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What is this Atari 400 mod?


David Hefner

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Opened up an Atari 400 I got in a haul a few weeks ago, after noticing it had 2 25-pin sized cutouts on the back housing (open cutouts, nothing in them). Was looking to see if it had a memory upgrade in it or not. It had a 64k upgraded OEM board in it, but I also found a mod on the bottom of the main board which I have no clue what it's for. Anybody seen this before, and have any ideas? I didn't lift it off the board (it's held down by what looks like 30 year old double-stick tape, lol). Not sure what the IC is, as I didn't try turning it over (but it LOOKS like it has some perf board under there, so I'm thinking you may not be able to see the top anyway). About all I can tell is it's connected to the cartridge socket.. I haven't powered this system on yet, so I'm really not even sure if it works yet, lol.

 

 

400mod-2.jpg

Edited by David Hefner
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After doing a bit of research on here (should have done that before I posted, lol). It looks like ClausB's memory upgrade mod, same as this one in this post, just done shorter connections:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/228325-interesting-find-inside-one-of-my-400s/?p=3044865

 

ClausB's post about it:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/123207-expanding-the-400/?p=1488304

Edited by David Hefner
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Now all I need is a B-key keyboard, and it'll be almost the exact thing I had back in the early 80's..

 

My brother gifted me with all his old hardware, and that 400 was in with the haul. Also got an upgraded 800, an original happy modded 810, an ATR-8000 with a dual floppy setup, an 850, a bunch of various cables, and 2 floppy boxes with just about everything you could imagine from back in the day (even the original disks for the ATR).

 

atari_haul.jpg

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Wonderful stuff......all of it damn impossible to find here....and you should get a fine for transporting it carelessly like that esp. the 810 and I guess that's a HD under it.... :D :D hope the HD heads survived the bumps of the ride....

Edited by Level42
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Wonderful stuff......all of it damn impossible to find here....and you should get a fine for transporting it carelessly like that esp. the 810 and I guess that's a HD under it.... :D :D hope the HD heads survived the bumps of the ride....

That's likely the dual 5-1/4" FDD for the ATR8000 instead of a HDD.

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It was only stacked that way for the picture, so you could see the other stuff underneath. The 810 still works perfectly, and most of the floppies have survived as well (a few I tried had read errors, but anymore that's not a huge deal). I haven't really tested much else, need to clear off a desk in my computer room for all the atari hardware.. I'll definitely be testing the ATR soon though. It's got the upgraded memory, but not the Co-power 88 installed. I remember when my brother got that hardware, I wanted that setup bad so I could run a BBS on it. I remember calculating how much I could store on each disk to see how much total space I'd have (between 2 810's and the 2 in that ATR expansion).. That was right around the time the ST was coming out, and I did the same thing with that, calculating how much storage space I'd have with an ST with 2 double-sided drives over the 4 drive A8 series.. Those were definitely the days... WAY before we had the 'internet', lol.

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IF I remember right, my brother bought that ATR for that dual-floppy chassis. He had some sort of copy program that ran on it that'd duplicate disks (non-happy type stuff) very quickly on that box. He would have been served better with 2 happy 1050's, but he had more money than sense back then, and went that route, lol. Lucky for me though.

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It's not an auction - the $275 is a buy it now price.

 

I've been eyeing it for a couple of days, simultaneously trying to talk myself in and out of going for it. I really really don't need another CP/M machine or Atari gadget, but damn...I wanted one so bad back in the day. If it had the co-power board I wouldn't have thought twice at that pice.

 

Someone buy this to take the temptation away.

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