oracle_jedi

If Atari had any aspirations to being taken seriously as a business machine they should have delivered on CP/M compatibility, 80-column text and high speed disk drives. CP/M was an already established standard when the Atari was released in 1979, and Microsoft shipped the Z80 Softcard for the Apple II in 1980 further expanding the CP/M market. Of course there were vague plans. The 815 dual disk drive, the 1060 CP/M module, the 1090 expansion module and an 80-column card but it was all half-hearted. Atari ploughed R&D dollars into holograms and hopelessly unrealistic video phones while Apple, learning from the mistakes of the III, sensibly brought us the IIe with vendor supported 80-column mode and 128K of RAM. At the same Atari thought the future of home computers was a built in 2400 baud modem and a speech synthesizer. There there third-party solutions. The Bit3 80-column card. The ATR8000 etc, but who seriously would run a business on an Atari 800 with a third-party 80-column card to act as a dumb terminal to a CP/M solution from yet another vendor who had almost no distribution network? And seriously guys. You could have put a full stroke keyboard on the 400 it would have no difference. No one was going to run a business on a 16K computer with RF only output and no factory authorized way to increase the RAM (until 1983). Atari could have better positioned the 800 as a business machine. Indus' idea of using a Z80 as the CPU in the disk drive would have been a master stroke of brilliance had Atari done it first with the 810. An Atari "800 Plus" stripped of the RF shielding and with externally exposed expansion slots might have helped by making expansion cards feasible. A 1200XL that included 80-column mode as a default option perhaps?, and a dual disk drive that support actual double-density mode or better yet double-sided would have helped. Amstrad proved there was a market for a small-business/prosumer 8-bit machine with their Amstrad PCW range (which was CP/M based - and even used a 3 inch disk drive). I remember Atari briefly packaged the 600XL with a 1027 printer and a copy of Atariwriter, but would you really expect your secretary to type the company letters on that sorry excuse for a real keyboard, and then save her work to a 1010 tape deck? And that would assume your office fire marshal didn't freak out at the multitude of power supply bricks now dotted around the floor, and that no typed letter required more than about 10K of RAM. I recall the Atari 8-bits were often used by cable TV companies to run TV listing channels, and Atari User magazine in the UK carried stories of them being used by the Lawn Tennis Association for something-or-other. But I also seem to recall that Atari themselves used VAX terminals to do the serious work in the Atari offices, probably using the VAX/VMS All-in-1 software package. Given Atari Inc didn't eat their own dog food. I don't think many others would have either.

Thanks for the link. It's odd. If I press the PLAY key very firmly then it seems to stick and run the tape. Also, starting with the Pause enabled, and then releasing it seems to help. It definitely seems like its starting to fail. Hopefully I can get the last of the tape games moved to disk before it completely gives up. I've got a number of projects lined up right now, and rebuilding the rarely used tape deck isn't high on my priority list of things I want to do.

I think my TI cassette deck is dying. After a long afternoon of transferring tape based files to disk for my Camputers Lynx, the cassette deck is now acting as if it is at the end of the tape when in fact it is at the beginning. Tried several tapes, and even advanced forward half way through, with no change. I am guessing the belt has stretched? Before I end up with yet another half dissassembled piece of retro hardware on the desk, and another small pile of screws that I am not entirely certain where they came from, does anyone know the belt specs for these units, and better yet, where to buy them from? This is the beige colored unit styled to match the later 99/4A computers.

Looks like you could mount that board in an old SX212 case. The back of that unit already has cut outs for the SIO connector, and the DB25 could probably be easily replaced with a 34-pin floppy disk connector. Then just run a Shugart 34-pin to Atari 14-pin connector cable to a stock SF314. If the power draw from this board is low enough it could even be run off the SIO's 5V power line.

There was no SF414. The SF314 was a double-sided drive. The SF354 was single sided. To answer your question, set the drive to drive 0. The 14 pin connectors on the Power and IO board swap the DS1 signal to DS0 on the second floppy connector, meaning that the second drive in the chain would think it was DS0 but would respond to signals for DS1. In later ST machine, the internal drive was DS0 and the external drive was DS1. Pay attention when you are installing a replacement 34 pin floppy disk connector. On my SF354 the stripe in the cable was on pin 34, not pin 1.

There's a guy on Ebay UK called airey36 who has an enormous stock of Amiga parts including clips, screws and brackets, as well as whole systems. I've bought parts from him before, including trap door covers and such. Shipping to the USA was pretty inexpensive as I recall, although I was buying a few difference parts so it might be less attractive if you just need the one part.

I wish I could say Star Raiders too, but in my case, BITD, I relied on magazine screen shots to decide what games looked the best, and for all its technical brilliance, Star Raiders actually doesn't screen-shot particularly well. For me, in the summer of 1984, it was the glossy full page ads for Solo Flight, Zaxxon and Beach Head that made me want the Atari. I read Jack Schofield's "Top 10 Games" in Practical Computing and drooled over the screen shots of Flight Simulator II and Way Out. Solo Flight ended up being a huge disappointment, but 1984/85/86 brought so many amazing Atari games like Boulderdash II, Dropzone, Rescue on Fractalus, Ballblazer, Elektraglide and Mercenary. Any one of those games would be enough to buy the hardware to play them. Later in life my determination to play the unreleased Submarine Commander on a TI99/4A drove me to get a Peripheral Expansion Box with 32K RAM and a disk drive plus a Semi-Virtual Disk (SVD), which was a precursor to the Gotek/HxC floppy disk emulator so I could transfer the TI disk image to the real TI. That ended up being an expensive adventure, but I do love that game.

Just wanted to add my thank you for porting this classic to the Atari 8-bits. I love Radar Rat Race on the VIC20, and even the C64/Max version is pretty good too. This version is awesome too!

On the 8-bit Atari: The 1050 floppy disk drive. Oh hell yeah. No more waiting 40+ minutes for Dropzone to load (or not). The SIO2PC. Double hell yeah. Fire up the PC-AT, launch SIO2PC, start up the Atari and it boots a "disk" without anything mechanical happening on the aging 8-bit side. I have one of the original Nick Kennedy made units from the early 90s that someone at BaPAUG (Bournemouth and Poole Atari User Group) brought back for me from the States before I moved there in 96. After I got it I spent the next few weeks copying every single unprotected disk I had to the PC and basically stopped using real floppies on the Atari. The Incognito. Adds full XL compatibility and 1MB of RAM to my Atari 800. This expansion fulfills the original promise of an expandable Atari 800. On the TI99/4A: The Corcomp 9900 MES. Added everything I ever used from the PEB in a small device that makes no noise. Never used the PEB again after that. The CF7 is pretty cool, but connected to the SD based HxC the Corcomp is actually more useful to me than the wonky CF format used by the CF7. I also use it with a 3.5 inch drive I got from Tex*in Treasures. Laserdisc OMG I loved this format. Those huge 12" discs were beautiful to look at, and the packaging of the mid 90s Pioneer laserdiscs was awesome. When TVs were usually no more than 36" in size and used analog signals Laserdisc blew everything else out of the water. It made home movie watching an event. Early DVDs struggled to match LD in quality due to early compression not being very good. My first DVD of Highlander was practically unwatchable due to artifacts. The 10th Anniversary LD of the same movie was gorgeous. I had the boxed set of My Fair Lady which had the Audrey Hepburn audio on the analog audio tracks and the Marnie Nixon dubbed audio on the digital audio tracks allowing you to switch back and forth with a single button tap. I still miss that format, even though it would probably look awful on a modern HDTV. I finally sold off all the Laserdiscs and players about four years ago. Bluray has never given me the same buzz as watching my old Pioneer CLD-D704 load a disc and start to spin it up. 3.5 inch diskettes. As much as I loved the Atari disk drive, discovering the 3.5 disk format on an Apple Macintosh around 1985 was a revelation. The Mac interface was nice. The mouse thingy was kinda cool. MacWrite was meh. But the disk format! Now *that* was awesome. VGA. I always liked the 16-colour text mode of the IBM PC's CGA graphics. My Atari ST could only do four colours in 80-column mode. But the CGA and later EGA kinda sucked for graphics. But VGA could do multi-colored graphics as well as the colorful text modes. VGA was the missing link that made me actually want a PC. Winamp and MP3s. Damn I still love that interface, and I would tie up the phone line for hours logged into Dalnet downloading totally legitimate samples of music. Honest. Cable Internet. Man needs only 3 things to survive: Beer. A good set of tools. And high speed internet (so he can watch Youtube videos on how to use those tools - while drinking the beer..)

The disk controller daughter board also added the 32K RAM. Without it, all you have is an expensive serial/parallel interface. Shame. I love my CC9900 - it has the daughterboard - and is one of my favourite peripherals for any of my retro systems.

Stumbled across these three weird auctions on Ebay UK. Nov 1 is long past now, and I don't see why a stock 99/4A keyboard is worth anything close to what this guy is asking. Anyone know what this is all about? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Coming-Soon-Nov-1/323535482832?hash=item4b5437afd0:g:xWIAAOSwutlbzaLs:rk:1:pf:0 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Coming-Soon-Nov2/323535483975?hash=item4b5437b447:g:xWIAAOSwutlbzaLs:rk:5:pf:0 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Coming-Soon-Nov4/323535493503?hash=item4b5437d97f:g:xWIAAOSwutlbzaLs:rk:3:pf:0

The Amiga 500/600/1200 PSU outputs the same voltages as the 520ST requires: +5V, +12V and -12V. Cut off the cable and solder on the 7-pin female DIN required by the ST. Alternatively you can use a Mean Well RT50B which outputs the same voltages. Find a suitable project case and assemble your own.

Mine arrive this evening. So far I have tested them with Atari Karts, Tempest 2000 and Downfall. Next up is Raiden... These are really nice. Thank you!

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.

Is this what you need? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/108472-xf551-oses/

+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.

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.

Buy a larger desk.

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.

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

Don't forget to add an Atari joystick interface to the order so you can use your existing Atari joysticks on the TI. If you have a composite video cable for the Atari it will work on a North American TI too. Lots of great games on the TI. Have fun

Well its PRGE again today. Excited for my annual opportunity to play Xevious on the Jag!

Exxos had replacement power switches on his site a while back. Maybe he still does? They were very cheap, but depending on where you live, shipping may add some.

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.

Here's a video showing an alternative to the drop technique. The MMU is a possible candidate here. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wtXzFnpbVfE HTH