kogden

My faves.... Past: Happy 1050 Now: IDEPlus (and a Happy 1050) Though to be fair, I like most of the available peripherals.... SIO2SD, Touch Tablet, the 1020 plotter, the Atari 850, AtariLab interface, I can't think of too many things that sucked. I'm tempted to get another 1020, I had a blast with mine as a kid. Same with the ill-fated AtariLab. I can't imagine 1020 pens being very obtainable now though.

The 8" drives are beastly.... only machines I ever really saw them on in person were DEC minis, some Convergent Tech machines and very old CP/M machines. Media is probably incredibly expensive as well now. Even 5.25" DSDD disks are pricey now. A modified Percom or an ATR8000 is probably the best bet. Even if you were able to wire it up to a 1050 controller, I would assume you would have to write some custom firmware as well to really utilize it. I'd rather have a 3.5" drive personally. I can get free media for that all day long. I can't spend $5-$10 per disk and $300 for a working 8" floppy drive. If I could, I'd build an S-100 crate and use it there instead.

I have a cased RAM320XL from the older run that I'm not using since I have some actual PBI devices now. Shipping charges would be brutal outside of the US though. If the new version has PBI pass-through that would be pretty sweet.

There were various mods for the 810 apparently from the Atari 8-bit FAQ: Third-party upgrades for the 810:810 Archiver -- copy many copy-protected programs810 Fast Chip by Binary 10%-40% faster810 Turbo (810T) by Neanderthal Computer Things (NCT) -- double-density, track buffering, speed comparable to Happy 810 Warp SpeedHappy 810 -- Happy Backup, Warp Speed 52Kbps, 18 sector buffer I don't think I'd butcher a working drive to stuff in an SIO2IDE or SIO2SD. I would scrounge up a dead one. Unfortunately I don't think any upgrades still get produced for the 810. 1050 upgrades are a dime a dozen though. A 1050 would be an easier project due to the standard 5.25" drive opening. I have a dead 1050 which the mech got killed in shipping. I'm considering scrapping the guts of and converting into an SDrive built on breadboard. 5.25" blank panels are easy to scrounge from PC cases and fit the opening in the 1050 chassis well. Could easily drill holes in the plate for the buttons and LED's. SIO2SD would be tougher to make look nice having to cut the square hole for LCD, etc. Only reason I haven't done it yet is I have too many other projects going on (homebrew RCA 1802 computer, etc) and EET classes to worry about. And kids. And already have an IDEPlus and SIO2SD (in an X-Acto'd cigarette pack enclosure). I'll get around to it one day. It's not a huge undertaking.

MyDOS also supports a ton of hardware, can be booted straight from disk instead of ROM, works like a standard Atari DOS, is actually *usable* with only 48K of RAM, and has source code available to the public.... Can SDX do THAT? Both have their place. Both support 8" floppies and other weird goodies. Corvus support also existed in a mutant version of Atari DOS from Corvus and is probably useful to 3 people out there that have Corvus HDD setups. There's probably a lot more people with PBI IDE/SCSI interfaces than Corvus ever dreamt of selling.

I had a cassette version of Zeppelin when I was a kid that had loading music. Was pretty neat. Can't remember the tune though.

My nearly complete collection of ANTIC magazines, a pile of carts, a 1020 plotter and Happy Drive when my 130XE died and I moved to a Mac Plus when I was about 13. I didn't get squat for it either. Gave it all to one of my dad's friends for a 20MB SCSI drive and 4MB of RAM for my Plus. My parents ditched their ST's for Mac IIci's around the same time. I also miss my original Lynx I gave to a friend a while later.

Just about anything on any Atari 8-bit can be repaired. Especially the 400/800 and the XL series. If the machine is the 1200XL I am seeing on ebay here, it sounds like it has keyboard problems. He says he can't get it into self-test mode which means the keyboard probably isn't working. I've run into similar issues with early 600/800XL keyboards. These machines are close to 35 years old. Expect some restoration effort with just about any of them. That's part of the fun really. You could always get the 1200XL and if it looks decent, send it to me and I'll send you a 600XL w/ a relatively rare external 320K RAM upgrade (RAM 320XL w/ case) which will let you run just about anything and would be ready to go out of the box with RF video. I'll even throw in a home-made USB SIO2PC interface for $20. I'd get a cool project and you would be able to hit the ground running with a more compatible machine that doesn't need any work.

Recent HDTV's don't support S-Video anymore. Most still support composite out of the box. A $0.10 resistor is all it takes to get S-Video from an 800XL. Not exactly a complex mod. And for all machines add-on boards out there will clean up the composite signal and make it look very good and make the S-Video near perfect. The boards that replace the video circuit like the 'low_budget mod' or the UAV do a really nice job. IMHO, it depends what you're going to use the machine for but XL's have much better build quality and are far easier to repair or expand internally. 130XE's are also VERY expensive compared to XL's these days. If one does choose an XE, do yourself a favor and get the upgraded rubber cups from Best Electronics he calls the "XE Touch" mod. It is a 10000% improvement and only takes a couple minutes to install. Amazing isn't even the word, feels like a completely different keyboard and is even superior to most PC keyboards these days afterwards.

Would the switch be necessary? Is there any downside to using greater field strength to write to DD disks?

A cheap dental pick from the drug store will probably do the trick. Very useful tool and very cheap. I keep a dental pick and pointed tweezers in my toolkit at all times. And a couple guitar picks and plastic spudgers for prying open laptop and tablet cases.

I didn't realize that, thanks for pointing it out. Will make things much more pleasant. I'm surprised it's not part of the official firmware distro.

SIO2SD is very handy. My only complaint is the Atari-side image selection program doesn't work on a 400/800 and you have to struggle with the on-device menu. Mine stays connected to the 48K 400 in the living room.

Chances are that if it's showing the Atari rainbow, it's perfectly fine. Unlike the later XL's, the 1200XL doesn't boot to BASIC. The 1200XL may have some compatibility issues with certain titles without an OS swap but they are good machines. Might take a little work to get the keyboard working 100% if it doesn't already.

Yeah, if you have the right floppes.... single or double density.... just format them using your DOS of choice. Typical 1050 drives support single and "enhanced" density which gives you ~90K and 130K respectively. "Happy" 1050 drives and other real DD-capable drives give you about ~180K per side. With a notcher or creative use of an X-Acto knife you can use both sides of the disk. Avoid newer HD floppy disks (720K and 1.2MB floppies) as they can be unreliable in the old Atari drives.

LOL Where are you digging up the porn? All I found were pirated rips of the bigger XEGS cartridges that get squeezed into extended RAM, most of them noted by Philsan. I was hoping to run some cool demos but I'm in NTSC-land and apparently the Xanth demos are about it over on this side of the pond and I'm too cheap to find/build a PAL machine.

An 800XL version was actually released a long time ago. It plugs into the PBI port. I still have one of these on my 600XL. It works quite well. Was called the RAM320XL. You need to solder a single wire internally for power in an 800XL or grab power from joystick port. In a 600XL it is not required since 5V is already connected on PBI bus. I have a cased version and I like it but if someone is timid when it comes to internal mods I'd be willing to sell it if I can get enough cash for an internal upgrade. In a 600XL you don't even need to do an 64K upgrade first, it replaces internal RAM.

Does NOT replace onboard RAM. I found this out by accident when I first installed my upgrade in a 600XL. I had 16K base RAM and lots of 16K banks of extended RAM. Oops. Had to do a quick 64K upgrade to the base RAM which is just swapping 2 RAM chips and soldering 3 wires. 512K mode does NOT give separate ANTIC access, at least on my rig. As far as BOM being only £20, if you're planning on eventually installing an Ultimate 1MB anyway, is it really worth going through this much hassle to save another £25 in the short term? Especially on an XE-series machine with a fragile PCB? Ultimate 1MB will also give you multiple OS slots and save you from modding the machine more than you have to. U1MB from Lotharek is only about £44.48 right now.

Hell, they are great without an Incognito. Big fun bulky tank of a machine. Just not something I'd recommend as a first machine due to their physical complexity and age. I don't know, thinking about it I probably won't end up modding my 800. I like it stock. It's a museum piece and 800's are getting harder to come by in reasonable shape. XL's are a dime a dozen these days.

Unless you plan on ordering 50-100 of them, I wouldn't bother. Small production runs of projects like this are very expensive and time consuming. The designer also has a day job and a family. I'd like to have one as well but unless there is massive interest *AND* Candle can find the time it won't happen. If you want similar functionality right now, you're better off getting an 800XL, an Ultimate 1MB board and an IDEPlus (or SIDE2). The 800XL's (especially early model) are generally quite well-made and very easy to modify. There's a ton of mods available as well. Also keep in mind that used original 800's can be maintenance nightmares. The square plastic posts in the keyboards get brittle with age and keys can pop off while you type and super-gluing them back on does not usually work and often results in sticking keys.... the complex 7 board design can mean a lot of corrosion issues, contact cleaner, pencil eraser rubbing.... especially with an eBayed unit after shipping if it has a full 48K board set. I wouldn't recommend it as your first Atari 8-bit machine if you're unfamiliar with the platform.

I have a very similar upgrade from Mega-Hz. Very nice, simple and reliable old-school design. Just plain works. Not as fancy as Ultimate 1MB but it's quite nice.

That could be fun. The only arcade cabs I'd be real interested in would be the vector games though. Space War!, BattleZone, Tempest, Armor Attack, Cosmic Chasm, Solar Quest, Star Castle, etc. Rigging up a vector display to a modern machine gets expensive and an LCD just isn't the same. Though I'm sure a vector display interface could be built for the RasPi pretty easily with all the extra I/O pins. A Pi3 could probably even do a damn good job emulating an ST or any of the 16-bit consoles as well. The Atari 8-bit should be no problem.

You can get an 8GB SD card for like $6 now. Hell, you can get a 128GB card for around $25. I wouldn't even bother with the USB sticks for anything but sneakernet use.

It's a pity the 8-bit version of Flight Simulator II is so terribly slow. Patched versions of Star Raiders and F-15 SE could be fun with an analog stick though. Star Raiders on the 5200 with analog control is pretty awesome in between joystick cleaning and rebuilds.

What does this require as far as software support on the Atari side?