oracle_jedi

April 13

I seem recall The Lone Raider, from Atari UK, was released on tape cassette in a large format clam shell package.

I think some of the Atari France titles were similarly packaged.

April 12

And.... I answered my own question!

I needed to add 120Ohm resistors to the RGB lines when connecting to a 1084 monitor. Looks so much better now!

April 12

Hoping one of the experts might recognize this, or have an opinion.

A Tandy 1000HX. When in the 16 color graphic mode, some of the display is clearly not right. What is supposed to be white comes off pink. Green colors are not consistent.

The Secret of Monkey Island shows that for some mode/colors it looks fine. Leaderboard shows how the green is causing ghosting. Two different Commodore 1084 monitors showing the same issue, and both monitors work fine with an Atari PC1/Amiga/ST etc.

Composite mode is better, and mono text looks fine. I am guessing this might be a sign I need to recap the mother board?

Anyone seen this before?

April 11

So here's a fun one...

I recently acquired a Tandy 1000HX. The Tandy defaults to booting off DOS 2.1 in ROM if it does not find a bootable disk in the drive.

To boot off the XT-IDE I added, it needs to update the EPROM to disable the ROM boot. The only way to update the EPROM is using a special program from Tandy.

I downloaded the HX1000.EXE program to my laptop, but the only 3.5 inch disk on a PC I still have, is when I plug an SF314 into an Atari PC1.

That would work, but to get the EXE program onto the Atari PC, I would have to either pull the XT-IDE CF card out - and that would require dismantling the whole PC, or I would have to use ZMODEM or something similar to transfer the program over a serial line.

The simpler solution was to use the NetUSB to copy the file to an Atari 1040ST, and then write it to a MS-DOS formatted 720K floppy.

Most of the time however I use the STs for games

April 10

As @tjlazer says, you can install new TOS ROMs into your machine, and if you do so, I would suggest TOS 1.04 as it adds support for boot-from-harddisk. The ROMS are *usually* located under the power supply, but exact locations depend on the motherboard revision.

You can also find a tool called "SELTOS" which allows you load up an alternative TOS to the one in ROM. It will however consume 192K of RAM, so if your 520STFM is stock, that won't leave you much RAM for applications.

Bear in mind that switching to a U.S. TOS means that some keyboard mappings will now be wrong.

If you merely want to switch to a 60Hz display refresh, there is utility you can download to do that, and set to auto-run on boot.

That said, your RF will only ever be PAL on UHF channel 36. The composite video out will also be PAL (now at 60Hz). The RGB output will switch to a 60Hz refresh.

March 27

19 hours ago, zzip said:

And remember Atari had other things in development, if the company didn't change hands. At that CES show they could maybe show off the 1600XL, which was going to be an Atari8/PC hybrid that would have been at least as interesting as the C128 if not more so (PC > CP/M by then). There was also the Atari 1850XLD Amiga system and Atari Sierra 16/32 bit computer that were in development that could bore fruit by then.

And that's a great example of what Atari might have done differently - to go back to the OP's original question. "Focus."

In the example you've illustrated above, Atari might have rolled up to CES 1985 with the budget 2600, the now-available nationwide "Pro-System" 7800, a soon-to-be-released Amiga-based 16-bit game console, the Atari 600XL/800XL/1450XLD home computers, the 1600XL home-computer/IBM PC combo, and the Atari Sierra computer line. Let's not leave out the also new Atari Holography game console and the AtariTel video phones.

They would have has more overlapping/competing/incompatible platforms than Compaq had after they acquired DEC and Tandon. The portfolio would have been a muddled mess.

Indeed Atari engineering was apparently so distracted by all the side shows, that the system they really did need to get out - the 7800 - had to be farmed out to a third-party.

Of course which of the above product initiatives they should have focused on is an interesting thought. My heart says the Amiga chip set. Since it is the spiritual descendent of the 400/800. My pocket book tells me that Atari might have followed Tandy's model, releasing a series of PC compatible machines intended for home use, but with Atari audio/video extensions ala "Tandy Graphics". I read somewhere that Tandy sold more 1000EX/HX machines in the U.S. in the back half of the 80s than Atari and Commodore sold STs and Amigas combined. I don't know if that claim is true. But Tandy sold a lot of computers.

March 27

19 hours ago, zzip said:

But I think the 1450XLD could have been a hit.. Some people would have wanted that all-in-one unit that you place a monitor on top of, and I think the drive was double-sided? It would appeal to portion of the 8-bit userbase that saw Atari as a serious computing platform no doubt

Exactly. And even had Morgan not mothballed the project and it had been released in Spring 1984, that market might have seen Atari shift thousands of 1450XLDs. But to be viable, they needed to shift tens of thousands and by Spring '84, more than a year after the introduction of the Apple IIe which had manufacturer supported 128K RAM/80-column mode/expansion slots, the only people who might contemplate a 64K/40-column system with a speech synthesizer, a slow modem and a weird disk drive as "serious computing platform" were die-hard Atari fans, most of whom are right here on this forum today.

I wanted a 1450XLD too. But that doesn't change my conclusion that there wasn't a viable market for them. Atari was right to kill it.

March 26

19 hours ago, CommodoreDecker said:

The 8-bits did need another hardware upgrade - either a better POKEY or improved graphics coprocessor. I recall the 1400XL and 1450XLD and both looked sweet in the catalog, but those were shelved... would the intended voice synthesizer have saved the 1400 line?

I ask myself the same question. As much as I wanted a 1400XL or 1450XLD, had they come to market as planned, I expect the result would have been the Ford Edsel of home computing. The lovechild of an Coleco Adam and a PCjr.

Imagine if you will. Its January 1985 at the CES in Las Vegas. Jack Tramiel never left Commodore, Atari is still owned by Warner and James Morgan is still CEO. After a brutal year, all eyes on are the show for what's going to save the two beleaguered micro manufacturers.

Amongst rumors of Commodore's upcoming 16-bit "ST" line, that will bring Macintosh power to a sub $1000 price point, Commodore is currently showing off their new C128. With 128KB of RAM, an 80-column RGB display, a full ergonomic keyboard, massively improved Commodore BASIC 7, a claim of full C64 backward compatibility and the ability to run still-relevant (but admittedly rapidly declining) CP/M applications, the new machine creates a buzz with its ~$500 price point. If you want to go online and explore the exciting new world of computer assisted communications, Commodore has a plug-in cartridge modem for ~$100 that also works on the existing C64.

Meanwhile over at the Atari stand we have the all-new 1450XLD. For ~$1000, Atari offers you a machine with 64K of RAM, a 40-column display, a built-in 300 baud modem (yawn), a speech synthesizer that sounds like a TI Speak and Spell from 1978, and an all-new disk drive the format of which is incompatible with the 810, the 815 and the 1050. And should you decide to add the also new 1090XL expansion box, you will have a machine on your desk about the size of a small Honda.

March 25

Thanks for all the great advice guys. I am going to try Farb's tool as a first port-of-call.

@FastRobPlus loaned me some disk magazines to try to archive. "The New Aladdin." Issues Feb 87 and Mar 87, which he thinks are not currently archived.

Mar 87 was a breeze. A simple sector copy and no issues.

Feb 87 was littered with bad sectors and disk errors. The Atarimax APE/PRO system was able to copy the disks, I don't yet know how much of the content is actually usable.

Rob thinks he might have a second copy of Feb 87 so it might not matter in the end. It would be nice to be able to share the disk images in a format everyone can use, and not have to have the Atarimax cable and software, which to be honest I cannot even get to run on Windows 11, and I have to rely on an old XP machine to support.

March 25

I have a bunch of .PRO disk images.

I can read them on real HW using an Atarimax interface cable and the APE software.

Is there anything else that can read these? Any emulators? I don't think SIO2SD supports this format. Does anything else?

Is there any software that can convert a .PRO image into a .ATX image, as the latter seems more widely supported?

Thanks for any pointers.

March 25

BITD I used to have a Lazer enhanced 1050 drive. In the UK in the mid 80s, and before the internet, Happy enhancements were hard to get hold of, so I got a Lazer from a friend-of-a-friend-fell-off-the-back-of-a-lorry type deal.

It was boardless. The whole unit was delivered encased in what I think was bathroom tub caulking. Amazingly it did actually work for a good few years, but then started acting erratic.

I think I replaced it with a US Doubler to keep the double density. By the late 80s, Atari User and Page 6 magazine were both carrying ads for U.S. Doublers, Happy drives and something I think was called "The Plate".

Happy memories!

March 12

I went to a 286 PC with a colour VGA monitor and a small hard disk. It was 1991 so probably Windows 3.0 or 3.1.

But I had to sell the ST to afford the new system, and it took a while to scrape together the funds, so I actually moved back to my 800XL, 1050 drive, 1027 printer for occasional correspondence, and got distracted for a brief time by a cheap and nasty used Advance 86B which was an awful 8086 PC clone.

March 4

Can you be a little more descriptive of the issue?

Does the unit power on? Do you get anything on the screen? Is the display all-white, all-black, garbage? Does it try to boot the internal floppy?

February 17

Thank you porting these games to the Falcon!

My dog loved "Alice's Mom's Rescue" on the Jaguar, and she approves of these ports too 😀

One question - is the lack of support for the Jagpad on the Falcon a deliberate design decision? If not, is it hard to add?

February 10

14 hours ago, tjlazer said:

It doesn't switch to PAL on the other machine?

It does switch just fine on every other ST - 1040ST (US-spec), 1040STE (UK-spec), 1040STE (US-spec), Falcon (US-spec). On this 520ST (US-spec) the 50/60Hz switch program causes the screen to offset to the upper right of the screen.

I am guessing maybe something with the older video hardware? Was hoping there might be a "swap this IC for a later revision...." type of known fix.

February 9

For me, not really.

The mini-reproduction machines are mainly of interest for gaming. For almost every successful ST game, there is an almost identical Amiga version but with better sound. An ST Mini would just be an A500 mini but without the cool audio. A mini STE would be better, and if they do make that it might get my interest.

Now a mini-Falcon? oh yes, now I'm interested!

February 8

I have an U.S. spec 520ST.

When it runs software for the European/PAL machines, and switched to 50Hz mode, the screen offsets and is squashed at the top.

This software works fine on a later 1040ST.

Is there an easy way to fix this?

February 7

I missed this auction completely. I have enough ST machines already so I probably would not have bid on it, but I would still have expected it to go for a bit more.

The completed auction link is here. I copied the images for posterity for when Ebay clears the auction.

Did one of our members win this? An interesting machine.

January 29

7 hours ago, snarkdluG said:

If I remember correctly, someone did do a fix and merged it on github with agranlunds github. I think he fixed the PCB. I can't find that thread at the moment.

I also did a PCB fix which is located here and on other forums. I never did github so it is sort of "hidden". It fixes the bodge wire need and confusion with CAS1L and CAS1H.

Thanks for the links @snarkdluG I answered the question posed on the github repo with a link to this thread. Hopefully anyone looking over the project will find it, and your fixes, and save themselves some headaches.

January 28

6 hours ago, snarkdluG said:

There are "fixed" agranlund pcb. That is why there are different instruction

How can one tell which version of the PCB you have?

The github repo still shows the need for a bodge wire. If a revision was made to address a mislabelled CAS1L/CAS1H, then why not also fix the bodge wire issue?

I don't see any evidence in github of project revisions. There looks to be just one with bare minimum instructions.

I do see a question from a user describing the similar corrupted menu items. That user had to disable the RAS line to get a stable 2MB, so it sounds like perhaps the same issue? The question is unanswered.

Had it not been for Adrian's Basement, I would have had no idea to try swapping CAS1L/CAS1H. But the fact that another reported NOT having to do so makes me wonder if it is the ST Rev H motherboard that is mislabelled for the CAS1L/CAS1H tap points, and had I soldered directly to the MMU, I might not have had any such issue.

I do see that Exxos has a similar 4MB expansion for the 520ST, and I like that his version uses a more elegant PCB design that leaves access to most of the RAM chip locations, meaning that in the event of problems you have an easier task of visually verifying that the board is installed correctly, and there are not bridged solder joints.

January 28

I bought an "agranlund" 4MB RAM expansion for my 520ST.

Its an open-source project that you can order up and make yourself. I bought a ready-assembled one from an Ebay seller. It seemed an easy way to add some functionality to the old 520ST.

You can download the project here: https://github.com/agranlund/STRam

The Youtube channel "Adrian's Digital Basement" featured the same expansion, although Adrian made the mistake of adding sockets to the install which meant it did not fit with the keyboard.

The install is not for the faint-hearted. The instructions on the github page are scant. Removing 16 RAM chips is not a trivial operation. The 520ST motherboard is better made than much of the Tramiel era Atari PCBs, but it is still easily damaged.

Note: Leave the bypass caps in place. These are still needed for the RAM expansion.

With the RAM chips removed and the expansion board installed, I followed Adrian's example and tied CAS1L, CAS1H and RAS1 to ground, and A9 to +5V. This allowed the ST to boot up with 512K RAM. Rather than run the lines under the board, I simply used pin 8 of U16 for ground, and pin 16 for +5V.

With the initial install done, next I had to connect the CAS1L, CAS1H and RAS1 lines. Rather than solder lines directly to the MMU, I ran the lines to the pads on the top side of the motherboard using this guide from the Exxos forum: https://exxosforum.co.uk/atari/last/STM4MB/index.htm. User Verault on the atari-forum.com reported that the CAS1L and CAS1H lines did NOT need to be swapped (https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=43064), however on my install I absolutely did have to swap these. Failing to do so resulted in a GEM desktop with corrupted menu items. Note: I don't know if the silk screen on the expansion board is wrong, or the guide on exxosforum, but the picture is of my working install.

This boosted the ST to 1MB.

The A9 line needs to be run to MMU pin 64.

I liked Adrian's idea of a switch to set the A9 to +5V which limits the ST to 1MB for compatibility with some software that objects to 4MB of RAM. I placed a small switch next to the cartridge port which is held in place with hot-glue. When reassembled, the switch can only be accessed with tweezers or a pen tip, but that's fine to me, as I do not want to accidentally knock it when the machine is running.

Cartridges can still be inserted with the switch in the 1MB position. Switched to 4MB it can prevent some cartridges to be inserted, but I don't have many so that's not really a concern. The +5V (force 1MB) is taken from the cartridge port.

With 4MB of RAM, booting from the Satan hard disk would be nice. But TOS 1.0 does not seem to support this, so I replaced the ROM with TOS 1.4. It took a couple of attempts to get the ROM chips in the right order:

With the case reassembled the ST would not even power up. I eventually tracked this down to the top shield shorting on the RAM chips on the expansion board. Since I like having the top shield in place, as it adds some support for the keyboard, I had to add a strip of Kapton tape to the underside of the shield.

The MMU had to be re-seated after the install, and all socketed ICs had to be firmly inserted several times before achieving a reliable boot.

Finally with everything reassembled, I can play Frontier off of a hard disk on the 520ST

I posted this here as I found the install guide frustratingly light on details. I hope this might help others considering this upgrade.

January 26

15 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

I just got a shipping notification for my Spectrum Next. It feels like it's been years since I put down my Kickstarter pledge...and it has been! Very excited now.

Mine just arrived!

Ordered Sept 2020 with an expected delivery date of Aug 2021. So happy it has finally arrived!

January 22

Interesting,

If you have the old ST boot ROMs that display the rainbow logo and prompt for a TOS boot disk...

GEM boots up to a pale green desktop, which I think is actually a green/white pattern effect. It looks decidedly more soothing that the garish kelly-green of TOS-in-ROM GEM desktops.

Of course these early STs only had RGB out. I am wondering if composite artifacting might have been a reason behind switching to the solid green color on the later units that included RF out?

Personally I with they had chosen a more subdued color scheme like they used on the Falcon.

January 17

I now live in Seattle, but grew up in the UK in the 80s, and a lot of kids at school had the ZX Spectrum.

Even though, as a Commodore, and then an Atari kid, I was obligated to heap childish scorn on the little rubber-keyed micro, I actually found many of the games amazingly cool. Psion Flight Simulator, Jetpac, Attic Attack, The Hobbit, Knightlore, so so many more.

I backed Spectrum Next KS2, and of course I am still waiting for it to show up. So I also bought a Harlequin kit from Byte Delight, and a remanufactured case from Retro Radionics, as ZX Renew were out of stock at the time. (Retro Radionics were also out of stock, but they just didn't admit it, nor offered any updates on the delayed order until prompted, and so I had to wait months for their stock to be refreshed from wherever in China is actually making this stuff).

The Harlequin was a lot to assemble but the instructions were pretty good. The finished machine can be switched from PAL to NTSC if needed, but also outputs RGB. It can also be set as either a 48K Spectrum or a 128K Spectrum. I use a 2A 9V DC power supply, center negative. I also have a DivMMC device to load games from an SD card, and to use a joystick as the keyboard still sucks.

The Spectrum is a fun 8-bit computer with lots of games and applications and on-going enthusiastic support from a great community. I am very eager to finally get my hands on the Spectrum Next so I hope they work out their "RotW" shipping issues soon.

December 31, 2023

I assume this is all obvious to people who've been around the Vectrex a while, but a few things had me confused trying to get Elite running on the Pitrex, so I figured I'd add this note to help out any other newbies.

First, to run Elite you need to be able to plug in a keyboard to your Raspberry Pi Zero. Since in the normal configuration the USB jacks are right up against the Vectrex housing, I replaced my 40 GPIO connector with a right-angled one.

This is really a benefit in a number of ways. I can now easily remove the MicroSD card without having to prize the Pi off the Pitrex. And I can also connect a keyboard to the USB jack.

Second. I tried a genuine Raspberry Pi keyboard since I like the small desk footprint. But this caused Elite to hang on startup, even though the code does recognize it as a keyboard. A standard Dell USB Windows keyboard did work.

Third. External power. For a while I was assuming my keyboard problem was that the Vectrex powered Pi could not handle the extra load of the USB keyboard. The Pitrex documentation says you can add a 2.1mm centre-positive DC power jack and remove the "Power from VEC" jumper. That approach however would also mean removing or hacking the Pitrex case. I removed the "Power from VEC" jumper and added a two-pin dupont connector. It fits easily inside the plastic casing. Later I will add a small switch.

With that done I can power the Pitrex externally using a Raspberry Pi regulated USB power supply.

As it turns out I did not need to do this. Switching back to Vectrex power with the generic Windows USB keyboard seems to work fine.