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Curious Craigslist Post


VicViper

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The post in question.

https://rochester.craigslist.org/sys/d/vintage-atari-computer-stuff/6309685052.html

Obviously not the best pic, but a few things caught my attention;

There appears to be one, maybe two toggle switches on the back of the computer

The two floppy drives under the printer are unclear, and ontop of the 1050 there appears to be 3.5" drive

Bags of computer chips? cant tell what those are

 

Any guesses on what any of this stuff is? im thinking about throwing an offer just because I'm interested in that sweet 128K of RAM.

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The floppy drives are XF551's - somewhat rare and are worth a good chunk of his asking price IMHO

The spare 3.5" mech implies that at least one of those XF551's has a Modded OS to support the 3.5" mech, most likely can swap out the 5.25" mech

The 130XE switches are most likely alternate OS selects.

SIO to Parallel printer adapter

The chips in one of the baggies may be the original OS ROM's from the modded XF551

The other baggie looks a CSS Quintopus? 6 SIO ports connected in Star, instead of daisy chain. if it is CSS, the OS MOD in the XF551 may be a CSS one as well... then that may also imply that the alternate OS's in the 130XE are CSS Ultraspeed OS as well... And maybe more than 128K of RAM.

 

I'd buy it! and let us know what you find :D

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Yeah. Jump on that deal before someone else does.. The 130xe has switches on the back.. probably a ram expansion.. The chips in the bag look like 1050 stuff.. maybe some spare roms/eproms, etc.. Theres also an ApeFace (or clone) SIO to centronics parallel printer interface..

The $250 is more than fair..

Edited by Albert
Removed racial slur.
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Are the xf551 power supplies hard t find?

It's the same power supply used for the 800/810/1050, 9VAC and 31VA.

 

Any 9VAC power supply with sufficient current(and the correct connector) will work. Many listed on eBay are only 1A which is too low, 2A may be enough but 3A minimum would be my recommendation.

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For the RAM switch, you have to boot the machine with a ram disk enabled. Make the ram disk bootable by writing DOS to it or sector copying a boot disk to it. Change the switch and then hold SELECT and press RESET for a warm boot. It will boot from the ram disk as drive 1.

 

Excellent for 2 disk games or BBSs.

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How the heck do i post pics from my phone? anyway, all the drives light up, havent hooked em up to the comp yet. the one XF551 has a rainbow ribbon cable and a four slotted plug that connects to the 3.5" floppy drive. No idea what to do with all that. The 1050 has a toggle switch on the side, witch is..... curious. it also has a sticker simply stating "BATCH" placed on top of it. I found a loose sticker in the box that says atari 800-800XL chips, The Impossible. the chips are as follows; "800XL", both of these chips are labeled J349A with the TI logo on them. the next ones are labeled "Atari 800" and are 8307 Atari 1981, and two smaller ones with a bunch of numbers on them. another one labeled CO16150, with a bunch of smaller chips.

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For the RAM switch, you have to boot the machine with a ram disk enabled. Make the ram disk bootable by writing DOS to it or sector copying a boot disk to it. Change the switch and then hold SELECT and press RESET for a warm boot. It will boot from the ram disk as drive 1.

 

Excellent for 2 disk games or BBSs.

Is the RAM disc a special disk? I have very little experience with Floppy drives as i pretty early on decided not to mess with magnetic media and just use SD card devices. Definately stoked for that 320K though, now i can play Pang. For a second. Before it crashes :-o

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The 130xe may be one Like I have. Mine has two switches in the back. On mine, one switch changes the OS between Atari/US Speed/FixXL. The second switch is to warm boot from the RAM Drive.

 

Definitely grab that stuff up.

 

That must be what's on my 130XE I just picked up (says Atari/US+/FIX on it) and it also has a 320K RAM upgrade switch. Thanks for the info!

 

Gotta get that power switch working...

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