Gradualore

My second atari 400, as I've mentioned in another thread, appears to be dead. Now that I have the rca-to-coaxial adapter I've tried it on a TV. sometimes it will power on, sometimes it won't. Every so often it seems to be creating some sort of a signal to the TV as it makes some brownish fuzzy colors but that is about it. Is it worth it to attempt to troubleshoot this or would it make more sense to send this one to someone who knows how to repair it, perhaps in exchange for parts for my WORKING atari 400? (controllers, belts, etc.)

First I attempted doing a "CLOAD" from BASIC, but I eventually realized DURR space invaders is pure machine code, not a BASIC program, so then I read up on how to boot from cassette. It made fart noises for a couple of minutes and then loaded the on board memo pad program. It does NOT sound like how I remember. I remember a very loud, perhaps also somewhat fart like, but it was like BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEP that I remember. This time it was more like ppttbtlttpltptltpbltptpp tplt tbtbt tplltl t tplt very random, lower pitched, and farty. Alright, well I suppose the next thing I will do is order a belt and see if it helps. One problem I had with the rubber band was that it didn't want to go on in an orderly orientation, it was a bit twisted.

Okay, I opened up my 410 cassette deck and the common problem you mentioned, a really loose belt, was the problem. I took it out and put in a rubber band just for the heck of it. It has a little trouble driving the spindles but it appears to at least partially work. Then I attempted to boot Space Invaders from cassette. Instead of the clear, loud tones that I remember from being a kid, it sounded more like a minute's worth of computerized flatulence. Would that mean the data on the tape has gone bad, or is the rubber band perhaps driving the spindles less than smoothly? (in which case I would go ahead and buy one of the belts mentioned above?)

Cool, thanks for the tips! I believe I have some tapes with old saved games and even custom adventures from Adventure Creator, made by one of my older sisters. It'd be really awesome/nostalgic if it turned out those could load =D. I'll post again in this thread (eventually) if I make progress on this.

So now that my Atari 400 is alive and well, I'm hoping to gradually refurbish various components. I think the most difficult or "iffy" of these will probably be the cassette deck. I tried to turn it on and rewind and play won't even turn the spindles (there is, however, a hum coming from inside the machine, so I know it must be getting power)...I assume I should be able to rewind a tape without the deck interfacing with the Atari? I saw in another thread that there may be a bad belt somewhere in the deck. Should I just carefully disassemble the deck and inspect the parts, or can anyone provide some tips? I'm worried that attempting to get the cassette deck operational may be a waste of time. I have several games and other programs on cassette, and these were in the attic along with the atari for over 20 years. How likely is it that these cassettes will still have good data on them? I know audio can go bad in that time, but presumably the Atari reads digital data based on peaks and valleys in an analog signal, how likely is it that these will decay to being unreadable? Any advice would be appreciated!

Good news: My Atari 400 still works. I got my RCA-to-coaxial adapter in the mail today. It looks like my controllers could use some refurbishing, is that fairly easy to do on one's own? Only one of the four or five controllers I had could do all 4 directions and the fire button, the others were missing a direction, could not fire or randomly generated fire button presses. I seem to recall about 20 years ago that the paddles we had were flaky even back then, I haven't tested those yet. I'm primarily focused on NES related hobby stuff right now (making a game), but after that's done I think I may dive into the Atari more...what fun =D

Born in 1970 here... BTW, you can start developing right away! There are several Atari emulators and 6502 assemblers for the PC and Mac so you can go from start to finish without a real machine if you want. Cool, you're the same age as my sister Amy =D I'm pretty sure my 400 works, it does both the keyboard beep and the boot from cassette beep that I think you or another regular told me about in another thread. I'm waiting on my RCA-to-coaxial in the mail. There's something really rewarding about running software on a real machine, once I got a PowerPAK for my NES I never looked back. Even if my 400 for whatever reason can't get a signal to a tv I'm hoping it can be restored somehow with information/help from people here.

I just got here so my virgin eyes haven't seen any of the flame wars you've mentioned. As far as I'm concerned, everyone here is awesome for being into ridiculously old computers. I wonder if I'm on the young side. I was born in 1983, but the first computer I ever played with was an Atari 400 that my dad and sister katy mostly used. So, I have very fond memories of it. I really hope I can restore my Atari 400, seems like it would be a lot of fun to play around with (programming wise). I'm having a lot of fun coding for the NES so I'm betting it'll feel similar.

Forgive my extreme newbieness. When I was a kid I think all I knew how to do with my 400 was play Asteroids, Missile Command and Stair Raiders, and program a tiny bit of BASIC. Assuming my Atari 400 works, what are some common ways of getting code (written in asm most likely) onto the system? Is there anything like the harmony cart available for the Atari 400? Also, I noticed Altirra does not have a mode for the 400---or is it an equivalent computer to the 800 just with less ram?

I found this: http://www.classic-games.com/atari2600/vcssound.html Answers my own question. Probably should have googled first =D. Though, I didn't find any other topics on this particular forum about the subject. Anyone care to share how they work around this limitation?

I haven't yet written any code for the Atari 2600, so I'm below newbie so far. What I'm wondering just from playing several games in Stella is, how come a lot of soundtracks for these games sound out of tune? From reading the stella programmer's guide, it sounds like the frequency registers are 5 bit, does this really mean there are only 32 pitches that each sound channel can produce? Do these pitches just barely align on musical intervals, is that the problem? Then again that "Saigon" demo posted recently certainly didn't sound out of tune, but it sounds like it might be using some advanced techniques to give the illusion of there being more than 2 (??? correct?) sound channels at once, I'd imagine that technique could be used to alter the perceived pitch, too.

Bryan, thanks for the tip. I immediately went to check both Ataris using the test you mentioned. The one that made the keyboard clicky sound also makes the boot from cassette sound (though, I don't know that it was quite 1 second long?). I remember what that sounds like now from using the cassette deck as a kid! The second Atari 400 (which I don't remember there being 2 from when I was a kid, it is kind of a mystery. My parents and elder sisters don't remember either!), does not make either sound, yet the red light glows. Also, the keyboard on the second one has a sort of "sunken in" texture and makes sticky sounds when you press a key. I wonder if the second one was in a hostile environment and got extremely dried out? One of them was in an attic for more than 20 years, I'm not sure where the other one had been all that time. The one that worked had been in the attic, in a sturdy plastic bin, the one that does not work (or at least, makes no sound---I won't know if it works at all til I get that connector) was in its original cardboard box.

Alright, this evening I got out both 400's (I don't have an RF connector yet). Both power on and the red light glows. However, only one of them makes that little computerized "beep" sound for every keystroke you enter. Is that cause for concern if one of them doesn't make that sound? I remember hearing it when I was a kid, so that's gotta be a good sign if one of them does it. As for the signal---I had written these systems off as not working some months ago, because I tried to use the switch box that was in the box with the Atari (I probably did something completely hair brained like plug the atari's tv connector into the yellow auxilliary video port or something...ask my wife, I can be pretty retarded sometimes). However, looking at the box now with my wiser eyes I see the only thing that goes out to the tv itself is those prongs---which modern Tv's don't have. I've ordered one of those rf connectors....here's hoping at least one of these works!!

I have two old Atari 400's from my childhood. The last time I tried to hook them up, I remember them turning on (little red diode) but I couldn't figure out how to hook up the old rf switch box to a modern TV. My guess is that these are not designed for modern TVs. I found this on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0028MXOF6?ie=UTF8&tag=atariage&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0028MXOF6 If my Atari powers on, is it most likely that the system still works and I just need one of the above? In addition...does anybody do Atari 400 homebrew?

I'm coming from the NES homebrew scene, there the most popular assemblers seem to be CA65 and ASM6, and to some extent nesasm. Dasm is also used. I was curious if anyone here uses CA65 or ASM6. Are there any reasons why DASM is preferred other than there being the standard header files available for it?