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Messages - CiH

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16
Other topics / Re: Retro Computer Museum Open Day 2012, Snibston Discovery Museum
« on: 2012.April.11. 23:47:51 »
News just in, I found this just now. It's not by me but it is still good.

YouTube montage of the Snibston event.

The guy that made it stops talking about his bargain purchases at 5 minutes, 25 seconds.

The bit we're all interested in starts at around 8 minutes, 10 seconds :-) I get the feeling the camera spent a little bit longer on the Enterprise than most of the others!

EDIT - I should really watch through the whole video before posting..

Also a very quick glimpse of me in the background around 9 minutes and 24 seconds. I'm the blur with the red t-shirt!

And someone is playing with the Enterprise at 13 minutes, 14 seconds. (Yay!)


17
Other topics / Re: Retro Computer Museum Open Day 2012, Snibston Discovery Museum
« on: 2012.April.11. 23:29:33 »
Quote
I see Snibston is in England, I haven't known it so far. You must be English, too, as I see your English here in your posts.
Really awesome pictures!

Guilty as charged!  :ds_icon_cheesygrin:

Thanks for the nice words. I've been to a couple of these before. This was the first time with an Enterprise being shown though.

There was a very good selection of lesser known 8-bit machines, I saw a Memotech MTX and Camputers Lynx both running games. Things I never saw back in the day. Then there was the hilariously thinly renamed to avoid legal action game "Jet Set Billy" on the Colour Genie. Not to mention the Acorn Atom and Enterprise, and of course a bunch of better known Sinclair hardware, Commodore stuff and Amstrad CPC's.

Oh and there were some rare consoles, for the console fans.

And next time, Even if I don't bring my machine along, I will be tempted to bring the Laptop with some different games to try out, now I've figured out tape loading from the emulator.

18
Other topics / Re: Retro Computer Museum Open Day 2012, Snibston Discovery Museum
« on: 2012.April.10. 22:27:43 »
Glad you liked :-)

Refresh your browser to make sure that the fully edited version is posted.

You may have noticed that the top for the joystick was missing. This confused a couple of guys who tried the machine, who thought this was an intentional (poor design) omission by the manufacturer.  :mrgreen:

If I'm putting one on display, it's with the joystick adapter and a suitable joystick plugged in, with a game which uses it.

19
Other topics / Retro Computer Museum Open Day 2012, Snibston Discovery Museum
« on: 2012.April.10. 22:13:45 »
Here's a tiny mini-gallery of the Retro Computer Museum (RCM) Open day at the Snibston Discovery Museum, 8th April 2012.

I didn't get to bring one of my own Enterprises to this event, as issues closer to home stopped me organising anything. However, someone else with an Enterprise 128 did allow the museum to borrow his for the weekend.

7428-0

This is the Enterprise 128 in question. The 'pack in game' on show was Cybernoid, the Amstrad conversion, which was a reasonable demo of the machine. Loading was done from an .MP3 of the tape file on an iPod Nano.

7430-1

A sideways view. The machine next to it is an Acorn Atom, another one of Dave Toop's projects, a much earlier and even rarer machine. It was hosting a very mean and vicious version of Space Invaders!

7432-2

An overall view of the main gallery area, nearest is a Vic 20. In the background, a home-made MAME cabinet can be seen.


20
Other topics / Re: New on here, tape image loading questions for real hardware
« on: 2012.April.04. 17:36:34 »
Quote
This is not an issue until there are actual dropouts in the audio, which result in a CRC error (the EXOS verifies tape data transfers with a 16-bit CRC). If necessary, you can increase "Latency" in the sound settings to prevent buffer underruns.

The latency tweak seems to have vastly improved the success rate with EP128, I've fondly revisited Starstrike 3D and Sorcery out of the classic games on my original hardware and crc errors have stopped, I'm a lot more confident with this process now  :cool:

21
Other topics / Re: New on here, tape image loading questions for real hardware
« on: 2012.April.04. 15:05:08 »
Thanks for all the info guys, great stuff.

Quote
There are another TAP image collection, which can be loaded into EP128EMU2, and during real time loading it can be loaded into real EP, if you have problems with loading them to EP, then I think the volume is low.
TAP images

So tape files should be able to load into a real machine in real time with the emulator? Interesting. That was the first thing that I tried with the new tape file collection linked to, but with very little success.

Apart from volume levels, I think there are two other possible issues which might detrimentally affect matters.

1. Emulator speed, EP128 is generally at 100%, sometimes goes slightly over, sometimes dips below 100% speed. Could this cause small errors in the tape signal noise and crc cassette errors?  My laptop is a few years old, but not that slow.

2. Quality of the tape audio lead. I'm using a mono lead, testing the volume (through the Mac sound output) produces a clicking or scratching noise if the volume is too high. This issue has been reproduced across a very old lead and a new replacement lead. This issue does not occur on the headphones I normally use. Are stereo cassette leads a better option? (I've also moved the sound balance over to the left hand side which increases the channel volume to give a slight improvement.)

It's not been a complete failure, I have had some successes with EPTE so have managed to get some of the classic games to run, but it has been tricky at times. Any further information or suggestions would be great.

Chris.

22
Other topics / New on here, tape image loading questions for real hardware
« on: 2012.April.04. 00:13:29 »
Hi there lovely people,

I'm dropping a line as I've stopped lurking and decided to ask to take part in this forum. I do have an interest in this interesting hardware. Indeed I was one of those rare original UK Enterprise 64 owners, back in the day, having rediscovered there is still a community some time ago, and very very slowly getting around to taking a slightly more active part.

 I was responsible for writing the following article at http://alive.atari.org/alive12/ent64.php which neatly details my early history on the Enterprise 64. If you look really hard, there was even an article by me in issue 9 of the Private Enterprise magazine!

I have fond memories of this machine, because of the all-round coolness, and well everyone with taste and intelligence has got to have some underdog to love in their life  :mrgreen: The Enterprise was the nearest hardware platform to which I came to having any sort of reasonable programming or coding experiences. (Nothing too stunning to shout about, before you get too hopeful). My other minority computing interests are the Atari ST/Falcon family and the demoscene respectively.  If anyone has any questions on these areas, feel free to ask, at the very least I can steer you in the right direction if I can't help directly.

I am intending to do 'something' with the Enterprise, starting at a low level and then see what happens. No promises or timescales, but I am mulling one or two ideas in my head.

For now, I have some queries about tape images and their usage with real hardware, so here goes...

1. I now have real hardware (Enterprise 64 and 128) which is great, and I'm looking for tape images and similar. The best success has been with the EPTE player. Are there any tips and tricks for getting more reliable and consistent loading from that player and audio files, sound settings for PC soundcards etc? I downloaded EPTE and a few TAP images a long time ago, but it seems the archives have disappeared off the internet now?

2. Related to this, are the more 'modern' tape images used with the EP128emu not compatible with loading into a real machine? I get lots of errors there.

(Mr Prise, in the course of registering me for this board has advised of the alternative tape image file loader 'TAPir' which I will give a try shortly.)

3. Are there any .WAV files, TAP or TFX images of some of the more graphically interesting or 'modern' Enterprise games out there? I am thinking of taking my hardware to a retro computing museum open day and would like to show off something that isn't obviously a ZX Spectrum port (with all due respect to the ZX Spectrum of course!)

4. A totally frivolous question which deviates from the topic above. How about adding this http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=58887 to the list of Amstrad conversions ;-) - They are thinking of developing the engine into a full game. Also please add the new Amstrad versions of R-Type and Bubble Bobble to the list of neat things to do sometime!

23
Maintenance / Re: Interfaces - IDE, EPROM, ETHERNET
« on: 2012.April.03. 23:58:42 »
I'm new here, but I have got a real E128 and E64.

I like the sound of new hardware. Not too sure if I want a box that does everything, at least not just yet, however there is one definite item on my 'wants' list for the Enterprise.

Disk interfaces are very rare and expensive on Ebay when they do go on sale, has anyone thought of something like this http://torlus.com/floppy/ for the Enterprise? I guess there would be two levels of needed hardware, one for those people already with floppy disk interfaces, and something else for those of us currently without, which needs to implement the interface as well.

I also have a long term interest in the Atari ST family, and I've got one of these which works rather well with SD-card storage - http://joo.kie.sk/ultrasatan/

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