JeffJewell

July 24, 2023

I would have sworn I saw someone post an image that had all the Pharaoh's Curse screenshots and their interconnections mapped out. I can't seem to find it anywhere now... even trying creative spellings of Pharaoh.

Anyone know where this was, or even remember it?

Thanks

April 9, 2021

jeffjewell@jjMBP1 ~ % ls /dev/cu*
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port /dev/cu.RW-01-vCOMM

Is all that shows up. Nothing appears in the dropdown box, even after hitting the refresh button. I do remember the field populating, when it worked.

April 8, 2021

I had run the program successfully some weeks ago, interested in the new happenings, decided to flash. FujiNet-Flasher can't find a serial port. Rescan, nothing. Try to flash anyway, fails, no serial port. Reboot, same. Re-install the USB drivers (the process recognizes that there is a driver install), same. Download fresh copies of everything, same.

Am I missing something obvious? Not sure why this process that went smoothly the first time is giving me trouble, now. I'm on Catalina, it definitely worked before...

User Feedback Forum · February 14, 2021

Just wanted to say I received my board, well-packed and promptly shipped, and I'm very happy with the service I received.

Even moreso considering this was a freebie, he had a couple extra boards from building SDrive Max boards, and he offered them to others. Great service on top of being a good guy for the community.

Thanks!

February 14, 2021

Came here to relate my very positive experience with Jurgen. Reading through the posts, I can't believe how lucky I apparently got.

My Sys-Check shipped January 4th and arrived January 28th. The last status message on the USPS site said something like "delivered to agent for delivery," and showed the green check like it had been delivered. I was out, texted home, but no package (no mail at all) yet, made a mental note to email Jurgen and see if he knew what that message meant.

When I got home a few hours later, there was already an email from Jurgen, who was also confused by the message and wanted to check with me. The guy selling me the stuff was on top of its delivery info as tightly as I was.

The other thing waiting for me was my Sys-Check; I guess that message means it's on the route carrier's truck headed to your home.

Here's hoping things start coming through for folks... and many thanks to Jurgen for his products and his service. He's one of the Good Guys.

February 8, 2021

Yeah, I vaguely remember it happening it two waves... a complaint that the game was too much like PAC-Man, and a follow up complaint that it didn’t change enough, which led to the entirely new rewrite.

Are there dates on the executable files on the original disks? But I’m pretty sure your summation is correct, the Pac-Man on its side was the short run first version.

January 19, 2021

Hi, just got my FujiNet a couple days ago and I'm having a blast. The next thing I want to do is set up a TNFS server of my own, I run Macs.

I see the linux64 binary, and I suspect that might even work by itself, but it's not obvious to me where to put or how to run the .linux64 file.

Any one compile this yet for Mac? Anyone able to point me in a direction to do that myself (I have opened Xcode, but in a pretty "hello, World" programming way.... still might be able to compile something someone else wrote)?

Anyway, it's late at night, I'm excited about this tool, and I wanted to check here if anyone had insight to share before I go dredging through the Google results I fear for these searches...

January 17, 2021

Hey there, if there’s one still available, talk to me about shipping charges to South Carolina.

January 9, 2021

The Quavers episode finally made me say something.

God bless you, Pete. There’s a lot of retro fluff these days, much that I find too ironic, much that I find too reverent... to really capture the way I feel about these games.

Somehow you are able to look at these games with eyes that are no longer fresh, but that have remained unjaded.

You make me want to play old games.

Thanks, Pete. I love what you’re doing, and I begin to resent the brevity of our alphabet.

January 3, 2021

With the uncertainties of the past year, spending on the 40 year old computers has been hard to justify. Got enough breathing room today... ordered a FujiLink and a SysCheck.

Just a good day, is all. Hope the new year is bringing blessings to you all.

December 19, 2020

533342

Its not pretty yet, I’ve just started with this one... but it’s the one on the bench right now...

August 27, 2020

tl, ngr:

Immediate issue: how/where do I tell the emulated SIDE2 to use a particular file/vxd?

Larger issue that may fix the immediate issue: is the Help facility not working for anyone else under WINE on OS X?

The rest of it:

So, I've generally been happy with the native Atari800MacX emulator to play old games, but a few recent threads where folks have gotten Altirra 3.9 running under WINE on current versions of Mac OS have piqued my interest with tales of emulation I had ne'er dared dream. Having a decent collection of actual hardware myself, I am currently weighing various upgrades and additions as funding and my skills allow... but realizing that Altirra could actually emulate many of these newfangled doodads, and I could know that much more about them before I go soldering things to stuff, was a game-changer.

It wasn't difficult to set up WINE with homebrew, and pretty soon I was running an emulated XE with the Ultimate1M, SIDE2, and an MIO hanging off of it. Next step is to get something running from the emulated CF card in the SIDE2, and I think I need to point it to a .vxd file somewhere, but I don't know where/how to do this. The online manual (Hardware Reference) talks way above my head about no doubt vital information that I cannot parse into instructions for this task.

I do know that Altirra has Help files (I was able to find an image online of the page where it shows the keymap for Atari keys on the Mac keyboard when I couldn't figure out how to hit "HELP" to activate the U1M) and this question may be answered there, but my installation of Altirra/WINE fails trying to open the Help files. Is anyone else running under WINE seeing that issue? Are the Help files downloadable in any other format?

Thanks for any advice or direction you can offer.

April 25, 2020

Oops, wrong thread, sorry.

September 5, 2019

83S DA 79691 143

My 1200.

July 11, 2019

I appreciate all the help. I've got my shopping list mostly ready.

DrVenkman, is a specialized logic probe a separate purchase, or can I do those tests with a regular multi-meter? If I'm reading at those charts correctly (great tip on the SAMS, by the way, I hadn't run across them yet) it looks like I'm just checking for low/high on certain pins when the machine has power. The specialized logic probes I was finding on initial search seemed to be automotive oriented.

July 8, 2019

Thanks to everyone who responded! Great to get quick feedback on retro hardware projects like this.

I understand the question about my having other machines, now, and yes, I have a working and very similar internally 800XL for comparison. I have attached a file of my workbench... the flaky 800XL is toward the back, and the working one I'm currently dismantling is up front. Next step is to remove the shielding on the good mobo.

Having two dismantled 8-bits at once is more than I was planning for on my current workspace, and I'm a little wary of yanking stuff out of my working machine to try and Frankenstein the other one, so I'm going slow on that part.

Dr Venkman, yes, it appears that everything on the "bad" mobo is socketed... I'll be getting into the working one's shielding soon.

For what it's worth, trying to start the offending machine while holding down the Start key usually goes straight to the self test. Once or twice it went to a BASIC READY prompt with two parentheses at odd places on the screen. But almost always the self test, never a cassette sound.

I've been trying to document what I'm finding out about taking these things apart and the differences in what you might find there, this particular machine is documented in this post. In the post, the SIO handicapped machine is 800XL-b, and the good machine is the reference 800XL. I've been following all kind of rabbit holes concerning keyboards, motherboards, serial numbers.... I think my next spelunk will involve Atari's IC iterations.

I guess my next step on this particular 800XL is... well, I wanted to say Radio Shack, but I think I'm a couple decades too late on that. Can y'all suggest the best products for my cleaning up stage? Not thinking about RetroBright or case aesthetics, just wondering about cleaning rust and whatever else off of old circuit boards. Initial Googling suggests that I can clean the rust off this weathered shielding, but I will then need to seal it somehow to keep it from rusting again.

I'm also going to look around for another source of test 800XL chips aside from my "reference copy" machine.

Thanks again for the tips and the encouragement!

July 7, 2019

The machine still seems to run fine with an AtariWriter cartridge... two different AtariWriter cartridges, now that I'm focussed on it.

BASIC cartridges are now powering up to blank screens.

And now it took me a minute to get the AtariWriter cart booting again.

So, something with the cartridge port not being consistent?

July 7, 2019

I have several other machines to test against. There's a 320XE with an XF551, XF351, and an MIO in the bedroom.

Okay, so now I'm wondering abut the cartridge port.

Using an old BASIC cartridge, I've gotten the thing to boot to Basic once or twice. It is mostly going back to the Memory Test screen. I just got 4895 as a response to the ? FRE(0) command.

GR. 8 gives me:

ERROR- 9 AT LINE 29441

Again, that is with the BASIC cartridge inserted in the 800 XL.

And after doing that, the ? FRE(0) gives me 63311. Repeatedly.

The stability of the machine trying to read this cartridge is suspect. It just flaked back out to the memory test screen from Basic. There is a BASIC cart in this XL at the moment.

So... cartridge port, I'm looking at you?

July 7, 2019

Cool... so what does the 32 good, 8 bad actually tell me... the RAM is those eight chips on the right side of the mb, right? Haven't found a table to equate the apparently 40 memory check blocks to the allegedly 64K memory of the 800XL. Should I look at replacing all of them? They are all socketed on this mobo. I've got a Harbor Freight multimeter, is there a way I can check the bad boys individually?

Thanks so much for the reply, by the way. I've got that newby-getting-back-into-it energy, and any new rabbit hole is a good one for me. Like I mentioned, dead links seem to be my nemesis right now, if there's some place I should be looking before I post here, please direct me there.

A sincere thank you to anyone who is still checking these boards with the hope of annotating and spreading the Atari platform.

July 7, 2019

I still have my Sunnyvale Heavy Sixer, my constant companion since Christmas morning, 1977.

My original 1979 Atari 800 still runs... as does my original 1050 drive (because I couldn't scrape up the $ for an 810, while it existed as a commercial product).

I am now spelunking through a collection partly of my own making at the time, and partly of my rebuilding on the second hand market after the time. I am currently spending some time with an Atari 800XL, and I hope that folks can point me in a couple directions.

First up, the 800 XL I'm working with isn't working correctly. It runs from some cartridges, but not all of them (AtariWriter has allowed me to check the keyboard, which seems to be completely working. Two different Pac-Man carts failed, Miner 2049er worked). It does not seem to check the SIO chain at all (known good drive on known good cable with known good floppy doesn't even result in a hey-look-I'm-here drive light flash at boot up). Machine goes straight to memory test unless one of the successfully booting cartridges is in place.

The memory test gives green for both ROMs, then green for 32 RAMs then red for 8 RAMs.

Wanted to see if anyone had any red flags go up at that set of symptoms. First Googlings suggest I might need to replace the BASIC ROM or the Atari OS ROM, based on the SIO funkiness.

I have found it to be a Chelco Rev A2 motherboard with the Alps keyboard.

I've also wanted to necro-post on a couple of things along the way... as I am digging through my Atari history and comparing it with the internet's version of things, I'm finding a lot of desirable information taunting me from behind dead links. What resources do y'all still find active and relevant with regard to Atari hardware versions and revisions?

I'm back, Atari-verse.

June 26, 2019

NTSC/PAL/Sears/Special: NTSC

Serial # (Ex: #54035V or #007649): #40396J

MFG Location (Sunnyvale, Taiwan): Sunnyvale

(Owner/AA Member), (Location= City, State, Country): JeffJewell, Greenville, SC, US

A/B Channel Slot (Yes/No): No

A/B Channel Switch (Yes/No): No

Functional (Yes/No): Yes

Notes (Previous owner, display only, white sticker, parts fixed, green connector, Switchboard/Motherboard Revision #): Original owner

August 15, 2003

Cart #33 is home safely.

Thanks, Steve.

July 24, 2003

The Mega STe does, the 1040 STe does not.

I've edited the thread title to cover up my less-than-clear question-asking...

July 24, 2003

I was very disappointed with the "free sex" page... not at all what I'd envisioned...

July 24, 2003

I think I remember reading that the TT/Falcon/STe network port is AppleTalk-based, in some way? Are cables available/compatible? Was there much netwok-aware software written?

Thanks for any information, experiences, or links.

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