This game oozes old school sensibility with modern day presentation. I’m totally sold — throw me your Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder any day!

See:
http://www.grimrock.net/

Peter Clemenza: Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
– and improvised, no less!

The Firebee in a mouthful is a brand new computer based on modern hardware – but is otherwise more or less Atari “ST” compatible. If you’re a fan of retro-computing, an Atari ST (or TT, Mega, STE, Falcon, STacy, ST book, etc) in particular, or just interested in alternative platforms or even a lower end multimedia quiet computer .. this is a very interesting development you’ve been waiting on for quite some time. Formally, the Firebee computer is part of the Atari Coldfire Project (where ‘Coldfire’ is the Motorola processor at the boards heart.)

Notice the resolution; 1680x1024 IIRC

The Firebee itself is a pretty small board; place two paperback novels end to end and hack off half of one of them, and you’ve got an idea how long it is, and how deep it is; it is of course very thin. (or for arcade nutbars, about the size of a Tetris pcboard stretched out.) I brought the board up with only two connections — a DVI monitor with the display above, and a TT030 keyboard; they keyboard itself has a STiK with a non-Atari mouse in it.

The board features many ports for both modern and retro needs; of interest is SD and CF slots for convenient and fast storage; CF implies IDE and yes, theres an IDE pinout here as well for hard drives, as well as the pins for an original Atari hard disk arrangement. USB ports allow for keyboard or mouse or mass storage, but we’ve also got the port for Mega/TT keyboards. Audio ports, serial ports for debugging terminals or modems, ethernet, PS2 keyboard .. I don’t know how the designers crammed all this in without competing on specs, but they did :) (I mean .. ST keyboard, PS2 keyboard, USB keyboard? Obviously someone has worked very hard updating TOS (the basic operating system) to multiplex all these inputs nicely, not to mention including support for ethernet and USB and extended resolutions and so on!)

Firebee from the Atari Coldfire Project

For the ST nutbars out there, is a “POST” boot screen:

Boot screen

I’ve only had a few minutes to play around, but I’ve got my time ahead planned .. need to sort out my development tools and environment — TOS is great to work in, but for multitasking its usually nice to drop into the MiNT environment – a Unix-like environment for TOS computers with a Atari desktop on top; from within MiNT its not hard to get the full gcc toolchain, and really all the Unix shells and tools going (at which time you might wonder why you’re playing with an Atari machine at all, but thats beside the point. Yes you want to run Unix and Linux tools on an Atari, duh.) For old times sake I attempted to run a few versions of GFA Basic to no avail (no surprise, given the firmware is still wildly being developed and a few low level ST assumptions had to be changed for the platform. Well behaved applications may well work from the old days (Calamus!), but applications that misbehave probably do not.)

Once the development toolchain is up, I can work on porting a few of my games over to get used to the feel of the system; my Atari coding skills are a good 20 years out of date. (Yes I’ve done extensive work on emulation of many systems including Atari ST, but writing code _on_ an ST is wildly different than simulating an ST..); I intend to bring over Manticore and BattleJewels..

.. time permitting. Less than two months until the twins arrive!

I run the Ubuntu distribution of Linux on my main head (though as always I tend to run Everything, from FreeBSD to various Linuxen to Windows to OSX) .. its convenient and has easy ways to get codecs set up to watch store bought DVDs. It has a huge community that I ignore, but that means many common issues are a mere google search away. So, yeah, Ubuntu is bloated and giant, but it works well, so all you Arch guys can stop bugging me, kay? ;)

I’ve been putting off the upgrade from 10.04/10.10 to current 11.04 version for fear of Unity, the big new desktop replacement Canonicle thought they’d push down; many people hate it (and the upcoming replacement Gnome and the not as new updated KDE .. like all the major players have gone the Wrong Path?!) so I’ve just not wanted to get involved. Things were working more or less fine. Also, I’ve got one of those issues where I really don’t like when peopel shove things down my throat, so I naturally balked.

I dont’ quite get all the Unity-hate, since Ubuntu has not (yet!) removed the gnome2 type setup — just log in again and set to ‘Ubuntu Classic’, and *poof*, it looks exactly like it did before the 11.04 upgrade. So why the broohaha and downgrade to 10.10? Sillyness.

Now, should they actually remove gnome2 (Ubuntu Classic session), I’ll be annoyed.

(Why the upgrade at all? Because in Ubuntuworld, they tend to not port patches back to non-LTS versions like 10.10 was, so if you want to stay on top of patches without applying every one yourself, you need to stay on current distros, or at least LTS (Long Term Support) ones. And randomly, a couple months ago, I started having lots of subtle oddities with the machine.. some subtle driver update, or some hardware gone flaky, has caused me no end of grief, in very small bits once a day .. enough to be annoying, but not enough to make detection easy. Blast! So.. upgrade time..)

I keep meaning to write some big sprawling thing .. sort of like I did before my daughter was born (about how we were cool once, really, trust me, but being a parent makes you by definition uncool.. I think I said that.. that the act of parenting puts you in a role that after so many years is hard to break out of, but the reverse is true for the growing child..)

Anyway, things have been busy in preparation for the twins; working on the basement, setting up a new guestroom for my mum to stay in, looking at new car options (3 car seats takes up a lot of space in a car..), and important life things for the girl — shes into soccer now, and school starting soon. And with school starting same time as the twins are expected.. all I really hope is ..

She doesn’t think we’re shoving her off to school to make room.

So I’m writing this, since someday she may read it — hey, kiddo, we sweat like mad how the twins may effect you; we’re so close, a little tiny 3 person family unit with two more suddenly going to burst in. And that first month or two will be a doozy! But you remember — we’re going to try like hell to make damned sure you get every piece of attention you deserve.

She’s a good smart sweet kid; an emotional little thing. She’s going to take this hard..

.. but she’s also brave and so sweet, she already talked to the belly; she helps little ones walk in the park and is so nice to her little cousin. Maybe she’ll be ready for this..

Our consolation is, most people go through this and turn out okay, right?

..

Doctor Who is still scary :)

We just found out we’ve got twins coming in a little while; *WOA*

I’ve been meaning to clear our some of the stuff in our ‘junk room’ and do audits of some of my gear; I’ve a number of very large collections of awesome junk, but sometimes you just don’t need so much; but nothing like getting news of twins to kick you into gear .. tick tock, only so many weekends before the big event, and then no free time for a year or two or decade after :) We’ve got bathrooms to finish, tiles to buy and lay down, cribs and highchairs and such to sort out, and who knows, maybe need to switch cars unless we can figure out a way to cram 3 carseats into the one we have now (!)

I’d relatively recently built a new shell server box to replace my existing older one, but hadn’t a lot of motivation to actually do the move.. so I’m running two shell servers right now; might as well get a move on that, and in doign so audit the services I’m running there. With Oracle’s takeover of mysql is it time to convert things to postgres? With so few people using the old BBS I keep running, is it time to shut it down and save myself the trouble? Should I keep this blog going .. do I actualyl have any readers, or is this jut for my own venting and occasional easy place to post reference material? Heck, at the same time could review .. I still host my own email since I don’t like Google reading it for me. I host my own blog, so I own the content and no worries. I host my own services in general.. but really, shoudl you worry, and just use the ‘cloud’ services and be happy, and have a lot less upkeep to do? hmrf. I mean, fighting spam and hosting my own crap is work sometimes and using gmail would be a hell of a lot easier sometimes…….

But I guess I should keep up the bbs; I mean, its been running (with a 6 year hiatus in the middle, sort of like Dr Who) more or less since 1988 or so .. like, nearly 25 years, or operating for say 16 or 17 years, mostly empty in the tail end of course. But its not hard to keep running, it basicly chugs along and runs itself. So, okay, a few people do seem to be using it and it makes me giggle.. and its a museum; so few BBSes are around today, and maybe a half dozen of Atari ones. Gotta wave the flag, I guess?

The blog.. hmm; wordpress is a security nightmare. I could use the official free wordpress service, but I’m ornery that way. Email me skeezix<boing>skeleton.org if you think I shoudl keep it up .. if I have a single reader ;) Otherwise, roll the dice :)

–

I’m selling off a pile of arcade stuff (but by no means the family jewels), and I must admit.. firing up my emu-cabinet (MAMEcab), my JAMMA arcade boards, my MVS Neo Geo games, sorting out which harness adapters I have in what condition, pouring over my original Pacman pcboards .. it does bring back The Lust, that any collector is familiar with. I’m proud of my collection of ancient gadgetry. Not giving it up .. just some, to make back a bit of space, to tidy up a bit, to make a few bucks to help buy some stuff for the coming twins. If we have to buy a new car, be nice to have a few more bucks…

Old Atari gear; I posted a supremely rare device to a few forums, if anyone is interested. An ST Book, one of the first laptops, a gorgeous little beast; if you’re interested, I posted here: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=20662&p=182269#p182269

But I’m keeping my other crazy Atari gear!

Old Role Playing Games / Wargames; I purged a bunch last year, but really, I’ve still got a bunch of this stuff, last looked at again back in the 80s. Time to clear it out, send it to a good home that might use the stuff, or give it one good fondling.

–

So, yeah, time to clear out, be a grown up for once… well, pretend to anyway. Sure, selling off 25 arcade games is a bit of a help in the $$ arena, but I still have 50 more ….

*plays Galaxian*

<edit; I guess .. its easy to look at turning stuff off or selling it, until you give it one last whirl; it was easy to consider turning down the bbs, until I thought I’d just log in and see whats up .. and a few people were they hanging out. *damn* ;)>

Related to my prior posting, here is a brilliant, simple and cheap solution! I was building some shelving into a too-shallow closet and the idea flew into my mind. . its just too obvious, and perfect.

Shoe rack.

You’ve seen them I bet — ‘over the door shoe rack’ is really a sheet with hooks on one end, that hangs on a door; more to point, on the inside of a closet door usually, so its entirely invisible to the normal room, and adds space to an otherwise unused surface. If you’ve got an office or basement door or somesuch, why not just suspend a ’shoe rack’ from it. Free storage, very organized.. it just doesn’t get any better.

I picked up one at Canadian Tire for $8.97 .. there are a number of options, from transparent plastic pockets, to black fabric ones, to fashionable ones. Generally with 20 pockets on it, for allegedly popping shoes into. Say 5 pockets across by 4 rows, or 4 pockets by 5 rows.

Thats 20 little pockets you can shove power cables, chargers or widgemacollits into. For cheap, for free in space terms.

Awesome.

                            []  []      [][][][][][][]
                            []  []    [][]          [][]
                        [][][][][][][][]    [][][][]  []
                            []  []    []  [][][][][]  []
                            [][][]    []  [][][][]  [][]
                        [][][]    [][]    [][][]  []  []
                            []    []    []  []  []  []
                            [][][]    []      [][][]
                          [][]      []  []  []    [][]
                        [][]    [][]                []
                        []    [][][][]  []    [][][][][]
                        []  [][][][]  []    []        []
                        []  [][][]  [][]    []    [][][]
                        []  [][]  []  [][]  []  []    []
                        [][]    []  []  [][][]  []    []
                          [][][][][]        [][][][][]

Anyone whose ever been a ‘computer junkie’ (or a musician :) (or who has upgraded cell phones or shavers) knows about the ‘rats nest’ problem; with pretty much everyone using computers these days, I bet the problem became pretty large for awhile (and less so, now that most people are using laptops in the home.) The problem being that along with computers, over time is the accrued pile of gadgets and parts that come with them.

Hell — ever bought CDs (or games that came on CD?) Thats a heck of a CD tower you need after awhile!

Even for a layman .. you buy a mouse, and it has a good chance it comes with the USB<->PS2-style-port adapter widget in-box. Into the drawer it goes, right? Webcam for skyping, before laptops all came with built in cam?

You buy a larger SD card, and your old SD card.. into the drawer? Or a new camera, and your old CD card into the drawer since your new camera used SD? Cell phone and SD to micro-SD? Spare batteries for your phone, shaver, PSP, Nintendo DS? Lets not even get into parts for cars (fuses? lightbulbs?) since people are pretty hip to that stuff these days — toss ‘em into the in in the garage, or just pay big-$$ to the mechanic.

You buy an original iphone, with the Apple-evil headphone adapter (standard, but recessed -just so- so a normal headphone will not jack in, how nice Steve!) so you need a headphone adapter; or you need a 1/4″, 1/8″ and 1/16″ headphone plug adapter?

The problem I have is that as a nerd, my problem is 10x what others might have. I’ve been doing computer madness since I was a kid, and while I regularly toss out really old stuff, I’m also afflicted by the retro bug; so much old stuff really does have some value and will be used again. (So much stuff will not be and must be given to a good home or binned, lest you become a Hoarder ;) You do not keep 5 mice from machines 15 years dead, but you might want to keep an old Amiga or Atari ST mouse around…… right? Anyway, I collect arcade machines, so have a huge pile of arcade spare parts (joysticks, coindoors, wiring harnesses, replacement buttons for control panels, bulbs for marquees, t-molding to repair the rubberized edges of the cabinets, you name it.) Computer gear from the last 30 years.. check! Mobile development including cellphones, PDAs and experimental gear? Yep, and all the serial console and debug break-out-boards.. thats me! Peripherals and games for long dead equipment like the Atari 2600 or Vectrex? Floppy disk drives for an Atari XEGS or Atari XL? Yeah, _naturally_. Spare RAM (ie: replaced RAM) for laptop, desktop? You do have parts of several PDAs, phones and game systems that never made it to market right? Or iphones/androids without ‘cases’, just bare pcbs lieing around? Or dissected kid-toys just cause? You have an EEPROM burner within arm reach just in case you need to reflash the firmware on your microwave? Some of us have _issues_ man.

Its hard enough to keep track of all the bits and bobs for modern current gear, but my ‘current gear’ (stuff I’m developing for or using right now) is a pretty big pile. I just don’t know how to manage — I’ve got a GPH gp2x Wiz handy along with the more recent Caanoo (no Dingux, managed to stay clear), the Pandora _of course_, a Palm WebOS machine I did a couple ports for, the iphone; I’m still occasionally supporting some of my apps on the PSP and my daughter uses it, so the PSP power cabling has to be handy.

Camera charger/cable; iphone charger/cable; PSP charger for PSP and Pandora; USB charger cable for Caanoo and Wiz; external drive for backups; charger for wifes cellphone.

How do you keep that _really essential_ stuff straight? (for me, I have a little plastic box, and each cable is in a ziploc bag so that at least they do not tangle to each other; can label the ziploc bags in a pinch.)

But with all that gorramned arcade gear, old computer gear, retro gaming gear and ancient old carts, the parts closet ehind me .. how to keep it all organized so its not …

Such a Damned Mess.

Wish I knew.Do you know how to manage all this stuff? (How do knitting people keep track of all their afghans? hmrf!)

Next topic — lets talk Firebee and working on modern Amigas (Amiga X1000), C64s (Commodore 64x), and Atari STs (Firebee). Oh yes, we can use modern tools and hack on retro-gear.

More later (need to play!), but gaming under Linux has really come a long way; sure, we don’t have the moral victories of having native ports of very many big ticket games, but it is sure nice to be able to fire up Starcraft 2 or World of Warcraft without a hitch.

Civilization V has come out today and it ran right out of the box (well, from a Steam online purchase anyway); audio, fullscreen or windowed mode and performing well, today is Civ Linux day!

As time is tight, I’ve chosen Crossover Games (a commercially supported Wine) though I imagine the normal Wine could pull it off; The Crossover folks have been good to the Linux community imho so I don’t mind supporting them whatsoever.

A fresh game, with low details and small windowed mode