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richard13

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  1. Wow! It looks like you are right! I renamed some of the problem files to .ATR and they now show files in DOS 2.5 under Altirra. I guess whoever created these files for me in the past mislabeled them. That was like 20 years ago and they've been wrong the whole time. LOL. Thanks! This saved me a ton of time creating new .ATR files and duplicating the disks over from the ".XFD" files.
  2. Hi folks! I decided to try using Altirra today but I'm not having much luck. It seems that most of my XFD files are not being correctly read by Altirra. When I go into DOS 2.5 and do an "A" to list the contents of the disk I get nothing but either 999+FREE SECTORS or 000 FREE SECTORS. I know the virtual disks are good because they list properly in XFormer 2000. The one thing I notice is that the virtual disks that read ok are 90K in size. The ones I have issues with are 91K or 131K. Is there some incompatibility going on here? Anything I can do about this? I think I vaguely remember some issue about XFD files in the past but I cannot remember. -Richard
  3. Thanks guys. Much appreciated. I had no idea this was a such a squirrelly problem! I wonder why it wasn't an issue back in the day.
  4. Yes, they are still in business. I just recently bought a 65XE computer from them. They were on vacation for several weeks recently which seriously delayed my order but there was a notice on the eBay auction to that effect so I knew what I was getting into. I have to imagine that this is a Mom & Pop operation run out of their house. They have been in business for a very long time and remembered them when looking for new hardware. Glad they are still around.
  5. Hmm... but I am using an S-video cable right now and I clearly see them. Are you saying that they are much worse without S-video? Or do I have a lousy cable?
  6. Thank you for your response, 1050! For the memory and keyboard questions, I think this was a case of RTFM. I remembered this computer came complete with the manual and looked there. It explained the 48K only being counted and it also said that the top row of the on screen keyboard has some characters that don't mean anything (or something to that effect). I see that I can check Start, Select and Option but nothing else from there. You may be right about some of those having to do with other models. Funny I don't remember any of that but then again, as I recall in the day, I didn't really pay much attention to these tests. It's only interesting now since this computer is over 30 years old. Regarding the vertical lines, at the READY prompt, I see a vertical line on the left side but I also see vertical lines throughout the screen all the way to the right at regular intervals. But in the Self Test they are much darker and tend to come in and out (as if there were some signal interference). They cycle through being really obvious to barely being visible. I see there are other threads on this subject so maybe I should poke around there. If my experience is going to be mostly the thin lines in BASIC that's probably ok and I might not even notice it after a while but if its like the Self Test, this is going to be terrible.
  7. I recently purchased a new 65XE and having just received an S-Video cable for it I decided to take it out of the box and check it out. The first thing I noticed are vertical lines on the screen. I presume this is due to the fact that I am using a modern flat-panel TV or that it is 40" which is way bigger than anything in the 1980s or a combination of the two? Is there any way to improve on this? Lacking a disk drive or SIO2SD at the moment I decided to just do the internal self test. Everything seemed to go ok but I am a little confused... Memory: I see 3 rows of 16 blocks for a total of 48. This computer supposedly has 64K. Can someone verify this is normal? What would the rationale be for Atari to only check 48K? Or maybe these blocks mean something different from what I think? Keyboard: The top row has some inverted characters but I can't for the life of me figure out what those are or how I would test those. Any ideas? Appreciate the help. It's been a few decades and I'm apparently a bit rusty.
  8. Funny. Initially, I only saw the first sentence and thought you got a smoking deal. . But hey, $3 is $3. Good luck with this one. Please let us know how it goes and if you felt it was worth it. Too bad on the duds.
  9. Thank you Paul for your response. Yes, I thought this was some sort of updater feature that went neglected/forgotten after I successfully ran it and it downgraded me from ver 1.2.0 to 1.1.5 (or at least, that's what the indications were). No big deal though, I just restored a copy and decided to ignore it. Good to have confirmation that it shouldn't be used. I did successfully update the version of Altirra (manually) in my local installation. No worries about it not being 100%. IMHO, It works great and I'm super impressed it works at all considering the work involved here! Also, sorry to hear about your family issues. I certainly hope it all worked out and things are back to normal.
  10. Hey folks. I just downloaded the two parts. I guessed that I was supposed to merge the "gamepack" subfolders so I did with robocopy. If I wasn't supposed to do that, please correct me. I do have another question though. At the base of the a8bgp_1 folder there is an update folder and an a8.exe executable. When I ran it, and clicked on "install" there was a progress bar that filled 3 or so times but then the app went into a "not responding" state and never came back. What exactly does this do? Do I need to worry about it?
  11. Cool that you were able to get the labels off. Goo Gone works wonders for me too. The most important part is that the drive itself seems to be in good cosmetic condition. Hopefully it works just as beautifully. I'm thinking about getting a 1050 myself but then again, I might just as well get an SIO2SD instead. I loved the Wico joystick I had back in the day. It was so solid and felt like the contacts inside were metal instead of plastic on the Atari controllers. I am tempted to buy one of those "new" Wico joysticks but at $54.99 plus shipping of $10 seems like a high price.
  12. Ouch! Cannot believe the seller didn't box it. Especially if it was advertised as "w/box" which would be part of the price. Good luck to you in getting it working and all. Might want to talk with the seller to see if he can give you a partial refund or something.
  13. Atari 65XE computer new in box. I didn't have one of these back in the day (had a 130XE) but couldn't justify getting the more expensive 130XE for use nowadays. Of course, I say that now but.... Anyway, hoping to look at my old code and maybe play some games soon with it.
  14. Thank you for the pointers this was a lot of help! Yes, I know the XFD files are for the Xformer emulator. Funny side bit, I actually met Derek Mihocka when I first moved to this area so he could deliver a copy of the Xformer to me. I gave the Atari800WinPlus emulator a whirl and it does have a utility to convert XFD to ATR. On the surface, it looks like the only difference between these files is the added header information. Since SIO2SD should support XFD I'm probably ok but it's great to know I can indeed convert to ATR if I need to. I wasn't aware of this format incompatibility. I believe I have tried to load all my XFD using Xformer without issue in the past. I'll keep this in mind though. Thanks. Another useful utility. I found that it can not only fix file sizes but can also convert XFD to ATR (at least single density ones). I have an XFD that is 180K and the utility fails to convert to ATR on this one with an array out of bounds error. But since Atari800WinPlus can do the job that's ok. Thanks. Cool! Good to know Lotharek has happy customers! I am leaning in this direction. Thanks for your endorsement.
  15. Hello Philsan. Thanks for your excellent newbie post and especially the comparison table. It is most helpful! I actually read the newbie post first before I posted this. And I do not believe my questions were addressed in it. For instance, XFD files are not mentioned in your post or comparison table. I can infer that XFD files are fine from other information in the FAQ. But I couldn't find anything about converting them to ATR there. The other questions are really asking other people's opinions about their experience.
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