Atari 800 XE Laptop

Lester Oats writes "Benjamin J. Heckendorn (of Atari VCSp, NES Micro, & PS2p fame) has been at it again! Summary from his site: "Of all the portable videogame devices I've ever built over the years one system has always been my 'Holy Grail' to make - my 'dream portable' if you will. (Yes, even more so than my Neo Geo arcade machine) And now after a couple years of tinkering it is complete! Without further ado - the Atari 800 XE Laptop!""

Comments

Handy...

[lastchance_000]

I love the error list right by the screen. Windows machines should come with that. Of course, it would need a bigger monitor...

Mirror

[quark007]

Without further adieu, the site crashed! Here is the mirror.

Re:Mirror

[fistfullast33l]

The mirrordot link didn't have any information for me (maybe it's too early?). A nice article with a picture of the thing is located here (coral cache).

Re:Mirror

[jdeluise]

I notice that this is the same site that was reported yesterday on Digg about the portable N64. Interestingly, the site was not brought down by the Digg people.....so.....score 1 for Slashdot!

Best line

[bobdinkel]

From the linked-to page:
Thankfully it hasn't been on Slashdot yet, I'd know as that usually tears my bandwidth a new one.

Poor bastard

coral cache

[Anonymous Coward]

click click

Just in case

[Krast0r]

In case this gets slashdotted, here are the main features (from the website):

Uses (what's left of ;) ) an Atari XE GS (Game System) the last model Atari 800 type computer from 1987.

8" TFT active matrix display

Compact Flash "hard disk drive" utilizing MyDOS 4.53 for maximum drive size of 16 megabytes. Card is removable for swapping.

Built-in NiMH battery pack and charger (uses external plug like a normal laptop) Also battery is removable from base as with most laptops.

Full (Atari 800) sized keyboard

Built-in Player 1 & 2 controls, plus joystick ports. Built-in joypads great for playing Robotron 2084!
bullet

Brushed aluminum and wood grain everywhere! A weird combo style, sure, but I like it!
bullet

Cursor control knob - Allows you to move the cursor around the screen without pressing control+arrow keys. That's awesome if you're an old-school Atari programmer "from the day"
bullet

Slim (compared to an original SIO port) DB25 printer-style port for connecting to disk drives, printers or PC's using an SIO2PC cable.

I have to see, it's looking pretty sweet.

Re:Just in case

[The Lynxpro]

"Slim (compared to an original SIO port) DB25 printer-style port for connecting to disk drives, printers or PC's using an SIO2PC cable."

And let us not forget that the Atari SIO (serial input output) port is the forerunner of USB. The same engineer who created the SIO port is also the same gentleman who created USB for Intel if I am not mistaken. It was a great idea then, as it is today.

Ok..

[MindStalker]

But how did he get it to support Dos or the flash drive????

Re:Ok..

[zakezuke]

Even the 8-bit Ataris supported hard drives with later versions of DOS (I always liked SpartaDOS personally). The flash is just an adapter that makes the CF show up as a standard HD to the Atari. Nothing too terribly fancy there. And it only makes sense that an Atari would support its own DOS ;)

These days you can even get ethernet and an IDE adapter for the things (though not cheaply).

"MyDOS 4.53 for maximum drive size of 16 megabytes"

I had an atari back in the day with a 15gig drive using a scsi to mfm controler... so I imagine with the right hardware anything ide could be supported. I recently saw an "ICD multi-io" with scsi and 1meg sold on ebay for $700ish. While the ram wasn't an expantion it could act as a printbuffer or ramdisk and was powered seperatly so it acted like a small hard drive. That's there and abouts of what they cost new in 1990 or so. Atari dos near as I'm aware never supported anything above and beyond 360k or 720k floppies... the largest drive Atari them selves came out with was 360k drive called an XF-551.

I got the atari when the whole atari dos thing went crazy. You had atari dos 2.0 which supported only 90k floppies, but then they came out with some odd ball enhanced density dos which but shipped with atari dos 3 which wasn't compatable the old disks... not even the discs that shipped with the drive. It had a utility that would convert old disks to the new format... but not back again which was a problem as most disks that were shipped employed copy protection... so atari dos3 had a nice feature to render disks totally unreadable. And the only reason anyone knew this is if they had access to a handy dandy user's group... it's not like the places that sold them actually were able to support them.

Eventaully I was able to get the newer dos 2.5 which was compatable with the new enhanced density yet could read the older single dos 2.0 disks... which was the standard of all boxed software. Most annoying was when they released a double sized double density drive and didn't ship it with a version of dos that supported it. Probally the most interesting were the various other DOSes that were on the market including SpartaDOS and MyDOS both of which could support hard drives and just about any disk standard available.

There was lots of really good hardware for the Atari... the problem is that most games didn't support anything above a single drive, and those that did only used flippable disks and didn't allow you to say copy side B to another floppy and run the game flipless.

Re:Ok..

[zakezuke]

Yeah, I got bit by the DOS3 thing a couple times. DOS 2.5 and SpartaDOS 3.2d were pretty much what I stuck with. I was mostly a kid during the heyday of the Atari and my family wasn't in a financial position to get the best of the goodies, so unfortunately I've never experienced the joys of mass storage. I lusted after a Happy Drive too :) We did have an R-verter and an 850 Interface, both of which are apparently somewhat rare today, as well as a couple of US Doubler'd 1050s

Problem with SpartaDOS, while being a spiffy command line super duper useful that you can jump to to peform disk maintance or hell even enable basic was that alot of programs wouldn't work under it.

For the most part... There was a very basic form of dos that acted as a bootstrap that simply presented a list of programs you could run. This was one of the few ways you could have your enhanced 180k or 360k floppies and run your games. Unfortunatly most of the offical user groups were so against piracy that they wouldn't even share this software, this freeware software. Quite sad as I saw no issue with having a stack of 10 to 20 games backing them up onto a single floppy for convenient access.

I had no direct experence with happy enanced drives or US doubler drives... or that other odd ball disk drive that had the nice smoked plastic dust lid that foled down over the slot. But I did own a Percom controler that could accept standard PC drives... up to 4 per controler IIRC. Cost a pretty penny... but considering the time period it was worth it. It was a tad querky.. as all things for the Atari were.

Web site is /.ed

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I can't get to the web site, but they never found the Holy Grail either, did they?

Re:Was the Atari his webserver as well?

[morgan_greywolf]

Why is it so hard to use coral cache? Coral Cache is blocked by a lot of corporate firewalls as being an 'anonymous proxy'. So those of us at work right now can't use it.

Safe

[3CRanch]

Interesting...

and probably the only OS left that doesn't have exploits / virus' targeting it ;)

Can't wait to see the bill......

[thatshortkid]

Thankfully it hasn't been on Slashdot yet, I'd know as that usually tears my bandwidth a new one.

Consider it torn... ;)

Coolest project I've seen in ages.

Odd Site

[secondsun]

According to whois, the website is hosted by iPowerWeb. A quick shot over to their website and it seems to still be up with no hiccups. These guys appear to have both the bandwidth and the horsepower to survive a slashdotting so it would seem that something else is wrong with his site.

Or it could be that they just pulled the plug when they got a slashdot referrer ;).

Re:Odd Site

[cliveholloway]

Goddammit he needs to give us warning ;-)

Bastard - I used to like Wednesdays...

I'll work something out so he'll be ready next time.

cLive ;-)

Lucky guy

[dada21]

This guy is a lucky builder.

The Radio Shack LCD he buys just happens to have NiMH batteries in its base.

The same LCD has a memory socket supplying enough 5V juice to run the 800.

He cuts a chunk out of the mobo to fit a hard drive that he later cans. The aforementioned NiMH batteries fit perfectly in that space.

Anyone think his tinfoil "mouse" will fail in short order?

Great article though. I'd love to make a portable Aquarius (4K) with Utopia. Screw Civ4 Bugs.

Pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that just want to see the pictures of the finished product:

http://img280.imageshack.us/img280/9113/mainpicbig 3jx.jpg
http://img280.imageshack.us/img280/1714/topandrear 2tc.jpg

Re:sweeeet

[spongebue]

I'm not sure of the required power/battery size, but I know he's using NiMH's, probably AAs. That's kind of surprising, since he usually uses Sony Camcorder batteries. Probably because his screen came with NiMH rechargables :)

But

[joeybagadonuts]

But does it run Linux?

Coral Cache works fine.

[cbiltcliffe]

http://benheck.com.nyud.net:8090/

Re:ugh

[OakDragon]

Hmmm... looks fine on my Atari 400. :)

Neo Geo arcade machine

[GoodOmens]

Further down the page ... his custom build arcade machine ... my favorite:

It has all custom graphics, brushed aluminum side panels and a LED coin counting display that also computes how many cases of beer the money stash will buy.

Awesome.

Re:I didn't see a supplier list anywhere?

[Omicron]

The LCD assembly he scavenged from a small LCD purchased at Radio Shack. This guy goes WAY above and beyond the average tinkerer - he's made several portable NES, SNES, Playstation and Genesis systems that he built from the original systems. He has access to CNC machines and built the lapto case himself, as well as wiring up each individual key on the keyboard. I caught the story yesterday before it was on Slashdot, and got to read the whole thing. Very interesting.

Re:Created in years...

[kmartshopper]

Did you try http://benheck.com/$sys$index.html?

how to make an auto coral cache shortcut

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

Create a link in your favorite browser that points to the following "location":

javascript:location.hostname=location.hostname+".n yud.net:8090"

(remove the silly space that slashdot puts in the "nyud" part)

Then whenever you get to a site that is slashdotted or otherwise not very available, just hit your shortcut (ideally right on your top bar) and there you go!

What about Atari 800 games?

[TheLoneGundam]

Some of the old Atari 800 games ought to be re-released on the GameBoy platform, especially the Micro! Not via emulator, but just recode them. I, for one, would like to see Star Raiders and Star Raiders II for the GBM - it had the essentials: good game play, interesting graphics. And since the chips on the 800 were designed to work in basically a 320 x 240 layout, the graphics ought to be pretty portable without scaling.

Re:What about Atari 800 games?

[fishbowl]

Star Raiders was a gestalt of game greatness that has yet to be matched by anything.

Re:Really?

[Urchlay]

Was there really a game named BallBlaster???

Yes.

Well, actually, Ball Blaster was an early leaked version of Ball Blazer (which was one of the first games Lucas Arts ever released). Ball Blaster was leaked to the Atari BBS scene some months before Ball Blazer was released... it was playable, but lacked the computer player's AI (so it was two-player only). And yes, everyone thought the "Ball Blaster" name was hilarious back then, too...

More than you really wanted to know, isn't it? :)

Re:Remove alternating colour background!

[erikharrison]

Actually, that's a bandwidth artifact. There is a white background that takes some time to load, due to the site being Slashdotted

Another way

[Craig Davison]

Try this:

javascript:location.href=location.protocol+'//'+lo cation.host+'.nyud.net:8090'+location.pathname

Works in Firefox.

Nice.

[TheSpoom]

Now that is cool, moving him to a dedicated server so his site survives the Slashdotting. /me notes you guys down if he needs hosting in the future.

Re:Where's the Portable Commodore 64?

[Zedrick]

It was done in 1983, you can get one for about $50-$100 on Ebay. See:

http://oldcomputers.net/sx64.html

Re:There was a plan to make a portable Atari 8-bit

[The Lynxpro]

"There was actually a plan to make a portable Atari 8-bit, which was even mentioned in Atari's literature after they were bought out by Jack Tramell. The plan fell through. Basically, the technology of the time could not make a portable machine with compelling graphics (The 8-bit Atari's niche); we did not get usable color flat screens for another decade after the end of the 8-bit Ataris."

You must be referring to the 130XEP (?). It wasn't s***canned because of portability issues. It was canned because the Tramiel crew could not figure out the AMY sound chip coding. Tramiel had fired the majority of the Atari engineers after he purchased the company, and only they knew how to get the chip to function. Its a shame; the Atari 7800 could've really used the AMY sound chip added to a lot of its titles just as the POKEY (you may correct me if I am wrong - the standard soundchip of the 400/800/XL/XE computers) chip was added in game titles like *BallBlazer* to improve the sound capabilities. Hell, the ST computer line could've used the AMY chip as well.

I like this bit...

[Molochi]

FTA "Note the hole in the bottom of the keyboard - this is where I intended my "Cursor Mushroom Button Knob" to go. In the olden days we didn't have "mice" to move the cursor around the screen, no sir-ee! We had to use KEYS, and sometime we'd have to press a couple keys even! (Then walk to school barefoot uphill through the snow fighting dinosaurs) With the Atari you had to hold "Control" then press one of the direction keys (which are normally +, -, etc) This worked but was clunky."

This has to be one of (if not the best) mod articles I've seen to date. This mod addresses tons of issues that occur with many other "turn a clunky dinosaur into a shiney portable" mods. Like the LCD. I have always wanted to be able to convert old notebook lcds, but long ago gave up the notion because of the the way notebook lcds are controlled. It is (as he notes) far easier and more economical to just reuse the guts of a modern lowrez (something with a composite input) lcd monitor. At the same time he knew which parts of the A800 circuitboard were ok to saw off. While I'm not a fan of sandblasted aluminum and laminate burlwood; it is well done, professional, and has that retro "Atari" look.

But can it run OS X?

[netglen]

Cool project but can it run OS X?

Re:iPower dies from a slashdotting...

[cliveholloway]

Be fair dude - this is $7.95 a month web hosting in a shared environment, with set limits (and very generous they are too for the price). If you bought a car would you be surprized that it doesn't go as fast as an airplane?

I called Ben up and said he had two options - suspension for going over bandwidth, or quick hack to keep the pictures up until we can work out a better solution.

So, we hacked him on to an empty machine, and will work out a dedicated server for him soon so that this can't happen again.

Last time he got slashdotted, he used over 130Gb of transfer in 24hrs (actually, for the first 3hrs we had a suspended page, so it would have been even more if we'd done this before (we left him on the host last time and watched the load *very* closely).

No warning this time either, hence quick hack. By the time he next gets slashdotted, we'll have a solution in place so that we don't need to do this again.

cLive ;-)
ps - still damn funny point though.

Best Advertisement Ever for Hosting Ever!!!!

[kwpulliam]

From the link...

hello /.

Much as we love our shared hosting solutions, they can't survive a death by slashdotting.

But, we love Ben so, rather than suspending him for bandwidth abuse, we've quickly moved his site to an empty machine.

So, head on over to Ben Heckendorn's site (or use the Coral Cache - if it's working). Or, why not stay around and buy some web hosting from us. You know you want to :)

cLive ;-)

ps - this is a quick hack, so only the static parts of the site will work - but heck (sic), it's better than a "site suspended" page ;-)