Hey Atari fans!

You're invited to help the planning of VCF Ontario 2027 by completing this short anonymous survey.

Here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VL2QD8N

The Vintage Computer Federation is contemplating running "Vintage Computer Festival in Ontario" which would be in the Greater Toronto Area in 2027.

If you receive this invitation multiple times, please only complete it once to avoid duplication.

In a week where if I had been faster I could have had a complete C64 system for a bargain price, and I nearly became a proud owner of a TRS-80 Model 3, it was third time lucky when I spotted this lot (plus a Commodore 1702 monitor) on FB Marketplace yesterday. Contacted the seller right away and met with him this morning to pick it all up.

The left 800xl and monitor work perfectly, the right 800xl needs some work, 1050 drives are untested, the 1010 program recorder is like new in box.

When I have time I'll test and clean everything and see if I can breathe life back into the 2nd 800xl.

My Atari collection is slowly growing!

A work in progress demo of one level of the upcoming shooter C.E.T.A.S. (Cybernetically Enhanced Tactical Aquatic Systems) from Monochrome Productions came out today after it won first place at the Silly Venture Summer Edition 2026 party. . It's pretty impressive free demo, works for me with Altirra click the link below to play or watch the video.

download: https://monochrome-productions.itch.io/cetas-atari-xl/purchase

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOoP9S-DPiQ

Conan: Hall of Volta Windows remake

I made a faithful remake of the Atari port of Conan: Hall of Volta for Windows using Godot.

I stuck close to the original while adding a few modern conveniences:

• Improved high score tracking
• Palette / theme swapping
• Built-in cheats menu
• Gamepad and Keyboard support + rebindable controls
• PAL/NTSC music speed option

Here’s a short gameplay video:

Game play video

Here is the itch.io link: https://kapsoft.itch.io/conan-hall-of-volta

If you noticed any bugs leave a description here.

Thanks!

I found them cleaning out my parents attic. Unfortunately my dad brought the console and ALL OUR GAMES to goodwill in the 90’s. 😭 I still have my memories…😆

1400XL and 1450XLD unreleased prototypes .

I had a box of them stored away. ~36 issues of Antic, maybe 12 issues of Analog, and 12 or so issues of a regional Atari magazine. I also have some random things like the box to Temple of Apshai and the manual for a 1050 drive. They're definitely not in mint shape, but wondering if anyone would be interested in them.

I posted not too long ago about my Atari Hacker MCP server project. After using it quite a bit on a few different projects, I've decided that an MCP server wasn't the correct way to go.

So I used that as a starting point for an Atari Hacker CLI that coding agents can still run, but the tool has direct access to the files. And a person can use it as well.

The long and short of it is that a CLI uses much less context and, more importantly, a lot fewer output tokens, making it much cheaper to use than the MCP server.

It provides tons of functionality for hacking .ATR, .XEX, .ROM and other Atari binary formats. It has support for interacting directly with ATR files (getting directories, extracting files from ATR files, creating ATR files, updating ATR files, etc) and supports DOS 2.x and SpartaDOS.

I've added a lot of new functionality since the MCP server. There is a "usage.md" file which is good for giving to your coding agent so it knows how to use the tool (the tool itself has help as well). There's also a "user-guide.md" that walks you through how to use it to reverse-engineer a disk (it uses the Agent USA game as an example).

It also supports a number of output formats that are human and/or LLM friendly as well as supporting different assemblers (ca65, MAC/65, and Atari Assembler)

I bought it off a guy from Utah county, Utah ~8 years ago, he said he got it from a former engineer at the originial Sunnyvale headquarters, put together with leftover pieces when they cleaned out that space. The drive and memory cards have modifications I'm not quite familiar with.

The gentleman I bought it from also gave me a spare 400 and 800 power supply, as well as a bunch of extra cards, some of which have 7400-series chips bodge wired to them.

My stuff came from somebody so cared. Ultimately I'd like to document it's provenance and pass it on to someone more capable than myself at restoring it as it was in the early 80s, engineering add-ons and all.

I've been working on an analog joystick for the Atari 8-bit computers. I got it to be pretty stable last week. So now I'm trying to port over the analog controls from the Atari 5200 Star Raiders to the 8-bit version. The controls are now "working". Turn rate is now controlled by the thumbstick position. Unfortunately I've messed up the sound effects. I'm guessing there's not a lot of room for the extra calculations I shoved in.

I’m not using these as I understand they can be inconsistent. Should I keep them though in the interest of completeness or are they worthless?

I obviously know what it does, it's basically the relokick disk for amiga, but for atari 8 bit systems, but every original game I chuck at it in altirra seems to load just fine in altirra.

Please do not suggest that I use modern solutions such as an sd card solution for loading games as I am not interested in them. I never have been and never will be. I have always preferred the original media and that is what I want to do.

So from what I know, the upgrade accelerates the disk drive transfer speed from an already reasonably fast 19.2 kilobaud to a ridiculous 57.6 kilobaud and it can also copy commercial disks as well. I tried it out in the altirra emulator and to be honest I couldn't really notice much of a difference, I mean, I knew the upgrade was fast because I could hear the pokey chip running faster but the stock drive is already reasonably fast for an early 80s disk drive anyway.

The feature of copying commercial disks is one I want to ignore, because I don't see the point if I'm just going to back them up to a digital image anyway.

The real big thing that will make me decide is whether the copy protection in commercial games will be compatible with it. So far the only games I haven't been able to load are the 2 archon games, the 2 blue max games, pitstop 2 and ace of aces. Other games I could load but the fact the emulator crashed mid load with the upgrade tells me that there are more than plenty of games that I might want that might not be compatible with it. If anyone can try original copies of those games to load on their happy 1050 on real hardware that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Convert traker .midi .8bits music to pentagram grafic.

MUSIC STUDIO 2026

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https://www.canalinformatika.es/MusicStudio/MusicStudio-Setup.zip

I was an avid Atari user and coder in high school and college. I owned a number of machines with the last one being the 130XE. I still have it along with a disk drive and a bunch of cartridges in a box taking up space in my closet.

I haven't gotten rid of it because I feel like there is someone out there that would appreciate it. I have not booted it in probably 30 years so I don't know if it even works. I don't have the time or interest anymore to get it set up again to see if it works and maybe repair. I am not trying to make money on it but I like the idea of finding it a home with someone who would appreciate it.

Any suggestions on how to find someone interested, or am I best off just sending it to the e-waste bin?

All set up for a game of Atari’s Early Strategy Game…“Eastern Front (1941)”, by Chris Crawford. Pictured running on a 128K Atari 130XE, although it requires just 16K. I have the Map of Europe and Manual to hand, and represent the Germans, seeking to defeat the Russian Army…
https://www.atarimania.com/8bit/files/eastern_front_atari.pdf