Thorsten Günther

Click here! From the item description of the Atari 800, "brightlight_de" is none less than Peter Finzel himself! Thorsten

If PIN 12 and 13 of the TIA have a direct connection on the main PCB (a multimeter should read 0 Ohms betweens these two pins), you have an NTSC console. If they are not connected, it's a PAL console. Thorsten

The 130ST was only a prototype and was never mass-produced due to the fact that the TOS was first provided on a disk instead on ROM chips and had a size of about 192K. Same with the 260ST in its original configuration (there was a machine with that label that actually was sold, but it had 512K of RAM despite its name for the same reason). Thorsten

First, no, you cannot upgrade ST to STE or STE to Falcon030, these are completely different machines, although more or less compatible. The Mega ST series has the best keyboards (made by Cherry) and a real-time clock, but is intended for SOHO use and can not be connected to a TV set except by an RGB DIN13-to-SCART cable. The STE is compatible with more than 95% of games, the Mega STE with some per cent less due to its TOS 2.0x ROM, and the Falcon will run less than 40-50% of games "out of the box" and about 30% will not run at all, but with some additional software ("Backward"), you may get up to 70% of games to run. The guys of D-Bug are currently going through the hassle of patching the games that do not work on the Falcon030 - and all of these patched titles will also run on the STE and Mega STE. I would get a 1040STE with colour SC1224 monitor, buy HDDRIVER by Uwe Seimet and pre-order an UltraSatan SD drive. Some external speakers would give you nice stereo sound on STE games and demos. Ah yes, and grab some 1 meg FPM 30-pin SIMMs off eBay for a buck to extend the 1040STE to 4 megs (or rip them out of a defective 386/486 PC). Thorsten

Yes, absolutely, the 9V AC 31 VA PSUs are needed for Atari FDDs. Of course, they will also power the 400/800 and apparently the 1200, but the 15.3 VA of the other PSU are far too low for any FDD. BTW: the first voltage on the PSU is the wall current, that's why it's always the same. Thorsten

Shouldn't that be "sea dogs" instead of "sharks"? Or when exactly did the Mayan word "xook" evolve into the English word "shark"? Thorsten

I nominate the Interton VC4000 and the Vectrex. Thorsten

I finally started collecting for the 2600 last year, and my Atari "career" began with the 800XL around 1985/1986. Although there are several games I just bought to get a first-hand impression of them on real hardware (as opposed to Stella), I mainly collect those titles that shine on the 2600 (like the Activision titles, these look and feel very similar to their 800XL couterparts in most cases), are exclusive to the VCS or are totally different on the XL (e.g. Thrust has keyboard control only as opposed to Thomas Jentzsch' version with driver controller/foot pedal control, Jawbreaker and Space Invaders are also very different). Thorsten

when i first got the lynx i was hooked on roadblasters and rygar with the occasional ninja gaiden now i am mainly playing casino,rampage with a litte elvira pinball games to avoid dracula,batman,turbo sub,double dragon,ishido,blockout I have to disagree on Double Dragon and Casino. I consider Casino to be a major bore, and Double Dragon plays quite good (totally different from the crap Atari ST version, much closer to the arcade). Batman Returns should be avoided - I've never seen such a stupid and brutally unfair unfair fighter game. Both Pinball Jam tables are good, not just the Elvira table. Checkered Flag is a top-notch racer on the Lynx (as opposed to the Jaguar game of the same title). Thorsten

I don't have the means to do this, but I bought a Toshiba 15V300 LCD TV with VGA input to try it on my ST. This TV set does display all ST modes (ST high through the VGA input only, the other modes as RGB through the SCART connector), but it doesn't like a PAL VCS with NTSC cartridge through RF - the resulting picture is black and white only. My large CRT TV has no problem coping with the strange timing of this combination, though. The only drawback of the Toshiba is that the background pattern of the ST desktop - especially in ST high mode - results in obvious scaling artifacts (vertical black and white lines). Thorsten

Yes, they literally produced millions of them for Europe and Australia (and presumably for many other countries with PAL TV). In fact, the consoles produced for the French market (SECAM TV system) were just modified PAL consoles - the mod was indeed so primitive that these consoles can only display 8 colours instead of the 104 of PAL and the 128 of NTSC consoles, see this page on the Spiceware site for an impression of the differences. This depends on how tolerant your TV set is to non-standard signals. A PAL cart inserted into a U.S. console will give a 50Hz NTSC picture, and several TV sets don't like that at all, resulting in a rolling picture. And as you can see on the Spiceware page I mentioned, the colours will be all wrong because Atari changed the TIA palette for the PAL TIA (they didn't repeat this mistake with the GTIA of the 400/800 computers, thankfully). So if you want to play PAL games with the correct colours, you need a TV set with PAL input (and this means PAL RF input - if it only has PAL video input, you'll have to solder a composite output into the PAL VCS). Any 2600 Jr., yes, as these have RCA jacks for RF output and the same 3.5 mm power plug has always been used for evey VCS worldwide (9V DC, at least 500 mA), plus they are cheaper to ship and give a better picture than a 4-switch. You can not use the European/Australian PSU or RF cable though (though the plugs differ between European countries, the voltage and AC frequency all over Europe and in Australia was 220-250V (250V used in the UK, 220V in most of continental Europe) and 50Hz, nowadays it seems to be 230V and 50Hz "everywhere"), and on non-Jr. consoles this would mean you'd also have to replace the TV plug of the RF cable. If your VCR accepts PAL through RF, yes, this will most presumably work. Thorsten

Turmoil No flicker, damn fast, hard and it has great stereo sound! Thorsten

Well, to give my answer to the question: No, Atari definitely didn't need a IIgs, but they definitely made a mistake when not buying Miner's Lorraine chipset (which indeed is very much the "Antic 2" some people in this thread wanted). But even if they had, the computer built around this chipset would most likely have been the Amiga as we know it, fully incompatible with the A8. So, what Atari really should have done to answer to the C=64 threat, IMHO: reducing the 800XL price much earlier! I am also quite sure it would have helped a lot if they simply made the 5200 a sleeker looking and cheaper to produce 400 and if they published those great Lucasfilm titles and The Last Starfighter when they were finished instead of holding them back forever. Thorsten

As nearly all European countries have 230V AC mains and most also have PAL (mostly the B/G variant,, in the UK it's PAL I, but this only means you get no sound when you connect it to a TV using the RF connector), yes, a Falcon is interesting for international customers. Plus the TOS inside the Falcon is multilingual, so the hardest work for international customers will be replacing the keyboard with one from an STf/fm/e of his own country. Ah, and btw, a Falcon with a 110V PSU will also work on any RGB or VGA monitor (a great one is the old NEC MultiSync 3D, this one will display SM124, VGA and RGB modes - you'll have to solder your own connector/switch box though) in the United States, but through RF it will only give a b/w picture without sound that even might roll on some TV sets. Thorsten

I wouldn't call any of these titles rare", but several of them are less common than say - Pac-Man or Pole Position. Plus several of your acquired games include the SARA chip providing the VCS with extra RAM to improve graphics. And there are a number of good to very good titles on these photographs - the previous owner apparently had a good sense of quality. That collection would sell on eBay for GBP 20-30, I guess, so you made a bargain. One last hint: if the PSU should fail or be defective, don't throw it away until you cut off the cord - the damn plug is impossible to find. Thorsten

Yup, plug-in terminators are just more comfortable if you alter the number of connected external drives repeately. Instead of remembering which drive you jumpered to terminated and always keep this drive last in the chain, you just plug the terminator into the only free connector of all your connected drives. Ah yes, one thing I just remembered: on the TT030, you also need to remove the internal three(?) terminator resistors to the external connector prior to connecting any external SCSI device. Thorsten

Not quite. An NTSC STE will always put out NTSC, but every Atari regardless of it's video circuit (or lack thereof in the original ST and STf models) can be switched from 50 to 60 Hz screen refresh rate by software, several times also directly in the game (usually with the F5 key for 50Hz and the F6 key for 60Hz). And older TV sets sometimes have problems coping with a screen refresh rate that differs from the local TV standard, resulting in a rolling picture (e.g. a PAL signal in 60 Hz - usually referred to as "PAL 60"). If an NTSC STE could be switched to PAL by software, one would not only have a rolling screen on an "intolerant" TV set, but also lose colour (different encoding) and audio signals (different subcarrier frequency). For games that insist on 50Hz screen refresh mode, I would suggest an RGB monitor like the SC1224 or several Commodore 1084 models (the earliest ones only had S-Video for the C=64). r you might purchase a portable TV from the UK - these have SCART connectors, sometimes will also accept NTSC through their RF connector (NTSC through the video connector is even more likely - all my stationary TVs bought in the last decade had it) and require 12V DC instead of 230V mains. The same is true for the rest of Europe, but only in UK they speak a language somewhat similar to American . Thorsten

I experienced the same problem, but a simple 470pF ceramic capacitor cured it for me (just solder it between chroma and luma). HTH, and sorry for the late reply, Thorsten

Hello! The paddles are analog with a digital button each. Thorsten

The XEGS doesn't have a monitor port either. Granted, it still has composite output (through RCA jacks), but it doesn't have the 5-pin DIN port that the other XEs have. Yes, but as most XLs and XEs only have composite on the DIN monitor port, changing the port was in fact an favour to most customers, for even though there currently are a large number of NOS DIN-to-cinch cables on eBay Germany (seller: "moppi"), they are otherwise quite hard to get., and finding DIN plugs for producing these cables sometimes also is an issue (OK, the DIN5 is one of the more common plugs even outside of Germany for MIDI cables and old PC AT keyboards have the same connector, but finding a DIN7 (XL/XE PSU) or DIN13 (ATari ST monitor) plug can become a real PITA). Thorsten

No idea, except perhaps there is no terminator on the end of the daisy chain? Thorsten

Nope, but the NTSC version doesn't have a monitor jack (RF only), plus it's only got 16 KB of RAM, so you need to upgrade it. The advantage is that most 600XLs came with relatively early XL keyboards (as they were discontinued early) while on the 800XL the keyboards got cheaper and worse with every generation. Beetle identified 5 keyboard types for the 800XL so far here, and of those currently in my possession, 3 of them have the type 4 keyboard and only onre has the type 1 (by ALPS). The first one I bought back in the 80s had either a type 2 or type 3 (both by AWC). Thorsten

"Fairly simple" is what Zybex proposed (the mod by Jerzy Sobola). This one is very complicated in comparison plus it seems redundant (there already is a CD4050 on the mainboard, what is the point in adding another one instead of tapping the signals after the existing one?). Anyone tried Jerzy's mod? Thorsten

slightly corrected

Hello! I recently purchased a lot consisting of a 400 plus 1050 from the U.S., yet I have no use for the two C017945 PSUs that came with them, as they are 110V AC instead of the 230V AC needed here in Germany. As the seller (item number at eBay was 190277154887) claimed both the lights of the FDD and the 400 came on when using them, so I presume they are both working. Shipping worldwide for both PSUs will cost me EUR 13.90 (untrackable/uninsured "DHL Päckchen") due to their weight, so instead of sending them away for free, I want to trade them for a defective 1030 (or case) in good optical condition or some games software. Thorsten