sjgray

Anders, a while back I picked up some 18" LCD monitors with SCART input from ebay from a seller in the US. They work great on my Atari, Amiga, C128 and BBC computers as well as some old game consoles, so it's not impossible. Also, there are "SCART" to HDMI adapters on ebay that support RGBs which work as well. Steve

Wow, amazing stuff! I have an Aquarius but I never imagined it could do these kinds of things. I'm more of a Commodore guy and I have a project to add bitmap graphics to the Commodore PET using a similar method with the character rom. Just need time to work on it. Anyway, it seems to me like all the pieces are out there to make a new "Aquarius III" motherboard, with everything included... extended BASIC, new OS, full RAM, USB drive, mini expander, bitmapped graphics / custom fonts, built-in games, and composite video (or maybe RGB) video out. If you leave out the RF modulator and packed the chips tighter together you could make a cool drop-in replacement motherboard for the Aquarius case, or better yet go all the way and design a new 3D-printed case and put in a "real" keyboard. The possibilities are endless Steve

Except for cartridge games... which load instantly. Those colecovision games that load from tape and disk can take forever Steve

Floppy disk drive mechanisms are not inherently FM, MFM or GCR. The formatting/writing/reading of the disk is up to the floppy disk controller chip(s). Perhaps the modification you mention had to do with the drive jumpers as early drives (before IBM PC became standard) had slightly different interface pin assignments and more configuration options. That being the case, I have several MSD drives and some with dead mechanisms, and I have not been able to find a replacement drive mechanism other than a TEC that would actually work. I have heard of other people doing it, so I believe it's possible but I have not had the time to look into it further. Steve

The SmartBASIC cart I have has a custom made board. Can anyone tell me if there are other, more standard, cartridge boards that accept a 32K eprom? Steve

Glad I could help! Enjoy. Steve

Ok, I have attached the eprom image (I didn't see the attachment option before). I will ask Seagull what he wants to do with the cartridge. He may want it back as he was hoping to pick up an Adam system in the future. Steve SmartBASIC_V1.1 (27256 eprom).bin

Hi, over on the Lemon64 forum http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=650235#650235 (Commodore 64 forum), in January of this year a user named Seagull found an unknown cartridge labeled "SBASIC" in a stack of Commodore stuff. After some discussion we guessed that it might be a Coleco cart. Yesterday Seagull dropped the cartridge off to me and I was able to read the 27256 EPROM and indeed, I could see the string "SmartBASIC V1.1" plus various BASIC keywords. So, I inserted it into my Adam and it does boot into SmartBASIC. On the cartridge is a 74LS08 chip. I don't know enough about Adam cartridges to know if it's a standard cartridge PCB or something custom. It says "Walters ©1989" and "E100". So , I saved the EPROM image and if anyone is interested or can post it somewhere let me know. Steve

I picked up an Adam system with a broken printer. It seemed to hang the same way. The wire that controls the carriage was broken, so it never moved all the way to the left. There is a little sensor switch to detect when the carriage is at the proper position. So, either the carriage is not moving far enough to the left, or the switch is damaged. If the switch is working then you can manually press it to allow the adam to continue. Steve

I agree with you. If you are supplying a solution for others then that's the best/safest way to go. Power supplies can be tricky. Some of us are "users" and some are "hobbyists". Personally, I don't mind experimenting with my stuff. I will take a small risk if the end results are beneficial. For me, this means one less power supply/plug to worry about. Of course, if you are not comfortable fiddling with things then don't try it, or leave it for others to do. Steve

Sure, the more cards you have in there the harder it will be. I guess the point was that the cf card can be powered by the Adam rather than the external power adapter. Nothing is preventing you from using the original cf reader and ribbon cable and still tapping power from the IDE board. If you're going to do that I would suggest perhaps some hot glue to hold the wires in place. There is also another possible solution. I don't have the pinouts infront of me, but one pin on the IDE connector is missing the actual pin. It's used as the "key" so you don't plug the IDE cable in backwards. Well, on my CF card reader this pin can also be used to power the card. So you could in theory solder in the missing pin then run a short wire from that pin to +5V and power the card that way. I don't know if the power pin is a standard thing or not, so you'd have to check. And of course, if you add the pin it could prevent some IDE cables from plugging in at all. Steve

Hi, I have the IDE board and I am connecting the CF board's power directly from the IDE card since it requires so little power. You can see some pics on my page here: http://www.6502.org/users/sjgray/projects/adam/index.html Steve

This one should work: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-ARCADE-SWITCHING-POWER-SUPPLY-8-LINER-MULTICADE-/120966942326?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2a310e76 Steve

Wow, no time to work on this stuff lately, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon. In the mean time I picked up another mostly complete Adam system, with a working printer and dual tape units... for free!. Unfortunately the hand controllers and keyboard cord were missing. I will have to look for a replacement cord. Steve

I guess that's what I'm saying. If I could get the ROM image and build a board to plug that rom into the correct slot then I have a boot card. I don't need the parallel stuff, just the ROM. Indeed, it might be easier to buy the parallel card Steve

Ok, I switched to Chrome and now the quote option is working... Are there schematics available for the Parallel Card with IDE Boot Pom? If so I might be able to wire up just the rom part on a prototyping card. Steve

JamesD.. I'm not willing to mod the Adam board yet to replace the video rams... Niad.. Yes, I know of that power supply. I found one a little cheaper as well. I don't think I'll go the multicart route as it's a little pricey, and I can get most games off the CF card anyway. Perhaps if I really get into the Adam I might check it out later. yes, I'll check off the "Play Games" box, thanks! Thanks for the advice! Steve PS: apologies for the single reply to multiple people. The Quote didn't seem to work for me.

Hi, I just joined AtariAge. I recently got a new Adam computer system (Thanks Richard!). The system works great except that the printer is broken. The power supply is ok, but the carriage is damaged. I'm hoping to eliminate the printer anyway, and use an alternate power supply. I ordered an IDE card from the Adam News Network (thanks Robert!) and have that working now. I'm hoping to make a boot cartridge using an old CV game (thanks Daniel!) with info from another thread I found here. So I created a little project page to document my modifications/progress: http://www.6502.org/users/sjgray/projects/adam/index.html Comments or suggestions are welcome. Steve