Top all-time · #4077
Jed Margolin
Personal blog · jmargolin.comhistoryhardwaregames
Jed Margolin's personal blog at jmargolin.com covers history, hardware and games. Since 2011, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “The Secret Life of Vector Generators (2001)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for Atari history: a 1982-1992 archive of internal memos and status reports, plus technical pages on XY monitors, vector generators and Asteroids circuitry, written by one of the original Atari engineers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Secret Life of Vector Generators (2001)5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-04-13
- /xy/xymon.htm3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-03-19
- The Secret Life of Vector Generators3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-04-19
- Unit Vector Math for 3D Graphics (2001)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-17
- Atari Vax Mail, Memos and Status Reports: 1982-1992 (2001)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-11-25
- The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-11
What Hacker News says?
You'll definitely want to read Jed Margolin's "The Secret Life of Vector Generators" http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm And "The Secret Life of XY Monitors" http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm (Jed was an Atari engineer during the vector era and beyond)
Comment linking /xy/xymon.htm
on “Ted Dabney, a Founder of Atari and a Creator of Pong, Has Died”Submitted Atari Vax Mail, Memos and Status Reports: 1982-1992 (2001) as a story · 118 points
HN discussionJed Margolin (ex-Atari) has the definitive history of the Atari vector games and how the hardware works: http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm Asteroids was a humble 6502 running at 1.5 MHz with a PROM-driven pseudo-CPU acting as the vector generator.
Comment linking /vgens/vgens.htm
on “Cool-retro-term: A terminal emulator which mimics the old cathode display”Submitted The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001) as a story · 98 points
HN discussionYou'll definitely want to read Jed Margolin's "The Secret Life of Vector Generators" http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm And "The Secret Life of XY Monitors" http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm (Jed was an Atari engineer during the vector era and beyond)
Comment linking /xy/xymon.htm
on “Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece”Submitted Unit Vector Math for 3D Graphics (2001) as a story · 36 points
HN discussionIf you love Atari vector games and haven't read Jed Margolin's primer on how they did it, this is a great technical read: The Secret Life of Vector Generators: http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm And it's companion piece, the Secret Life of XY Monitors: http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm
Comment linking /xy/xymon.htm
on “Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic”Submitted The Secret Life of Vector Generators (2001) as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThis is great: Due to a severe increase in demand, we are forced to state some kind of policy on private archival backup tapes. Effective immediately, anyone can have a backup done on a BYOT (bring your own tape) basis. All of the above applies to floppies, as well as tape; floppies are a little more convenient to store, but don't hold as much. Rough figures follow: Tape (2400 ft, 8KB block size) = 40MB storage, or…
Comment linking /vmail/Vax83.txt
on “Atari Vax Mail, Memos and Status Reports: 1982-1992 (2001)”Submitted Atari Telephone Directory 1983 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis whole archive is a an absolutely priceless treasure, from the '92 status reports: EYES ONLY BURN BEFORE READING To: Rick Moncrief 1 of 1 Fr: Jed Margolin Re: Pirates Dt: 26 February 1992 1. From the evidence, the Pirates have broken security on ASIC65. Guardians has a problem because they use the same system. Consider the following: read more at: http://www.jmargolin.com/vmail/Stat92.txt about when the 'war wit…
Comment linking /vmail/Stat92.txt
on “Atari Vax Mail, Memos and Status Reports: 1982-1992 (2001)”Submitted The Secret Life of Vector Generators as a story · 2 points
HN discussionsee also https://github.com/schlae/scopetrex with the plan to build a clone. You need a XY Monitor - https://jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm or if you have a normal CRT, you can add the XY kit: https://www.retrorgb.com/vector-monitor-xy-kit.html
Comment linking /xy/xymon.htm
on “Vectrex Mini”Submitted Unit Vector Math for 3D Graphics as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt's absolutely worthwhile to click the comments link. [0] [0] https://www.jmargolin.com/mail.htm
Comment linking /mail.htm
on “The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)”Submitted The Secret Life of Vector Generators (Atari) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe definitive guide to how the Atari vector system worked was written by Jed Margolin (ex-Atari engineer). It's amazingly detailed but incredibly easy to read: http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm The secret is very precise (and expensive) DACs. The vector generator actually did all the hard work in Asteroids. The main CPU (a 1.5 MHz 6502) just created vector lists for the AVG to draw.
Comment linking /vgens/vgens.htm
on “Ed Logg's plan form for Atari Asteroids”Submitted The Secret Life of Vector Generators as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOn early pre-production Atari vector games, you could burn a hole in the phosphor all the way to the glass if you left the electron gun active too long without moving the beam. They added a "spot killer" circuit that turned the beam off if you left in place too long. (From "The Secret Life of XY Monitors": http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm )
Comment linking /xy/xymon.htm
on “Recreating the “Asteroids” graphics with a single-beam laser projector [video]”Submitted More on Atari's dev env: paper tape, emulator boxes, Forth, PDP/11 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYou can also read the incredibly well done documentation from Jed Margolin, the Atari engineer that worked on the actual hardware. https://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm
Comment linking /vgens/vgens.htm
on “Vector Games 32c3”Submitted The Secret Life of Vector Generators (2001) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionJed Margolin, ex-Atari engineer, did a great pair of articles about the secrets of the Atari vector games. Highly worth your time if you're curious. The Secret Life of Vector Generators: https://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm The Secret Life of XY Monitors: https://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm
Comment linking /xy/xymon.htm
on “About Asteroids, Atari's biggest arcade hit”Jed Margolin is an ex-Atari hardware engineer that wrote an excellent tutorial on how the vector graphics systems worked on classic Atari arcade titles. http://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm The Vector State Machine mentioned in OP's article was essentially a custom processor designed out of TTL latches and DACs to draw the vectors faster than the 6502 main CPU ever could. It's a great piece of engineering and a…
Comment linking /vgens/vgens.htm
on “I Hear That Asteroids Machine Calling My Name”The color/3D Atari vector games used the Analog Vector Generator, which used op-amps to trace smooth lines of arbitrary length and angle on the screen. It also seems to fall out of calibration as the years go on, which is why you see a lot of Star Wars and Tempest machines with jittery images. More information on the Atari vector hardware, written by one of the original engineers, is here: http://www.jmargolin.com/v…
Comment linking /vgens/vgens.htm
on “Asteroids played on an Oscilloscope - Tek Contest”Here is a deep dive into the circuits used by Asteroids and other vector games. Digital & analog vector generators, gate arrays, the Math Box, and more. https://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm
Comment linking /vgens/vgens.htm
on “Asteroids: By the Numbers”How does one do that? I think Jed's messages are probably archived -- text files linked to at the bottom here too: https://www.jmargolin.com/vmail/vmail.htm
Comment linking /vmail/vmail.htm
on “The Atari Years (2014)”Tons of additional information here from an Atari staff engineer who worked on some of the XY games. [1] [2] [1] https://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm [2] http://www.jmargolin.com/xy/xymon.htm
Comment linking /xy/xymon.htm
on “Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware”A really good start is Jed Margolin's website. He was a key engineer in Atari's vector hardware and software through the classic era. https://www.jmargolin.com/
Comment linking /
on “Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production”
