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JohnBuell

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Posts posted by JohnBuell


  1. I've never seen a 1029 before; looks like they took an 800XL, removed the keyboard and jammed a printer inside!

     

     

    Yup, it's a bit of a beast! Great printer though, may not be the quietest of printers (I'm told the 820 was LOUD!) but solid enough, don't quote me but I think it shares it's internals with other similar era units...

     

     

    Edit: Same as the Commodre MPS-801, both units were made by Seikosha.

     

    The 820 and the 825 are about equally noisy. :) The 820 might be a little louder, but I'd need a decibel meter. The other printers I've used are a 1027, which is noisy, but not as much as the dot matrix printers, and a 1020, which is actually fairly quiet.


  2. Good choice with Lynx. IMO, it's aged much better than Game Boy. The only problem I can find with it is that 6 AAs are a bit hard to procure.

     

    Use rechargeable batteries, I use 2700 mAh GPs, it works fine with them, I never use the power adaptor.

     

    How long do they last on a charge? I just joined the ranks of proud Lynx owners, and I can't wait to get mine in the mail...

    I have been using my Lynx 6 hour 35 minutes since the last charge, and it is still working. I must say that the battery life is not bad at all with these modern NiMh batteries. I have expected like 4-5 hours maximum. (I even saw a review on youtube and the guy was talking about 2 hours working time...)

     

    When I took my Lynx for the year I lived in Germany (1992) I took two sets of NiCd AA batteries with me - I hadn't bought the D cell pack yet. And yep, they lasted about 2 hours per charge.


  3. I know there have been aftermarket conversion kits for 3 1/2" drives for use with the 8-bits for quite a long time. In theory, you can replace or add an off the shelf 3.5" drive to certain units, like the XF551 and have a 3.5 or dual 3.5/5.25 drive setup. But what I'm wondering is has anyone taken drives like the old ST external drives and converted those for use with an 8bit? Is this remotely possible?


  4. Somebody who is REALLY good with a soldering iron (not ME, obviously) could probably make a nice little job for themselves custom fitting candle's various addons in different models of XLs and XEs. :D

     

    i am, and i do :')

     

    sloopy.

     

    Then why the heck haven't you sent me a PM with a price list yet? :D


  5. We all know about Atari's rough transition from Warner to Jack in '84 or so, but when did Atari Corp die (1996?) and what happened? Also, in terms of "were the tramiels good or bad for atari" is there is distintion to be made between the jack and sam era? and did the jaguar kill atari corp?

     

    Everything BUT Jaguar was killed/stopped. Atari eventually did a "reverse merger" with JTS, which manufactured hard drives. There's a good summary at the end of:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT_Storage


  6. Anyone else reading this on a Mac with Preview? Half the screenshots don't show here. IIRC this happened with the last issue too :(

     

    Hi, don't have a mac so can't test it with Preview here. Can you try it with Adobe Reader, I presume the MAC version is free. That should resolve the problem.

     

    Well I can try but I've never needed it before and I read a lot of PDFs. To be honest I'd rather not have yet another piece of software installed just to read this one file :(

     

    Any more Mac users out there?

     

    spookt, same thing here. Preview just doesn't render something or another, and I'm on 10.6.5. Looks fine with Adobe Reader 9 though.


  7. I sent mine right after Thanksgiving. I'm sorry if wimping out on what I sent (gift certificate) seems lame, but it was the only thing I could think of/come up with, and it WAS on your list! :)

     

    I also got my own gift a few days ago, from Canada, and wow I am impressed! I kinda rambled on about different likes/dislikes and mini-collections including non-Atari stuff to poor Ax, and Secret Santa came through! Box of Belgian chocolates, VW logo keychain (I have an odd collection of New Beetle stuff even though I've not yet owned one. I just think they're cool), and some loose Atari 8-bit carts! Yay!

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  8. So that I can utilize my RAM 320 XL to the fullest, I'd like to get my hands on a PAL XL, to play all the games and demos that I can't do on my regular NTSC one. I'm willing to buy, or I might have items to trade (I have an 800 with a little damage on top, another NTSC 800XL, not as clean as my main one). Those are the only items I can think of at the moment (also have an 810 with a hole in the top, but I'd like to take it apart, make sure there's no more loose plastic, and replace that top piece before selling/trading it, unless someone else wants to take on that DIY job).

     

    Please let me know! :)


  9. puppetmark, since I've got a stock 130XE and a 65XE with Svideo mod, how easy would it be to add an svideo port to the back, run the wires, and some kind of switch on the back to go between svideo/RGB? Just a simple SPST switch between signal wires?

     

    Stock 800XLs do not have the chroma line hooked up to the monitor jack so that's why you have black and white with that machine. I have the board configured for chrom / luma input because it yields a much better picture. Anyway, adding the chroma line is actually quite easy, jut one wire and a resistor.

     

     

    I meant to ask you, that's wire and resistor on the XL's motherboard, right? It's been a while since I've thought about this :)


  10. Here's a couple of what I think have been the coolest. Thanks to Santa Bob and Santa Mark for a couple of these ;)

    post-10340-129195692497_thumb.jpg

    First is the GORGEOUS 1200XL from Bob. Thank you!

    post-10340-129195691934_thumb.jpg

    Next is Mark's AWESOME RGB converter box, connecting an SC1224 and a 130XE, and running one of my all time favorite games!

    post-10340-129195691548_thumb.jpg

    post-10340-12919569115_thumb.jpg

    post-10340-129195690604_thumb.jpg

    Lastly, some items I got recenly from an eBay auction that I thought were interesting. First is a pair of AMIGA joysticks. I knew they made them to fund Amiga development, but I had never seen or owned any...until now! Next is some of the boxed software I got, and another item I hadn't seen before, a GE computer recorder! It's actually pretty neat. It's a light weight tape recorder that comes with an adapter box that plugs into standard jacks, and has a special data port on the back of the adapter, and a SIO-data port cable. One thing I'd LIKE to try is to find out if it can be totally run off of batteries! It looks like it could...wouldn't that make for an interesting Atari XL laptop peripheral?

     

    As I wrap up for the year, I want to take a moment to thank Jon, Bob and Mark again, and everyone else on these forums who've been supportive in my return to my 8-bit hobby (addiction). You guys have all been great, the advice is fantastic, and the hardware and software development is still top notch! Atari Forever!


  11. Eric, if you don't mind my asking, are you able to create a manual based on original documents? I.e. when you got all of your materials for EOTB, did it include the rough drafts of the documentation as it was being written? I'm just curious. If you want to make me wait until you're closer to a release, I can understand that too. :)


  12. I wouldn't worry - all the toys are going for more before Christmas. It will settle down again in a month or so. I wanted to pick up an old school Simon, and the things are regularly going for $60 - I'll just wait until everyone is broke after the holiday season and get one for a reasonable price...

     

    Huh, does that mean the Touch Me's are going for a high price too? :D


  13. So, I got mine from puppetmark the other day, (Thank you thank you!), got my SC1224 out of storage, and I'll be dipped if I can't tell what company actually manufactured the thing. Oh well. Anyway, I've tried this with a pair of 800XLs, and just got b/w. Bummer. I'm going to dig up one of my XE's and try that next :)

     

    puppetmark, since I've got a stock 130XE and a 65XE with Svideo mod, how easy would it be to add an svideo port to the back, run the wires, and some kind of switch on the back to go between svideo/RGB? Just a simple SPST switch between signal wires?

     

    Stock 800XLs do not have the chroma line hooked up to the monitor jack so that's why you have black and white with that machine. I have the board configured for chrom / luma input because it yields a much better picture. Anyway, adding the chroma line is actually quite easy, jut one wire and a resistor.

     

    Adding a s-video port to the back of the interface is posssible. In fact, I did that for someone else instead of having the 5 pin DIN cable as the input. I am not sure why you would need a switch because RGB is the output, regardless of which kind of input you are using. In other words, the input to the interface IS s-video, I am just taking the signals from the 5 pin video jack in the Atari computer. I am also taking the audio signal and just sending it to the audio input on the SC1224 in n order to use the built in speaker.

     

    I can make you a short cable that will plug onto the end of the existing 5 pin DIN cable and that will give you a standard s-video and audio input.

     

    Oooooh, that would be cool! I'll take you up on that! I'm having fun with this :)


  14. So, I got mine from puppetmark the other day, (Thank you thank you!), got my SC1224 out of storage, and I'll be dipped if I can't tell what company actually manufactured the thing. Oh well. Anyway, I've tried this with a pair of 800XLs, and just got b/w. Bummer. I'm going to dig up one of my XE's and try that next :)

     

    puppetmark, since I've got a stock 130XE and a 65XE with Svideo mod, how easy would it be to add an svideo port to the back, run the wires, and some kind of switch on the back to go between svideo/RGB? Just a simple SPST switch between signal wires?

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