PAL Gridrunner Linked

[PAL Gridrunner Linked]

Borrowing same format:

 

Here are my test results:

 

ATARI 1200XL (NTSC), 256K RAM, 800XL OS

==================================================

Title screen with sheep -> O.K.

Rainbow animation -> O.K.

Title screen with plane -> O.K.

black screen

 

ATARI 1200XL (PAL), 256K RAM, 800XL OS

==================================================

Title screen with sheep -> O.K.

Rainbow animation -> O.K.

Title screen with plane -> O.K.

black screen

[TI99/4a Games Available in .DSK format]

 

I made the Atari disk and I can't seem to play any of the games. I don't have an E/A module I use Funnel Web.

When I start it, I go E/A, 3 - loaders, and then option 3. I enter DSK2.DD01 The drive chugs a little bit like its loading

but then the TI locks up with some screaming audio.

 

Try this one.

Atari Cracked (19xx)(-)req. PHM 3055 option 3DSK1.ATARI.zip

[How to create a blank disc and use it for saving basic programs]

You need a DOS disk.

 

The exact procedure will depend on the DOS in use, but DOS 2.0 and derivatives is the most popular.

 

If you boot with BASIC you will end up at the READY prompt.

 

Type DOS to access the DOS menu and then select I for "Format Disk".

 

MAKE SURE YOU PUT A BLANK FLOPPY in the drive.

 

Once formatted you can select B - Run Cartridge.

 

Then once you have written your masterpiece:

 

SAVE "D1:MYPROG.BAS"

[Free Atari 8-bit stuff in the SF Bay Area]

EDIT: any tips on cleaning out a 1200XL keyboard? Some of they keys are non-working so I am going to see what's inside. Have my eraser and rubbing alcohol handy...

 

See this:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/104583-tipstricksproducts-used-in-restoration/

 

BTW, I had a damaged and largely non-functioning 1200XL keyboard in one of my two machines.

I bought a replacement from Best Electronics a month ago. I am happy to report that the new keyboard works flawlessly.

[TI99-4/A Disk drive help]

Also post in a Yahoo TI99 group:

 

I was told when I purchased my PEB that it had the stock TI drive and

controller. Was the drive used a SS or DS drive?

 

 

The stock TI drives are SS/SD.

 

I believe the controller can handle DS/SD, but not double density.

 

If you want DS/DD you will need a upgraded controller, such as a Corcomp or Myarc controller, and a DS/DD drive too.

 

These controllers tend to fetch high prices on Ebay these days and are really quite rare.

[What kind of RAM upgrades are there for the 800XL]

OK, here we go. Here you can see the new 320XL plug and play RAM expansion plugged into 600XL:

 

http://krupkaj.ic.cz/showpic.php?show=Atariada2010&obr=8

http://krupkaj.ic.cz/showpic.php?show=Atariada2010&obr=9

 

I will add some detailed info soon.

 

Oh wow - finally a good use for the PBI port!

 

Now I wish I had bought a 1200XL PBI extender!

 

Great work, I am going to want one for my 800XL. And I expect I will have to take out the Wizztronics expansion that is currently in there.

[PC to TI99/4A interface?]

 

What makes some games require XB and some require E/A? Is there a way to convert the E/A games to run under XB or put a nice menu together for the E/A games?

 

Tempest

 

There is a program called YLOAD that runs in XB that allows you play most EA/3 and EA/5 games.

[PC to TI99/4A interface?]

Supercart?

 

Tempest

 

http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/supercart/supercart.html

 

 

My tips:

 

Don't try a chip seat for the 8K device - the case isnt big enough.

 

Skip the battery if you don't need the device to keep its contents when the console is turned off.

 

Use a newer case without the dust guard - it catches on the solder joints.

 

 

Enjoy.

[Question about 1450XL bare board]

 

The Best catalog calls it the 1450XL board, but yeah, it should be 1450XLD.

 

 

Didn't Atari at some point consolidate the 1400XL and 1450XLD motherboards into one?

 

I thought the 1450 had an extra daughter card to provide the parallel disk capabilities?

[Converting TI-99/4A dsk files to TI disks?]

Is it possible to use the CF7+ and a PEB so you can copy the image contents from the CF dsk images back to a real floppy?

 

Thanks

John

 

Not really no.

 

The CF7 terminates the expansion port, just like the PEB adapter does.

 

I've heard talk of a Y-cable adapter to allow both devices to co-exist, but ive never seen one, and even if you were able to plug it all in, I suspect you'd end up with device conflicts.

[Getting started with CF7+]

Attached is a zip file for Windows.

 

The files are:

 

cf2dsk.exe - DOS program to move images off the CF card to the PC.

 

dsk2cf.exe - DOS program to move TI disk images onto the CF card.

 

CF7A_plus_b.pdf - PDF instructions on using the CF7

 

CF_To_Disk_Transfer_Utility.exe - graphical front end to the cf2dsk/dsk2cf programs.

 

Utilities 90K (XBA).TIDisk - a 90K TIDisk image of some useful programs, such as UNARC.

 

 

Here is an example of moving the TIDisk image onto the CF card:

 

 

Connect your CF card to your PC using any standard CF card reader.

 

Then open a DOS window and navigate to where the files are located:

 

D:\> dsk2cf "Utilities 90K (XBA).TIDisk" 2

 

The program will move the TIDisk image to Volume Position 2 on the disk.

 

A 32Mb card can hold about 19 volumes.

 

 

 

 

Then take the CF card out of the PC and insert into the CF7.

 

Power up the TI and enter TI Basic.

 

Now type:

 

CALL MOUNT (1,2)

 

 

 

We loaded Disk 1 with Volume Image 2.

 

Then exit TI Basic and select Extended BASIC - the image will now autoload.

 

 

 

The card that comes with the CF7 has a utility disk as Volume Image 1.

 

I keep this as Volume Image 1 on all my CF cards since it allows you to manage the card, and if I get into a mess, I can always drop back to TI Basic, mount image 1, and reboot to Extended BASIC.

 

 

Hope that helps.

CF7.zip

[Converting TI-99/4A dsk files to TI disks?]

There are a number of ways to do it:

 

If you have an older PC, then the TI99-PC tool will write TI format disks right in your PC, which are readable on a real TI. This includes 3.5 and 5.25 disks. But I can tell you for me it has never worked, the PC simply wont write to the TI format diskette. I think you need older hardware for this to work.

 

If you get an SVD (Semi-Virtual Disk), you can download the disk images to the SVD and then hook it up to your TI as Disk 2, your real floppy is Disk 1, and you can then copy the files from virtual disk to real disk. The SVD recognizes TIDIsk and PC99 format disk images.

 

Also, various methods exist to copy TI disk images over the RS-232 ports from your PC to your TI. Then can then be saved to disk on the TI.

 

But if you want to just play games on a real TI, the simplest solution is the CF7. It plugs into the side expansion port and replaces the entire PEB. The unit includes the 32K expansion plus a CF card reader that can be written to on the PC. Transfer whole disks to the CF card and then read them like real disks on the TI.

[uIEC/SD Questions]

I don't know much about the various options with the uIEC/SC, and I was hoping for some advice before I purchase. What's the difference between the daughtercard, 1x13 Edge Connector, and "none"? Any advice would be appreciated...

 

 

The daughter-card provides the 6-pin IEC interface and a power connector that draws from the cassette port.

 

With the daughter card you can connect the uIEC to the VIC or 64 using a standard serial cable. If you want to connect it to a C16 or Plus/4 you would need a cassette interface adapter.

 

If you don't have the daughter-card you will need to wire the uIEC manually. Some people have mounted the unit inside their VIC or 64 computer. I put mine inside an old 1530 case and used the cassette interface cable to draw power.

[1200XL Pizza Box w/detachable keyboard...]

All in favor of ditching the "pizza box" idea in favor of a full blown 1450XLD case reproduction, say "I"....

 

heheh...

 

Aye!

 

The project as it currently stands makes no sense.

 

Take away the Mitsumi keyboard and the uber-cool chocolate brown/brushed aluminium finish, and your left with arguably the worst basis for an Atari upgrade project. Without some serious modding, the stock 1200 has only 64K so it cannot run many of the latest games, no PBI, an OS that is more non-standard and any other and the worst video display of anything Atari produced. Plus a cartridge port that SpartaDOS, R-Time8 and anything by Parker Bros wont fit into!

 

I appreciate Curt's efforts here, but the 130XE in a 1450XLD case makes a lot more sense.

[64K Cartridge Games]

 

These are the actual Carts and NOT the XEX versions you tested?

 

Yes, actual real carts on a real 800. Tested yesterday morning.

[64K Cartridge Games]

Now that I'm using my Atari 800 as my main 8-bit computer, I'm trying to compile a list of XL/XE cartridge games that won't work on the stock 48K 800 (disk games are too numerous to count). I looked over an old cartridge list and found these games listed as needing 64K

 

 

I tested my collection of XE video games on a PAL Atari 800 with 48K:

 

Ace of Aces - no

Airball - no

Archon - yes

Ballblazer - yes

Barnyard Blaster - yes

Battlezone - yes

Blue Max - yes

Dark Chambers - no

Desert Falcon - yes

Fight Night - yes

Flight Sim II - no

Food Fight - no

GATO - no

Into the Eagles Nest - no (display corrupt)

Rescue on Fractalus - yes

Star Raiders II - yes

Tower Toppler - yes (1987 development version)

[When did you first learn/discover pirated software?]

What stories do you guys have or recall of pirated software?

 

Early on it was kids in the school play-yard swapping tape casettes for their ZX Spectrums, VIC-20s and Dragon 32s.

 

Low-tech solution using the twin-deck ghetto-blasters of the early 80s, place original tape in slot A, blank tape in slot B and tada - instant clone every time. There was no money changing hands. Distribution was on a swap-by-swap basis. With all the immature inter-platform rivalry of the age it was inevitable this led to yet more friction, with kids claiming they were cheated because their cloned-game was good and the one given in trade was crap/non functional/a magazine type in/etc etc.

 

I had a VIC-20 and a few copied games obtained with this method, but I always wanted an Atari 400/800 system. Eventually I got an 800XL in Dec 84 and that made me the first kid in the school to have an Atari. Everyone else was buying Spectrums or Commodore 64s. But I still wanted a real 800, and by luck one came up in the local newspaper a few months later. It was a pivotal moment, because whereas I was excited to finally own a real 800, the package came with a dozen tapes of games.

 

These games were not the usual simple tape copies, but dumps of cartridges. I had the entire Atari cartridge collection on tape. I never even knew that was possible back then! And there was more - one tape had "The Last Starfighter" on it - wow - that didn't even exist!

 

By chance I had bought the old 800 of a member of a hacking/piracy ring. He had upgraded to an 800XL and needed cash for another disk drive, so sold his 800 to me. I wanted the 800 for the cool looks (I still own that machine) but the software that came with was the real prize.

 

I guess the interesting part of this tale is that I used that collection of pirated games to tempt other kids to the Atari platform. In the brutal competition between the Spectrum and Commodore 64 camps, each one offering a collection of copied games provided you provided a title-for-title match, the Atari camp (just me) went from a collection of basically none to the biggest inventory of any camp. What's more I decided to just give the collection to anyone who provided a blank tape or ten.

 

In the following year the Atari 800XL became the most popular platform at the school.

 

Jack Tramiel would claim it was his aggressive cost cutting in 1985 "Power Without the Price" that did that, but I think it was my "free software collection" that was the real reason behind Atari becoming a major sales force!

[atari 130xe video problem. atari 8-bit monitor]

hey guys, new to forum, first post.

 

anyways. i have an atari 130XE i wanted to set up but it seems to have issues. at first i tried hooking it up to a commodore monitor and the colors were WAY off. even adjusting everything with the dials i still couldn't get it right. i then tried a regular small tv i have and it supriseingly the picture was better, still not good but better which suprised me since i figured the monitor would produce a better picture.

 

 

Some 130XE machines had bad GTIA chips. They worked, but the colours were way off.

 

A properly functioning stock 130XE should match or exceed a stock 800XL on video quality

 

Also note there should be an adjustment POT accessible from under the machine. Try adjusting this while the display is running and see how the colours change.

[512K hardware expansion debugging?]

Does anyone have any brilliant insights on how to diagnose a faulty 512K memory expansion?

 

I have a DRAM piggy-back expansion. The base 256K seems to work fine, the additional 256K is reported "E" by SRAM021.

 

I rigged up a 9V battery to a buzzer and probed the 128 legs of the DRAMs, and got a buzz from everyone, so does that mean they are all soldered? Or is it shorting through the chip?

 

To test I would touch one lead Pin X of the first chip, and then the second lead to the same pin of chips 2, 3 and so on until I got to chip 8.

 

Anyone got any clever methods? Or am I down to removing each of the extra 8 chips and eye-balling it?

 

Thanks

[Flat Screen LCD that supports PAL?]

Is anyone Americans here using one of those flat Screen TV's with a PAL Atari?

 

Check my gallery for a PAL 800XL connected to a Samsung TW215.

 

It supports PAL and NTSC composite and S-Video inputs.

[TI99 Robotron]

I used to have a program called Kartridge Kracker for the c64. I was able to use it to copy 5 or 6 carts onto a floppy disk. If such a prog. still existed and could by rewritten for the ti99, you'd be able to do it.

 

Not really.

 

The TI's memory map is different from the C64/Atari model.

 

The cartridge port uses an 8K block of memory that no memory expansion can populate. AFAIK it simply isnt possible to populate that address space with anything connected via the expansion port on the side. Therefore even you could copy the program data from the cartridge to disk, you cant load it back into memory because that memory does not exist.

 

There are a few devices that place memory in this location, the most popular of which is the Gram Kracker device. The last one sold for over $500 on Ebay. Amongst other things, that allows you to copy cartridge programs to disk and then load them back again. However, I don't think the Gram Kracker could handle the bank-switching mechanism used by any cartridge game larger than 8K - including Robotron.

 

The Gram Kracker attaches to the cartridge port, not the expansion port.

 

As Tursi said, you would need to copy the program code and then rework it to run from the 32K memory expansion, relocating the code and reworking the bank switching mechanism. It's been done before with games like Centipede and Dig Dug - but its way beyond my knowledge of the TI!

[CF7+ for TI99/4A]

 

Any advice? Links? All is appreciated.

 

I think the program you have is an Archive file, so you will need to UNARC it.

 

The Barry Boone un-archiver is the most common one and it seems to work really well.

 

Since you dont have a real XB cartridge, your best best is to un-arc the ARC file with something like the Win994a emulator, working with the TIDisk image. Once you have it working on the emulator, you can move it to the real TI on the CF card.

 

HTH

[Atarimax 32-in-1 OS - resistor?]

This is the installation instructions:

 

http://www.atarimax.com/warpos/documentation/install_guides/install1200xl.php

 

I didn't see any resistor values.

 

Steve got back to me directly and said anything from 1K to 5K would be good.

 

I used a 4.7K from my box and completed the upgrade about 30 mins ago, my 1200XL now has the Clearpic 2002, 256K RAM and the 32-in-1 OS upgrade, pretty sweet! That's enough soldering for one weekend, next time I might try to take it to 512K.

[Atarimax 32-in-1 OS - resistor?]

I recently got one of the 32-in-1 OS upgrades for my 1200XL.

 

I missing the resistor to solder onto the PIA.

 

I have plenty, but I cant see the colours from the picture, does anyone know the resistance value to use?

 

Thanks

[A Couple Questions about DOS]

It says 62940 bytes free after booting to IBM Basic. Assuming my elementary memory is correct, would that not translate to less than a 100K ? Yikes.

But assuming that is correct, I wonder then why the computer was upgraded.. all but one expansion slots are filled (they all appear to be peripherals with serial ports, one clearly for a printer, none appear to be for a modem.) and the video card was upgraded as well, as the CGA with composite output was not standard.

 

Cassette BASIC only recognizes 64K, so that number is the same once you reach 64K.

 

The 5150 Motherboard supported either 4 banks of 16K or 4 banks of 64K depending on the model. The earliest models only had 16K factory installed and left three banks unpopulated.

 

To determine actual memory, turn on the unit and watch the memory test complete. It should count the memory 16K at a time until it reaches maximum memory, and then briefly show the final amount before dropping to cassette BASIC or booting the floppy.

 

Here's something else to check - from http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~preid/pcxtsw.htm

 

 

IBM PC

Switch block 1, near center of board:

 

* Switch 1

* off = Boot from floppy

* ON = Don't boot from floppy (goes to Cassette BASIC in ROM)

 

* Switch 2

* off = 8087 Math Chip installed

* ON = 8087 NOT installed

 

* Switch 3,4

* ON,ON = One bank of memory

* off,ON = Two banks

* ON,off = Three banks

* off,off = Four banks

 

* Switch 5,6

* off,off = MDA (or Hercules) Video

* off,ON = 40 column CGA

* ON,off = 80 column CGA

* ON,ON = No video or special (EGA, VGA)

 

* Switch 7,8

* ON,ON = 1 floppy drive

* off,ON = 2 flops

* ON,off = 3 flops

* off,off = 4 flops

 

Switch block 2, near power supply:

 

Switches 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 = Total memory installed

 

* Memory installed - sw1 2 3 4 5

* 16K = ON ON ON ON ON

* 32K = ON ON ON ON ON

* 48K = ON ON ON ON ON

* 64K = ON ON ON ON ON

* 96K = off ON ON ON ON

* 128K = ON off ON ON ON

* 160K = off off ON ON ON

* 192K = ON ON off ON ON

* 224K = off ON off ON ON

* 256K = ON off off ON ON

* 288K = off off off ON ON

* 320K = ON ON ON off ON

* 352K = off ON ON off ON

* 384K = ON off ON off ON

* 416K = off off ON off ON

* 448K = ON ON off off ON

* 480K = off ON off off ON

* 512K = ON off off off ON

* 544K = off off off off ON

* 576K = ON ON ON ON off

* 608K = off ON ON ON off

* 640K = ON off ON ON off

 

* Switches 6, 7, 8

* Always off

 

HTH