oracle_jedi

My son turns 13 this coming weekend. Despite being born in 1999, he has developed a great affection for 8 and 16 bit consoles and computers. Maybe it's Dad's collection of Atari, Commodore and TI systems, or maybe its Nintendo. Who can be sure? So for his 13th birthday he wants an original SNES. Not a reproduction unit, a real actual genuine SNES. Living in Seattle, we are blessed with what appears to be an above average number of retro game stores, including Another Castle, Game Gurus and "AL's Music, Games and Videos". We also host the PAX Prime conference and Seattle Retro Game Expo here. All in all, pretty much a retro paradise. So it was with some confidence my wife and I set off earlier today to Pink Gorilla in the U District to buy a SNES. We confirmed they had some before leaving, and they said they had one. But what they had had major discoloration. I know how to retro-bright, but I asked if they were willing to swap out the case plastics for non-functional one in the window display. "Err.. Dude. No". So then I checked their display of used games for some of the titles my son wants to play on his SNES. They were lacking a couple. I asked and the clerk reported that they didn't have them. "You have two other stores right? Could you check inventory there?" "Errr. Yeah. guess.." He checked one, and they didn't have it either. But they did have two working SNES consoles, so maybe our odds of success were better across town in West Seattle. We bought a Mario and a Kirby game and headed off to the next store. At the next store they had two SNES consoles. A rather battered one for $45, and a slight better one for $50. "We'll take the fifty dollar one." Then he showed me their display of SNES games. They had a Mario game that was a compilation of several other Mario games, including the one I had bought an hour earlier in the other store. Despite buying a console, and having a receipt for the game from their other store across town dated today, the clerk told me repeatedly they could not exchange the more limited cartridge for the more extensive one. I was willing the pay the difference, but Pink Gorilla would only trade in the earlier purchase for maybe thirty percent. Wow. That is about the most ridiculous approach to customer satisfaction I have ever heard. Even the DMV would struggle to match that. So somewhat annoyed, I bought the SNES and no more games. I asked about any warranty that the $50 SNES would actually work when I got it home. The clerk hesitated and mumbled. "Yeah, these old systems are made like really well, it's our name here, it's like one hundred percent guaranteed supposed to work..." Now that's a definite maybe if I ever heard one. So we drive home with our SNES in a bag, only to discover the unit in the bag is the battered $45 unit, and not the somewhat better $50 one. We check the receipt and sure enough, he's charged us for the more expensive unit. We call, explain, and head back across town. Upon reaching the store, the same clerk looks up and says, "Err, why are you here again?" Wow. Just wow. Retro gaming is now so main stream, so over burdened with customers, the few suppliers in this market can resort to customer satisfaction policies that would make the main stream brick and mortar's blush crimson. That my friends, is real progress.

Correct, I did this on my 1200XL and stopped after I had the OS installed, since holding down OPTION to disable BASIC gets old. You are left with an 800XL in a 1200XL case but no PBI. The LEDs still operate during memory test if you leave it as stock 64K. From the Bob Woolley upgrade published at http://retrobits.net/atari/pbi.shtml (With a little reformatting) All you need to do is pull the 24 pin socket at U13 and solder in a 28 pin unit. One more address line (A13) is needed, so remove the W6 jumper and solder a wire from pin 23 of the CPU chip (U21) to the top pad of W6. Now, plug the 800XL OS ROM into U13. The 16K ROM select is just as simple. Take a look inside your 1200XL. See the chip that has 20 pins (U14)? That is your MMU. It is the main difference between a 1200XL and an 800XL. Same number of little pins, same number of inputs and outputs ..... But the 800XL IC has the 16K select for the OS ROM. So, lets jump right in and swap the MMU with the 800XL part (CO61618). Fits just fine, doesn't it? Pull out all the jumpers except W11, W12 and W9 and you have a ROM select line that will select the address range from $C000 to $FFFF in a single ROM, like the 800XL. Since the 1200XL has two ROM sockets, and there may be some hard core nuts out there that just must have the internal Basic ROM, get a version C ROM and bend up pins 24 and 21. Plug this ROM into U12 and solder a wire from pin 24 of the Basic ROM to +5v at the top of C11 (just to the left of U13). Solder another wire from pin 21 of the ROM to the left hand pad of W7 (which should not have a jumper in it). One more wire from pin 18 of U14 to pin 11 of U23 and your machine has Basic under the covers, just like the big guys!

A bad MMU can cause this too, including all manner of other bizarre effects including refusing to recognize cartridges, ramdom bad RAM, bad ROM and graphical corruption.

You might want to check this VIC-20 thread from a few months back: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/198950-vic-20-questions/ I still say skip the tape and disk drive, grab a memory expansion and a uIEC and be done - at least until you get a MegaCart.

Given that Bladerunner was filmed in 1981, and the XE line did not appear until 1985, this seems unlikely.

You can find it on the Planet 99 web site: http://www.planet-99.net/disks.asp?id=31&action=view&aid=178 You will need to sign up to be able to download the ZIP file, and it comes in TIDisk format. I don't have my TI rig set up right now, but I think that works with the CF7. You load YLOAD with Extended BASIC, then it allows you to load an EA3 or EA5 file, removing the need for an Editor/Assembler module.

Wouldn't you just need to swap the personality card for the PAL version and the OS card for the CXL801P? Best Electronics has the CA06113 board for $15. With Incognito I think you don't need the OS card right?

Put me down for two populated with shipping to Seattle, WA.

Just picked up my fifth from Ebay. Here's my complete list: 83S DA 020878 073 - 800XL OS, Rambo 256KB, Clearpic 2002 83S DA 78443 133 - 32-in-1 OS, Atarimax 256KB, Clearpic 2002 72R DA 10202 203 - original spec, complete in box 72R DA 16022 213 - 800XL OS, 512KB, PAL ANTIC 72R DA 23381 243 - original spec, complete in box One of the un-modded ones will receive an Ultimate 1MB expansion in the next few months.

Seems unlikely, QDOS was written for the 8086 which is why Bill Gates wanted it for the IBM project. In 1981 Atari were firmly behind the 6502 as the workhorse of their computer line, and I don't recall any talk of Atari seriously considering an Intel based offering until much much later. Atari I believe did consider Microsoft BASIC as the preferred dialect for their machines, but Microsoft were unable to pack it down into 8K without stripping all graphic commands out and leaving something like CBM BASIC V2. Atari selected OSS to provide the cartridge BASIC and sold the Microsoft version on disk.

I got the second machine back: 72R DA 10202 203

Maybe the original owner wanted to add a Bit 3 80 column card and didn't want to give up 16K of RAM

The atarimax 32 in1 OS has a 1200XL OS rev 5 that has the ® registered trademark symbol on the splash screen It also has the regular rev 10 version without Is this mislabeled? Why would they add the symbol, remove it, then add it back again? Is there anything to test this rev 5 compatibility?

At the Seattle Retro Game Expo, I bought two 1200XLs from FastRobPlus. Thanks Rob! One is over at a friend's place. A stock 1200XL minty fresh in the box. I will post the serial number when I get it back. The second has an 800XL OS and a 512KB expansion. S/N: Taiwan 72R DA 16022 213

After reading the 800XL memory thread started by Marius1976, I tried swapping the MMU and everything started working. Additional help from Steve had me replace the CMOS RAM chips with NMOS RAM chips and the 1200XL is now running reliably again. Thanks to everyone on this thread, Steve and Marius.

Well, looks like my memory is shot. Pitfall on cartridge doesn't need extra memory to run. Robotron 2084 appears to have all the same enemies as the Atari cartridge, so appears complete. Either way, they are both great games if you can get your hands on them.

TI-99/4A monitor jack: http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/hardware/cables/monitor.html Atari 800/XL/XE monitor jack: http://www.hardwarebook.info/Atari_8-bit_Monitor Note that the TI diagram is looking into the DIN plug, and the Atari one looking at the female monitor jack from the outside. The pins therefore are numbered in the same fashion. Proof is in the pudding though, and my Atari 800, 1200XL, VIC-20 and TI-99/4A all share the same 5-pin DIN monitor cable to the front mounted A/V jacks on my Commodore 1702

Also seem to recall that the FDX gave full CP/M compatibility, not the limited version the Commodore cartridge gave the C64 or the vague promise of the Camputers Lynx

I remember these as great machines Late to the party I think, but I remember they had a Spectrum emulator that allowed some games to play The FDX floppy disk expansion was expensive, and the machine fell victim to being too expensive to compete against the C64 and not well established enough to compete against the BBC micro Memotech then sank some ungodly amount if money trying to export 64,000 of the machines to the Soviet Union. In typical Soviet style they renaged on the deal and left Memotech unable to pay their creditors Still, a very interesting machine which deserved better than it's fate.

The NTSC TI99/4A uses the same 5 pin composite cable as the Atari

The 32-in-1 does require quite a number of modifications to install. Taking it out wont be easy. The Atarimax 256K upgrade requires 8 trace cuts which would even harder to reverse. Is the PIA from an 800XL compatible with the one from a 1200XL? I think I am going to try replacing PIA since I have a spare in my parts bin.

Some time back I added the 32-in-1 Atarimax upgrade to my 1200XL. All was good. Then I added the Atarimax 256KB upgrade, and that was cool too. Some time after that I added the extra 256K memory and things went pear shaped. The 32-in-1 OS started reporting "Communications Error" instead of the currently selected OS, the self-test crashed at the conclusion of testing the 48 memory blocks, and SRAM021 reporting errors across all the extra 256K. But everything still worked and 256K games played okay. Steve was great in helping me diagnose some of the problem, and the R59 connector was moved to pin 17 of PIA. That fixed the "Communications Error" problem, but the self test still crashed and I never did figure out the problem with the top 256K. Yesterday I triled to pull the extra 256K out. I removed all the stacked memory chips and replaced them with eight new 256K devices. All the extra wiring for the 512K upgrade was pulled out and the R59 connector restored. I have tried to repair the broken pin 17 of PIA with a wire soldered to the bottom of the board connecting to the snipped pin 17 of the chip. Now however nothing works. The 1200XL will boot to the OS selector and I can select an OS. The OS selector shows the currently selected OS. Self test will lock up on ROM test, or report most of RAM bad. It frequently crashes. If it makes it to the audio test the display is usually corrupted in some manner, and it has yet to make it voice 3. The shift keys have stopped working. If I select the 1200XL OS I get the rainbow logo but parts of the display are missing. I have put another set of eight RAM chips in and got the exact same result. I don't think this is RAM. So what is the most likely next candidate? Is the PIA fried? The MMU? What failure most likely explains failing ROM/RAM self test, failing voice 3 (lock up), some of the keyboard not responding? This is not a typical 1200XL keyboard problem. I can test this keyboard on another 1200XL and it works great. Any help appreciated. Thanks Graham

I'll take one so long as it's cheaper than a replacement board from B&C If it takes the 3.5 mech then I'll probably buy two

Put me down for two please.

Check the cooling on the VDP. On older units there was a piece of metal that connected the from the top of the TMS9918A to the shielding. On later models it had a clip on heat sink. That you get 20 mins of playable time suggests that heat build up is causing a crash. Check that all heat sinks are firmly attached. Mainbyte has a nice diagram of where the VDP is (labelled number 2) http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/hardware/big.html