svenski

Can't see pic dude. Congrats on the 810, I reckon you could almost use one as a portable catbox

Have attached a link to a 1200XL keyboard "tune up", written by Bob Woolley. The 1200XL mylars tend to lift off the pcb over time, especially if someone gets fluid between the keys. I didn't have much success with this method, had better luck not removing the mylar and sitting on the pcb , but others more skilled in the arts of Atari have . http://retrobits.net/keyboard.html Obviously a 1200XL mylar is a bit different from a 800XL one - not folded for starters.

Definitely mylars on all the 1200XL keyboards I've looked at. I know Best sell replacements for the 130XE but apparently they never had enough demand for a 1200XL one.

1200XL keyboards are notorious for this sort of problem. Last time I tried a fix I ended up with one more key working Still wasn't as professional as your tutorial though, will have another go.

For the UK at least it was bad marketing, but perhaps "bad" is too good a word. Was almost as if they (Atari UK) didn't want anything to be a success. The height of the 8-bit scene was box dumping the 800XL, then a short lived (we'll do 2 ads in Atari magazines) for the XEGS. It really was that bad. I think there was a couple of TV spots for the XEGS but it was nothing - kind of if you were up at 3am you might see it. With the launch of the ST it looked like Atari were getting it right - was that down to lack of competition?. They had the market sewn up. When the Amiga launched Atari could have maintained market share but they probably threw 10% of what Commodore was putting in, into marketing. Then you have the Lynx , and compared to a Game Gear or Nintendo Game Boy it was fantastic. But did they push it?, no. The Jaguar was another console ahead of its time, but was that ever marketed properly? Atari watched their market share dwindle, and didn't do anything about it. But, given that Commodore, with the huge success that the Amiga was, flopped, would Atari have been able to survive anyway? From store level, it seemed like Commodore ventured perhaps 2 years 2 early into PCs, they shot themselves in the foot with the Amiga 1200 and the CD32. That and some dodgy third party onsite support. Another example would be SEGA... they rested on their laurels, guess nobody saw SONY coming.

Bump

Between the two I'd go for the 8-bit every time. Just much more fun, and so much more you can do with it. If I had to choose a console, the 5200 would win. Shame about the pads being unreliable. Hi, from a 5200 in PAL land.

Bump!

They are out there ....... I did rename a 1200XL and pretended but after about 5 minutes I gave up... the correction fluid started to flake off.

Hi guys, Been off board a while, relocated to somewhere warmer. Still looking for an Atari 1400XL and 1450 XLD or other rare Atari stuff. If you have for sale PM me. Thanks

I think the 600XL w/64k was also sold (initially exclusively) through Atari's staff only stores.

Most of the disks in each pack are duplicates - you'd probably end up with 45 copies of "1000 great cooking recipes" instead of 30 - 40 classic APX titles.

From what I recall the story was the XC11 was destined for the USA (and Canada) market. There were always going to be 2 units. Due to low (comparatively speaking) disk drive prices stateside compared to Europe etc Atari decided demand wouldn't be strong enough to warrant continued production so they started selling the stock in Europe. The XC11 stocks dried up before the XC12 was ready in large numbers. To me the XC11 looks like old technology (late seventies style cassette recorder?!) but as Jack mentioned it has the SIO pass through and it looks like a more solid and reliable beast. Personally I prefer the 1010, never had a problem with them, not even the pause button.

Finally got hold of a working 810. It arrived today after travelling thousands miles, loose in a beat up box. If it had been an XF551 it would have bits rattling inside, if it had been a 1050 the front would be hanging off and it would be toast. As it was an 810 and Atari built them to survive a nuclear attack, it was in one piece. I looked inside it from the front and I swear you can see a whole city in there with millions of little people going about their daily lives, it is massive. It makes the Astra 2001 dual drive look almost tiny, and the noise ....... Shame some kid used it as a coloring book and covered it in pen and crayon...that took a couple of hours scrubbing to clean up..

Sorry nukey, we were both replying at the same time Anyway, you explained it a lot better than I did.

I don't know the spec of the Commodore 1541 so can't comment, the 1050 uses 'enhanced density' which is part way between single and double density. Most Atari drive speeds were similar speed wise, the 1050 has a read time benchmark of 10 seconds, and a write time benchmark of 12. As for using a DOS disk; a DOS disk is vital if you want to get the most out of your Atari and your 1050 drive. Now you've got a disk drive your Atari will be in its element. Loading files - a DOS disk isn't normally necessary for loading commercial software and you can usually do basic functions such as load and save saved games from a game disk without having to revert to a DOS disk. If you don't have a manual with your 1050 you can pick a new manual with DOS disk from myatari.com - they also sell them via ebay.

Yeah, ebay can be great for disks. You can pick up bulk 5.25 disks quite cheaply, sometimes around $5 for 50 .

I want 8-bit porn

I think XL stood for eXtended Line. Goochman is correct, the 1200XL came out before the 600XL and 800XL. There were also several RAM variations on the 800. It launched with 16K, later sold with 32K, then finally sold with 48K. As for the difference between the 400 and 600XL, the 400 was sold as a beginner's machine, ideal for children (Atari made a big deal of the 'wipe-clean' membrane keyboard). The 600XL was sold as a value for money, serious home computer that was as good in the office as it was at home. By dropping 2 of the joystick ports, Atari partly freed up the (I think) PIA chip which was then used for switching in/out of BASIC, self tests and helping with RAM management.

Vigo, I guess you were on your own little Island somewhere if you consider either the CD32 or the Mega CD to have been a success. In the end Sega could hardly give the Mega CD away. As for the range of CD32 titles, I guess you're conveniently forgetting the CD32 versions of A500 titles that were rushed onto CD perhaps with, perhaps not, a couple of extra graphical menus or whatever.

Hmmm...... I've cross posted your post David onto several 'SCAT' newsgroups, hopefully you should get a huge response

Vigo, As someone who was selling A1200s, A600s and CD32s at the time, I stand by my original comments. The comparison with the 1200XL was like I said - new machine, new design, it put people off. Sure people began to see past it but in no way were A1200 sales anywhere near as good as those of the A500 or A500+. We had A500s stacked up to the ceiling. As for the CD32, yeah, sure it was a big seller, thats why there were sooooooo many titles released for it. Come on. The fact that it was a good machine has nothing to do with the fact it was a sales flop.

Yes I have it, if you want a copy.

Ian, Thanks for your post. This 5200 was from about 3 weeks ago on ebay, not a fantastic deal but boxed, 2 fully working controllers and off the top of my head 7 games, 5 boxed for $63. I've got a Samsumg Worldwide VCR that will play anything but modern US tvs have a screw in RF in, not like European tvs. The VCR manual said it came with coax adaptors (which it did - they just vanished) but then I rememberd I had an old NTL cable box and sure enough that had one. I've got it running ok through the rf lead via an old US switchbox and using the coax adaptor but the picture isn't great - might be the switchbox. Only problem is now the 5200 cuts out after several minutes but its running via a multi socket adaptor and a step down converter. I'm going to try it plugged straight in the wall through the stepdown and see if that helps. The stepdown should be more than enough to cope with the 5200 but if it continues to cut out I'll have to invest in a bigger capacity one and see if it cures it.

I've got my 5200 running via a coax adaptor and an old switchbox, the picture is not perfect but that seems to be down to the box as you only have to move it to get interference on the screen. My problem is the 5200 powers off after a few minutes. Because I'm in the UK I'm running it through a step down converter . The converter has a maximum load of 50va . Now I've compared the 5200 PSU to a 1200XL PSU and the inputs/outputs seem the same. Could anyone confirm if the 5200 does use more power than an Atari 8-bit computer? It might be the 5200 is faulty as straight after the 5200 turns off I can use the step-down on something else, so doesn't look like its a safety trip on the voltage converter. Anyone got any ideas? - just when I was playing Dig Dug too