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That's actually where my worries started. It came off, and I tried fixing it back on place with three points of glue on what's left of the original foam pads (this high humidity has taken its toll on them, apparently). Currently, I took it out to see if it made any difference... why do I have a feeling this may be the likely culprit? Yep, I cleaned them. I've seen far worse, though maybe the top ones need a bit of cleaning. The four ones in a row labeled "TR0"? Unfortunately, I never had the money to buy a scope... Ribbons. Everywhere (well, mostly). Uh huh. It's labeled [iK] N9V0 on the small PCB on which it's mounted. Yes, it does. That's something I'm not so sure about... I'll remove the cover from the working one and see if it spins at the same speed. I'll try to find some... thanks for your help.

Unfortunately, I'm broke, so I'd rather try to repair it myself. Nope. Just a short "hop" when powering up. I've kept it with the top off, seems OK. No, they don't... the XF551 uses standard Percom block commands.

I guess this was the thread you meant: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...pping&st=25 I'll take a better look tomorrow... EDIT: heh, I see you also found it...

Well, as the title implies, today after a couple of years without using it, I found out that the Mitsumi mech of one of my XF551 drives isn't working properly. If I try to boot from it, I get the usual "BOOT ERROR" messages; if I try to read a disk's directory on it (using it as D2:, which was how I originally had it - changed it to D1: only to test it alone), I get ERROR- 163 (meaning the drive isn't responding). Any suggestions on where to look? On first sight, I can't see anything suspicious, I'm leaving the multitester testing for tomorrow since it's late already. I've already discarded any electronics problems in the board, swapped the mechs with the other XF551 and found out it's the mech. The motors seem to be OK (drive spins normally and head moves normally too), I also cleaned the head and tried to realign it just in case, no changes. Haven't checked solder points in the mech yet (as I said, it's late already - I'm tired and the artificial lighting isn't good enough either), if anybody knows what the "usual suspects" tend to be, I'd appreciate the help. As I said, I connected my equipment after a 2 year hiatus (more or less), last time it was working fine except for one of the SIO connectors (which I already resoldered today) so overheating and such isn't the issue here... Thanks in advance.

I don't remember playing one of those on my 800XL ever... it's going to make a nice addition. Going through my files, I just came across a program I wrote named "LEM.3D" which is an animation of a wireframe "lander"... didn't remember it, but this is my disk with all the 3D stuff I made over 15 years ago.

Something must be wrong at your end... maybe you have your browser set to display only images on the same server as the webpage displaying them. Here are the links: http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xf551image1by3.jpg http://img102.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xf551image2wi8.jpg

That's one of the reasons for using a detached A8 keyboard instead of a whole A8 - don't emulators already emulate the A8's custom chips? Just provide them with the input signals they need. In fact, I've done that - the only reason the A8 isn't currently connected to the capture card is because I connected the DVD player instead. Now that the DVD player isn't working, I could connect the A8 again... Hmmm, I'd like to hear more about that...

It's not mutually exclusive. If you get the atari keyboard to act like a PC keyboard then it would work with emulators too. I don't see the point in making it only work within the emulator environment. I agree... all you need is a driver telling the PC how to read data from the A8 keyboard.

Sorry for posting on an old thread, but I was just cleaning my XF551s and thought you might be interested in seeing this one: Look at the SIO connectors, they use screws instead of the later crappy rivets (my other XF551 has those). It must have been an exceptional case, from the first run or so. They still need re-soldering, anyway... (that's what I'm doing right now) Funny enough, the riveted connectors have had fewer cracked solder joints than these ones... or maybe I only re-soldered those already a few years ago but not these ones. That would make more sense.

I'll ask IAQ about that when I see him... maybe this week. Although I believe he's still selling them as "collector's issues" nowadays (at least, the few remaining Atari Creativo #0 ones). From the later issues of Informática Creativa (#1&2) he had several issues lying around, I believe that was one of the reasons #3 never got published (too few sales). Later he started publishing the Sugoi anime magazine, which is still around (latest issue had just been published last week). I didn't realize we had met there... I would have recognized your name if I heard it. Same to you. I'll try to hook up my Pentium 3 (that one still has a 5.25" FDD and the needed programs to read DD Atari diskettes). In the meantime, I still have some on my old page: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2645/atari.html http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2645/A8/ Likewise.

You see, RS-232C is basically designed to transmit ASCII characters... as you said, you would get any characters that you can type. But there are programs that expect more than that. For example, I wrote a small "electronic organ" program (called XorganoL, IIRC) that would detect for example the keypress corresponding to the "SHIFT" key - that wouldn't work your way. Your way, you'd need: 1.) A working 8-bit computer (with power source and cables) 2.) A working 8-bit drive (unless you're using a cartridge-based program) 3.) Loading a terminal program on the 8-bit 4.) Connecting a monitor to the 8-bit to see what you're doing 5.) Being careful not to exit the terminal program by accident 6.) A working PC (for simplicity's sake, we'll include monitor, drives, etc. as part of the whole) 7.) A connecting cable between the 8-bit and the PC (*****) 8.) Loading an 8-bit emulator on the PC 9.) Having modified the emulator so that you can toggle the input between the RS-232 connection and the PC keyboard, 10.) but only for certain keys, since there are others for which you'll still need the PC keyboard. I don't really see it as too practical... and the "zero cost" you mentioned wasn't taking into account how you're getting both computers connected. Making an interface that would allow you to connect an A8 keyboard+joysticks to a PC would cost about the same as the RS-232C cable, and modifying the emulator to accept input from it wouldn't require much more coding, either... Don't get me wrong, either, but personally I wouldn't work on such a project when I see a simpler alternative.

I guess that would involve modifying an emulator to accept input from an Atari 8-bit... but that wouldn't be too useful, there's only so much you can do with a terminal program in text mode (that's what you'd have to run on the 8-bit). A better option would be to use a "spare" A8 keyboard, detached from the actual motherboard, and hook it through an adapter to the PC, then modify the emulator accordingly to process the data from the interface. It shouldn't be difficult, the A8 keyboard is far less complicated than the PC one, IIRC. I would also include Atari joystick ports in such an interface...

Wow, I didn't know you were still programmming on the Atari 8-bits to this date... nice tribute to M.U.L.E., should show it to IAQ some time... I think you may like to know that several years ago, I uploaded a disk image of the (never released) Informática Creativa Diskette #1, with permission from IAQ. It included some of your programs too. You can find it here: http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/8bit/Magazines/ I had been waiting for your game "ACCIÓN" to be published with issue #3 back then, but that never happened... I remember playtesting it for a while at IAQ's all this time ago. (BTW, don't know if you heard, IAQ's mother sadly passed away this tuesday...)