29 replies to this topic

[erazmus]

Hello,
  I acquired an ATR8000 quite some time ago.  I've finally cleaned it up and I'm attempting to get it up and running, but I'm running in to a few problems, and I was hoping someone can send me in the right direction.

I've confirmed that the unit I have is the 64k model, but I have no documentation, drives, or disks with it.  I've pulled the EPROM and compared the contents with the image I found elsewhere on this forum, and they match perfectly.  When I plug it in to my Atari (I've tried an 800, 800XL and 1200XL) with no other peripherals, I get a couple of beeps like it's attempting to load something from the ATR8000, then I just get BOOT ERROR down the screen.

From what I can gather, the unit is meant to load a device driver in to memory - I assume that's what it's trying to do?  I don't have any drives hooked up when I try this (none connected to the ATR8000 and no Atari drives either).

Am I meant to have a drive and may be a boot disk?  I assume I need a boot disk for CP/M, which I'd love to get if anyone has a copy.

I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on how I can verify if my ATR8000 is working, before I go on the hunt for some old floppy drives to hook up to it.

[a8isa1]

erazmus, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 7:53 PM, said:

Hello,
I acquired an ATR8000 quite some time ago. I've finally cleaned it up and I'm attempting to get it up and running, but I'm running in to a few problems, and I was hoping someone can send me in the right direction.

I've confirmed that the unit I have is the 64k model, but I have no documentation, drives, or disks with it. I've pulled the EPROM and compared the contents with the image I found elsewhere on this forum, and they match perfectly. When I plug it in to my Atari (I've tried an 800, 800XL and 1200XL) with no other peripherals, I get a couple of beeps like it's attempting to load something from the ATR8000, then I just get BOOT ERROR down the screen.

From what I can gather, the unit is meant to load a device driver in to memory - I assume that's what it's trying to do? I don't have any drives hooked up when I try this (none connected to the ATR8000 and no Atari drives either).

Am I meant to have a drive and may be a boot disk? I assume I need a boot disk for CP/M, which I'd love to get if anyone has a copy.

I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on how I can verify if my ATR8000 is working, before I go on the hunt for some old floppy drives to hook up to it.

With no disk drives attached to the ATR8000 My 800XL does the Atari fart and then drops to BASIC. No attempt to boot a disk.

Not sure what would happen if the internal jumpers are set for the "RS-232 Terminal" instead of "Atari". Jumpers J7 and J10 determine the usage of the SIO port.

For normal SIO port functionality J7 jumpers should be on pins 1-3 and 2-4. J10 jumper on 1-2.

Does your ATR8000 happen to have a hard disk interface? It might be trying to boot that.

If you get past your error condition the ATR8000's printer buffer should be active. You would be able to issue an LPRINT "whatever" command from BASIC without errors if the ATR8000 is being acknowledged. If it's not responding you will get "Error - 138".

-Steve Sheppard

[erazmus]

a8isa1, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 8:27 PM, said:

With no disk drives attached to the ATR8000 My 800XL does the Atari fart and then drops to BASIC. No attempt to boot a disk.

Not sure what would happen if the internal jumpers are set for the "RS-232 Terminal" instead of "Atari". Jumpers J7 and J10 determine the usage of the SIO port.

For normal SIO port functionality J7 jumpers should be on pins 1-3 and 2-4. J10 jumper on 1-2.

Does your ATR8000 happen to have a hard disk interface? It might be trying to boot that.

If you get past your error condition the ATR8000's printer buffer should be active. You would be able to issue an LPRINT "whatever" command from BASIC without errors if the ATR8000 is being acknowledged. If it's not responding you will get "Error - 138".

-Steve Sheppard

I've double confirmed the jumper settings and they are as you describe.  There is no hard disk interface card or any other card other than the main logic board.  The ROM is version 3.02+.  I have re-seated all of the socketed chips.  The power supply rails are a nice clean 4.93v with no ripple.

When powered up, it makes one disk-type beep, then pauses about 2 seconds, beeps again, prints BOOT ERROR, pauses 2 seconds, and repeats.

To confirm, this will work on an 800XL, right?  I can't remember if these units were 400/800 only wor if they worked on newer machines.

[BillC]

erazmus, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 7:53 PM, said:

Hello,
  I acquired an ATR8000 quite some time ago.  I've finally cleaned it up and I'm attempting to get it up and running, but I'm running in to a few problems, and I was hoping someone can send me in the right direction.

I've confirmed that the unit I have is the 64k model, but I have no documentation, drives, or disks with it.  I've pulled the EPROM and compared the contents with the image I found elsewhere on this forum, and they match perfectly.  When I plug it in to my Atari (I've tried an 800, 800XL and 1200XL) with no other peripherals, I get a couple of beeps like it's attempting to load something from the ATR8000, then I just get BOOT ERROR down the screen.

From what I can gather, the unit is meant to load a device driver in to memory - I assume that's what it's trying to do?  I don't have any drives hooked up when I try this (none connected to the ATR8000 and no Atari drives either).

Am I meant to have a drive and may be a boot disk?  I assume I need a boot disk for CP/M, which I'd love to get if anyone has a copy.

I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on how I can verify if my ATR8000 is working, before I go on the hunt for some old floppy drives to hook up to it.

Rick at Morethangames has(as of April 2010) ATR8000s for sale with manuals. You may want to contact him to see if he has any spare manuals.

Bill

[erazmus]

Thanks for the link. For the price I might just pick up a replacement Atr8000. That way I can compare signals with mine, and try swapping parts and figure out what has failed. Has anyone done business with Morethangames?

[a8isa1]

erazmus, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 8:52 PM, said:

a8isa1, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 8:27 PM, said:

With no disk drives attached to the ATR8000 My 800XL does the Atari fart and then drops to BASIC. No attempt to boot a disk.

Not sure what would happen if the internal jumpers are set for the "RS-232 Terminal" instead of "Atari". Jumpers J7 and J10 determine the usage of the SIO port.

For normal SIO port functionality J7 jumpers should be on pins 1-3 and 2-4. J10 jumper on 1-2.

Does your ATR8000 happen to have a hard disk interface? It might be trying to boot that.

If you get past your error condition the ATR8000's printer buffer should be active. You would be able to issue an LPRINT "whatever" command from BASIC without errors if the ATR8000 is being acknowledged. If it's not responding you will get "Error - 138".

-Steve Sheppard

I've double confirmed the jumper settings and they are as you describe. There is no hard disk interface card or any other card other than the main logic board. The ROM is version 3.02+. I have re-seated all of the socketed chips. The power supply rails are a nice clean 4.93v with no ripple.

When powered up, it makes one disk-type beep, then pauses about 2 seconds, beeps again, prints BOOT ERROR, pauses 2 seconds, and repeats.

To confirm, this will work on an 800XL, right? I can't remember if these units were 400/800 only wor if they worked on newer machines.

The ATR8000 may be ancient but it responds to standard SIO commands that all Atari 8bits issue.

Turn the ATR8000 on after you boot your XL to BASIC. Afterwards turn on the ATR8000 and try the LPRINT test that I described earlier.

-Steve Sheppard

[erazmus]

Interesting. The LPRINT test works. I get an error with the unit off, but with the unit on I get a few clicks (SIO stuff) and READY.

Maybe I should try hooking up a drive to the unit and see what happens.

[BillC]

erazmus, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:09 PM, said:

Thanks for the link. For the price I might just pick up a replacement Atr8000. That way I can compare signals with mine, and try swapping parts and figure out what has failed. Has anyone done business with Morethangames?

If you do a search for "morethangames" you can find posts from some who have purchased products.
Three I found:
SDrive: orpheuswaking, a8isa1
A8 A/V Cable: WIZZARD77

I ordered an SDrive kit and an AV/BOB from him 10 days ago, which I am waiting to receive.

Bill

[a8isa1]

erazmus, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:33 PM, said:

Interesting. The LPRINT test works. I get an error with the unit off, but with the unit on I get a few clicks (SIO stuff) and READY.

Maybe I should try hooking up a drive to the unit and see what happens.

I my mind that confirms communication is working.

I hope you don't have a bad disk controller. Your ATR8000 is acting like a drive is attached.

Morethangames does have cable adapters for the ATR8000 and Rick's a good guy.

I think you would have a difficult time finding IDC connectors for the ATR8000. The 34-pin one for the floppy cable might be the easiest but make sure it's not keyed. It won't fit the ATR8000 if it is. If you are really lucky an old Radio Shack store might have one kicking around out back or try the TRS-80 community for a complete cable.

Yep even my old 286 floppy cables are keyed.

-Steve Sheppard

[sup8pdct]

From what I have read, it sounds like the atr8000 is working. The device buffers the printer output.
You will need to find some 360K 5.25 drives (like in the xf551 if you want one to quickly test) and a floppy cable.
The atr does't use gold plated contacts so you may need to clean them before use. you can roll your own cables if you want .

James

[bf2k+]

erazmus, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:09 PM, said:

Has anyone done business with Morethangames?

I have with good results.

[sloopy]

i will throw a yes to rick (morethengames) also, good guy, great products...

and i agree with steve (a8isa1) sounds like it is mostly working, but they dont respond to disk commands unless a drive is hooked up, but its failure mode is thinking there is a drive attached... so you may want to try hooking up a drive... also if it is the drive controller chip, last i looked Best Electronics has them for sale (they have been in the atari biz for almost 30 years, so finding ref's for them isnt hard ;')

sloopy.

[a8isa1]

[correction]
Apparently morethangames.a8maestro.com has ATR-8000 adapters for the printer and serial ports only. I don't see anything for the floppy drives. My mistake. Sorry.

However, I found these 34-pin connectors. They look un-keyed.

-Steve Sheppard

Edited by a8isa1, Wed Oct 27, 2010 8:53 AM.

[orpheuswaking]

BillC, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 10:09 PM, said:

erazmus, on Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:09 PM, said:

Thanks for the link. For the price I might just pick up a replacement Atr8000. That way I can compare signals with mine, and try swapping parts and figure out what has failed. Has anyone done business with Morethangames?

If you do a search for "morethangames" you can find posts from some who have purchased products.
Three I found:
SDrive: orpheuswaking, a8isa1
A8 A/V Cable: WIZZARD77

I ordered an SDrive kit and an AV/BOB from him 10 days ago, which I am waiting to receive.

Bill

Rick is a good guy to deal with, He can be a little slow (both in Email replies and shipping) and he has recently started a new full time job so his Atari time is limited. That said I would not hesitate to recomend buying from him. I have two of his sDrive kits, a supersketch and a couple other things... I even screwed up a 130XE memory mod he sold me and he was willing to fix it for the cost of shipping.

I have yet to buy an AV/BOB for my jaguar, but I hear they are amazing quality.

[erazmus]

I emailed Rick yesterday to see if he had any ATR8000s for sale.  In the mean time I did some more experimenting.  I've added a floppy drive to the unit, and I think I've got it jumpered correctly.  The drive will spin up, and the red activity light on the drive will blink in unison with the Atari beeps, but I still get the boot errors.  However, the floppy drive is destroying the data on any disk I put in it.  I can freshly format and copy DOS to a disk in my 1050, but if I try booting it with the ATR, the disk is unreadable in a 1050 again.  It doesn't physically destroy the disk because I can reformat it and re-use it.  I can't be sure that I don't have a bad floppy drive, but I'm beginning to suspect I have a bad disk controller in the ATR.  I guess I'm going to have to wait until I can get another unit so I can try swapping a few things.

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions everyone.

[redman]

Hello,

I have a .pdf of the 72 page ATR8000 manual.  It's 4.3 mb.  Is this too big to upload here?

Redman

[sloopy]

redman, on Fri Oct 29, 2010 7:08 AM, said:

Hello,

I have a .pdf of the 72 page ATR8000 manual.  It's 4.3 mb.  Is this too big to upload here?

Redman

can you send it to me? see msg for email, and i will host it on my server

also any other PDF's like this i can host (i have about 4GB of server space i am not using) send me an IM and i will send you my email... i am only interested in  single file per doc, and files either uncompressed or formats that can be freely distributed...

[redman]

redman, on Fri Oct 29, 2010 7:08 AM, said:

Hello,

I have a .pdf of the 72 page ATR8000 manual.  It's 4.3 mb.  Is this too big to upload here?

Redman

Just found out where I got the manual from.

http://www.atariage....-documentation/

Redman

[sloopy]

it is now on my server too, if your in the US use curts server, if your closer to France (where my server is located) you can use mine for faster speed

http://sloopy.digita....us/atari/Docs/

sloopy.

[OldAtarian]

I have a floppy drive that I bought a long time ago to use with the Portfolio. It's a 3.5 inch that was designed for the Tandy 100 computer. I read an article that there was a piece of software that allowed this, but I never did find the software. I just rediscovered the drive recently and it has a port on the back labeled RS232C but it's not a standard port. It's custom for the Tandy. It has two rows of 4 pins, so I don't know where to find a cable for it. Would that work with the ATR8000 with appropriate cabling?

[erazmus]

OldAtarian, on Sun Oct 31, 2010 4:01 PM, said:

I have a floppy drive that I bought a long time ago to use with the Portfolio. It's a 3.5 inch that was designed for the Tandy 100 computer. I read an article that there was a piece of software that allowed this, but I never did find the software. I just rediscovered the drive recently and it has a port on the back labeled RS232C but it's not a standard port. It's custom for the Tandy. It has two rows of 4 pins, so I don't know where to find a cable for it. Would that work with the ATR8000 with appropriate cabling?

I used said drive on my Tandy 100, 102, and 200 back in the day.  The interface is serial, with a proprietary Tandy protocol.  There's emulator software out there for the PC that allows you to emulate disks for the Tandy machines.

Even though the ATR8000 has an RS232 port, and technically with the right cable you could connect the Tandy drive to the ATR8000, it wouldn't work as a floppy drive.  You would need custom software for the Atari to convert the proprietary Tandy protocol to the equally-proprietary Atari SIO protocol.

[tregare]

erazmus, on Thu Oct 28, 2010 11:03 PM, said:

I emailed Rick yesterday to see if he had any ATR8000s for sale.  In the mean time I did some more experimenting.  I've added a floppy drive to the unit, and I think I've got it jumpered correctly.  The drive will spin up, and the red activity light on the drive will blink in unison with the Atari beeps, but I still get the boot errors.  However, the floppy drive is destroying the data on any disk I put in it.  I can freshly format and copy DOS to a disk in my 1050, but if I try booting it with the ATR, the disk is unreadable in a 1050 again.  It doesn't physically destroy the disk because I can reformat it and re-use it.  I can't be sure that I don't have a bad floppy drive, but I'm beginning to suspect I have a bad disk controller in the ATR.  I guess I'm going to have to wait until I can get another unit so I can try swapping a few things.

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions everyone.

have you heard back form him at all?  I've gotten no response

[erazmus]

tregare, on Sun Nov 14, 2010 4:19 PM, said:

have you heard back form him at all?  I've gotten no response

I haven't heard anything at all.

[sloopy]

hmmm maybe i should consider selling me second one seriously...


sloopy.

[erazmus]

sloopy, on Sun Nov 14, 2010 8:40 PM, said:

hmmm maybe i should consider selling me second one seriously...


sloopy.

How much?