OLD CS1

Hey, Brain, since you wrote the partition code for the SD2IEC, can you tell me how to CREATE a partition? I looked through the docs and do not see a way to create them, only how to use them.

I have a couple of brown ones in my closet which I believe are working. I will test this weekend. Is it just me, or these pictures people are posting lately of their "retro," "classic" systems seem to show an almost reverence?

I never realized how nice that 130XE looks sitting next to a beige 99/4A. I have one of those 130XE's, myself, just have not been able to put it together, yet. Good luck on your hunt. I know you can get an Indivision ECS from AmigaKit... admittedly, it has been a while since I looked.

The JU-253 floppy drive in my 1581 failed. It has a hard time starting the spindle motor even though it spins freely. It appears a small cap on the drive board as leaked, which is apparently a common failure for a similar model. The problem is I cannot get the bloody thing apart. It appears the retaining spikes inside the floppy guide and holding mechanism are pressure fit into the chassis. This drive is used in both Amiga computers and Commodore 1581 disk drive, so I am posting here rather than crossing in both the Commodore and Amiga subs. Does anyone know how to get this thing apart? It has been a very reliable (long-lived, anyway, until, well, you know, it failed) and QUIET drive and I would like to bring it back to life.

The systems were working when pulled... about 20 years ago. These have been kept in storage on an anti-static foam pad since then. 1) 8x 256k 30-pin SIPP RAM (2MB total) $10 + USPS Priority Small Flat Rate (around $7-$ 2) 32x piggy back RAM: 17 TI ZA1250NL, 15 MOSTEK MK4128N-15 (128kx1 chips, all together should be 256k 16-bit memory) $10 + USPS Priority Small Flat Rate (around $7-$ These parts are 20-some years old. They worked when stored. We are both taking a gamble, so my offer is I will send them to you. Once you receive them you have two weeks to test them. If they do not work within that time period you pay nothing. If they do work or you do not test them out within two weeks you pay me. If that sounds fair and you need these parts let me know.

Likely the modulator has not started broadcasting or the TV had not locked onto the signal before the Master TItle Screen beep. Nicely, the ads would not load thanks to AdBlockPLus, but the windows and tabs opened. Nice thing about AtariAge is you can upload a variety of file types.

Nothing unusual there. The 9919 tone generators power up in unpredictable states. One of the first things the operating system does is set the generators to a defined state which turns all of the tone generators off (full attenuation.) Sometimes you will hear a buzz before the first "happy beep," sometimes a low boop, other times a cacophony of tones. BTW, that sharing site is (expletive) awful. Damned thing tried to pop up three windows and some other crap. Not sure if there are any better out there.

89 block program from the point of LOADING to READY: approximately four seconds and roughly 5600 bytes per second.

Word.

I love my 1200 cases... except I cannot figure out how to open up the USB port holes on the side.

Egads! I thought I had seen one of these before but could never find one, so I assumed it was a phantom of a fevered imagination. I must have one!

Straight file copies from 1581 to SD2IEC run about 1200B/s. Writing a full D81 to disk took about the same time as reading, roughly 17 minutes running around 840B/s. I guess it could be something with my setup but I cannot see it out-right: JiffyDOS 64, SD2IEC, and a JiffyDOS 1581.

Holy Shazbot... I fell that far in the rankings? Gotta get my game on, I guess. BTW, I could make available one of a few TI items I have here for the winner this month; maybe help spur a comeback of the whole prize thing.

A few missing frames: between the second and third should show a greying man spending his money for comfort and enjoying his children, traveling, mistresses, or whatever makes him happy. Then, the fifth frame should show his skeleton being picked over (a jeweler's monocle and a pair of tweezers seem to fit the vision) by a fat government bureaucrat holding most of the remaining money and handing a few bills off to his surviving family.

D81s are 800k, roughly 4.5 times the capacity of a D64. Oh, yeah, WRITING a D64 image takes a relatively short amount of time with the XU1541. I have never created a D64 or D81 image before so I have no measurements against which to judge. My guess is CBM Commander is not using Kernal vectors to do its reads from the disk and thereby bypassing JiffyDOS. No idea without looking at it more deeply. I have some opportunity to play around to see what needs or can be done to speed up the process a little.

Okay, this program is really frustrating at first. The help file is missing some useful information, or at least not concise and not clear, but the "Cheat Sheet" PDF answered a LOT of questions. On a JiffyDOS C64, making a D81 image from a JiffyDOS 1581 to SD2IEC takes about 16 minutes. Which is still three to four times faster than the XU1541. The process is running 845B/s and I suspect would be much faster using the 128 version -- got my 128D sitting up on the rack just waiting to be brought back to life! I guess I should get my SuperFloppy running at some point to make my life easier.

I was browsing through some D64s in my downloads directory and found cbmcmd23.d64. I just popped back in to note that I had found it and was about to try it. Reading the help file indicates it can "manage disk images" so, yes, I think it should work. Thank you!

To make matter worse, I just uncovered where I had stashed my original C64C and C128. The 64C is in fantastic condition. The 128 not so much, but it also did not come to me in the best shape to start but I also heavily modified it and it has also yellowed badly. I am actually pretty proud now to have located all of my originals: TI-99/4A, Commodore 64 bread-bin (though it has been parted out after failing,) Commodore 64C, Commodore 128, and Amiga 500 (just the case and keyboard, since the motherboard has been replaced numerous times.) Pretty cool, really -- something I can display and show off or maybe hand down.

Using CBMXfer is ridiculously slow to create D81 images. I will try using imgcopy.exe directly to see if I can coax a faster transfer. It seems to me that using my 64/128 natively with the SD2IEC would go much more quickly but I have been unable to locate a program to do so. I am still looking tonight but about to head to bed. I would greatly appreciate if someone can point me in the right direction. (I swear I downloaded a program, maybe from Q-Link, and have it on a disk somewhere...)

Well, being as I am primarily the one who moved topics between forums during the last split, dare I ask who will step up to the task this next time? Just kidding. I have said my piece on the subject at hand and rest my case. Objectively, I see compelling arguments on both sides. I see where if we start mimicking a structure like our parent forums (look at AtariAge from the root) we may see both a splitting and a growth to the community. AtariAge is a lot like Atlanta in that you can spend half your life there and never see more than a few areas of the city. While I am not personally compelled to change the status quo, I see nothing fatal in changing the structure so long as we all meet every year to celebrate the diverse ties that bind us, be it in Chicago or places beyond (IRL *gasp*.) I have some ideas built from the various mentions in this thread which I shall share with everyone this weekend. While I am not approaching this from a truly neutral perspective I still possess a romantic notion of a little "TexasAge" within AtariAge could prove to be a surprising success. Maybe we cannot rise up and take over the world like Amiga will soon, but perhaps we can be a larger part of it.

I am definitely in for that... would like to put my souped-up 500 in a clear case. Mind you, I am still waiting for all my KS key-caps.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Manhattan Island Maximum-Security Federal Penitentiary.

Agree with @mizapf on the polling. As well in any case, all this talk is completely academic unless someone approaches the Powers That Be with a compelling supporting argument for the motion. I do not see this as a community-driven question in the first place. It comes down to a handful of people who want their own sub-forum for x purpose and another handful who will visit said sub if created. The sub has to become a life of its own. The real question I see is whether the proposed sub should be a sub-forum of the TI-99/4A section(s) or its own stand-alone.

Yup, and I wish they would stay away. There is a new snag on the good ol' POTS lines. As infrastructure is converted from copper to fiber trunking and facilities are extended outward, service reliability is fine but longevity lacks during extraordinary circumstances. For instance, at the entrance to my neighborhood is a powered shelf which provides me with phone, ADSL, and VDSL circuits. The two data lines are through two different providers, which is good for logical redundancy like routing issues, upstream outages, etc., but the shelf battery power only lasts about six or seven hours. During the last hurricane we were without power for almost three days and we lost something like 80% of our cellular infrastructure. No mobile phones are data, no land-line phones or Internet.

I will do that, thank you. But I just reassembled my drive and set it aside. I am expecting to receive a replacement power jack so I will dump them when I put it back apart to fix that -- should be early next week if not this weekend (depends on how fast Mouser ships.)