justrob

Tried both SIO ports, couldn't see any broken traces from what I could see under the SIO ports. Guess I'll just wait for the parts and try it after that. Thanks for the help guys.

While I wait for parts to come in, are there any alternatives to this diagnosis? Or is this pretty definitvely the cause of my issues?

Found the chip. Little bit of googling goes a long way Are these easy enough to source? Looks like a simple desolder and replace job so shouldn't be too bad.

Still new to the Atari stuff. Which one is that? I've attached a shot of the chips.

Yep, both switches are to the left, so Drive 1. I gave all of the socketed chips a little push down to make sure they were seated, and got a close look to make sure none had pins sticking out the end or anything. All that was done before I posted though. Wanted to make sure I took care of the most obvious things first.

I'm participating in the retrochallenge this round and I'm needing some technical assistance with my 1050 drive. I had a previous post about it here, but I've dived a bit deeper into it this time around. Basically, the thing doesn't read any floppy I've tried in it, and I've tried all 97 floppies I own. The drive seems to have a homebrew US Doubler mod added to it, but I'm not sure how complete or successful it was. I've checked all the usual culprits; device switches set to drive 1, track 0 sensor, all the jumper cabling is plugged in correctly. I took a little vid of what happens when trying to use the drive. I kinda went stupid and filmed it vertically, but it should be clear enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6M6rQyz8lM Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Well, I don't have a BASIC ROM, so it would only tell me what version is in the carts I have, which is Rev A for both carts. Booting without a carr goes straight to the self-test, even when I've tried different key combos at boot. Thanks for the program anyway.

Er, correction I think. It shows 3 rows of 16 blocks in the memory test. 48k only?

With no cart in the slot, it boots to the blue loading screen as normal, and then drops into the self-test. Memory test runs like normal with 2 blocks for ROM and the regular number of blocks for 64k RAM. 58383 returns a 0. Also, I was doing some playing around to see what happens when I push buttons randomly I have a K-Razy Kritters cart, which should only run on OS A or B from what I can tell. With a normal boot, it does nothing but show me a solid color screen, different colors each time. If I hold down the Option key when booting with the cart, I get what looks like a garbled loading screen and some random sounds. The screen is just solid lines moving across the screen from right to left and the occasional semi-letter character here and there. I also have a Pac-Man cart, brown label Atari standard. Does not boot in the machine. Gives the blue loading screen then drops into the self-test. I tried messing with hitting the option or select keys and such with it and hitting option on boot, it loaded the game. This was last night. Went to bed thinking I solved another mystery with it. Tried it again this morning, nothing. No matter what I press it goes to the self-test and bypasses the game. Is there some kind of key combos I can try when booting with or without carts to try and figure out what else this thing has done to it? Is there any way to see if the ROM is only 16k from basic or if it's larger?

Well, I put everything back together as instructed by 1050. I managed to dig out my 800xl and get it up and running today. I have the drive sitting next to it, but with the SIO cable unplugged. Not really sure how else to go about testing without floppies or DOS of some kind though. After reseating the connectors, it all still works as it did before. Motor and head carriage move as they should and sound just as noisy as ever. Any suggestions short of getting a SIO2PC cable of some kind and some blank floppies?

I pulled out my 800XL to try and get it running so my wife could play a few cart games today. First thing I did was open up the case to make sure it didn't need a cleaning and that none of the socketed chips had loosed since I had put it away in storage. Well, my BASIC socket is empty, and the OS Socket has a custom chip in it. I pulled apart the keyboard, cleaned the contacts on the ribbon, booted it up and ran some tests. Since I didn't have a BASIC ROM I plugged in one of the two BASIC carts I have. Here's what I got after doing a couple peeks: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xcxmlzkh1yc8pnb/Photo%20Mar%2029%2C%2012%2008%2032%20AM.jpg?dl=0 Both BASIC Carts come up as Rev A, which is good enough considering I haven't gotten my 1050 setup again yet, so that's no biggie. I googled around and found that the two other peek addresses would identify the OS rom for me, since I couldn't be sure it hadn't been replaced. Not sure how to test how to get the size of the thing to see if it's been appended to or anything. From what I can tell, a response of 2 from 65527 means it's the 800XL ROM, and 255 from 65528 means I have to use the alternative tape loading procedure if I decide to use cassettes. Is that all correct? Is there anything else I can do with an accessory-less computer to check any other possibilities of the ROM?

Finally getting the chance to pull out my atari stuff, and I wanted to focus on my 1050 drive first, as I know my 800xl works just fine. From a previous thread, I was told that this drive has a homebrew US Doubler mod of some kind in it. Last time I tried using it, I had written notes that maybe the drive mechanism was bad or something. I don't have my 800xl out to plug in and test, and I don't have floppies of any kind to try and load DOS or something from the drive. If anyone has any suggestions on how to test the drive from cart basic, that would be helpful. So, here are my checks. First, a few of pics of the internals for an overview: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xp3ot60nfn3v1ap/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2004%2059%20AM.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/gtyjfejre1rd7j5/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2005%2009%20AM.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ny0rm5b3ww1cw4l/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2005%2022%20AM.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/z2idnhkcrqypg6f/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2005%2037%20AM.jpg?dl=0 You can see in this last pic, the spring for the drive inject/eject is fine, but the little plastic ring it connects to has broken. I temporarily moved the spring to the plastic in front of it and it works ok for testing. I dunno if I want to leave the spring as is with the cover on and in normal use. Springs flying around moving parts and electronics are bad juju. https://www.dropbox.com/s/iuvrc1nmhgyyfh8/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2028%2002%20AM.jpg?dl=0 Drive motherboard: https://www.dropbox.com/s/abyah8w2dpfk5kw/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2005%2048%20AM.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/hzvsb6cf2p42g14/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2005%2056%20AM.jpg?dl=0 I'm not sure what this plug is for. I'm guessing it has to do with the stepper motor or something. Looks like it matches up to J15. In fact, there is another cable connector hanging out of the back of the mechanism that look like it was supposed to connect to J15. I tried both (yes I know, unknown shit fries shit). With the original brown connector, everything spins as it should, but it's really loud. With the blue connector on J15, all the same motions happen, but it's MUCH quieter and buttery smooth compared. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t7k96f6c7fj5lch/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2006%2041%20AM.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/b628rfnt9fj4dlx/Photo%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2045%2044%20AM.jpg?dl=0 Since I don't have the computer itself out of the closet to plug into and test, I made a couple of quick little videos to show what it does when powered on: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9kescuqj5wcv09z/Video%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2007%2006%20AM.mov?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9ksci7rxwgqcuh/Video%20Mar%2028%2C%201%2010%2021%20AM.mov?dl=0 Both of these were taken with the red connector on J15 as above. From the video, you can see the seeker carriage moves. I tried the jumping the first two pins on J10 trick to see if it returns to the back of the carousel, and it does and seems to be seeking just fine. Is there anything I'm missing here? Is there any way to test this thing without functional software of any kind? The disk I used to test the motor and such is a DOS formatted HD disk. Not usable in this drive, but it was a physical boilerplate just to test the mechanics.

The K-Byte cart seems to be K-Razy Critters from what I was able to pieve together from the info at Atari Mania. The Roklan cart is an unknown game I'm guessing. The other two along with the custom OS rom are in the mail to a friend who has handled protos in the past so maybe we'll get an idea after he dumps them for us. No burner in the pile unfortunately. The rest unpictured were just various joysticks, paddles, and some heat damaged floppies. The commodore 1084s monitor that came with the lot powers on to a blank screen and red power light so I think the flyback is dead, but who knows? The thing was yellowed to hell and some of the jacks are rusted. The overall condition of everything leads me to believe it sat in an outdoor shed for some years so I'm not too hopeful on some of it.

Can't get the other one open. Heh, have to wait till I get my skinny screwdriver set. Drive 1 does seem to be working. I just don't know if all the floppies I have are dead or not. Still getting the 139 error when trying to init any of the floppies I've been trying.

Yeah, everything seems to be in place. Could it be the happy board in that drive is faulty? The power light comes on but that's about it.