Ely

I remember getting DOS 3 with my 1050 in 1986 and my long time Atari owning friend telling me not to touch it and stick with 2.5. I eventually wiped over the disk so I could use it for something else. Being a 16 year old with little money a "free" 5 1/4 disc was more than enough justification.

I've got a Rob C. Menu disk with the Rob C. Menu maker on it I think, and the ones that add music to them. If you want that let me know.

Finally decided to take the plunge and buy one of these. Hope the install goes okay when it arrives. This thread should help though I think .

Those Donkey Kong colours shown in that Altirra screenshot look like my PAL colours on real hardware, and how I remember them from back on the day.

What about the "USB Blaster" are they a common item? I must admit, regardless of how great the picture quality is, if there's an update to make the colours correct I want it.

Now I've got my Sophia board working I've been looking into buying an Ultimate 1MB, but I'm put off a bit by the lack of install documentation. The last thing I want to do is buy something and either not get it working or breaking my 800XL. What do you get when you buy the board?

I looked at quite a few games last night and didn't really notice any issues. The only issue I did see was the text colour if I just boot to BASIC and get lime green text, as other people have already noted.

I'm using a Sony 24EX320 TV which I bought in 2011. It's a native 1080p which I use mostly for my XBOX ONE.

Finally made a proper cable. Damn the video quality is amazing!! Not too fussed about this talk of the colours being correct at this stage really. I've only got a Miner 2049er Cart to compare as the board is out of the case and I've no keyboard or SIO connected. The difference between the composite video and Sophia is striking to say the least. Sophia; Composite Video Out from standard port;

Yeah sorry, i mistyped. It was a capacitor not a resistor that was the problem.

So, for anyone who's interested, this issue is now resolved. Turns out the C20 resistor had gone "open-circuit", thus breaking the signal path between the 2 amplifier parts of the LM358. My Dad found this, he's much better at electronics than I am, and retired to has the time to investigate Thanks for all the suggestions though.

I can confirm that the replacement POKEY I order made zero difference to the low volume or the keyboard issues. Which is a shame

Hmm, I guess it could just be the POKEY with a problem. When I got the machine the volume issue was present, but the keyboard issue wasn't until I took the machine apart, ever since then plugging the keyboard in I get the problem (BTW how rubbish is the connector for the keyboard!!). EDIT: Just ordered a new POKEY for £11.50 off of eBay so let's see what happens when I replace mine with that one.

A bit more information on this. This Atari 800XLs keyboard is currently not working. When plugged in it just sends full stops continuously, so clearly a membrane issue which I need to look into. What's interesting though is that the volume of the keypress sound is at the correct volume, could this help diagnose this problem at all?

Thanks. It's bit tricky to do that without either a logic probe or oscilloscope. My Dad has one of the latter so I might take a trip over to see him for some help.

Thanks for the reply. Sorry, but what do you mean by "check for pulses qt pin 15"?

Ah, if the RCA is the LM 358 (8 pins) I've already swapped that chip.

Thanks for the reply Paul, I'll take a look at my board later today.

Thanks for the info, I am thinking maybe I've not soldered the new chip in that well. No socket on this machine though, all the memory, cpu and custom chips are but not the 358.

Hey there, I recently picked up a really nice looking PAL 800XL on Ebay in the UK. This thing looks mint but it was sold with an issue with the audio volume being low. I did some research before buying (on here) and it looked like the likely candidate could be a dodgy LM358N audio amp chip. So I took the risk and bought the machine and ordered some new LM358N chips I then took the old one out and replaced with a brand new one. And the result, the audio volume is no better, well maybe it's a little better. It's also slightly louder through the RF modulator and the video port but nothing drastic. I've reseated the POKEY just in case that made a difference, but it didn't. So has anyone got any ideas what else I could look at to the problem? Thanks in advance for any help. Ely

Fair enough, thanks for looking. I didn't make this cable, it was one I bought ages ago for other purposes (for which is works fine), so I thought I'd give it a go. I think I'll make one up from scratch in that case.

Here's the details about the cable I'm using. This is a pre-made this cable and is really is meant for taking an RGB SCART input into a Philips CM8833-II (or a 1084s) so it's got a 9-Pin (for video) & 2 phonos (for audio) at one end and a Female SCART socket at the other. Here's the pinout; 9-Way SCART 0---Black 21---Black 1---Brown 17---Brown (also 13, 9, & 5) 3---Red 15---Red 4---Green 11---Green 5---Blue 7---Blue 8---Yellow 20---Yellow Pictures of the actual wiring;

Thanks for the info, I'll give that a try when I get a chance, and I'll try and take some photos of the cable also.

Has anyone else received one and got it working?

Okay re: Jumpers, that's what I had them as. I don't have a mutlimeter, well I do but it's packed up in a box somewhere. The TV SCART (Sony KDL-24EX320) is definitely able to handle RGB (it's in the manual and I've used it with a Gamecube with RGB and an Amiga with RGB). My guess is the cable I'm using isn't quite right. I'll take another look when I get a chance, I'm in the middle of fitting a new audio amplifier chip in the machine and sorting out it's iffy keyboard.