Kenshi

The manual mentioned in the previous thread has some good suggestions to check for drive motor problems, especially "drive motor doesn't rotate when latch is shut" and "drive motor operates sporadically" on 4-1. Since you completely replaced the drive mechanism and still got an RPM fault, it seems like that issue is on the board. If you have a known good LM2917 (U5) chip, you could try swapping that out. You can check pin 11 to make sure the tachometer signal is making it to the chip. An oscilloscope is ideal, but if you don't have one, you can switch your multimeter to VAC mode and it'll tell you if you're getting a changing voltage and some will give you the frequency. It'll be less than what's in the manual since it shows peak voltage and your multimeter will try to show RMS, but if you're only getting a few millivolts, it's background noise. If Q4 or Q6 is failing or R80 has too much resistance, it may make the motor weaker.

This is the manual I was looking at and probably the same as what everyone else is as well. http://www.atarimania.com/documents/atari-1050-field-service-manual.pdf On page 5-5, it shows C67 to be 35 V. As I said above, it'll only see about half of the 25 V rating of the capacitor you put in it so I think what you used is fine, but this manual is why everyone is saying that it should be 35 V.

The voltage on the capacitor will fluctuate if there's any load on it. The regulator is constantly pulling charge from it but the rectifier can only recharge it near the peaks of the AC voltage or every 1/120 of a second. The numbers you gave are about right if the load is an amp or two. If you lose a diode in your rectifier, it'll only charge half as often and the fluctuation will be twice as bad. It's up to the regulator to clean up the fluctuations and make the voltage constant.

I just realized I multiplied by 2 an extra time to get the numbers above. C67 and C71 will see about 12 V at most and C68 about 22 V. Personally, I'd prefer at least a 30 V capacitor for C68, but the 25 V for C67 is far more than enough.

The manual says the plug feeds in 9 VAC. Do a little math and the most voltage the capacitor should ever see is around 24.5 V. I don't know that a 25V capacitor is going to last for decades under such conditions, but it shouldn't blow after a few minutes of operation. It seems more likely it was put in backwards or was just bad. I'm a little concerned about C68 though. Between it and the rectifier is a voltage doubler, so it's going to see at least 45 V accounting for some losses. Why does the manual say it's a 35 V capacitor? And did Slag replace it with a 25 V as well?

After compiling, in addition to the expected tnfsd executable, I also have a tnfsd.linux64 in bin that I don't recall being there with the previous version. I'm guessing the former is a 32-bit version and the latter would be the ideal file to copy in 64-bit Linux. And thanks for the chroot info. My TNFS server isn't public, but just changing three measly lines in the startup script is still worth the security.

Good to know. I figured each subsequent world would be harder than the previous and it wouldn't help to skip around much, but if I can't come up with any good ideas on 4-5 next play, maybe I'll skip to world 5 and come back later. Again, great game and very challenging, one of my favorites so far.

That's the smoothing capacitor just after the rectifier. Yes, electrolytics will go pop in no time if you put them in backwards. Pay attention to the stripe. Lucky for you, it probably didn't take out anything else in the process, but I'd check diodes CR17 to CR20 to be sure.

I love this game. I just got my 800XL last summer and I'm a fan of Adventures of Lolo on the NES and Tricky Kick on the TG-16, so I was hoping there was something similar on this system. I found this about a week ago and I'm currently on 4-5 doing them in order. World 4 has really taken the difficulty up a notch. I get stuck and have to leave for a few hours and come back with fresh thoughts on things to try. I hope it doesn't get too much harder or I'll never finish it.

I never liked programming languages that were too much like English. If my calculus teacher had written a problem on the board as "the integral from zero to one of x squared plus one," I would've dropped that class as soon as I got home. Likewise, I want my programming languages to look more like the language of math than English.

I tried your program on my setup with my TNFS server (this computer) and it was still running fine after several minutes. I can't think of anything I already have on my computer that would really stress the CPU, but there's no way any computer made in the last 20 years should get so bogged down from a game that it can't send a few kilobytes to another node. It could be something physical with the network that's mostly affecting just your server computer, such as interference or a loose antenna. I'm leaning towards something in the operating system though, such as a bad device driver, a faulty firewall, the computer is running out of memory, etc. Do other programs ever have trouble connecting to internet services? Does the game drop frames? You'd think whatever is causing it, it would affect other programs too. Sorry I can't be of greater assistance, but I'm kind of interested in seeing what the problem is.

Thanks for the welcome. I wouldn't say I had faith in the TNFS servers but rather it wouldn't have been a big deal if the one I was using went down. If I'm trying to play a game and it won't work, so what? I guess I'll try again later. If it had messed up while I was programming in DASM, still not a big deal. I was saving my progress frequently on my SD card anyway and I didn't have a deadline to meet. And honestly, the only problem I ever had was on occasion, I'd have a program just give me a black screen when I tried to boot up, so I'd reset and it would work the second time. Like I said, I don't have a lot of experience with it so I'm not saying other issues can't happen, but they don't seem to be very frequent. Anyway, I'm not saying he should never worry about copying the file to his SD card, but while he's figuring out the ins and outs of the device, getting his card formatted properly, and whatever else he needs to do, mounting files directly from the server would be an easier option and is also an easy way to try out unfamiliar programs to see if it's even something that's worth copying. He probably won't be able to seriously use Envision until he has a working SD card to save on, but in the meantime maybe he'd like to browse the huge selection of games or fire up some BBS software or something. I pointed this out to him because he seemed to think that TNFS servers are like FTP servers and you have to download the files to a physical medium before you can load it. It sounds like he at least has some experience with the computer and software, but I had none at all and being able to quickly choose a program on a server and run it was so helpful. It might keep him from feeding the FujiNet to the disposal unit.

We programmed in machine language on three or four processors in that microprocessors class. I specifically remember the 6502 was first and took up most of the class, then the Z80, and the 68000. There may have been an Intel processor too. This was in 2000 or 2001, so these processors were pretty antiquated by that point. They made me take a Windows 3.1 class which I fortunately tested out of, but then the college dropped that class and added a Windows 2000 class. There were a few classes I wondered why I was having to learn about such ancient stuff, but I enjoyed the microprocessors class. We had something along those lines. It was some kind of development board, but it had a case; it wasn't just a bare circuit board. You had to type in your code in hex and you could single-step it and watch the contents of the registers on the LED displays. It was pretty cool. I had done assembly programming on the x86 by that point, so it wasn't hard to pick up.

You guys make me feel young. It was when I was 9 in 1990, plus or minus a year. They used to advertise for these "college" courses on TV where you'd mail in your work and get a certificate when you finished the class. "Get your certificate in accounting, business management, computer programming..." I wish I could watch that commercial right now. It was the equivalent of online courses before the internet was much of a thing. My mother signed up for the Basic programming course, got a Tandy CoCo3 and some programming books, but never completed the course. Instead, I was the one that learned to program on it. The only game we had was Predator which was terrible, so what else was I going to do? Maybe I should've finished the course for her. I made some simple programs and recorded them to cassette. We got our first PC-compatible computer a couple of years later which led to me learning C/C++, x86 assembly, and other languages. Programming PLCs is now part of my job, but I never got real serious about computer programming. I mainly write small programs occasionally just for the joy of doing it. A few months ago, I was reminded of that CoCo3 but bought an 800XL instead since I always wanted an Atari computer when I was a kid. I've been learning to program in assembly on it. (I learned the 6502 in college, so I just had to learn the other hardware and OS.) Maybe before I die, I'll finish a game or program that's actually worth sharing.

I just got my first Atari computer with a FujiNet a few months ago, so I'm no expert, but I feel like I might be able to offer some suggestions since I recently had to learn this stuff. I think you're making this harder than it has to be starting out. Most of the software on TNFS servers, especially games, can be loaded read-only and doesn't need to be copied locally to run. Just mount the remote ATR file to D1 and boot it up. If you use something frequently and don't want to have to worry about network issues when loading it, copying it is a good idea, but I've hardly had any network issues and it's also a good idea to learn how to crawl before you learn how to walk. There is even a TNFS server with a few high-score enabled games on it so you can compete with anyone accessing it for a high score and pretty soon, one homebrew game I like is supposed to have network support so people can play against each other directly. I think that's pretty amazing myself. When I started programming with DASM on the machine, I needed to be able to save my source and object files. I still loaded the remote ATR file to D1 read-only over the internet, but used the FujiNet menu to create a new disk image file on the SD card which I mounted to D2. I'm guessing Envision can be used this way as well and whatever you save to D2 would be accessible by other programs if they're able to read that type of file. You can skip copying the ATR file, but you do need an SD card formatted properly to make the blank disk image. I got mine with the FujiNet, but don't most SD cards come formatted already? Then I decided to install my own TNFS server on the computer I'm using right now so I can easily load stuff that isn't currently on any public NTFS server including stuff I program myself, but that's something to do after getting the basics down.