Retro Challenge 2019/03

The advent of Arduino was great for hobby activities and getting back into tinkering with programming. An Atari computer fan(atic?) Thomas C. decided to resurrect the Atari's ability to connect to the PLATO system as a terminal and started up a vintage computing community dedicated PLATO system. You can get on the original PLATO system here. I found all this intriguing because I had been seeking to play the PLATO tank warfare game that is listed in Ernst Cline's Armada (Chronology). Who knew? Recently, Thomas C. asked if someone could interface a wifi modem to Atari's cartridge port. Why not take a crack at it?

I learned to program my Atari 400 then 800XL in BASIC during middle school. About that time, I became interested in how the machine worked and read about the ANTIC chip. I made my own character set, although I cannot remember how I learned to do that. I tried doing some player missile graphics (sprites), but never grasped it enough to use it. So I didn't understand enough to put it into practice.

I was also reading about robotics and wanted to control things. At this time, I told my father I wanted to learn how to "program hardware." He figured out what I meant was I wanted to design digital circuits. He was a mainframe system analyst and didn't know enough electronics to teach me (or maybe I had other more important interests) so it wasn't until college that I learned to design electronics. I also learned assembly programming on a Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller. Although I ended up going into microwave systems, I still dabble in embedded systems whenever I can.

For better or worse, I'm entering into the Retro Challenge 2019/03. Looking back at emails, I started this sometime in September 2018. In January 2019, I finally had a working prototype that seems to work without anomalies (no dropped characters, missed packets, etc.). I took a break in February to enter the BASIC 10 Liners. I don't know why I made the decision to not post earlier as I was developing, other than life gets in the way.

So, here's my rat's nest (starting point):