Xebec

Update - found a taker for the defective SIO2USB

Hey folks - I had problems with AtariMax APE not working; turns out my SIO2USB is just bad (not being seen as a device on any computer), and APE didn't like the serial adapter I was using (although RespeQt had no problems). I switched to another serial port adapter and APE behaves now. I appreciate all of the help. Anyway, I have an AtariMax SIO2USB adapter that appears bad. If anyone wants it (at the very least there's two good female SIO ports on it that could be desoldered/resoldered) send me a PM and i'll mail it to you free of charge. I don't want to throw it out as SIO ports are probably getting rarer. I would prefer to send to someone who will use it too ... (Once i'm done extracting files off of floppies I'll see if my soldering skills are good enough to put a U1MB in another 800XL..)

Thanks - trying guides now. Would still appreciate it if anyone knew of Atari software that could re-try sector reads so I could just skip APE alltogether .. (I'll mail my USB SIO2PC free of charge as a gift to anyone who can find me software that does what I need)..

Hi Folks! I'm still trying to get APE/PROsystem working to recover old BBS floppy disks. I have three systems that either fail or BSOD with APE (but all work with AspeQt perfectly). I've updated to the latest version of APE -- v3.0.13 on all 3 systems, specs/status are as follows: Athlon 5350 / Win 10 64-bit - APE doesn't work at all with USB SIO2PC, partially works with Serial SIO2PC ("drive status", and it sounds like the Atari reads 1-2 sectors before "BOOT ERROR"). System will BSOD with USBPORT.SYS "Driver_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" after ~ 15 seconds). AspeQt confirmed to work flawlessly (have recovered a lot of floppies). Tried 3 different USB ports. Core i5-6600K / Win 2012 R2 64-bit (Windows 8.1 kernel) - APE doesn't work at all with either USB SIO2PC or Serial SIO2PC. No BSOD. AspeQt confirmed to work. Tried 2 different USB ports. Core i7-2600K / Win 10 64-bit - Same status as first system except I haven't tried AspeQt yet; although i'm sure that will work. I would skip ProSystem alltogether if I could find a backup utility that will go back and re-try bad sectors with some downtime inbetween each try (so I can clean the disk heads, let it dry, etc); but so far every utility seems to be a 1-try or 1-pass and that's it kinda utility.. (or it starts reading from the beginning which I don't always want if a disk is falling apart - as it'll recoat the drive head). Suggestions? John

No love on this machine. If I use a RS232 / SIO adapter - AspeQt works, but APE never works. It says it finds the COM port but then doesn't 'send the disk' to the Atari. If I 'shutdown' APE and reload AspeQt - AspeQt works flawlessly. I've tried rebooting several times, and re-running APE from another location and no luck. A few times APE BSOD'd on me when trying to exit/then switch to AspeQt. The same results on my SIO2PC USB adapter -- It just won't communicate with the Atari even though it claims everything is OK. I've tried resetting the app, etc. Oddly, I do not see any device in device manager for the USB / SIO device when plugged in. (I've tried different USB ports front and back and same result); although I'm not sure what hardware ID or device name to look for. I emailed Steve Tucker a few weeks ago asking for the latest version of APE in case my copy is corrupt, but no response yet. I feel kinda silly for buying this product given the USB adapter only works with Atarimax stuff, and given that APE won't work on either my Win 10 box or my Windows 2012 R2 machine... it's kinda worthless . Also, What does ProSystem do that the other copier utilities don't do?

What SIO hardware are you guys using, and what version of APE? I have both the SIO/USB adapter from Atarimax as well as their SIO/RS232 adapter. I will try a few different combos again today to see if I was doing something silly ...

Thanks much!

Yeah - I've avoided ProSystem so far because I can't get it to work under Windows 10.. but may end up dual booting to Windows 7 or even XP to try this. Does ProSystem work through retrying bad sectors, that sort of thing? I bought it a long time ago but have never actually used it (only APE).... Thanks

I'm a little worried about this approach because some of the disks I can see some of the coating coming off after a read already. Thoughts? Not a stupid idea for the ones that aren't spinning very easily -- I haven't done this yet though because I was assuming this required cutting the 'good' sleeve.. but looking more closely I guess I can just break the indents on the top piece and do it that way.. Thanks!

OK So I've embarked upon recovering a lot of old floppies - and I'm now getting to the 'really' dirty disks - dirt, mildew, etc. I do operate under the assumption "this may be the last time I can read data". I've got 4 x 1050 disk drives, an 800XL (64KB, stock) and Aspeqt setup. I've recovered a number of 'good' floppies now, and also have a 'reference floppy' that I use after cleaning the disk head to make sure the drive is working correctly. I've been mostly using My Copier from the APE utilities disk (I own a licensed copy of APE..) My problem: Some disks do not spin freely, to recover those I've 1> Tried turning them by hand to loosen up by grabbing the hub in the middle. 2> Lifted the lever on the front of the drive a bit to allow it to be 'freer' -- this works a lot more than I expected. 3> To be frowned upon - but sometimes lifting the top part of the head loosens it up enough to allow reading (and i've verified data integrity manually that this works). For the dirty disks - I've been cleaning the head once per side of the disk (rubbing alcohol, q-tip, 5+ minutes of drying even after using the dry edge of the q-tip to pull off any more gunk). But I'm at the point where some disks are going to require multiple cleanings, so I'm looking for an application like My_Copier that: - Makes an automatic pass of the entire disk - Remembers what sectors couldn't be read / are bad. - Allow me to pause during a pass, so I can clean the head, wait, and then let it retry bad sectors - Multiple retries until I'm happy that there's no way to get the data back. - Supports single 810 and enhanced 1050 density disks. - Preferably supports at least D3:, D4: I've scoured through these forums and looked at US Copy, Bob Puff's Disk Communicator, various Sector copiers (all of which are very manual, and may be my fallback), but I don't see anything that does this all at once? Also bonus question - is there any way to keep the disk drive spinning when a copy decides to 'halt' to write to the destination? this would have helped me a few times. (Or is this the excuse to finally move my Ultimate 1MB from a bad atari to a good atari?). Finally, is there any place to buy new old stock disks these days that have the center hub? Thanks all! For the dirty disks - I've been cleaning the head once per side of the disk (rubbing alcohol, q-tip, 5+ minutes of drying even after using the dry edge of the q-tip to pull off any more crap).

Thanks very much! - I was interested in this one since it had version 1.0 which it looks like I ran back in the day..

Hi folks! I'm in the middle of recovering and copying to PC my Atari 8bit BBS disks.. Does BBS Express 850 (v1.0) have any copy protected sectors on the disk? Sector 4 (starting from "1") always fails without any serious hitch; although later on the disk it has some problems reading I was just curious if that first early sector is a copy protected sector.. Also, since my disk is pretty weak - does anyone have a good ATR copy of BBS Express 850 v1.0? I found a post on here about this but couldnt' find the files anymore on his website: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/128280-bbs-on-a-stick/ Thanks.. John

OK - how would you mount that? modify case? or re-mount/wire the existing monitor connector on board? just curious..

Interested in 1 for 800XL ; curious what people's thoughts are on the best way of running the cabling out for the DB9 output? hack the case or something else? (+Likely a second one if i'm able to get one of my 1200XLs operating in good condition, and get back to the workforce ).

OK - These all make sense. The ICD US Doubler upgrade replaces the ROM, but it *looks* like you end up plugging a PCB with multiple ICs into the MOS 6810 location, so definitely not a simple two chip replacement. Is there any way to tell the drive to format extra sectors in an arbitrary fashion like you could do on the ST? (i.e. 10 or 11 sectors per track), understanding reliability concerns.. (and why is the XF551 so ugly compared to 810/1050? )

Just here to say thanks Philip and Gary for the awesome Alternate Reality back in the day! I will say a buddy of mine works at the same company Philip does or used to, and we both thought about emailing something random about Alternate Reality but never did get that email out ... We weren't 100% sure it was THE PP.. Anyway, I still remember a good friend of mine spending the whole night over playing Alternate Reality The City one time - we had two Atari's setup.. would level strength a bit by going out at night time and parrying against trolls or something like that (a regenerating creature) ... Unfortunately I lost my friend a few years later under tragic circumstances (still quite young) but that night playing AR was one of the best / most fun memories we had together. (He did later write some programs in assembler on the 8bit then PC, and AR served some form of inspiration for that too i believe). Thanks Philip and Gary!

My Dad and I ran "The Deadbeat BBS" on an Atari 8bit circa ~ 1986-1988 or so (sometime around late 87 or in 88 we switched to a 520ST). BBS Express (still have the floppy), Avatex 300/1200 modem, and a 10 or 20MB Supra drive at the time ; I'm actually in the middle of restoring some of the ATASCII graphics / animations and other stuff off of old floppies to my PC. I also restored an ATASCII 'maze generator' program for the BBS -- that would draw a room on screen, and then you'd tell it to go up/down/left/right/whatever and then it would load the next screen. For some reason I ran it on floppies instead of the HDD so it was quite 'non responsive' i'm sure . 609-853-8084 was the number.. the area code at the time was for all of NJ, or at least all of southern NJ.

Stupid question about the 1050 Drive. I know it supports Single Density and "Enhanced Density": FM 40 tracks x 18 sectors/track x 128 byte/sector = 90K capacity MFM 40 tracks x 26 sectors/track x 128 bytes/sector = 130K capacity and then I read that the reason the drive doesn't support Double Density is because the drive only has 256 bytes of working RAM and that's not enough to support DD: MFM 40 tracks x 18 sectors/track x 256 bytes/sector = 180K capacity ... Questions are -- is the 256 byte limitation the primary reason? And if yes, is the sector count limited to 128 only and not something like 192 bytes for the same or another reason? (i.e. 26 sectors x 192 bytes/sector = not possible?)

Great timing of question - I completely agree with your premise. The ST is also starting to ride this wave with it being hard (at least in the US) to get a cheap STE. For the A8; actually right now i'm finally getting around to copying data off of old floppies from when I was growing up. Many years ago I copied a couple of critical things... like my Alternate Reality character disks . This time around I have some old floppies with ATASCII graphics and user logs from when I ran a BBS (well my Dad ran, and I helped ). .. and some BASIC programs I wrote as a kid that taught me Algebra 6-7 years before they taught it in school. In the last 3 years I have picked up a few 1050 floppy drives along the way and a pair of 1200XLs that were cheap - always wanted the 'BIG' XL. I keep looking at XEs but the price hasn't been right. I've also tried some upgrades/repairs on my 800XLs but one of them went through serious work by a generous member of this forum and he was unable to repair it. I've given up on the U1MB upgrade based on how many issues I had with it (never could get it to boot from .ATR, and then attempting a flash the atari died and took the ROM burn with it..). For me the main issue is going to be monitors in the future I think. I have a nice small monitor I use for my 800XL but I know it won't work forever. A way to connect to an ST SC1224 might be nice though.. Once I've gone through as many floppies as I feel like, I'm going to reduce my Atari collection. I have 3 x 800's - one with the SIO port broken off the PCBoard; none of the 800's are working now -- I'd like to get one working (one is an original my Dad bought), and find the right home for the others. The 800XLs are always the workhorse to me; I have 3-4, and one is now spare parts.. I will reduce by 1. I don't really need 4 x 1050 floppy drives -- I'd like to restore all 4 of them to fully working/clean condition, and then decide which 2 to keep, with spare SIO cables of course. I have an 850 interface, tempted to get another just because that was my favorite piece of hardware back in the day.. Lastly I would like to find an old 810 with the single middle flip lid section (not the kind where the entire front opens up) -- as that was the kind I had as a kid, with a happy drive upgrade. The one thing I'd really like to do is find a good source for brand new "Atari" power supply units that work with everything. I'm glad there is still a community here to share stories and nostalgia with.. I'm on the 'younger' edge of some users out there, so I worry about the day where the few people left to share nostalgia with will be all gone.. I appreciate everyone who records their memories either in text or in podcasts..

Hey folks, I'm a US resident who "went" from Atari 800 platform (several variations) --> Atari ST (520ST, 1040ST) --> PC (an XT and then a very expensive 486, both in 1990). Although I used each platform for a variety of things it was games that had me more or less mentally migrate away from each platform. Those games were: 2600 --> "Dad, I want an Atari 800" = Miner 2049er ~ 1983 800 --> ST = SunDog then Dungeon Master (then the 800 saw little use) ~ 1986-1987 ST --> PC = MechWarrior (playable on XT), Gunship 2000 (80486) (+ ST HDD died) ~ Late 1990 PC --> "Strictly PC" - original Unreal (caused me to sell or box up any consoles I owned). ~ 1998 I was curious what applications or games caused others to switch and heavily "move away" from an earlier Atari platform. I should note I was a big BBSer all through these transitions up to late 1994 so that also helped shape what software I had access to , to make those transitions.. I was also very lucky my Dad sprung for a very expensive 80486 in 1994 (sorry Dad!), combined with a soundblaster and VGA kinda put the ST out to pasture.. I kinda wish I had seen an Amiga in it's full glory around the later ST time frame as I suspect that's the platform I might have chosen for a while before going fullbore on the PC with Unreal.

Just here to show support (will order 1) . I have 2 x 1200XLs, and waiting for the right 'mood' to figure out why they're not working flawlessly, and the tightness of the cart port really surprised me.. thanks for making these! And another good use for the homebuilt 3D printer

First i'm hearing about this -- I'll admit I'm in and out of sites like Atariage over time. I assume we'll still be able to buy any existing/released magazines?

Do both the VBXE and Rapidus fit under the keyboard in the 1200XL? Is there any need/benefit for the Ultimate 1MB with these upgrades? (if yes - does that also fit?)

I don't think it could really become competitive on it's own, considering a Raspberry Pi Zero or 1 is faster than Vampire 2, and even the $400 version coming with the high end FPGA will not be faster than the Raspberry Pi 2, let alone 3. With that said, it currently gives Amiga fans a lot of acceleration for a reasonable price (even 250EU is good vs 68040/68060 accelerator cards), and it's more compatible than the 040 or 060 to boot because of how they engineered the CPU. On top of that it works with any existing hardware which standalone versions certainly wouldn't do. This makes it a more compatible solution than MIST, with much higher performance to boot. The Amiga was lucky to have software that really benefits from faster CPUs. I think the ST story could be similar; Starglider, and Frontier Elite II will use whatever you can throw at them hardware-wise as they'll scale to 50/60 fps nicely with CPU speed. I'm sure there are a few others. Summary- Vampire has these benefits over MIST: - More compatible CPU* - More compatible custom chips (because it uses onboard chips) - Much higher CPU performance (>110,000 vs 8,644 Dryhstones for MIST in Sysinfo 4.0) - Will come with a FPU soon - 128MB instead of 32MB of RAM (web browsing is tolerable) - The full retro feeling (you still touch the old computer to use it) - HDMI output (vs VGA on MIST) and drawbacks: - Requires a whole host computer to work - higher cost - Cannot emulate multiple machines like MIST - Not using open sourced cores - Does not support USB HW like MIST * From the Apollo team: Apollo 68080 CPU (100% 68K compatible) Apollo fully supports _EVERY_ CPU instruction of the 68000/68010/68030/68040/68060 Apollo 68080 supports _ALL_ 68000/68020/680x0 Ea-modes. Apollo 68080 supports selfmodify code operations. So code doing this which worked fine on 68000, but fails on 68030/68040 .. can work again on 68080.

The Apollo/Vampire teams are working on a standalone version of 'Vampire' as well. They've been working on this 8 years, and their first versions intend to enhance the older computers (less work to do it this way) before moving onto the standalone. Ultimately the Vampire standalone should be a lot higher performance than the MIST.. Competition is a good thing .