Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

oracle_jedi

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    743

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by oracle_jedi

  1. Posted

    Mine was also the C2N tape drive for my VIC-20. It was the old style looking one and not the 'soap bar' one.

     

    Yep. Same here.

     

    And we had to drive for miles to find one, as it seemed in 1982 Commodore UK had imported a large shipment of VIC20s from West Germany, but forgot to order any C2N tape decks. My memory tells me the dealer my Dad found was based out of a warehouse in a trading estate, not a high street retailer as became popular later on. We got the C2N and a compilation tape game from Audiogenic called "Magnificent 7" - seven games for the VIC20, but two of them required a 3K expansion, and I didn't have one! Arghhh.....

     

    That place was also where I first caught glimpse of this strange thing called an Atari 400.

     

    Later an Adman VIC 8K RAM expansion, then a Vixen switchable 16K one, then a Super Expander, and I was debating spending money on a 4-slot expansion board and a Programmer's Aid Cartridge when I had an epiphany and settled on the next upgrade I wanted; an Atari 800XL.

     

    Got one for Christmas 1984.

    • Like 2

  2. Posted

    Got my board last week while I was away. Also received an order from Mouser on the extra parts I'll need, and got a disassembled XF551 from Bob Woolley, as well as a 3.5" drive mechanism and faceplate. Any idea where I can download the custom 3.5" ROM firmware? Yes I know Bob was the original guy behind that, but he didn't know where to look in all of his piles of Atari stuff, but I presume it's got to be available somewhere online.

     

    Thanks a bunch for the board :thumbsup: :) .

     

    Is this what you need?

     

    http://atariage.com/forums/topic/108472-xf551-oses/

  3. Posted

    +1 on the FE3.

     

    The unit allows you to add your own ROMs, as well as providing 3K, 16K, 24K and 35K expansion options.

     

    Also it includes an SD card reader which can be configured as any device number, and also soft and hard reset buttons. You can also add ROMs to the SD card using a configuration file, that then allows those ROMs to be loaded from the menu.

     

    My only complaint would be that the user-added ROMs are not alphabetically sorted, and changing the programmed ROMs meaning wiping it completely and reprogramming.

  4. Posted

    Hard to know with any certainty. Did the color work before you put the 600XL in storage? I am assuming it did.

     

    Modern digital upscalers usually have limited tolerance for out-of-spec video signals, unlike older analog devices, so your upscaler may simply not recognize the 600XL's output as a valid color signal.

     

    Kjmann had his own 600XL SVideo mod, and even though he made several posts about it, I have never seen one. Can you take a picture of the motherboard and share that? You might need to take a pic of both sides depending on how the mod was done. You mention the RF out has been converted to an audio line, but is the original RF modulator still in place? If it was removed was the shield ground restored or not?

     

    The mention of the power supply makes me very worried. Do you know what PSU you have? Check here in these forums for an Ingot power supply and find a picture. Compare it what you have and if that is what you are using, stop it immediately and toss that PSU in the trash. They are crap, and when they go, they take the XL with them.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted · Edited by oracle_jedi

    There's some Polish guy on sellmyretro.com who has Skunk boards for £69 ea plus shipping.

     

    If you can't wait until Saint's Jag-SD Card solution is available, the Skunk will allow you to download 2 games at a time to a flashable ROM over a USB cable from your PC.

     

    Given the high prices of Jag games - and often the gameplay in no way justifies the price - the Skunkboard will allow you to explore some of the older Jag titles that can be found for download on the web.

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

     

    I guess everybody here understand why I thought that the RIGHT one, was a 1:1 copy of the original, and working XF551 board.

     

     

    No not really.

     

    I am not a hardware guy at all. Yet even I could tell from a simple glance at the image that the "Reimaged XF551 Original Disk Drive Controller v2.0" was a dual layer PCB with traces on both sides, whereas the stock XF551 controller board was single sided.

     

    It simply made no sense that this new dual sided design would be an exact replica of the layout of the stock item.

     

    Furthermore, a review of the text of the entry on Dropcheck's website from time states:

     

    "Two years ago I started playing around with the idea of redoing the controller board. I wanted to correct some of the design failures and hopefully add additional features. Fast forward to today and I now have a finished product. It reduces the size of the original board, while using an industry standard double sided pcb. It also incorporates an easy method to switch between two OS by using a SPDT toggle switch connected to the OS header. Mod board connectors built in allow upgrading to a daughter board allowing numerous additional features. An internal SIO header provides future internal upgrades. Best of all it can simply function as a dropin replacement for the original controller board."

     

    Emphasis mine.

     

    Furthermore I will state that I own one of these "Reimaged XF551 Original Disk Drive Controller v2.0" boards and have it in my 3.5 modded XF551. It has worked flawlessly from day 1, reading, writing and formatting without error. I know Dropcheck advised us that some units were not working as expected and offered fast and simple remedies.

     

    So even if this new design turns out to have some flaw I have no doubt she will continue to support her work 100%, and the fact that this new design is not a xerox copy of the stock XF551 controller board is no reason to reject it as a suitable basis on which to repair an otherwise useless XF551 drives.

     

    Original website as of Dec 2015 for reference:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20151207135825/http://www.bitsofthepast.com/?product=reimaged-xf551-disk-drive-controler-woriginal-power-supply

     

    Graham

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    I ended up being given an 520ST and Dedicated monitor and got hold of a IIgs and IIe. I have had some fun with the Apples but the ST just sits in a cupboard. My retro love time can only extend to the machines I have history with and that is the Commodore/TI and Acorn machines. I'm sure the same is true of users of Apple/Atari who get the chance at getting a TI and then it just sits in a box.

    Yep. Have the same situation with a boxed Commodore 64 I picked up about 10 years ago in a job lot.

     

    I know that machine can do amazing things but I never seem to find the time to explore it properly.

     

    When I do find time to power her up I tend to gravitate to the games I love on the Atari like Dropzone, Ballblazer and Mr. Do. Games that suffered less than stellar ports on the 64.

     

    Longer in depth RPGs I dont have the time for. I need to find the good pick-up-and-play games for the 64 and spend some time there.

  14. Posted

    The ADAM being your first computer really doesn't have anything to do with the Atari ST. Neither do its 4 expansion ports and 16 device ADAMNET feature, for that matter. If you want to know whether or not the Atari ST offered any type of "hardware expansion interface", a direct question about the Atari ST, without any unnecessary exposition on the features of the ADAM, would suffice. Combined with your inexplicable regurgitation of the most pedestrian Atari ST knowledge, your posts make me wonder what you hope to gain from the discussion.

    Perhaps I have grown cynical in my old age, but this whole thread reeks of troll to me.

     

    Implying that all Colecovision titles were superior to Atari 8-bit versions, which of course in many cases they were not, and other choice nonsense such as "ADAM was unique back in 1983 since it had a square box form factor with a separate keyboard." Apparently our intrepid would-be Coleco historian is oddly unaware of machines such as the IBM PC, DEC Rainbow or the many other base-unit/separate keyboard designs from the late 70s and early 80s.

     

    Idiotic claims such as the Coleco having the “absoulte [sic] best videgames[sic] when compared to any other system”, which by definition would include the SNES, the Jaguar, the PS3 etc. and claiming that “Back in 1983 Buck Rodgers the Supergame was reference quality on the ADAM.” when that version of Buck Rogers requires an expansion option not produced until 2012.

     

    The example of Atarisoft Pac-Man is offered as rebuttal to @rpiguy9907 observation that the Coleco lagged far behind the Atari ST and Amiga even by 1985. An odd offering given that Atarisoft did not release Pac-Man for the Colecovision, and it was only available as a proto-type download. In 1983/84 if you wanted to play Pac-Man at home, the Colecovision or ADAM was not the machine you wanted.

     

    And gushing about the ADAM’s expansion bus in comparison to the ST, when the former did not include an RS232 serial interface or a parallel port and was never offered as an official expansion option. The Atari 8-bit did not have serial or parallel ports built it, but then in 1983 the 800XL cost less than $300 compared to the ADAM’s $700+.

     

    I remember the Colecovision, and I recall the ADAM being referred to as the “ADAM-bomb”, which I never could work out if that was a reference to the EMP/media-self-destruct on power-up, or that the machine almost brought down all of Coleco with it. It was all a shame. The Colecovision always looks very nice in print adverts. Zaxxon looked especially great in a screen shots and I get that some people love the machine and it had some neat features.

     

    But when I finally got to play a Colecovision at PRGE back in 2013 I tried Zaxxon and Mr. Do – two games that I love on the Atari 800 - and I came away unimpressed.

     

    • Like 5

  15. Posted

    A TRS-80, a Commodore monitor, and a TI-99/4a floppy disk drive.

     

    None of these strike me as irrational.

     

    Commodore monitors - especially the 1701s, 1702s and 1084s were pretty awesome.

     

    A TI99/4A is a different computer entirely once you add 32K of RAM and a floppy disk drive.

     

    Don't know much about TRS80s, but a friend of mine back when I was a kid had an EACA Video Genie II, and I loved that behemoth of a computer with its faux wood finish side panels.

     

    You should get all three...

  16. Posted

     

    You can't save to those digital tape devices right?

     

    Just wondering.

  17. Posted

    ...

     

    Anyone reading that would not have said 'wow that guys a fan!'. So I apologize if I got a different impression from your posts here.

     

    Hey go easy there... he's trying to port the classic game Bioshock to an 8-bit as you can see from the demo release:

     

    http://atariage.com/forums/blog/738/entry-14957-demo-released/

     

    Given the sample code shared I'd have to agree with the OP. No way could Commodore V2 BASIC handle that level of programmatic complexity.

  18. Posted

    For when everyone gets their Indus GT drives upgraded with a new Super Charger, attached are some CP/M format disk images.

     

    You can copy these to physical disks, or just load them under SIO2PC or APE presented as drive 2, with your Indus as drive 1.

     

    Terminal is probably set as ADM3.

     

    Microsoft BASIC - CPM80.atr

     

    Microsoft BASIC - Utils - CPM80.atr

     

    Zork 1 - CPM80.atr

     

    Zork 2 - CPM80.atr

     

    Zork 3 - CPM80.atr

     

    WordStar - CPM 80.ATR

     

    Turbo Pascal 3 - CPM80.atr

    • Like 7

  20. Posted

    There's been a few discussions on the STF's power supply requirements, below is one:

     

    http://atariage.com/forums/topic/198431-diy-retro-fitting-a-picopsu-into-a-stffme-machine/

     

    The red lines are +5V. The black lines are ground. The blue is +12V. This is the same for the STF, STE, Mega ST and Atari PC1.

     

    From memory the +5V needs about 2A. The +12V much less. Maybe 0.5A? In the thread referenced you can see they used Pico and ATX PSUs to drive the Atari, the Mean Well RT50B will also drive it, as will the excellent replacement PSUs from Exxos' web store:

     

    https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/atari/last/storenew/

    • Like 2

  21. Posted

    The Atari ST case badges seem to have a habit of lifting on one side.

     

    I've used Gorilla Glue in the past to stick them back down, but I am also aware that case badges should be carefully removed before attempting retrobriting.

     

    Does anyone have a recommendation for an adhesive that will keep the case badge firmly in place, but also allow it to be removed should the case ever need cleaning, painting or briting?

     

  22. Posted

    Circling back to the list provided by SpiceWare, I enjoyed reviewing the Radio Shack catalog from 1980.

     

    I didn't know Radio Shack had already retired the TRS80 Model I by this time.

     

    The $399 CoCo with 4K RAM came with Color BASIC. To get Extended Color BASIC you needed the 16K RAM version, and it cost at least $599.

     

    Does anyone know the differences between Color BASIC and Extended Color BASIC?

     

    Was regular "Color BASIC" significantly better than Commodore BASIC V2?

  23. Posted · Edited by oracle_jedi

     

    And worst commercial game of all time in my opinion is Aztec Challenge on the VIC 20 ( Note the C64 version is awesome). Seriously below was a $29.99 commercial game for VIC 20 and worst purchase I ever made in my life:

     

     

    I agree with your list of great games, and yes Aztec Challenge was a disaster.

     

    Of course it wasn't just the VIC that got lousy ports. One of my best friends had a 64 and I loved playing Airwolf. Later I got Airwolf for my 800XL, from the same publisher Elite. But Airwolf on the Atari wasn't even a bad port - Elite had simply licensed an entirely different helicopter game that already existed on the Atari, and slapped the Airwolf label on it. Unlike the 64 version with smooth graphics and that catchy Airwolf tune playing, the Atari version was a bad clone of Protector (at least from memory).

     

    I had borrowed the game from a friend. So I didn't lose money on that one, but I did learn the utter cynicism with which many of the software publishers of the time treated their customers.

     

    I'd add Jet-Pac, Arcadia and everything by Jeff Minter to the list of great VIC20 games.

    • Like 2

  24. Posted

    You're corrected, I've updated the list. I wasn't that familiar with the Atari computers, so went by the original announced specs.

    According to Wikipedia, in June 1981 the revised TI99/4A was $525. For that you got:

     

    • 16K RAM
    • full travel keyboard (albeit rather small)
    • 32x24 display
    • upper case only
    • line editor in BASIC

     

    Also, the CoCo and the TI could use any domestic cassette recorder, whereas the Atari and the VIC required dedicated tape decks that added to the cost.

     

    The VIC still looks the best value for the beginner.

     

     

  25. Posted · Edited by oracle_jedi

    i guess the most irrational 'want' for me would be a complete MBX system for my TI 99 4A. (headset, joystick, console, etc)- theyre pretty pricey, though, and im not entirely sure *where* i would put the darn thing to hook it up, lol.

     

    but heck if it doesn't look cool! (plus nostalgia)

    When I first moved to the States back in '96 I bought a TI99/4A from a thrift store in Peoria, IL. which included the 10" Color Monitor and a complete boxed MBX system. I don't remember what I paid for it, but it was the cash in my wallet, so not much.

     

    The MBX came with no games, so after fiddling with it for a while, I sold it on this new website called "Ebay". Used a polaroid camera and a flat bed scanner that connected to the PC via the parallel port to take some pictures and upload them. Damn that was hi-tech!

     

    I got $250 for the MBX even back then. Wonder what they'd fetch, complete in the box today.

    • Like 2
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...