JohnBuell

Whether the XM301 or the 1064, these are just freaking cool. I wish I had a steady pair of hands!

I recently remember seeing a thread that said, essentially, that if you get the right parts and cut a hole in the back of the 600XL, you can basically set it up for the same monitor connector as the 800XL. Is this correct? Are there other options for a 600XL? And what options, if any, exist for the 400? The cord is hardwired, correct? What kind of signal is it sending? It doesn't look as if you can plug it into a standard RCA video jack....

And of course, Zork. Was Star Raiders based on Star Trek or Spacewar (which is splitting hairs a bit, but Spacewar had already been Atari's first video game attempt)?

is the keyboard good? that's always worth a few bucks I can't really tell yet, I haven't started taking anything apart.

The screen stays black and there's no sound at all. Doesn't matter if I try starting it holding nothing down, holding Option down, or with a cartridge inserted.

So, sadly, I recently acquired an 800XL that I didn't know was dead until I got it home and tried to hook it up. The right light comes on, and the monitor "blanks", but nothing else happens. Any troubleshooting suggestions? Might it be salvageable? Any parts that I should pry out of it if it isn't? Anybody want to take the cartridge port, joystick ports, and my 7" lcd tv and try to make a portable out of it? Or should I just go the doorstop route?

I think the deviation is a hint... a team with FIGHTER in it's name.... to make something new for Lynx. Zaku is a wonderful game. Can't wait for the next release of this caliber. AX Well said Ax!

Yeah it is, it's the same family of newspapers.

I couldn't find a better place to put this, so forgive me in advance Just wondering if anyone saw this, and what the thoughts are among those of us here: http://www.chicagotr...0,7257227.story

(watches YouTube video) Okay, the graphics aren't as bad as I remember, although that yellow and black color scheme for bullets is really distracting (looks like construction equipment!). There was something about the game that really rubbed me the wrong way, I do know that. Maybe I'll have to play it again to remind myself of what that was. I think more to the point about Zarlor and Zendocon are that they were really the only two shooters BECAUSE they were written at Epyx by the team that really knew the Lynx's hardware. And getting into the same original tools DOES show in Zaku, love it or hate it. Personally, Zendocon in 1989 is the game that sold me on having to have the Lynx, and I still enjoy the hidden level of blowing up all of the programmers' heads. Zarlor I found tough, but not impossible, but not so much fun in cheat mode (although the hidden Life game can amuse for a little while). Zaku I haven't beat YET. So in terms of replayability, I'd go 1) Zaku, 2) Zendocon, 3) Zarlor. And all of that said, if Brandon/Osman DO team up on another Lynx title, I'll have my money ready.

I have no idea if they'd tested the 800XL. But hey, another 1050 and now owning both types of 1010s, I don't think I got hit THAT bad. I'm probably going to start selling extra books/cartridges soon, or at vcfmw.

Well you ARE creating an infinite loop. How about: 10 FOR A=1 TO 10 20 PRINT "HELLO!" 30 NEXT A

FB2+ has no slots, unless you hack and add them.

So I went down into Chicago's southern suburbs over the weekend to pick up some XL-era gear. For $125 I came away with an 800XL, a 1010 and a 1050, a couple of Atari Basic books (and another copy of the original BASIC cartridge), a warped and unusable DOS 3 disk, and DOS 3 manuals (which I had already). When I finally got a chance to start plugging things in and testing them last night, I couldn't get the 800XL itself to start The power light would come on, but my monitor stayed black and I never heard any of the usual 'startup' noises. The 1050 plugged into my existing setup just fine, so I have a D2: again! Yay! And the 1010 is the silver backed one (I already had the orange backed one), so now I have one each of both kinds of 1010s. However, playback on a regular audio cassette was VERY noisy, so I'm thinking a cassette head cleaner is in order. So, questions: 1) Do you just pick up an "off the rack" cassette cleaner for 410s/1010s? <Nevermind, I needed a little better forum search kung-fu; I'm going to try one of these from RadioShack: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3964917> 2) Anybody want a seemingly dead 800XL for spare parts?

If you can believe Wikipedia, this is an interesting wrinkle: In 2005, Hasbro bought back the digital gaming rights for their properties from Atari for $65 million.[10] In the deal, Atari's parent company acquired a 10 year exclusive deal to produce video games based on 10 key Hasbro franchises, including Dungeons & Dragons, Monopoly, Scrabble, Game of Life, Battleship, Clue, Yahtzee, Simon, Risk and Boggle. Hasbro bought back the digital rights to Transformers, My Little Pony, Tonka, Magic: The Gathering, Connect Four, Candyland and Playskool. So if anybody COULD do it, it would be the current ATARI! (Not that I think they will, or that Hasbro will cave in and allow an authorized release, but I can dream, right? ).

The first batch of 60 units is officialy sold out, and next is planned to autumn. Until that I want to focus to another projects, mainly the RAM 320XL. However, there are a couple of uncorfimed/unpayed orders pending, thus there is a chance to get one or two cards sooner if these orders will be cancelled. If that should happen, please leave me a PM. I'm going to see if I can dig out my grandfather's old 800XL so that I have a system to test with.

If we're talking about Kjmann's site, I saw in another thread that he's been very ill

Will there be any more of these available? I'm trying to think of things I can demo next month (agh! September's only a month away now!).....

Wow, what a long strange trip this thread has taken. Chicky, all I have to say is that I hope you're feeling better and getting better every day.

Hey, don't look at me, I've got NOTHING to do with logistics except for getting my gear there to show off.

One final bump on this one, since the "official" http://vcfmw.org/ site is live as of this weekend.

I've only followed the hack/upgrade scene a little bit since digging my Atari back out, so I apologize if I come off sounding like a total newb. Especially since I honestly have no idea how much engineering this would take. But based on what I've been reading, I'd vote for: 1) Upgraded video (for flatpanels, VGA or digital, since CRTs are disappearing, as are S-Video and RCA connectors). So some kind of monitor-out to VGA plug for the back of the XLs, sides of the 400/800 (I only own an XEGS, so I have no idea if the other XEs use that same cabling). 2) Stereo Pokey. Love this idea, especially if it's set up in such a way that you can get one of the chips going out a standard audio jack to one speaker, and the other chips feeding the other speaker. In other words, a connectible box with a headphone jack on it. 3) Plug-n-play RAM/CPU upgrades that will run software that expects it, and be ignored by software that doesn't. I'm not really worried about replacing controllers and so on and so forth; I had nearly everything but MIDI (including the ComputerEyes box, somewhere....). Though if someone wants to work on new versions of those, I'm all ears. Thanks for your time!

Aw, man, I didn't miss the cutoff again did I?

French, German, Italian and Spanish. I _think_ I have the first three of those. Well, I know where my Italian cassettes are but none of the others, so I can't answer this. None that I've ever seen, but I almost never see the tapes sold without the book. I could dig up the Italian one and scan it if there's enough interest. Absolutely no idea here.

Just to let everyone know, the http://vcfmw.org website is now live. It will be taking place alongside a Chicagoland Commodore gathering on Sept. 18th, in Lombard Illinois. And I see that Marty is already signed up to give a talk!