and the other was Zaxxon. And knowing you, I could read your mind, you know.... I knew what one you were going to run with....
Atari Dos was fine, it did what was needed and did it pretty well, until someone gave me a copy of MyDos. I think that was the one that didn't have to offload memory to load in the menu? But SpartaDos, that was a whole new beast, no menu but super power because anything not built in could be built as a utility. And like you mentioned, the folks at ICD were just brains and built it to handle pretty much whatever hardware you could throw at it...
I learned about the neutral zone from the book Racing the Beam. But I am definitely going to put that link aside and watch it when I have a few minutes to focus. Like probably lunchtime...
and so what uranus is a star - Rob
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Kruger
-1 is for the Negative Flag... (there, now you can start at 0)
I think we both were playing a little of the Princess Bride battle of wits. Because I thought Zaxxon would be the one as it was more of an arcade game but it wasn't made by Atari. Neither was Zork. But Zork is more iconic as a game and not just for the platform it was played on. But which one exemplified the Atari? Well, Zaxxon I thought would, but then there was the pressure to pick the correct Z. And by correct, the one you were thinking of. And since we both have brought up more references to Zork than to Zaxxon, I had to choose Zork.
I haven't read Racing The Beam. It'll be on my list of books to pick up sometime soon. That and this...
Oooooohhhhh, I found the next book that I wanna get. Thank you!!! The problem with these is I need more coffee tables. I probably have enough coffee table books to take care of the furniture store near me. It's a good thing book shelves have adjustable heights, too...
and so what uranus is a star - Rob
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Kruger
The TV stand I've been working on went to shit when I was putting on the poly top coat to protect the painted finish. And that painted finish was done with just a paint brush and roller if you can believe that. It was absolutely perfect. Then applying the poly (making sure to thin it out to an almost water viscosity to make sure it took longer to dry and level itself better) still ended up with brush marks that wouldn't come out. I sanded the pieces down 3 times and tried. Each attempt getting progressively worse. So now I'm looking to start all over...
It's just so cool that you build your own custom furniture. But in lieu of trying to get the finish perfect, why not try going "farmhouse" and scuff it purposefully. Between that and taking a chain to it and a few other implements of torture to put dents into it, you wont notice the finish has a few brush strokes. You know, kind of like buying jeans that are already worn out and have rips in them...
and so what uranus is a star - Rob
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Kruger
That'll be a hard nope on my end. That faux distressed, beat-up, dingy, looks like you found it on the corner of a road after being dragged behind the pickup truck it fell out of, look is a trend I cannot get behind. That and those sliding barn doors just ruffle my feathers. I've put work and effort into my projects and I want the end results to reflect that. It's like an artist that paints intricate pieces of work and deciding that it'd be better to just toss a bucket of paint on the canvas. The closest I could ever get to that distressed look is rough cut wood used to make rustic cabin-esque furniture...
Ok, I'm with you on the faux distressed look. But sliding barn doors don't skeeve me like they do you. While I don't have any in this house, it wouldn't bother me. But what does bother me is "pop." You don't hear it as much anymore but ten years ago, everything popped. Pop this and that pops, it was worse than nails on a chalkboard. I dunno why but I really despised that term...
and so what uranus is a star - Rob
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Kruger
