Level42

Yup, want one too ! Uh oops.....I want a XL version, sorry

One more little note: I could have used the former Composite output as the luminance output (so connecting that to pin 1) however, I measured R124 on my machine and it was 17 Ohms or so for some reason, not 75. Same was true for R137.....no idea why this was. Anyway, you could replace R124 with a 75 Ohm set like above and re-route the output of L12 but that would be at least as much work as what I suggested above. You can also remove R124 and L12 if you want of course, they have no function anymore but I left them in.

All in all nothing really new in this information here, but I had to look long and hard and combine some info to be able to make a S-video (chroma/luma) output on my PAL Atari 600XL. NOTE 1 => THIS MOD WILL REMOVE THE COMPOSITE VIDEO OUTPUT !!!!! I see very little use in keeping it when you want to do the hassle of making an S-video output and I didn't want to make a switch like is suggested in the article. NOTE 2 => I HAD ALREADY REMOVED THE RF-MODULATOR FROM THIS MACHINE. SOOOOOO, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP EITHER COMPOSITE VIDEO OR RF-OUT, DO NOT PERFORM THIS MOD !!!! Unlike the NTSC version, the PAL 600XL has a composite video output, but it still lacks S-video. I wanted to use S-video since it is a lot better than composite, although I must say since I removed one capacitor from the video circuit, the composite picture was the best I had ever seen on any 8 bit machine. I based this mod on the info I found in the old Super Video mod article here: http://atarionline.pl/biblioteka/materialy_ksiazkowe/SuperVideo%2021XL%20oraz%20errata.pdf (this contains quite a few errors on part numbers by the way...so beware...) Also used info that I found in the schematics by Jerzy Sobola. Preparation: - get 4 150 Ohms resistors - Take 2 of them and twist both legs together, do the same with the other 2 resistors. - Cut one of the legs on each side so you will not have two leads on the ends. - Solder the twisted parts. - Pull some isolation over both sets (shrink tube is ideal) so that there is only still a small part of the leads sticking out on each side. - put a little bit of solder on all ends of those resistor sets Now the real work: 1 - Cut the PCB trace (on the solder side) between pin 2 and 5 of the video connector. Pin 5 is tied to Gnd by this pin and we don't want that. Use a multi meter in Ohms setting or "diode check" setting to confirm the trace is fully cut !!! 2 - Remove R137 3 - Remove C112 4 - Remove C109 and throw it away. This simple mod will dramatically improve picture quality. Following steps on the solder side of the board: 5- Take one of the resistor sets and solder one end to the emitter of Q6 6 - solder the other end of that resistor set to Pin 1 of the video connector 7- take the other resistor set and solder one end to the emitter of Q9 (if you want you can use the soldering hole of C112 that you just removed, just be sure to take the correct one 8 - solder the other end of that resistor set to Pin 5 of the video connector 9- once again measure between pin 5 and 2 to make sure there is no full short between them (50 Ohms is OK). I've tried a couple of the other suggestions in the article, but none did anything to the picture as far as my eyes could see, so I left them out to keep things simple. Done. Connect chroma and luminance to your monitor and power up. You should have a very nice picture now.

.....

OK so it should be possible to make one with EPROMS I guess. Nice to diagnose some other defective XE's I have. Here's a picture of the modded 2164 I used:

Now I only have to fix the keyboard....Mylar problem. Could buy one from Best but pretty expensive at 40 bucks ex shipping and import duties....if only there were still separate mylars....

Memory problem fixed ! that was a piece of cake I had some Sharp LH2164-15s around which are 4164 compatible. Snipped off pin 1 (just to be sure), flipped over pin 8 and soldered it to pin 9. Put it in the RAM module and put that one in the first slot and removed the other two and yes, 800 boots just fine. Inserted the other RAM modules and ran Jumpman again, flawlessly :) This is so easy to do, even if you'd switch all 8 RAMs on a module it's probably still less work than modding the module itself.

Awesome, I guess they have to run from cartridge and can't be loaded from floppy ? Any special hardware in them ?

Well I'll just keep answering myself Modding a 4164 to replace a 4116 is even easier than I thought: http://picmania.garcia-cuervo.net/recursos/redpicdatasheets/memorias_ram/4116_to_4164.htm

Never mind the software.....I found out the RAM problem the old-fashioned way and with a bit of luck. I booted up Jumpman from my 1050 on the 800....a bit accidently as it was still in the drive from playing it on my 130XE. Once I got to the intro screen, it said the game needed 32K to run (NICE !!! Didn't know it would do this, I did see that it reported to remove all cartridges if you forget to hold Option at boot on XL/XE). My 800 PAL is fully equipped with 3 16K banks, so it should be 48K. It was actually GREAT that it needs exactly 32K. I concluded that the 2nd or 3rd module would be defective, likely the 2nd because it apparently had booted up with 16K. So I switched the first and second module and sure enough the machine would boot to a brown screen. Next I removed the defective module and moved the 3rd one to the first position, so I would have 32k of good memory. That worked, the game booted just fine, so 32K OK ! Next up was to find out what was wrong with the module. Most likely one of the 9016's had died. I learned that 9016's are the same as 4116's an from my arcade games I know these are troublesome because of the three voltages required. So I swapped 9016s between one of the good modules and the bad one and naturally, it was the very last one of the 8 which was defective. Now, I don't have a 4116 at hand but I do have 4164's. I know I can use these by modding some pins on a single chip, but did anyone ever mod an entire module to switch all the RAMs to 4164's ? Also, which pins do I swap/cut off for a single RAM mod ?

Hi, I've got an 800 PAL version which has some issues. First of all the keyboard but I found plenty of info about that. Next I suspect the machine to have some other issues, maybe RAM/ROM related. Of course the XL series have at least the built-in ROM/RAM test software but is there anything like that available for the 800 ? I found this type-in listing and copy/pasted it to Atari800MacX but it just seems to crash (continuous black screen) when I run it: http://www.atariarchives.org/c2ba/page015.php Thanks, André

I bought a Happy from Steve about 2 years ago and installed it right away (a breeze). It has been working fine but I never used it intensily. The floppy that came with it didn't work but Ive downloaded it now and ran all tests etc. and it's 100% OK. I bought this sort of out of frustration from my youth because it took years before I could afford a 1050 but I never had the extra cash for a Happy. Now.....I know it speeds up the loading and writing in general. However, I have some "menu" discs which seem to work in an even higher speed when loading (ís that "warp speed"). I have had these floppies since the mid 80s. They are not Multiboot and not Ndos menu's though, they have a blue screen and there is a white outlined box around the listed games. I wonder which tool made these "warp speed" floppies. Also, are there any other tools to convert Multiboot or Ndos floppies to this "warp speed" ? I know it is probably silly to do this now while there are so much other ways of loading stuff but I just like to try it for the fun of it, I really like using a real 1050 drive still. Also, I have some copied discs that have protection, Recue on Fractalus and Ballblazer, I know the Happy can copy these, but what tool is best for this ? I know there are file-versions of the cartridge versions of these games but I love the intro screen of both games. And also, what are the latest versions of Ndos and Multiboot ?

I dont give a shit about sales numbers. I give about quality of the machine. The Atari was the best.

Sorry for not reading all the 20 pages here but.....is/was there a dedicated cartridge released and if so where do I get it ? No way to put this on an ATR file and use it through SIO2PC ? Or do I really need to get a Maxflash cart to run it ?

Steve do you have an updated link, this one doesn't work (anymore). The floppy I got with the Happy doesn't work, would like to create one myself. Thanks !

There's the word I forgot about, thanks ! I think I mostly remember it being about 3.5" floppies when I was in my ST days but stil...makes sense. @JK40001: thanks for that link ! "Made in Bulgaria in 1989".... wow I also found some offers on ebay Germany. This actually makes you think what has happened with all the production machines of floppies...and would anyone still be able to do some runs in the future

Mmmm, with the current nice Euro-Dollar rate it's actually still not that bad, would be about 43 Euro so less than a Euro per floppy. Need to order covers separately but they are cheap.

Jeez....just checked the s&h costs of shipping 50 floppies to Europe and it's a crazy 30 bucks.....nuts. Someone know European sources ?

I probably knew this BITD but forgot..... Will empty HD (1.2MB) 5.25" floppies work on 1050s ? If you look here http://www.floppydisk.com/5point25.htm they are actually cheaper and I guess because they are more modern they would be also be a bit more reliable to use now ? Is that a good place to buy floppies by the way or do you guys have better/cheaper sources, maybe something in Europe ? Yes I know we can use SD drives etc. etc. today, but IMHO running a real 1050 is part of the whole retro computing fun so I'd like to buy a good number of new floppies.

That will never match the look or quality of the original plus f.i. a top cover is HUGE to print in 3D and will be pretty expensive.....and the worst thing: you need a 3D file that matches EXACTLY the shape that you want to print, and the 800 is a nightmare for that because of it's "weird" curves.... I double boxed the 800XL PAL I shipped to the US and it arrived just fine. It was a lot of bubble-wrap, then in a relatively small box than put that box in a larger box with lots of "crumbled" newspaper pages, so that it will completely fill the box. I don't blame the plastic of the 800, I blame the bad packing habits of lots of sellers.

Yes that is very well known but that was about the arcade version. IMHO vector games are the hardest one's to convert. You can _never_ reach the fantastic visual effects of a real vector monitor on a raster screen. Think about it this way: if they had to use a vector monitor to get the game running smoothly on (much more powerful) arcade hardware, there is NO way that home hardware could ever run as smooth because it was raster. Even though the basics are the same (Battlezone uses 6502 and POKEY too) there is still some powerful dedicated hardware for doing the 3D calculations on the arcade hardware that the A8 can never match. After all you can't use the Antic or the GTIA...but well....there's no vector monitor output anyway This _would_ be a very cool thing to try, to build an interface that would enable (f.i.) an A8 to output vector graphics.....you could use a vectrex as monitor (or a scope or best, an arcade vector monitor)....but I guess that will remain just one of my wild dreams, just like someone writing some awesome new games that will run on original vector arcade hardware...imagine what you could do with the horsepower of a Star Wars PCB set....4 Pokeys, 1 speech synth, couple of 6809's....some of the guys who wrote the later demo's/games on the A8 would be able to make that hardware do stuff we could never imagine, but it's probably never going to happen.... The only thing I know to exist are a breakout vector version on Tempest hardware I believe and maybe a vector Pac Man ? But both of these games are rather pointless to do in vectors... Anyway, we're drifting off Does anybody know how the words were stored in Berzerk A8 ? Are they proper samples like we used today, I can't imagine that because that would require a lot of ROM/RAM. In some way, they must have done in software what was done in hardware on the speech synths.

No problem at all, I fully understand, I try to keep spares for my arcade games as much as possible too A 1450 XL..........wow.....just wow........I have only seen pictures of those, I guess none ever arrived in Europe...

Lol, small world to meet here. Telekoder was the shop where I first saw the Colecovison and was blasted away by DKs graphics. I hated the controllers though and we did not have the 2600 that long so I put it out of mind....luckily....because when I played the 600 XL DK at the Femina in Ahoy' ( of all places!) I was sold and HAD to have that machine I bought Antic mostly and I think usually at Donner or maybe even local magazine stores. If you'd ask they could order any magazine. I only bought a couple and never got a subscription, both were too expensive for a young school boy I bought almost nothing from Telekoder actually, not sure why....I bought my 600XL and 1010 at Radio Correct. Later I got a 1064 from V&D (after it went on sale). I really don't remember where I got my 1050 from, but it was much later for sure, I remember many Atari meetings with me feeling totally left out without one When Telekoder started dumping the 8 bit stuff I bought a 130XE but I think I already had the 1040ST then,,which I bought at Zero in Ridderkerk (the place where I love now). I don't know how, but Zero sold these 1040STFM's for around 1000 guilders, which was WAY cheaper than anywhere else. I think they were gray UK import machines. Dunnet grew to a very big store but they are gone now AFAIK. Edit: I also remember I bought a 850 interface when they dumped the price to 150 guilder at Telekoder.

Yeah remember Crazy Hans but I was very rarely there, didn't like the whole atmosphere....I never was there around the time they sold all those XLs. In fact when I was there there was hardly anything Atari related... So, you guys must remember Telekoder too then About that burnt out company, was that Dunnet ?

Those market shares look 100% US focussed. Situations were very different in Europe in the 80s.