erazmus

Hello All, Trying to set up hard drive emulation in Atari800MacX and having a bit of difficulty. I've found the BlackBox ROM, and I've tried using it, but the machine just hangs. (I've got all OS patching turned off). I have been unable to locate the MIO ROM file. Any pointers on getting this working? Anyone have a link to the MIO ROM?

Perfect! That one worked for me. For some reason I didn't have the sdx128 image but I had everything else. I'm sure I clicked on all the check boxes on the Spartados download site but obviously I didn't. Thanks again for your help!

Thanks for the response. When I insert the Maxflash8Mb version, it asks me what type of cartridge it is. No matter what type I select, I just get a black screen.

Hello All, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Atari800MacX had recently been updated to fix the sound issues with the latest MacOS. I am interested in setting up an emulated environment on my Mac that will let me emulate an Atari running SpartDOS X. I have been unable to find the correct incantation of SpartaDOS X ROM image and Atari800MacX settings to make it work. Is there anyone who has some words of wisdom that could point me in the right direction to get something running? I would prefer Atari800MacX, but if I have to go with something else to get SpartaDOS to work, that's what I will have to do.

Wow, I think the moral of this thread is "If you're in to Atari 8-bits, don't get married"

That is something that I never knew. After all these years, I learned something new about the 400! Thanks.

Result! Congrats.

Looking at a 130xe schematic which I found here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/127716-good-quality-130xe-schematics/?do=findComment&comment=1541087 I would use a meter to check continuity from the keyboard connector to U24 and U25 (4051) (page 6 of the schematic). Then I would check from U24,U25 to POKEY. If you check continuity from the top of the board, with the chips plugged in, by touching the top of the IC leg, this will make sure that there's no break in the trace from a bad via or anything. Possibly U24, U25 is bad? Do other POKEY functions work, like the pot inputs, sound, etc?

Ouch, ouch, ouch. The XE boards are terrible for traces lifting with too much soldering iron heat. Did the through plating survive? Perhaps in the process of removing the socket, you tore out a through hole plate, thereby disconnecting a top trace from a bottom trace?

This is an interesting question. I was living in the UK at the time, and my parents bought me a 400. Unfortunately, I don't remember what year it was (or even time of year) but I do recall that there was a huge delay in getting the machine, and when it finally arrived, there was no BASIC cartridge because those hadn't arrived in the UK yet, so for the first month all I could do was play my Star Raiders cartridge.

Stephen - Best. Avatar. Ever.

Excellent write-up ricortes. Another solution for A8 CP/M is running it on an Indus GT drive with a memory expansion. I have the drive, but no expansion card, so I've never tried it. Here's a page with disk images and schematics for a memory card http://trub.atari8.info/index.php?ref=cpm_en

All but the very first 400's have a GTIA chip in them. In fact, I would love to own an A8 with a CTIA in it - never seen one in person yet.

If you're looking for a single machine, I wouldn't pick either of these - they both need expansion options (RAM, and a keyboard for the 400) to make them usable. In my case, if I was given the option of just one of these, I'd pick the 400 purely because that was my first A8. The 600XL would probably be more practical, just because of the keyboard.

The ATR-8000 successfully runs CP/M on any A8. You will need a 360k 5.25" floppy drive to plug in to the ATR-8000 in order to do this. The A8 drives aren't visible to CP/M, but the ATR-8000 drives are visible to the A8. As for MS DOS compatibility, I think this was provided by a plug-in board for the ATR-8000. I'e only ever heard mention of it, but never seen one in real life.

There's one person seeding. At his current speed, it'll take me a day and a half to grab it. I plan on seeding for a while once I've grabbed it. Others may want to grab this before it disappears.

I have a 360k half height IBM-style floppy drive hooked up to my ATR8000. I had some cabling problems last time I tried (several years ago) but I think I have them solved. I *also* have an Indus GT (in storage). The Indus has a Z80 processor, and they released CP/M for it, as long as you added additional RAM for it. The article linked discusses re-creating a CP/M boot disk for the Indus drive, and it is theorized that a similar recovery process might work for the ATR8000. I should probably take the corrupted ATR disk images for the Indus and the ATR8000 and compare them in a hex editor to see if the same corruption is happening in the first couple of sectors.

Thanks for the offer. Even if I borrowed your original, we'd have the problem of being able to copy the strange format. The above link to the Indus GT CP/M version has given me an idea. I have an Indus GT. I can probably hack together the 64k board for it. If that works, I can make an Indus disk as described, which will boot me in to CP/M. From there, I can probably use the appropriate tools to create a ATR8000 CP/M disk. Whichever way it goes, I really want to solve this problem. Everywhere you look online, there's lots of questions about getting CP/M running on the ATR8000, but no real answers. Hmmm, this is beginning to sound like a Retrochallenge project...

Bump. After a few years of sitting in my closet, I've pulled the ATR8000 out and I'm trying to see if I can get it to work. I'm really interested in finding a set of CP/M disks for the unit. I understand that there's a trick to creating the disk properly because the first two sectors are single density. Does anyone have a copy they could sell/give me? Or is there any instructions on how to successfully create a bootable CP/M disk from an image?

I made an inquiry about Pro about 6 months ago and was told that it was being ported to a cartridge and no licenses were available until the cartridge version came out.

Looks like your mail box has a tray-load CD ROM drive at the top.

Fibrewire, Not everyone here acts that way. Please don't let the haters stop your posts!

I've got a carbon monoxide detector in the house the goes off whenever I operate on 40m. What frequency is FREDDIE operating at? Different from the CPU clock?

My other hobby is amateur radio, and unfortunately the wife limits my hobbies to a single room in the house, so my vintage computer stuff and my ham radio gear all have to share the same room. I can definitely hear increased RF noise from any of my machines that have had the shield removed. The good news is there's only one of me, so I'm never playing Atari and playing radio at the same time