doctor_x

Does anyone have any thoughts of where I might find some of the old ATASCII bbs screens that were used back in the day? I'm putting up a CARINA telnet board to support 8 Bit Underground and would like to use some existing art rather than creating my own.. I remember some excellent stuff - but like the other stuff I've been searching for I have had a hard time finding anything on the internet. Also - and I havent searched for this yet, so dont flame me if the answer is easy - but is there a way to create ATASCII screens on the PC? I guess something like ATASCII Animator (which is what i used back in the day) for the PC? Thanks all for responses..

I am guessing you mean if we had of never played them before? Everything you said, plus: fighter pilot f-15 strike eagle galahad and the holy grail battlezone gyruss stealth (what a cool game) hardball great american cross country road race (another incredible game) I do have to say that your mention of leaderboard reminded me of not being too bored during extended periods of being grounded when i was younger. which also reminds me of the few times my parents decided to also ground me from the atari - at which point i asked my mom if i could have a spanking instead!!!

yep.. and i thought about you earlier as i have about 200 disks of games that i would be happy to provide you if there is anything in them you want out of an act of good will that you will pass any warez app/tool disks my way when you're done with them. after all.. sloppy seconds isnt that bad.

I'm more of an 8bit guy - but when it comes to modems hooking up to machines that werent meant for it I am all ears... I knew about the gameline when it was being advertised in the magazines back in the day.. I remember riding in my dads el camino up to the lake one summer reading an "electronic gaming" magazine (i think) and seeing it and talking to him about it. He reasoned that there would be a subscription or long distance charges involved and the answer was "no". i've seen talk about them recent day - and may remember seeing them a few times on ebay, but i cannot be sure. with all of that said - could someone give me an idea as to how rare one of these units complete with documentation is? and if i were to score one, is there anything i can do with it at all as far as exploring menus or anything since there is no machine to connect to at the far end? thanks! doc

yea - this is it: http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/mecomp3.html cm-141.. i will use it to test all of this stuff with - but as i cleaned it this evening i realized that there is simply no way i could use it due to its small size and my ever worsening eyesight. with that said, i may start a thread later about what the best LARGE display would be to use with atari/c64 machines - with possible dual duty for an xbox360..

didnt realize there were normal inputs on the front or I would have tried that... as a matter of fact, im not sure where they could be on the front unless I've quoted the monitor model incorrectly.. It has two BIG roundish knobs on the front, same big round knob on the left hand side for power - and then ports on the back with a commodore/video switch.. I will look when I get home.. thanks for the info regardless.. That guy lied to you.. If that's a commodore cable, then theres no way to use it for chroma/luma on the atari.. You can use it for audio and composite video.. On the Atari, pin 5 is chroma output.. On trhe commodore, pin 5 is +5VDC.. so you see, theres no way that one of those RCA jacks goes to the proper pin on the ATARI-END, if that cable was made for a Commodore.. If you want to use it for composite video (the inputs on the FRONT of the 1702) then first, turn the volume up on the 1702, turn the atari on, and hold down a key.. plug each rca jack into the audio, one at a time until you hear the key repeat noise in the speaker.. Then, trey the remaining two RCA connectors, one at a time in the video input RCA jack until you get a color picture.. Oh and make sure the 1702 is switched to "front inputs"..

very cool.. thank you!

Metalguy - that was a good explanation about flat screens/lcd's and I had been wondering how like a 32" LCD would work out with an Atari.. I may still do it, but at least I know now what to expect. I picked up a 1702 with a recent haul, and in trying to use the cable that came with the haul I'm not sure if its the cable or the monitor - or possibly the output of the atari. The cable has a black, white, red and yellow splitout (RCA) - with the red having some tape around it.. I attempted to use the black and white cables as audio, and then the red and yellow in their appropriate spots on the back of the 1702, but all I get is a screen with bad vertical and horizontal, and I am unable to fix it via the V and H knobs.. I didnt try switching things around much - and the guy I got the stuff from said the cable was a commodore cable and I would just have to "mess with the connections" till I got it right. Anyone have any ideas as to what the proper way to hook this up is? If I spend enough time with it I will just buy a new atari specific cable off of ebay for 9.99 - but thought I would ask here first. thanks.. CRT televisions do not have anywhere near as sharp of an image as a professional CRT display (or commodore/magnavox chroma/luma monitor) does.. It's hard to beat a 1702, 1084/s, or Magnavox "Color Computer Monitor 80".....

ralph, you definitely should.. certainly one of the more creative games although obviously inspired by Adventure .. fabulous game.. Wait.... you can actually FINISH this game? I never knew that and used to play it extensively way back when. Hated that you would drop what you were carrying when the black knight came out..... never got much farther than into the castle and just got stuck. Will have to dust this off! -rcb

Thank you.. I think a lot of people - even those who have never had an inkling to dabble in hacking/phreaking will have an interest in the project as it grows as I think they will look at it and say "oh my lord, they were able to do that stuff with THIS??".. We'll see.. I am not knowledgeable on this subject at all, but I find it interesting, and wish you luck with your project! I'll check out those links.

Working condition - I dont care if it comes with packaging or an SIO cable as long as it comes with a power supply. USA.. Thanks!

Like someone else here, I am after the boxes of disks that people collected that are now sitting around collecting dust. I am especially looking for "warez"/pirate disks - especially those that were downloaded from Atari/Commodore BBS's back in the day. Why? Because I am trying to put together an archive of Atari/Commodore hacking/phreaking apps - not for use, just for nostalgia - and make it available online for others who have an interest in seeing/collecting those types of apps like I do.

Thats what I've heard.. Crazy thing is, I believe you can still get those disks.. I found a list a year ago or so that had ordering information for them... i believe they were sony branded. Always on the lookout for another one but I have a feeling the big time collectors probably have them all rounded up.. I had one on my BBS back in the 80's - I used it as D2: & D3:. And I had a PC quad-density drive attached to it as D4: - some type of Teac - I forget the drive number. It could control additional dumb drives (like a Percom). When I bought it from a collector here in town, he sold me about 20 3" disks for it - those disks were even harder to find that the unit itself back then. I remember having to modify the VTOC on the 5.25" quad disks because the DOS I was using did not support the full size of those QD disks. OF course when I changed the BBS to run under SpartaDOS, that problem solved itself. I really wish I still had that thing... It was a very reliable drive... quiet. I think those disks were 180k DD.

So I googled around a little, searched here and a few other forums, and I have yet to find an ATARI user with a 3" amdek dual drive setup. These have sort of been the holy grail to me ever since I saw one in a magazine back in the day and I was curious if anyone knew what the rarity of them is? I assume pretty astronomical (i.e. curt vendel has one, but he's the only one)... And now a little story. Around 2000 or so, I was making pretty good money and wasn't in bad debt (yet).. I was buying this and that and even delving into things like TRS80 and Apple gear. I also built a pretty cool Atari 8 collection during this time including 65/130/and xegs... Well it just so happens that I stumble across an Amdisk unit on ebay - but it was for a TRS80, not an Atari. Since I was playing around with TRS anyway I figure why not, and I ended up scoring the unit for under $100. I guess it was a fluke, because after I won the drive I had no less than 20 TRS enthusiasts contacting me through ebay to buy my newly aquired Amdisk unit. I gave in and ended up selling it for not a whole lot more than what I paid for it just because I'm that kind of guy. I've looked high and low for another unit ever since - basically DAILY and have never seen another on ebay the whole time. I sort of regret selling the unit now - it would have looked cool just sitting on my desk if nothing else... Hopefully the guy who bought it is enjoying the fire out of it and had no problem finding blanks!!!

Thanks much - I think if i can find a mega st/e for a reasonable price I may do that.. Or I may just get a catweasel card and install it in a spare PC and be done with it...

Well I tore everything I'm going to keep (800xl, 3 x 1050, 850, 800) down tonight except for the 800 which will have to wait till tomorrow night.. Cleaned everything up with mr clean magic eraser, windex, and water externally and windex internally... The 800xl that I've been posting pics of isnt QUITE as nasty as it was before - though I will probably hit it again. One of the 1050's was quite a bit more dirty than the other two.. The two clean ones "clicked" when I unscrewed the case screws, making me think they've never been apart before. No clue if any of it has happy enhancements as I wasnt able to get the board cover off easily and didn't want to take the whole mechanism apart tonight to find out. I assume I can just try booting to the happy diskette to find this out anyway. What was funny was that the 850 was absolutely PRISTINE inside.. No dust, no flux on the legs, nada.. It looked like it was built yesterday - seriously - and its probably the oldest piece in the lot other than the 2600 games. Anyway - I won another 850 and a 1030 in an auction yesterday, so if anyone needs an 850 let me know - I do not need two. Would be very interested in trading for a working or non working 830 for sure - or an sx212 or xm301.. Take care.. more updates tomorrow on my first recent haul.

alright.. after looking this over i am betting it is an ST scsi related item - but I will post it here to double check...

Just a question - it appears the following is part of the memory mod - but I googled this chip and I'm not really getting much explanation.. Can someone tell me what it is? Also - I'm going to snap a pic of some of the boards that supposedly went along with some ICD SCSI hard disk bridge that this guy had as well and see if anyone recognizes it...

I noticed that.. It does appear that there was a small amount of melting. Not sure how long ago this was, but the guy I bought it from claimed to be an EE and all this other stuff - so I def was surprised at what I saw when I opened it up last night. I am going to assume that this was done during the mid 80's, which would make a little more sense.

I used to think I knew something about Atari until I started hanging out with this crowd. Thanks to everyone for their excellent replies and willingness to help me with my noob questions. That will only work with conventional memory, since the 6502 only "sees" a maximum of 64K anyway. Programs like XRAM probe the PORTB register to establish which (if any) bits cause bank switching between $4000-$7FFF. Using a simple algorithm, it's possible to detect any memory upgrade this way.

Greetings, A few of you might have already seen some of my posts on the Atari8 section - or my hacking/phreaking archive posts here.. Long story short, I am "getting back into" the 8/16 bit scene and I would like to put together an ST system and need some help from those who know as to which one I should go with. I have owned an 1040STfm as well as a 520 previously, but have always been interested in a MEGA system as I like the detached keyboard arrangement. Are there any gotchas to owning a MEGA or any particular things I need to look for in picking one up? My goal for doing this is mostly to have "real" hardware to do archving of software that I come across in the project I am working on. Usage will not be terribly heavy as far as actually running software on the machine as I can emulate most everything on my PC with 24" monitor - but I do want a single true hardware ST system as well. One final question... I have never seen a Falcon sell for any less than $400 which is quite a bit more than I want to spend on this - but I wondered if there were any reasons why I should maybe reconsider that line of thinking. Is there anything other than DTP or Music that the Falcon can do that much better than an ST? For someone how is more interested in playing around with BBS's software, term programs, and of course hacking/phreaking apps written for the ST is there any reason I would want to get a Falcon rather than saving my pennies and finding a good deal on a Mega or even another 1040? From what I understand there were no applications of the types I mentioned that were Falcon specific - right? Thanks very much for taking the time to read my post and for any and all replies...

Wasn't there also a peek/poke that gave you total or at least free memory?

Man am I glad I started this thread - though I'm not about to look at the room map... Stumbling upon "new" stuff was what caused me to love the game so much and I havent come anywhere near finishing it yet... Also would be curious to know what Apple game/version that was that was being talked about earlier.. great stuff. You are correct. I disassembled the room structure (attached) and it turns out that the only way you can escape from the final series of rooms in the APX version is to blow up the boat and skate by it into the room on the left. It also turns out that the Antic Software version has a number of room fixes as well as the resurrect option and the better collision detection: $20 (Starting room): Top-left area extended to corner. $30 (Grail room): Grail no longer sits on impassable area; required since you can no longer bump your way into a wall $3E (Spider trap room): Corner holes of left side have been plugged. $3F (Gray castle): Corner holes plugged and lighter gray used; castle gate is no longer lethal. $53 (Black castle upstairs 2): Arrow added pointing left. $64-67 (spider strobing rooms): Replaced by teleport maze. $6E (Uphill ramp 2): Hole opened on bottom to match rooms 1 and 3, presumably for collision change reasons. $76/77/79/7a (Useless flashing rooms): Replaced by teleport maze. $7d (2600 throwback room 2): Top corner holes plugged. The change to room $3F is the most important one, for an unexpected reason. The arrow room next to the Holy Hand Grenade room (room $41) is peculiar in that it has an up exit, but the top border is completely closed. If you bomb it and go north, you end up in front of the green door and can then backtrack to the gray castle. The gates on the gray castle no longer kill you in this version and instead teleport you inside the black castle, which has a path back to the lower-left corner of the main map. Bring the Grail to the starting screen, and you win. The downside is that you can no longer use the bomb on the killer rabbit in room $43, which would be canon if you're into Monty Python.

Yes.. I googled after I posted and found that out.. Interesting if the memory mod is all thats been done - he was certain there was an os mod as well. He originally said that what I was getting was a 1200xl with the memory mod and os mod, which would have made a lot more sense.. When it turned out to be an 800xl, I was almost wondering if the 1200 was lost but then when I got it home and saw the memory mod I assumed he was just mistaken. Now though, I'm wondering if there wasnt really another machine - likely a 1200xl that ended up getting lost... Ohwell.. I have a 256k 800xl - and since the 800xl was the machine I used the most, thats still cool. Hopefully the 1050's will work and I still hope to come across an XEGS thats affordable.. The collecting will continue and I will post the books I ended up with and any software that looks rare later this week. thanks for the responses...

So I picked up the following today: Modified 800xl 800 3 1050's no clue how many if any work 850 Interface Third party SIO printer (trash) Atari program recorder Some VERY unique books that I will post pics of soon 200+ disks - some original some warez 3 decent joysticks gobs of cables and PS's Commodore 1702 monitor about 12 atari 2600 carts 4 or 5 atari 8 carts several boards that I believe were part of an ICD hard disk interface for the Atari which I will post up later as well $40. The question I have revolves around the modifications to the 800xl.. I cracked the nasty yellow case to it today and I can at least tell with my low electronics knowledge that it has some type of 256k mod done, but I was also told that there was another mod that involved possible OS switching or something more.. I didnt get terribly good explanation as the gentleman who "gave" this stuff to me hadn't used it in some time. I feel fortunate to have come across this load, and locally - as it is going to propel me even further into Atari than I was already going with my various projects. For now, here are three iphone pics of the mod - and also the label of the chip: <br> <br> The label on the second photo contains the following: 8329 P6520A C014795 Not sure if that helps or not - but I know alot of you are real hardware nuts and I thought it might be a familiar mod...