mellis
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Posts posted by mellis
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I don't think I'll ever be able to buy an IBM Power system at retail and have it work with all my software and file formats. And certainly not in a way that is compatible with how I work.
That's ok. Because different and better in the tech world is not always adopted by the masses. Different and better can have a very short shelf-life. That's something I'm not interested in.
I think I see your philosophy here: if you keep your expectations low, you are rarely disappointed.
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I went from a 4MB Atari STe to a NeXT '040 Cube (25MHz) in the early 1990s. That thing was awesome.
And here I am years later, still writing Objective C applications (pioneered on the NeXT), but in this case for a derivative system that rests in my pocket.
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Or use composite I do on my Atari 130XE and its in colour,if you use your monitor with your PC too then get a Easy Cap,its a capture usb card,that how i use mine,so I am able look on here and in the left bottom of my screen I have my A130XE displying and I click on it and it goes full screen when I want to play a game.
Can't use composite on a 1040STF - composite requires an STFM.
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took a bit of re-jigging, the case has been raised by 8mm to give it the full 80mm to accommodate Dropchecks Cartridge tunnel without modification, and give us a bit more room inside.Here it is with and with out this option fitted.
I think you will be happier if you keep everything rectangles.
On most of the XE/ST-style Ataris, the cart port is on either the back (XE) or side (ST), so you do not have the rectangular cart port clashing with the trapezoidal details. On the XE Game System, the rectangular cart port is on the top, but it runs parallel to the diagonal case details.
I think your case should either commit to the diagonal (XE style) or go with XL-style rectangles and bevels.
Keep up the good work!
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Original logo, and new position? Or back in centre? It didn't work in the corner...also indented the 1088XEL label...
Ohhhhhh noooooooooooo!
I really liked where where you were headed originally, but this is going off the rails with the gigantic "1088XEL". I would recommend finding a location where the fuji can be next to the model number (as with the 5200) or on opposite sides (left for fuji, right for model number).
Personally, I would ditch the trapezoid-shaped buttons and go with XL-style rectangles, but if I had to pick one, I'd take the trapezoid buttons over the gigantic "1088XEL" any day.
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Hi Zogging Hell
Thanks for the input. I am just switching it on as I don't have an external floppy. The computer does not have a modulator and the TV is connected via the ST video cable composite in. The TV and cable work fine with another 520ST computer. Normally when getting this seemingly dead computer I would just pack it up, but the bell chime really made me dig around some and post here. Hell, I thought somebody would reply within 15 minutes saying "...and I suspect there is an issue with solder ball number 78 on the Blitter chip..." Or something like that.
Rick
If your ST does not have an RF modulator (which you say it does not), then there is no composite signal on the video jack. Presumably the other ST with which the cable works does have a modulator, and therefore the composite signal is present on the monitor jack.
You will need a monitor for the original 520ST.
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Oooo - the 5200 expansion connector pinout. Intriguing!
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I'm not positive if I'll buy it if I can't find a good cheap way to get actual programs or games into it. I'm afraid it might hit the recycler if I don't though. Not a big call for ST stuff in my area.
If you decided to pass, I will contact the seller if you PM me the store's info. I would definitely be interested.
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That PS3000 is super rare (working or not), and $70 is a steal just for that! I want! :-)Ok so I finally got to return to the game store and take some pictures. Turns out it does have RF out and the monitor has a built in disk drive? There's also a box with a couple of massive power supplies, a couple of books and an Atari ST Language disk, nothing else. Since it does have RF out he will test it sometime in the coming week and we'll go from there. Please let me know thoughts on this model and the monitor and if $70 is indeed worth it, assuming at least the machine works.
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Seriously.
Respect much?
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I have been working on an 800XL that would boot up then go to a blank screen after about 1 minute, sometimes sooner. I noticed that the antic chip got very warm so I swapped it out with another and got the same results. How warm should the antic chip get, this one gets warm enough that it is uncomfortable to touch. Are there any former techs out there that know anything about troubleshooting motherboards. I know that the normal procedure is to just get another one but there must be someone who used to actually fix things instead of just replacing them.
With very little go on here, it sounds like you have a failing power supply that is cooking your Atari(s) when it warms up. If I were you, I would ensure that you are using one of the known-good types of power supply before continuing.
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Here are the pics
Very cool! Thanks so much for posting those!
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It looks like this was a bundled revision of the the Atari ST base model that included the power pack set of games. I am looking for that set of games that came bundled. How hard will that be to get?
I'll bet you have a reasonable chance of finding the individual games that were bundled, but I am not sure what type of packaging they used for those shipped with the bundle. By this I mean, did Atari use their own floppies when duplicating the games for the bundle, or did they include disks provided by each of the game publishers?
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I can take some pics if you wish. It might take a few days.
No worries - it's not urgent. Thanks very much for sharing!
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I had a large donation to my collection today. I grew up with the Atari ST 520 in my household. I remember playing alot of Time Bandit. In my game room renovation, I will have a nice ST setup and now will have some hardware to run some games. I did a video on my channel about it. Enjoy!
I'd love to see more detailed images of the 520ST retail box. I'm not sure I've seen that one before; I am more familiar with the white ST boxes.
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Was it not done the other way on (ECI added later and everything else moved along)?
Curious as it might be looking back, the answer is "No, ECI was not added following the XE systems' debut". The 130XE and 65XE were introduced simultaneously, and the differentiating features for the 130XE were its extra 64K of RAM (for a total of 128K) and the ECI port for expansion. At its introduction, the 65XE was to cater to more causal users.
Later on, it seems cost-cutting led to the reuse of the 130XE motherboard, and when that happened, the ECI port appeared on 65XE systems also.
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Oh no I meant the Atari st. The Easter egg themed system....
By "Easter Egg" I assume you are referring to the pastel console buttons on the Atari XE Game System (aka XE GS). That is an Atari 8-bit computer, while the ST is a completely different (and incompatible) Atari 16/32-bit system.
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Still experimenting with the logic probe and learning my way around the 74LSxxx logic on the board ... man, I wish there was a Sam's Computerfacts for the 1200XL! The one for the 800XL seems pretty damn excellent. Anyway, so far as I can tell, everything on the board is generally doing what it's supposed to so and just to be sure, I swapped all the logic one by one again from working donor systems but no change. The only thing I didn't swap is the C060472 "XL Delay" component, as it's soldered to the board. However again, the logic probe shows it's putting out the signals it's supposed to, at least at a coarse, high-level basis. I don't have a 'scope so I can't check pulse frequencies or anything of that nature. To rule it out, unless I solve the problem before then, I will add it to my list of stuff to order from Best in a couple weeks.
To address Todd's suggestion of last night, I did try swapping all 8 DRAMs from a donor system but again, no difference. Per Jon's suggestion this morning, I tried flexing the board while it was running but it made no difference. I even tried wiggling the sockets and the chips within the sockets, pressing down on discrete components around the board except for the power components. No change. I will do a bit more testing tomorrow or later in the weeks with the logic probe once I've gotten a better understanding of the schematics - more particularly, I'm going to open up my working machine and try to spot any differences in behavior from one to the other with the probe, specifically around the support logic.
I do note a new difference from a few days ago - now, almost invariably, when I boot up the machine, there's a bit of graphical distortion in the display. Specifically, a few missing, dark pixels in the logo. Seems more and more likely to be an ANTIC or GTIA problem but I swapped the ANTIC again tonight with no change and I've previously swapped GTIA as well.
The last thing I can think of is some kind of foreign object or debris under a socket between two pins; I've mentioned in the past that this machine was FILTHY when I got it. Unfortunately, several of the sockets are the "solid" style which cover the board underneath. That's good for removing the chips for replacement, but you can't see very well around the edges where the plastic might be slight raised off the board, not completely flush. It's an outside shot but at this point it makes as much sense as almost anything else.
You have done a thorough job troubleshooting so far.
This reminds me of a troubleshooting session I had with a malfunctioning Roomba (yes, the robotic vacuum). After extensive troubleshooting, I decided that there had to be some undetectable conductive material messing with the logic. Figuring I had nothing to lose as the board was going to be trash anyway, I ran it through a dishwasher cycle. Here's exactly what I did:
1. Emptied the dishwasher
2. Loaded just the circuit board into the top rack (glassware rack)
3. Ran a no-heat-dry cycle with normal detergent
After the cycle, I bathed the board in isopropyl alcohol to displace any water. I then let the board air dry for two days.
After all of that, I have the Roomba working flawlessly.
I am not promising this will work for you, but being as the board was filthy, it might be the only way to eliminate the hidden conductive material.
Good luck!
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Hi!
I've just brought my 030 back from the dead after many, many years.
I'd tried on-and-off to get it running again, but after recently restoring a Commodore CDTV I thought I'd give my old Atari some attention.
It was showing no video output at all, although the fan and power LED were running. On a hunch, I suspected the FalconWING RAM upgrade (visible on the left in the photos) as being the trouble. EDO SIMMs were pretty delicate when new, let alone after all these years. Yesterday, I received a 4MB original Falcon RAM board from eBay (for about a hundredth of its original price... *sigh*). Installed that today and.... IT'S ALIVE!
Next is to get an IDE-to-CF (or SD) board for the machine.
The case has seen much better days though. Cosmetically, it looks fine, but the threads for the screws are shot, one of the rivets into which the HD bracket screws is missing, and I think a floppy drive post is also absent.
Does anyone have a source for a Falcon030 top/bottom case and screw/post set?
Cheers,
Chris
If you are prepared to trash the bottom case anyway, you might try filling the screw holes with glue, let the glue set, and then re-drill pilot holes for the screws. That *might* fix it, and it sounds like you have nothing to lose if you're pitching the case anyway.
Let the glue set for at least 24 hours.
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Makes it only easier in that it sends only one printing format, but that's PDF, not the easiest format to handle, AFAIK.
PDF is not too bad - it is a subset of PostScript, which is text-based page definition language. The Atari should be perfectly capable of generating useful output. It would be way more challenging if the Atari had to generate raster-based output for today's high resolution printers.
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This crossed my mind too. I have a really old HP laser printer with a Jetdirect card, and I know you can just blast text to it on a TCP port and it will print it, using the internal fonts. I suspect modern printers will expect proprietary data from a customized print driver, but I guess it's worth a little research.
It's probably one of those things that won't be that hard to get to work for a very small subset of printers, so we'll have to determine how useful that really is.
Thankfully, AirPrint (called ePrint by HP) standardizes wireless printing these days. Most modern printers support it, and it is the way by which mobile devices print.
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Hi, I recently got an Atari 800XL and an Indus GT floppy drive from a friend who was cleaning his garage. They were both rather dirty (the Atari especially so) and I have no way to test functionality as I haven't got a power adapter. I noticed Commodore power plugs fit (I have one with all the pins, not just 4), but I haven't powered it up for fear of the voltage being wrong and blowing chips.
So, is the power plug compatible? If not, where's the best place to purchase one? What maintenance besides basic cleaning should I do as it's been sitting for 15+ years? I'd love to get it and the Indus working together if I can do so without spending an exorbitant amount of money. This would be my first Atari computer and I can use all the help I could get. I have access to soldering equipment and a voltmeter. I'll get some photos up when I get home if that'd help diagnosis.
Do not fry your 800XL by using the Commodore power supply. They are NOT compatible.
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Not to rain on your parade, but Atari800 would remain on SDL1.2, so any updates on the Atari800 core would have rewritten again and again.
A better way would be look at what is causing the problem. I now have a Macbook Pro with the GM build of Sierra and I observed that the app crashes with an Division by Zero fault. I will try to look at the problem the coming week, if I find time.
Secondly, I installed Logic Pro 9 and played a bit around with it. The app seems to work perfectly.
The crux of the problem is that, for the Mac port, SDL v1's audio is based on Carbon Audio Units. I suppose some effort could be expended to back port the audio code from SDL v2 (which uses CoreAudio) to SDL v1, as SDL v2's audio API is compatible with SDL v1. In doing so, a new SDL v1+ hybrid for Mac would result :-P .
I have isolated the areas that need changing, and the changes seem fairly localized. That said, I've made no effort to ascertain which pieces of code are particular to the Mac port and which pertain to the Atari800 codebase.
If I get a chance to play with it some more, I will post here. My immediate objective was to get enough ported to SDL v2 to get it to compile. At that point, I will need to address the keyboard input as the next order of business.
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Installed macOS Sierra GM tonight, and as DrVenkman wrote above the sound is still borked. I was hoping for a different result, but alas. I guess I'll need to install a Wine port of Altirra.
Hi folks.
I saw this thread and looked into it. As it stands, sound is never going to work in Sierra or later because the current codebase relies on the SDL v1 library. SDL v1 uses Carbon Audio Units for sound on the Mac, and that API has been deprecated for the last couple of OS X versions, pending its ultimate removal in Sierra.
I also looked at the possibility of swapping in SDL v2. It is doable, and I played with it. I might even finish it, but while SDL v2 fixes audio (as it now employs CoreAudio as it should), it brings some API incompatibilities with SDL v1 that require some reworking of the code. Unfortunately, the Objective C code in the app has some important deficiencies -- specifically, multi-parameter Objective C method calls lack parameter names. I spent a little time and sorted that out, but my point here is that it requires a little reworking to use SDL v2 and is more effort than simply recompiling.
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Announcing 7800 Anniversary Multicart #2 - Limited Availability
in Atari 7800
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I'm in for one also.