Have you all heard about the Pi Pico emulating the XEP80? It's pretty
darned great, and hopefully this post will remind me to come back from a
PC and post the links to the details. I'm on the Atari at the moment and
I think the easiest thing would be to show a pic of my "dual monitor"
setup :)

https://i.imgur.com/1hQiz4S.jpg

I haven't found a great terminal program for it yet. The one I'm using
in the pic is of course BobTerm, but it can only do ASCII which for some
reason doesn't play well with my Linux BBS. At the moment I'm using FlickerTerm80 out of the regular video out because it has pretty good
VT100 support. A terminal that supported VT100 and the XEP80 would be
pretty great! And now that you can make an XEP80 with under $20 of
hardware, maybe someone will make one.

There's an AtariAge thread about this, which you can find yourself or I
will hopefully come back and link it here :).

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phigan wrote:

Have you all heard about the Pi Pico emulating the XEP80? It's pretty
darned great, and hopefully this post will remind me to come back from a
PC and post the links to the details. I'm on the Atari at the moment and
I think the easiest thing would be to show a pic of my "dual monitor"
setup :)

https://i.imgur.com/1hQiz4S.jpg

I haven't found a great terminal program for it yet. The one I'm using
in the pic is of course BobTerm, but it can only do ASCII which for some reason doesn't play well with my Linux BBS. At the moment I'm using FlickerTerm80 out of the regular video out because it has pretty good
VT100 support. A terminal that supported VT100 and the XEP80 would be
pretty great! And now that you can make an XEP80 with under $20 of
hardware, maybe someone will make one.

There's an AtariAge thread about this, which you can find yourself or I
will hopefully come back and link it here :).

Now that's an attractive setup!

--
David Solimano
david@solimano.org

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On 18 Jul 23 14:34:08 phigan wrote...

Have you all heard about the Pi Pico emulating the XEP80? It's pretty darned great, and hopefully this post will remind me to come back
from a PC and post the links to the details. I'm on the Atari at the
moment and I think the easiest thing would be to show a pic of my
"dual monitor" setup :)

https://i.imgur.com/1hQiz4S.jpg

I haven't found a great terminal program for it yet. The one I'm
using in the pic is of course BobTerm, but it can only do ASCII which
for some reason doesn't play well with my Linux BBS. At the moment
I'm using FlickerTerm80 out of the regular video out because it has
pretty good VT100 support. A terminal that supported VT100 and the
XEP80 would be pretty great! And now that you can make an XEP80 with
under $20 of hardware, maybe someone will make one.

There's an AtariAge thread about this, which you can find yourself or
I will hopefully come back and link it here :).

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

To which Commodore Clifford replies...

I was following that... but alas... I was a bit broken hearted to see
that AtariWriter 80 doesn't work with it. :( Might see if they fix some
of that before I invest in it. It's not a bad idea though. Since I
already have a real XEP80, and might get the XEP80-II since it has some additional features, I don't know if I'll end up doing this one or not.

But the link for the thread at AA is....

https://tinyurl.com/46ukdsz5


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On 2023-07-18, Commodore Clifford <Commodore.Clifford@f171.n3.z21.fsxnet> wrote:

I was following that... but alas... I was a bit broken hearted to see
that AtariWriter 80 doesn't work with it. :( Might see if they fix some
of that before I invest in it. It's not a bad idea though. Since I
already have a real XEP80, and might get the XEP80-II since it has some additional features, I don't know if I'll end up doing this one or not.

What's the big deal about AtariWriter? Are you really going to word
process on the A8, and even then, isn't The Last Word better? :)

You have a real XEP80 already, so you're good. But, for those that
don't, this $20 worth of hardware gets you 80 columns with an HDMI out.
If you spend most of your time with the machine BBSing and connecting to
other systems, this is awesome. The image/text is slightly better than
IceT with Sophia2, albeit without the extended ASCII support. There's
also the added bonus of being able to do 80 column ATASCII, which there
doesn't seem to be a software terminal for that.

The XEP80-II _probably_ be better, because you get a built-in HDMI
converter for the regular video signal along with a button to switch
over to the XEP80 output. But, it's more $$$ :). And you can accomplish
the same thing with separate parts. I got one of those HDMI converters
for something like $16, then you either need a video cable with an
SVideo end or separate RCA chroma and luma (and adapter that combines
two RCAs to SVideo), then you need a supercheap HDMI switchbox :).

Anyway, I've been using it for like a week straight now. Totally wish
I'd had an XEP80 all along.

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On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 12:25:12 PM UTC-6, phigan wrote:

What's the big deal about AtariWriter? Are you really going to word
process on the A8, and even then, isn't The Last Word better? :)

Some of use prefer to use the same software we grew up with. :) I did all of my school reports on AtariWriter until we finally got a PC when I was in high school in the very late 80s.

- Trevor

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Some of use prefer to use the same software we grew up with. :) I did a
my school reports on AtariWriter until we finally got a PC when I was i school in the very late 80s.

The Atari I had back then didn't have any peripherals at all (storage or printer or anything), until I got to HS and a buddy I met there gave me a
410 tape recorder. The XT w/ a really crappy MX-80 printer is what I had
to use. At first with WordStar 2000 and then with WordPerfect 5.0 (then
5.1). WP51 was pretty darned great, for being non-wysiwyg especially.
It's not my favorite, though. While I am not a fan of GUI things in
general (GUIs are for opening side by side terminals!), my favorite word processor is an old version of MS Word for 68k Mac. I never owned one of
those back then, but I did use them plenty in HS. This version would let
you disable all menus and dropdowns so that you just had a wysiwyg text
window. It seemed smooth and sleek to me at the time, compared to the gross/ugly Windows word processors (including Word).
Of course the problem with writing long things on the Mac is that you
were bound to lose your work at one point or another :).

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On 29 Jul 23 19:14:53 Trevor wrote...

On Saturday, July 29, 2023 at 12:25:12 PM UTC-6, phigan wrote:

What's the big deal about AtariWriter? Are you really going to word
process on the A8, and even then, isn't The Last Word better? :)

Some of use prefer to use the same software we grew up with. :) I did
all of my school reports on AtariWriter until we finally got a PC
when I was in high school in the very late 80s.

- Trevor

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To which Commodore Clifford replies...

Well, actually it wasn't about that... I did use AtariWriter growing up
(but only the 40 col one). For me the reason I wasn't happy is that you
could probably count the number of software titles that were written specifically for 80 columns on one hand after a tragic accident in shop
class, so for it not to work on one of the more known ones seemed like a
major loss to me.

But on all the other points, I'm with Phigan all the way.

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Oh yeah... I have fond memories of WordPerfect 5.1 (I think the Nursing
College I worked at eventually got 5.2 before moving to 6).

But I seem to remember having a version of WP compatible to 5.x on the
Atari (maybe not WordPerfect itself, but something I could go back and
forth with).

I'm going to have to dive into that.

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class, so for it not to work on one of the more known ones seemed like major loss to me.

I know BobTerm! :). To be fair, I probably heard about Atari Writer
before, but it most likely went in one ear and out the other. I don't
have a printer for the Atari, so I wouldn't have bothered word processing
on one. Plus back then the 800XL with the good keyboard had bad memory or something, so I would use a 130XE. Those are HORRIBLE to word process on (stock).

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On 23 Aug 23 15:34:26 Phigan wrote...

class, so for it not to work on one of the more known ones seemed
like major loss to me.

I know BobTerm! :). To be fair, I probably heard about Atari Writer
before, but it most likely went in one ear and out the other. I don't
have a printer for the Atari, so I wouldn't have bothered word
processing on one. Plus back then the 800XL with the good keyboard
had bad memory or something, so I would use a 130XE. Those are
HORRIBLE to word process on (stock).

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To which Commodore Clifford replies...

Agreed... the 130xe really isn't all that great for anything requiring extensive keyboard use. Which is why I used it for running a BBS rather
than calling them. :)

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