Happy drives are series of disk drive enhancements for the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST computer families produced by a small company called Happy Computers. Happy Computers is most noted for the add-in boards for the Atari 810 and Atari 1050 floppy disk drives, which achieved a tremendous speed improvement for reading and writing, and for the ability to backup floppies. Happy's products were among the most popular Atari computer add-ons. They were still in use and active in the aftermarket as of 2009.
22-460: HCI may refer to: Computing [ edit ] Happy Computers , an American computer hardware manufacturer Home Computer Initiative , a United Kingdom government programme to increase computers usage Host controller interface (disambiguation) , various computer interfaces Human–computer interaction , the study of how people interact with computers Human-computer interaction (security) ,
44-464: A company notable for its text adventure games (also known as Interactive Fiction ). Whilst employed in Silicon Valley between 1976 and 1982, Adams gave demonstrations on the testing of codecs and authored a paper on the subject. In 1982, Adams founded Happy Computers to market and sell add-in boards that he had invented for Atari computer disk drives. These boards greatly increased
66-419: A plug-in board with a better data separator and used sockets already in place on the 810 internal board without the need for any soldering or permanent modification. In addition to the buffered reading and writing with zero latency and faster serial I/O, it made backups of floppies. Brian Moriarty of ANALOG Computing wrote in 1983 that the magazine was reluctant to publish reviews or advertisements of
88-683: A school in Singapore Science [ edit ] Highly charged ion Hot carriers injection , in solid-state electronic devices Hydrocarbon indicator , in reflection seismology Organizations [ edit ] Handgun Control, Inc. , the former name of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Harrisburg City Islanders , a soccer club from the United States HCI Books (Health Communications Inc), an American publishing house, see What
110-545: A video camera that he started building when he was ten years old and got working at age 12 in 1967. He worked entirely at home without the aid of his school. It originally gained coverage in the Miami Herald when he had enlisted the newspaper's help to find a TV station that would help him tune the camera. Although he did not invent, the fact that a child could build one cheaply drove home a point that made others desirous of this technology. It continued to be publicized by
132-529: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Happy Computers Happy Computers was formed in 1982 by Richard Adams under the name Happy Computing. At that time, the 810 Happy was hand-wired on the internal side board. The name was changed to Happy Computers in 1983 when the company went from a sole proprietorship to a corporation. It stopped shipping these products in 1990, and since then many other Atari enthusiasts have reverse engineered and replicated
154-476: The 1050 Happy was faster than the 810 Happy due to the faster speed of the 6502 processor that replaced the on-board 6507 . The 1050 Controller was a small board that was installed inside the 1050 Happy drive that had 2 switches and an LED that allowed enabling or disabling disk write-protect to override the notch in the disk. It also allowed switch selection of a slower mode to provide compatibility with some picky programs. Some commercial software only ran in
176-473: The 1050 was a single sided drive with only one head, the disk had to be formatted as SS (180 KB). The IBM disk could even be formatted on the 1050 drive. The Discovery Cartridge was a device that plugged into the cartridge slot of the Atari ST computer. It backed up floppies and had connectors to allow a 3rd and 4th drive to be hooked up. The original ST computer only allowed for two floppy drives, and
198-419: The 810 Enhancement "because of its unique potential for misuse", but after testing the board "decided that the legitimate performance benefits it offers are too significant to ignore". He found that booting time decreased to 11 seconds from 14–18, formatting time decreased to 25 seconds from 38, and drives would last longer because of more efficient disk access. Moriarty's tests confirmed the company's claim that
220-682: The ATARI community will not abuse this power by using the Happy drive (and other similar products) to infringe on the rights of others". Atari released the more reliable, enhanced density (130 KB) 1050 drive with the introduction of the Atari 1200XL . The 1050 Enhancement was a plug-in board and could be installed without soldering or permanent modification. In addition to the buffered reading and writing with zero latency and faster serial I/O, it supported true double density (180 KB). The serial I/O of
242-405: The Atari ST cartridge slot and had a cable for 1 drive that allowed converting Mac disks. Richard Adams (inventor) Richard Adams (born December 8, 1954) is an independent inventor , engineer , businessman and founder of Happy Computers . Since building and demonstrating a video camera as a child, his work has often garnered media interest. His first project was the construction of
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#1732780894092264-551: The Bleep Do We Know!? Human Concern International , a Canadian relief and development organization Huntsman Cancer Institute , an American cancer research facility and hospital Other uses [ edit ] Heavy-Chemical Industry Drive , a former economic development plan of South Korea See also [ edit ] HCL (disambiguation) HCIL (disambiguation) HCl (H-C-lowercase L), chemical formula of Hydrogen chloride Topics referred to by
286-677: The Herald and other newspapers each time the camera made a public appearance. In 1974, whilst attending Florida Institute of Technology , Adams created an interface and software to connect an electronic organ to a computer so he could record and play back entire musical scores with full polyphony. Adams built an early 16 bit computer in his home. His brother, Scott Adams , would use this computer to program his first computer game (while attending Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne Florida) and later found Adventure International ,
308-467: The board and accompanying Happy Backup software could duplicate any disk readable by the Atari 810 drive. He wrote that the 810 Enhancement's $ 250 cost would probably be more useful as part of the purchase price of a second disk drive, but those with two drives "would find the high speed and special capabilities of a Happy drive to be a worthwhile investment" and "a pleasure to use". Moriarty concluded, "I hope
330-457: The emulations slower and less reliable. It was faster and more efficient to convert Mac disks to Magic format first. The HART chip (IC number HARTD1©87HCI) also allowed copying conventional ST disks much faster. The computer floppy controller required two passes per track, three with verification. The HART chip could format and write in the same pass, saving one pass per track. This was a smaller version of The Discovery Cartridge that plugged into
352-578: The extra drives were handy. There were 4 different options available. Options included a pass through for another cartridge, a switch to bank select larger cartridges, and a switch to select/deselect the extra drives. There was also a battery backed up Time of Day clock option in the Discovery Cartridge, a significant oversight the Atari ST lacked in the stock configuration. The power of the "HART" chip (Happy Atari Rotating Thing), designed by Richard Adams, allowed standard Atari drives to read
374-400: The first product released in 1982. The customer sent in either their 810 drive or the internal sideboard, and the upgrade was wired in. This consisted of a few extra logic chips, a different EPROM and point to point wiring . In addition to the buffered reading and writing with zero latency and faster serial I/O , it made backups of floppies. This version of the 810 Happy board was
396-458: The original slow speed mode. The controller required a mechanical modification to the drive's enclosure and hence its installation was more permanent. The software that came with the Happy boards had many options. This program was included with the Warp Speed software. It allowed transferring files back and forth between an Atari and an IBM disk using a Happy enhanced 1050 drive. Because
418-456: The products. As early as 1983 Happy Computing was mentioned in context of software piracy. By 1986 software companies began producing fewer titles for the Atari 8-bit computers than for the Apple II or Commodore 64 . They attributed this to their belief that an unusually high amount of software piracy existed on the Atari, and cited Happy Drive as a major cause of the piracy. This was
440-403: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title HCI . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HCI&oldid=1107240154 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
462-478: The study of how people interact with computers concerning information security Hyper-converged infrastructure , an IT infrastructure framework for integrating storage, networking and virtualization computing in a data center. Education [ edit ] Harbord Collegiate Institute , a school in Toronto, Canada Humberside Collegiate Institute , a school in Toronto, Canada Hwa Chong Institution ,
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#1732780894092484-461: The unusual Macintosh variable speed disks without needing a variable speed drive. The disks were then re-written in a standard "constant speed" 3.5 inch compatible format called Magic format. This allowed using the various Mac emulator products that would run most efficiently with Magic format disks. At least one of the Macintosh emulators also had a circuit to read Mac disks, but could make
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