Site Feedback

I’ll see what I can do, but drupal doesn’t provide much configuration for RSS exports.

However, the existing RSS feed at rss.xml should, hopefully, already contain all updated pages (new pages or any edit, news product, FAQ or whatever). The only difference between that and the “Recent Posts” page would be that Recent Posts also gets updated when someone adds a comment - is this important?

I am being a loon and taking the feed from http://www.worldofsam.org/taxonomy/term/1/all/feed which is what FireFox offered rather than http://www.worldofsam.org/rss.xml.

I love the site to bits and although I appreciate Sam users being passionate about its software base etc I feel some Sam users take the whole thing far too seriously, at the end of the day the Sam computer is a bit of a retro fan hobby thing, not a religion! It mnakes me laugh when I see people leaving serious-assed intense comments on anothers opinion, like someones insulted them or took the mick out their religion or somethin like that - the Sam computer aint a serious assed subject man, chill…. there a lots of things n the Sam world to have a barrell laughs over are there not? Also there are loads of talent and apprecation of things took for granted like the demos on the FRED disks - many of which seem to go unnoticed…..

Spend many hours and years of your life devoted on a subject, at the expense of a social life and any funds… to have a nameless person insult your work and demean your efforts… i’m sure you’d appreciate it as well.

(I know Dan’s posted about not letting comments turn into a typical forum, but I feel I have to reply)

I have to say for me, I view it far more than just a ‘retro fan hobby thing’, you really wouldn’t believe just how much I put into what I do, both in terms of time and money, and I don’t do for what I get back in terms of sales or that, I am just so passionate for the ol’ Sam.

No one is saying you aren’t entitled to have arsey opinions, but some respect surely has to be paid to those who have done stuff for the Sam, in their own time really for their own pleasure, especially after every commercial software company didn’t bother.

Afterall, those involved in producing for the Sam have had to live with arsey comments for years, and especially in the mid 90’s when there was so much more happening, the whole Sam scene was fragmented into it’s own little gangs and factions - it was unbelievable the amount of bitching that went on against people.

When I first started out in 1995 with the soundcard I had the biggest magazine disk refuse to print news about what I did with the comment “I won’t print your news, news is plugging and I can’t be seen to plug other people’s products”, yet of course news from other places was mentioned all the time afterall thats the job of a magazine disk - to report the goings on in the scene for the benefit of the readers and to keep them involved with whats going on. Why I was refused … who knows, i don’t … one chap starting out with a Soundcard was hardly competiton! But never the less, time has told it’s tale and i’m still here producing new stuff for a fantastic machine.

That sort of attitude, and so much more, had such a detrimental effect on the small Sam scene and the typical user was generally unaware of what went on behind the scenes.

In the early days I even had people take the time to write a letter and post it off to me just to just critisize what I did despite them having no idea whatsoever about what they were talking about or what was involved cost/time wise with what I produced. Very motivating I must say.

At least letters like that were rare, and people who actually had bought my stuff and full of praise, so when a letter saying ‘well done’ or ‘it’s great’ turned up in the post it would make me think I was doing something worthwhile!

For a whole host of reasons like that i’ve covered, a lot of great software etc went unnoticed in the Sam world and because of it sadly a lot of programmers gave up.

Even to this day, it can all add up and make you question is it really worth continuing, it’s something i’ve thought about a few times over the years…

Colin
=====
Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe
April 1995-2006 - Celebrating 11 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe
Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/

You talk sense - you know what your goin on about, I totaly agree - it seems though some need to take a few steps back and accept critisms even if theyre of the rails, its the only way software improves - even if it is too late on for the 8-bit machine…

…am glad you didn’t let it get to you. It did to many others.

Hi Anton,

No idea on what sales were like, but it was certainly being sold for several years - I remember the ‘Revelation Software’ adverts, with it being listed up until they vanished in 1999.

Not surprising you did not receive royalty payments - a lot of past Sam programmers I’ve interviewed for Sam Revival magazine have stated they never received any payment from several of the old ‘big name’ publishers.

Colin
=====
Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe
1995-2007 - Celebrating 12 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe
Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/

erm its in english if anyone fancies but googtle trasnlate does quite a few lingos

why doesn’t the ram in rom position write protect disable the asic wait states from video ram contention? if it did it would be like having external/rom routines that run full tilt instead of being contentioned all the time

why doesn’t the ram in rom position write protect disable the asic wait states from video ram contention

How could it? Accesses to the ROM are uncontended because it’s on a completely separate chip, one which the video circuitry is physically unable to address. RAM with the write protect bit set is just RAM, you could set VMPR to be reading not just the same chip but the very same page: the ASIC still needs to prevent the possibility of the CPU and the video circuitry attempting to read RAM during the same clock cycle.

but if you set the write protect then the vmpr is going to be pointing to a screen saver only one that is not animated at least not in the top 16kb two thirds as you cant write to this area according to the write protect - so i agree yes it could be vmpr accessible all 512kb - apart from the 8kb after the 24kb of mode 3& 4 mind you in mode 2 this area is video ram as the mode 2 screen is 12kb with a 2kb gap so 14kb of each 16kb vmpr page can be used though you cant fit two mode1 screens in teh same 16kb page unlike the timex?
do you know if the +2ab3 ram only mode has a screen paged in or if the screen can be in either of two ram pages but not necessarily paged into the z80 address space?
would have been nice for sam to have a little external ram - even 512kb would have helped
how can the mb-02+ add 128kb ram to a 48 and the second video ram page - is this compatible with velesofts speccy edge connector adapter even if the dma needs a faster clock for full sam compatibility? 6mhz would be better than 4?- still no info on atom lite read or written by dma? would need bdos rewrite rom reprogram?
could masterbasic use the dma for printing it might be a bit quicker - 17kb ram2ram @ 128clock speed
so the write protect just stops the bottom 16 kb - not the top 16kb being written to?but doesn’t alter the timing at all

Correct, write protect does not alter the timings at all. It doesn’t matter that the CPU can’t write, because it can still read, and the ASIC can’t allow the screen and the CPU to read from the same RAM chip at the same time.

You have to remember that back in 1989, 512K was quite a lot of memory. (Indeed, the Sam shipped with 256k and it cost about £40 to upgrade to 512; about £80 for an external 1MB, a price which was broadly comparable with other platforms at the time). So shipping with 512K “external” memory out-of-the-box would have been an unreasonable extra cost, and it’s not clear that programmers at the time would have found good use for all that RAM.

One could argue that being able to display 16 separate mode 4 screens is unnecessary, and that if this capability had been limited to (say) 4, then the rest of memory could have been accessed uncontended. But the designers chose flexibility over speed.

even in mode 1 an extra 32 attribute byte buffer would have meant the speccy ula didnt need to reread the same 32 attribute bytes for each of teh 8 pixel rows - this would have meant only two byte reads for the first attribute and pixel bytes for the first row 32 attributes and 32 pixel bytes followed by 7 sets of only the pixel data to be read and combined with the attribute refetched from a buffer - crickey a 32byte buffer on the asic reduces the reads by how much
- and why did the ula make the entire 16kb contended? - and what a daft place to put the system variables - ofcourse every micro live benchmark in BASIC is gonna be thrashed by the beeb with a co porcessors and the arm9 dev kit!
surely the hmpr bit 5&6 extra 4 colours for mode 3 would have needed some tie up with the status register - didnt this allow horizontal positioning? would have been trickey in game but for fixed screens?
even now we wont be able to use it unless the setting of hmpr bits 5or&6 occur with enough tstate room to be not too frequent - paging out one video page along a scan line by changing vmpr - wont change the palette unless the entire clut is altered instantly - which the asic cant do as it doesnt store the clut it merely reads it from ports and there arent duplicate or in teh sams case 16 sets of clut ports - or for a hi coulour mode 4 64 cluts and 16 sets of stored 64 cluts - this would also make altering vmpr every 4 pixels for a mode 3 screen which could have given 64 colours on 16 mode 3 screens
the test results were only for altering one clut valu not for altering the vmpr valu and clut during the scan line
theres some weird cpc effects even without the cpc+ features
overscan ?
didnt realise the cpc had four screens in ram available - most 3d vector stuff looked a lot slower with 16kb of video ram to be handled even in low rez 160x200 mode

would moving the bdos code into the external ram make my animation routine any faster?
does it use INIR?
she is 21 tstates?
INI only 16?
could we fill 16kb of external ram with INI
do you have to tell the atom the track and sector using out before you can read each byte from teh compact flash?
think without fast disc access sim coupe gives about 3 frames a second
that is around 70kb or so?
must be possible to squeeze a bit more out of her than that?
use all 16 screens as a buffer?
use external 4mb as a decompressed 5 disc buffer? - its quicker to trasfner from external ram to internal than read from atom?
master basic doesnt load itself into external ram/ speed up atom bdos accesses?
otherwise im goign to have to laod each screen
save two 12kb chunks - how do i do this
one 12kb top part of screen adn teh other the bottom part
then i feed the uhf of sam one into tv tuner
try to run cyberlink power director and feed scart to composite from sam2 -
may be able to windowize tv tuner and put it ontop of cyberlink power director as you cant fullscreen the recording window in power director
nor intervideo wincoder winproducer - though the latter only works with msi nvidia mx440 vtd 8x agp and i have no software that works with the fx5900vtd 128 msi nvidia
or the power colour ati x1950 as im about to install vista 64 bit and the manufacturer and cyberlink whom ive both emailed actually dont want folks to use teh crap they bundle with their hardware only £150 up the spout so nothing really!

Yes, I see it too. It looks like rogerjowett edited a lot of his own recent comments to remove their content, I’m not really sure why. It doesn’t appear to be a database issue, which was my first guess.

i cant delete teh other ones?
getting less than 8kb a second from a 3.6mbps connection
i know you dont want me to complain but this is not worth £2 a month let alone the £25 the crooks are charging it takes all day to upload and if you are lucky after wasting six seven attempts files that are really not that big a couple of mb eventually get there im sick of this im sick of being screwed by these crooks so forget it

This is a website devoted to all things SAM Coupé - not an area for you to keep posting endless drivel about obsolete modem technology or venting your anger at your mobile provider. No-one cares.

What have you actually contributed to the SAM scene? Have you ever written a game? Perhaps you’ve written a utility or tool? Or maybe you’re a graphic artist and we’ve seen some of your work in a popular SAM title?

Sadly, I think all you have written is endless rubbish on forums and mailing lists. I’m sure I’m not the only one tired of your incessant spamming here and on the sam-users list, several retro-computer websites and email. You still haven’t got the message that we’re all sick of the (seemingly) endless rubbish you post…

i get the messaeg i wont be posting here again
you havent looked at youtube at all then?

i was actually trying to delete some of the dafter posts but it is impossible - its a bit like logging in which sometimes works and sometimes doesnt but we cant complain - still a column of text in the middle of the screen$ with massive infinite left and right borders with utterly no text in them - bit of a waste nope just me….
ciao

That’s pretty much a standard layout for most modern database sites - and it actually reminds me of the way the SAM Screen had the border all the way round :)

Err - is this on topic comment? SAM related? Gosh - so it is!