Particle Man

As a kid I never thought My Atari 600XL / 800XL music test was a song. I thought it was just 6 notes they chose. But, now I heard this same repeating sequence of notes in a classical piano piece. Sounds asian. Does anyone know what piece was used?? Nevermind, I guess I found it - pictures at an exhibition by Mussorgsky. I heard a very subdued piano cover of it. I can't find that cover, but oh well.

I'm probably not going to invest $130+ in the ability to rip these disks. I'm willing to send them to someone with the hardware, if I can be sure of the safety of doing so?

Hope it's ok if I post 3 images, I couldn't figure out how to get them inside the spoiler tag. I posted the M.U.L.E. image twice because it shows both sides of the demonstration card, giving instructions for the seller. Unfortunately for the value of the thing, its disk housing was preventing the actual disk from spinning, so at some point I ripped open the disk housing and transferred the actual disk to another housing. Oh well? I actually bought it on ebay probably in the early 2000's so it's not an artifact from my childhood. I'd prefer not to mail out disks and risk them getting x-rayed and destroyed or lost in the mail, hopefully I can afford to buy one of those devices. Is anyone in the Pittsburgh area by chance? I wouldn't mind if they would be ripped locally and returned.

Hello -- very inactive user here. I saw someone post on youtube asking for the Electronic Arts version of Ali Baba (and presumably its flip side Return of Heracles) to be ripped? It was an old post, so I don't know if this is still needed. I have an SIO2PC cable, I can try to rip my disks if any are needed? Can someone clue me in if there's a list of what software is still desired / needed to be imaged? I'll give a quick list of the genuine disks I own: Ali Baba & The 40 Thieves / Return of Heracles flippy (ECA) Archon (ECA) Astro-Grover (Hi Tech Expressions) Ballblazer (EPYX) Atari / C64 flippy Bill Budge Pinball Construction Set (ECA) Bruce Lee (Datasoft Cat. No. 1220) Fantastic Four (Green Valley Publishing / ShareData) Flight Simulator II (subLOGIC) Flight Simulator II Scenery Disk (subLOGIC) Jeepers Creepers (Quality Software) M.U.L.E. Demo Copy (ECA) Masters Of Time "CAD-331" Mercenary (Datasoft Cat. No. 1525) Atari / C64 flippy Mercenary The Second City (Datasoft Cat. No. 1526) Montezuma's Revenge (BCI Software #9590) C64 / Atari flippy Silicon Dreams (Firebird) Speed King (Mastertronic) Atari / C64 same-side Summer Games (EPYX) Superman (Main Street Publishing) Atari / C64 flippy Temple of Apshai Trilogy (EPYX) Trailblazer (Mindscape) Atari / C64 flippy Ultima 4 (Origin) If any are rare and/or need rips let me know?

I have a Pac-man cabinet which was gutted, I restored it for use with a MAME PC. The monitor was replaced with a Happ monitor. It also has the original controls, coin door and speaker wired up to the adapters required for the MAME PC connections. However, I've sold the cabinet and the buyer wants to run it for profit. I've explained he will need to switch over to running a licensed PCB. However I need to know what else he would need to run the PCB. I gather he needs a compatible wiring harness & transformer / power supply for it? Can anyone give me an exact rundown of what I'd need there? Or since it doesn't have the wiring harness, is there a better option he could go with if he wants to run it for profit? Jamma? Ideally I'd want to hook him up with a good licensed multi-game PCB which wouldn't cost him a ridiculous amount. I'm seeing wiring harnesses costing $75 and PCBs $300, but entire working cabinets cost that, so it makes me wonder what the best options are. Advice appreciated, thanks!

Powered on my 800XL, and in the middle of typing the keyboard just went dead, and stopped responding entirely. Fixable? Likely culprits? I also have two 1050 drives which are both inoperable. Hoping to fix at least one of them, to try to rescue my old programs before it's too late. They do the ".............. boop "Boot Error" .................... boop "Boot Error"" thing. I believe. (Haven't tried them in a while.) Suggestions?

I think you are looking through the gigabyte lens of wasteful modern computing. Uppercase, lowercase & numbers = 62 different characters, say 64 characters or 6 bits. 6*4 = 24 bits = 3 bytes to store 4 characters. 64KB = 87381 characters. Say 60 characters per average question+answer, that's up to 1456 questions and answers. Seems like a "decent number" to me, for Atari 2600. Note that algorithms could be used to greatly increase that, given similar types of questions.

The buried ET carts legend is true IMO. As for the original poster, his initials are "B.S.". Sorry I didn't bother reading all 43 pages to see if this has been pointed out already.

I have 3 800XL's and 1 130XE. Two of the 800XL's work perfectly, one doesn't work. My single 130XE has been flaky since day one (bought it used about 14 years ago.) It seems to work, but then crashes randomly, so I suspect some of the RAM may be faulty. I hear this is not uncommon. Aesthetically I really like both systems. Different flavors I would say. I have no complaints about the 130XE keyboard, it's just a bit of a different feel to it. The cart port position of 130XE is annoying, but not really a huge deal. Very few games were designed specifically for 130XE, in other words, almost everything runs on both. If you're using it for gaming, definitely get the 800XL. However, if you want to develop stuff that really maxes out RAM, AND you are unwilling to install a memory upgrade, then you may consider the 130XE. Or get both, since having just one of these old systems can be pretty sad in the inevitable event of its breakdown. And one last thing -- I read that the 320K memory upgrade is most easily installed on the 600XL. If you are set on doing that, it might be the system for you.

OK. This is the OP, I've tried some of the tests. First I ran M. Pascher's ANALYZE.COM. It gave "Fehler" (fault or failure I imagine) during the following tests: 1. Address Test B1 ADR1 B2 ADR2 00 4000 00 5000 2. Refresh Test BK ADR 00 5000 3. Walking BK ADR 00 5000 4. Random Test BK ADR 00 4000 5. (other random test) BK ADR 00 4000 Next I tried "Extended RAMtest". It said the following: Bank 11100011 $E3 OK Bank 11100111 $E7 Err Bank 11101011 $EB OK Bank 11101111 $EF Err The thing is, I don't know how to interpret these. The 'errors' returned are very quick and reliable, not intermittent at all. Are these genuine errors or just nonexistent RAM it's trying to check? Again it's a 130XE with (I assume) 128K of RAM. If anyone can interpret this I'd appreciate it, thanks. ** I also just tried "Super Salt". No detected problems. And since the onboard memtest ram for 40 minutes with no red blocks apparent, I'm not sure what to think.

I got a 130XE used some years back. Never used it that much, just fooled around with it a bit. I noticed at first that some games seemed to mess up, and I attributed it to it being a 130XE, thinking maybe some 800/800XL games would just crash due to some incompatibility. Now as I've used it more, I am starting to think it is just faulty. However, I don't know what component it could be, or how to test it. Usually a game will load fine but within some number of minutes (10 minutes? it's very unpredictable) the game will freeze, with a frozen sound (whatever sound is being played at the time) and sometimes with colored lines on the screen. I tried switching to another power adapter and it SEEMED to improve it, but the crashes were still present, and I don't know if it really even improved it or if it was just coincidence. I'm running a memory test on it now, it seems to pass fine. I even left it running for 40 minutes, no apparent problems (though I didn't watch the whole time, so I'm not sure if it erases the red blocks once it cycles?) Anyway, any suggestions on how I can test my system to see one way or the other whether it's hardware or software?