machf

For the time being, I'm probably going to use one of these: The left one is my late aunt's old National Panasonic cassette recorder, which she rarely used, aand the right one is my dad's Sharp, which he also rarely has used. I'll test them both maybe tomorrow. The Panasonic one has the advantage that it is set to work with 220V AC and so doesn't need a transformer, while the Sharp one is made for 110V so it requires one... and also, the Panasonic incliudes a stereo cable which I can use to connect it to the PC's sound card. And here are all the cassette tapes I'll need to convert if any of the recorders are still in working condition: The first 9 ones have Sinclair ZX-81 stuff (I have a Timex/Sinclair TS-1000 too, from before I bought the 800XL) and the remaining 11 have Atari stuff. I'll probably start with the Alley Cat tape, the one that says "PRISMA"... my aunt bought it in Chile on one of her many voyages - I had asked her if she could look for "Gato" (the submarine simulation) and that's what they sold her... (several years later, I DID get Gato, in the 1990s or early 2000s - on cartridge) In case you're wondering, the top 3 rows are carts which belonged to my nephews, the 3 carts at the bottom are the ones I bought much later...

Well, aside from "8x8 cm" (just to prevent any confusion with the measurement units), I don't think there's anything wrong with the translated documentation, at least after a quick look last night. Just got me thinking if it would be feasible to write code to graph the capacitor charge/discharge curve...

I used watercolors to paint both the graphics characters and the interntional characters on the front of the various keys myself... after seeing my cousin-in-law's 130XE back then. The heart and the diamond were the only ones for which I used red color instead of white. I'll maybe start a similar topic myself next week (or later) when I finally have some time to finish cleaning the insides of the 8-bits and start connecting them for test prurposes...

Probably not worth the trouble, then...

Definitely sounds interesting... I'll take a look at it and try to figure out how it's supposed to work. That should help wih the documentation.

I have his picture on my wall, from some full-page newspaper ad years ago... I think it was from some bank, saying "you don't need to be a genius to recognize a genial investment" (I cut the text at the bottom of the picture, making it square).

Sorry for the triple posting, but a friend who's come to the country after quite some years away called me earlier and I've been on the phone for over an hour, now I can't edit my earlier post... (Incidentally, I remembered he also had an 800XL and so I asked him if it still exists, he says it's in store behind his old desk and his mom hasn't thrown it away yet, although she wants to renew that room's furniture) Never mind that, when you boot with BASIC enabled the last 8 rectangles don't show up altogether. So, I did some more thinking... since it's those last 8K which show up red, it seems the common denominator here is the high address bit. Either the 64kbit chip corresponding to the highest bit may be damaged, or the address lines are, my guess is it may be the former. If removing the chip for the topmost bit gives you the same result, then that would confirm it; or if swapping it with another one makes the red rectangles move to a different position...

Have you thought about upgrading your friend's 800XL to 256KB RAM since it's socketed? And maybe yours too, since you want to replace the ICs already and socket them...

Hmmm... I'm remembering that the memory test may yield different results depending on whether or not you disable BASIC at boot time. Have you tried both options?

My cassette tape didn't come with any manual, only instructions on the label on placing it on the program recorder and then turning on the computer while holding down the OPTION and START keys... never knew the cats and the dog had any names! But at what point could a second player get a turn? When the first player loses a life?

A couple of days ago I found the PSU for my late cousin-in-law's 130XE and his 1050 drive... the XE's one turned out to be one of those bricks, for 220V input. Haven't tested it yet. As for the 1050's, the plastic casing is cracked, but apparenty inside it there's only an AC transformer, so that shouldn't really be a problem...

Well, aside from Strip Poker (which I played because it's a poker game, after all, and I like card games), I can't think of anything else. And I think I mentioned elsewhere I made a custom version using DOS XE on a DS/DD 360K disk with the content from the 3 extra disks added and the menu allowing you to select from all 8 opponents... I guess some of you may want to see an .ATR file of that one?

Looking at local listings (MercadoLibre.pe), similar models sell for around US$30-40...

Indeed, given the mechanics of the game (going from one screen to another one when completing an objective or reaching a target spot), it doesn't look like a game suitable for more than one player at a time...

Yeah, but it's tedious. I was wondering if anyone had already made a program which would do it automatically (looking for places in the waveform where the level is practically 0) while converting the .WAV files to .CAS ones. I really get bored with repetitive tasks... I'm trying to port it to the PC without using the 800XL. I still need to clean my Atari FDDs without the heads getting misaligned and then I'd need to copy the files from the Atari diskettes to the PC... I'd rather copy the contents of the tapes directly to the PC and process them there. OK, I haven't read about the format of .CAS files, but I expected that once loaded into an emulator I could save them back to .ATR disk image files. Or otherwise just extract the binary data with a hex editor (since most are BASIC files) and resave them. Yes, that's one of the methods mentioned in the tutorial. And that's the other method mentioned. Sounds like an interesting option, I should take a look at the local Radio Shack (well, they're called CoolBox now) or other stores around here and see if they have something like that...