oracle_jedi

A slot! Yes! A slot for the modem. And a slot for the TONG disk controller. Slots are good. Slots make sense.... But wait! Atari already thought of that. The 1090 expansion box! I recall reading (on Curt's site I think) - that the reason the bus connector on the 1090 was on the front was to keep the ribbon connector to the PCI bus as short as possible for stability. That's fine for a 600XL or an 800XL. But can you image a 1090 behind a 1450XLD? You'd have a computer system about 14 inches wide and about 3 and half feet deep. I'm with @stepho on this. Apple had already shown the way. A 1400XL with 128K of RAM and vendor supported 80-column mode, a deluxe Mitsumi keyboard. An extra POKEY for Stereo would have been a cool feature too. But a fat 800XL with an obsolete modem, a voice synthesizer gimmick and one weird-format disk drive. The entire world wide market for that would have been.... probably the 20 or so guys on this thread.

Exactly. A modem that would have been obsolete before it was even brought to market, a third official disk format to confuse the existing split between 810 SS/SD and the 1050 SS/whatever-density. Oh and a speech synthesizer. Yeah I too drooled over the idea of a 1450XLD BITD. But Tramiel was right to kill it. It was a solution in search of a problem. A huge desk-filling 64K, 40-column home computer with weird disk drives, a lousy modem and a speech unit that was considered cool in 1979, but by 1983 was passe.

My wife sold an electronic cutting machine on Ebay in December. The buyer paid a final amount of $169.57. Of that we saw $109.14. I am not a regular Ebay seller. Nowadays I rarely buy. I do not claim to be an expert. Despite the "free listing", Ebay charged 35c for a "Gallery Plus Fee". They also charged $37.42 for a shipping label, and $22.66 in selling fees. Let me break that down: When listing the item, which was large and heavy, I opted for buyer-pays-shipping, and selected UPS Ground as the preferred mechanism. I measured the box and weighed it. I entered those numbers into the Ebay interface. There was no option to specify insurance and/or tracking that I can recall. Not at the time of listing. I also elected to allow local-pickup and as @bf2k+ stated there are numerous default options that you need to watch for. I was not interested in any buy-it-now or accept-offers options. We had to accept Ebay's payment scheme and we had to link a bank account to do so. That was new from last time. When the item sold for $110.50 and Ebay told us to ship it. They then offered the UPS shipping label for ~$30 Despite charging the buyer $59.07. I was then able to add insurance and tracking at my expense which raised the cost of the label to $37.42. From one angle, we sold the machine for $110.50 and saw $109.14 so the cost was about 2%. But this is only true due to Ebay charging the buyer $59.07 for shipping which in reality cost $37.42. If we calculate the $22.66 in selling charges against the $110.50 sale price, Ebay's fees were over 20%. If you add in the $21.65 in shipping that the buyer was charged over what Ebay charged me, their fees amount to 17%. And that is the point. Ebay charges that "12.5%" fee against the total sale cost, including shipping, which in many cases they are providing the shipping label. But all of this is not the reason I am so reluctant to sell on Ebay. The reason for me is that unless you are a regular seller, Ebay treats you like shit. They have the largest group of buyers, and they know it. A few years back (~4) I sold a brand new never-opened FitBit on Ebay. The buyer paid. I shipped. I got positive feedback. So I left positive feedback. And then the very next day I get a message from the buyer, expletive laden, claiming I cheated her and that the FitBit was not NIB. She claimed the charging cable was missing. Before I was even able to respond Ebay had refunded her the sale cost, and charge me for a shipping label to return the FitBit. I send an email to Ebay stating that the unit was new which was brushed off. When it arrived back, the FitBit package had been ripped open, and the USB charging cable was exactly where it was supposed to be in the bottom of the package. I emailed Ebay again and got another brush off. I was basically charged $50 to have a NIB FitBit destroyed by some moron. And having done more research I realize I was probably fortunate to even get the FitBit back at all. I have seen numerous posts, some even right here on AtariAge, where buyers have stated something they bought turned up damaged, and they got not only their full purchase price back, but also got to keep whatever-it-is they bought. And unless you are a power seller it seems Ebay couldn't give a crap. I have had an Ebay account since 1998. They used to be a great company. I don't see them that way anymore. As for @phc_joe - you've got some great Atari pieces there. Some super rare. Most people in the 8-bit community are straight up but do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with common Ebay scams. Some of those pieces I imagine are worth a fair bit to the right collector, and you deserve their full value. Good luck!

Attached is Wordstar for CP/M as an ATR. Let me know if this works. WordStar - CPM 80.ATR

And a beige console with an actual power LED! ?

And even if you were willing to go to that much trouble, you'd be better off using 8 more 256K chips and getting 512K total. For the few $$$ you'd save recycling the 64K chips it wouldn't be worth it IMHO. Atarimax used to sell a 512K upgrade board based on Claus' design, which is also the template for the Rambo.

Probably the Advance 86B. It was a low-cost British PC clone from 1983 or 1984. I bought it used around 1990. God it was crap. The entire case was made of cheap plastic that was too thin to support any kind of monitor, despite the size of the unit making it hard to put a monitor anywhere else. The keyboard was supposed to slide into a keyboard garage behind a smoked plexiglass cover, but the keyboard broke, and the plexiglass crazed. The Advance 86 could also be purchased as the 86A, which did not have the expansion unit on top to house the drives. The 86B included the expansion unit, and it was connected with a fat ribbon cable that could come lose. When it worked, it was an 8088 with 256K RAM and I think CGA graphics. It was sort of PC compatible.

So many that I keep going back to, but the top few: Dropzone, Elektraglide, Mr. Do, Fort Apocalypse, Pac-Man 2012, Boulderdash II, Blue Max, The Last Starfighter, Scramble, Rainbow Walker, Ballblazer, Yoomp, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Star Raiders, Pooyan, Stealth, Pole Position, Bombjack, Commando

Thanks @Tanooki I'll order up a set and see how they work out.

Hey gang, So here is a question for those who game alot. What head phones do you recommend? I am looking for something that lasts more than a month or two. I've tried a whole bunch of brands, and price points from $30 to almost $300 and they all seem to be made of super brittle plastic that snaps after my sons have used them for between 8 and 12 weeks. Does anyone know of a brand/model that is able to take young-adult Destiny raiding without coming apart? Robustness is prized here over sound quality although that is important too. Would appreciate some pointers, even if it is "avoid this brand...."

You're right- it was google. Here is me in 1994 asking about the existence of Elite for the Atari 8bit. Some dude at the Atari show in Stafford had claimed he had seen it. Back then it was much harder to confirm or refute such claims. So glad the modern internet has eliminated crazy conspiracy theories and unfounded rumors! ? A while back I stumbled across a simulator of the internet circa 1988. I am not sure if this is the same thing, but it looks close. Point a browser at telehack.com and set up an account. It gives something of an approximation of the experience we had in university, even down to the green-on-black text only display. Fond memories of the Zenith Z200 in my dorm room connected via an RS-232 cable into the serial port in the room which allowed me to log into the school's VAX systems, and from there... the world!

I know Atari Age has a few users who have lived that era, so I was curious about how your experience was. Here are some of my questions: More than a few I hope! I don't have the demographics but I thought most of the regulars here were working or studying as computers entered the mainstream. 1) Does your perception of one of these machines change a lot (for the worse) when you are forced to use it 8 hours a day to introduce boring data (or even if you have some fun programming, it's still work and it's tiresome)? Quite the opposite. Having an Atari 800XL at home, I was originally baffled by the crazy prices of "serious" computers like the Apple II or IBM PC. But working with them for hours at a time one quickly learned to appreciate the superior keyboard, build quality and large capacity floppy disks (360KB!). I also learned to quickly appreciate the green screen text monitors. The crisp 80-column displays were ideal for programming, text processing or working in dBASE and I could stare at those warm green phosphor displays for hours. Turbo Pascal and Turbo C were fantastic languages compared to the limited programming environment at home. 2) When there was nothing to do at work or in rest periods, was there any way to have "fun" or "check some news" in those machines before the Internet era? (Including playing pre-installed game packs for Win 3.11 or even bringing disks/tapeswith games from home) It greatly depended on where you worked. There was no regular internet as we know it now. But there were dial-up BBS systems, and at IBM we had access to the global network of IBM mainframes which included PROFS for email and many repositories with things like jokes and funny stories. At some places you could access the internet but it was pre-HTML so it was all text. There were newsgroups which you could access with a UNIX tool called TIN - The Internet News. Years later I think Yahoo took over those newsgroups but I think they are all gone now. There was also gopher which let you find things. I actually bought some books from a bookshop in San Franiciso, and laserdiscs from a store in Indiana and had them shipped to the UK long before e-commerce was a thing. At one place I worked in Chicago in the late 90s they had a strict no-external-network policy. But I needed access to newsgroups to get help learning Oracle. The company's solution was to give me a modem and a Prodigy account that got me onto the internet. With no filtering at all. 3) Can you specific details about the type of work you performed and the computer model? A lot of programming in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C (as an intern), development of macros for dBASE II, scripting in Foxbase, lots of writing reports/designs in Wordstar and later Word Perfect. I hated Word Star but grew to like Word Perfect 5. Some development of spreadsheets in Lotus 1-2-3 and similar clones. I also did technical drawings in a software package that ran on a PC with Hercules graphics, but I can't remember the name of it now. Machines were BBC Micro, Osborne 1 (CP/M), Apple II, EACA Video Genie (TRS80 clone), IBM PC (and numerous clones), IBM 3278 and 3279 terminals, Daisy Cadnetix CAD/CAM terminal. I worked various internships and part-time jobs starting around 1987.

The VIC20 version is a 16K cartridge sitting as two 8K banks at $A000 and $6000. The program would be able to avail itself of most of the 5K of RAM to handle variables and manage the display. Assuming that the source comments mean that 32K is needed to execute the code, and not in addition to code loaded as cartridge, the Atari version then would need at least 16K for code, plus whatever RAM is needed to support the graphics mode - which is typically at least 8K. Plus some overhead for variables and we are at 32K.

It should be. RetroIsle has the schematics of the PCW. They are not a great scan but you might find better if you dig around. Looks like the motherboard itself needs +12V and +5V. There looks to be a +24V connector that is passed through to the printer. If I am reading this right, the video signal is coming off a large custom gate array and is available on the expansion port on pin 48, with a pin labelled NSYNC on pin 44. Ground looks to be pins 3, 4, 49 and 50. Of course all of this is speculation based on a bad scan. Proceed at your own risk, and good luck!

Would the Tiger Learning Computer qualify on this list? ?

It was slow. The 2001's chicklet keyboard was not something you ever got fast at. Of course this was 1981-ish so no one had a computer in the home then. Typing was something girls learned as part of secretarial skills. But the chicklet keyboard of the first PETs was at least familiar to anyone who had used a desk calculator, which were pretty common back then. BASIC was very limited but I don't think we really knew that at the time. It wasn't as if we had much to compare it to. Most of us didn't even have a ZX81 at home. There was no AUTO or RENUMBER commands. And no structured BASIC commands either. Programs consisted mainly of INPUT and a bunch of IF/THEN/PRINT commands. When you got really advanced you started exploring DATA, READ, RESTORE and FOR-NEXT loops. Wild stuff. But it was also magical. Here was an actual real computer. Just like they talked about in the movies or on TV. Only this one was so tiny. It could fit on a (large-ish) desk! Would the computer explode if I entered the wrong command? Take over the world? Start World-War 3? These all seemed real possibilities to an impressionable 10 year old. The warm glow of the monochrome monitor, the way text and symbols would fade from the screen when you pressed SHIFT-CLR HOME. My memory says the BASIC did have a full screen editor. At least you could move the cursor around and type over a line of BASIC. But I might be confusing memories here. Our school ended up with several PETs from the 2001 to the later green-screen 4000 series. Some had those huge double-full-height disk drives attached but I don't know if that worked with the 2001 or not. Definitely agree with @Gemintronic that the cassette interface was a strong point. You could load and save your programs and give them names. Years later I recall being baffled by how crude the Atari's cassette handler was by comparison. There was no color or sound. PETSCII graphics were all you got. Lot's of fun creating variations of that flapping bird animation. To this day I still enjoy playing PETSCII-graphic games on my VIC20. The Pixel Productions games, the Commodore cassette titles. The early Audiogenic titles. A while back a fellow on the VIC sleeping-elephant forum ported a bunch of PET games to the VIC using a 40-column software emulator. So many great memories playing those titles.

I wanted a small XP system with a built in DVD as I have a bunch of ~2000 era Windows games on CD and DVD. I had previously tried to repurpose a Sony Vaio laptop (Vista era) but found XP unwilling to recognize much of the hardware including the graphics adapter. I never though of trying Dell D-series laptops. Instead I recently bought a Dell Optiplex 760 SFF off Ebay. Delivered to my door it was $60. They have so-so built in graphics but they do have a PCI x16 expansion slot so I added an Nvidia 6500 for another $11. For XP era games this is working really well. The Core Duo proc and 2GB of RAM handles GTAIII through GTA San Andreas. It runs Need for Speed Underground and Nightfire very smoothly. It will run Need for Speed III but it needs a patch to load and run. Rogue Squadron runs without any problems. The Small Form Factor is bulkier than a laptop but is still compact. I would guess it is about the same dimensions as an Amiga 3000. I use a Raspberry Pi keyboard and mouse which don't take up much desk space. What is not working so well, and I am hoping you guys might have some insights, is DOS era games. Doom, Doom II, Simcity 2000, Quake - the graphics and sound are corrupt. I have to use DosBox to get them to run properly. I don't recall if/how I ran these back when XP was my main OS so perhaps this is expected? But I am wondering if there is a command.com config option for XP that would allow these games to run without DosBox. Since they are running well enough its more of a curiosity at this point.

Wondering if anyone recognizes this chess game screen shot? It was broadcast as part of the BBC's Blakes7 episode "Gambit". The show was originally broadcast in March 1979. It was a low-budget Sci-Fi show that routinely recycled props from other shows to save money. In the show the chess game is animated and I highly doubt the props department created this from scratch. Plus in 1978/79 home computers/consoles/TV games beyond "pong" were still quite rare in British homes, so I expect they used a commercial product assuming most viewers would not know. Including me. It looks like it might be from an Atari 2600, but this is not the 2600's chess cartridge. Also it is not from the Philips G7000 or the TI99/4. What home chess games were even available in late 78 or early 79 when this was probably filmed?

I bought a second 400, and installed the 48/52K RAM card and the Super Color Card. - SN 210043 I also installed a 5-pin monitor jack to replace the 2/3 switch. I had to cut the opening a little larger, but I think the end result is pretty good.

Centurion has the power supply in stock Exxos did have a supply of 060 procs. RAM was pretty standard IIRC. I'll have to look to see the spec.

CBM BASIC V2 is an implementation of Microsoft 8K BASIC. As such it is extremely limited. It does not support IF..THEN..ELSE. It does not support user defined functions. It amounts to PRINT, GET, a few arithmetic functions, GOTO/GOSUB, IF/THEN and a FOR/NEXT loop. Not much else. It is why Microsoft released 12K Extended BASIC, and many home computer manufacturers (e.g. Tandy, Dragon, Oric) used 12K BASIC or 16K BASIC as those dialects included a more comprehensive implementation. Commodore could have delivered a more comprehensive implementation - and indeed they did on the PET (CBM BASIC 4.0), the C16/Plus (CBM BASIC 3.5) and the C128 (BASIC V7) - but on the VIC20 and C64 we got stripped down bare bones BASIC 2.0 because Jack wanted to keep the costs low. The original point here was that the VIC20 was a better machine for the budding programmer because it has a "real keyboard". That real keyboard isn't very good. Better than the 400's touch panel, but not really by much considering its anti-ergonomic curve and the height at which the keyboard sits due to the deep case. But sure, a better option for the budding programmer than the 400s pregnant speak-and-spell approach. Commodore BASIC is a poor dialect to learn BASIC. On the C64 you got Simon's BASIC that went along way to adding in what was missing, but the VIC got the Super Expander, which just added some RAM and graphical commands or the Programmer's Aid Cartridge which added some useful utilities. You could not use both at the same time even with a multi-cart expander as they conflict in memory. Neither one was likely to help you become a good programmer. Add in the VIC's limited screen size and user RAM, and few considered the VIC as a tool to learn programming, despite what the Commodore marketing people said at the time, or how many copies of "Introduction to BASIC - Part1" they bundled in with a VIC, a tape deck and a cassette of Hoppit, Race and Type-a-Tune. The VIC was a toy. Its very development codename was "TOI". The Atari 400 was a games machine with aspirations of being more. Neither was a sensible choice for anyone wanting to learn programming.

Yes. But you'll need the Atari 14-pin to Shugart 34-pin cable that includes both control lines for disks 0 and 1. Many such cables only include drive 1 as they were intended for use with an Atari ST/F/E where drive 0 would always be the internal disk. If you press F2 when you boot the PC1, it will boot off the first external floppy. Press F3 and it will boot off the second external floppy. If you press F2, (and with the right cable) the Gotek becomes drives A: and B:, and the internal disk becomes drive C.

Atarimania has a PDF of the revised edition of Mapping the Atari which has several chapters dedicated to the XL/XE. Chapter 13 is a whole section on enhancements and bugs.

Attached is a PNG I made with Painshop Pro to replace the damaged label on my Jelly Monsters cart. I decided to make the Commodore logo more colourful. The label was printed by Sticker You. The label was 5" by 2.5" and I used a xacto knife to bevel the lower edges. I thought I had the PSP assets file with the blank label but I can't find it now. I probably used the Final Expansion label as a starting point and deleted what I didn't need, adding in what I wanted.

The VIC20 font is Banco.