Arcanis-Will
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Posts posted by Arcanis-Will
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I was testing an 810 drive yesterday and initially I thought it was broken. I had the slide switches set for drive ID 3 and it was not responding. But I decided to test all drive IDs and I found that the drive always thinks it is drive 1. Using it as drive 1 seems to work ok. I was able to make a boot floppy and save/load some test files.
Has anyone else seen this? If I clean the switches will it fix the problem? Or are there other fixes I should perform like maybe installing new switches?
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I'm sorry. I didn't understand your problem. I thought you indicated the 800XL would start sometimes, and that you were having problems re-starting it with or without the OPTION pressed.
It doesn't start with or without a cart installed, you just get a dark grey screen, and maybe a brief white flash at powerup. It never goes to self test? I'm leaning toward sending you a set
of 40 pin LSI. Antic, GTIA, 6502C, POKEY, PIA, for you to try and return. Are the LSI socketed, which ones are socketed?
Hi Russ, let me try to describe the problem behavior:
There are 2 failure modes: 1) A blank screen. 2) An inverted colors screen where everything is powder blue / light blue background.
It does give me a READY prompt sometimes, but even then, it is unstable. If I get the READY prompt, it will not run well -- even a simple 2-line program will crash (failure mode 2).
Entering PRINT FRE(0) will crash (failure mode 2). Pushing RESET will lock up with blank screen (failure mode 1). Holding OPTION during boot will mostly lock up (failure mode 1). Turning power off and on, without waiting 10 seconds, will also give a blank screen.
For self-test, yes, I can enter self test sometimes also, but that does not show any error.
For sockets -- Every chip is socketed and I have reseated them all but that part did not help.
I appreciate your offer of loaning some chips to me. I might take you up on it. I'm hoping that the new memory chips that I ordered will help. I should receive them in the next few days.
Thanks!
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Especially with higher RAM. If possible you should RUN E477 to do a re-boot, from
MyD/2.x 'M' or Sparta command line.
Are you sure your 800XL doesn't have a memory upgrade? Test with FRE(0) or memory tester like 'SHORTEST.COM'..
No, FRE(0) doesn't work with my Newell 256K. You gotta use a memory tester.
Well, SHORTEST.COM doesn't measure my 256K Newell correctly, says I have 131k. Here's RAMTEST.COM that does.
Nope, it has 8x of the HM4864-P2 chips which is 64k x 1bit so just a stock XL. The fact that I have 2 from W. Germany, 2 from Japan, and 2 from Malaysia indicates there has already been some swapping. Since I can't run anything on it including cartridges, I'm not sure I will have any success running your attachments. My new RAM chips will be here Monday or Tuesday and that should be informative.
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Wow, I had no idea more than 2-3 people had actually built and used my project :-)
@Arcanis-Will - I had tried doing the same thing with Arduino LED too. The SIO commands are so fast the flicker is hard to see. I had thought about maybe turning on the light on the first SIO command and then keeping it on until a certain interval passed with no commands. This would sort of act like the Atari drive light.
@deanolium - Once you clean up your changes, I'd be happy to incorporate them into the project and create a new version.
I had something like that thought, and then I also considered just adding a pickaxe or similar super cheap processor to perform LED blinking. Would be nice to have a Read/Write access light and/or SD card activity vs SIO activity but they are probably intertwined so much that it's hard to differentiate.
Many thanks for the well-written code! I can't say enough about what a relief it is to have well structured code, as compared to so many projects which are a) One gigantic file; and b) One 4000-line mainloop; and c) The same 4000-line function pasted in multiple places with one minor change in each.
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This is such a great project. I'd love to see it further developed.
Yes it is a great project! Last night I built up my own SIO2Arduino using a Canakit breadboard / Arduino Uno / Seeedstudio SD shield combination. To my complete amazement it worked on the first try! I built the Reset / SDrive version of the project since I did not feel like wiring up an LCD.
Regarding maintenance, I would not say I could take over the fulltime development but I am going to extend it a bit - for example I noticed on first powerup that you got BOOT ERROR until pushing the special Reset selector button to tell the Arduino to default to the AUTORUN.ATR file. Guessing it's a bug... I also wanted to have a disk access LED so I made a small change to the code to make it flash the Uno's onboard LED when processing a command. It's only giving a light flicker however, so that must mean it is really speedy and/or I put the on/off calls in the wrong place. DId not look into it too much further.
So being completely new to the world of Atari DOS, I am ignorant of what I can do with (for example) the Atari DOS 2.5 prompt. I'm used to the Linux command line and it was not obvious what I could do to load/save programs or how to go into BASIC once I booted DOS. I'll have to look for some tutorials.
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Now that it has been explained, the warm-boot behavior makes sense. I did notice that Reset takes less time than a cold boot.
The underlying problem affecting my 800XL prevents a successful warm boot. Instead, it hangs. For example, pushing Reset does not return to the Ready prompt as it should. Instead I will get a blank screen.
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Well, you're using a TV, the 400 doesn't have a composite jack. Maybe try a different TV. You can get a picture with an antenna?
Hi russg, yes, the TV input is working ok with cable box, Atari 800, and this 800XL (sometimes) -- I tore down the 800XL, reseated all ICs, and spent lots more time power-cycling with longer delays -- I described the behavior in more detail up in post #12.
The problem I have now is that if it is a bad IC, I don't have a donor machine to do chip swaps. I found a good price for 4x RAM chips on ebay so I ordered them. Now I can swap out 1/2 at a time to rule out memory issues. But I don't have a second 800XL for the bigger chips.
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Reseated all ICs. Noticed that I had 3 or 4 different brands of RAM chips - 2 from West Germany, 1 from Japan, 1 from somewhere else, 4 from Malaysia. Must have been replaced at various times. Also found one of the larger ICs that had a bent pin crushed under it. Straightened it and reinserted it fine but that did not cure the problem.
I did run self-test. All keys work, sound works, all memory tests fine. However, I'm not sure I believe the memory results - the behavior fits what I expect from a memory problem.
On power-cycling, if you wait at least 5 seconds, first you get the blank screen then it boots to a blue screen then the READY prompt which overall takes 3-4 seconds. Seems ok.
However if you don't wait long enough between cycles, you get only the blank screen and it never boots.
On pushing reset button, 90% of the time you get only the blank screen. Very rarely you get back to READY prompt which takes less than 1 second if so.
While in BASIC, entering PRINT FRE(0) will usually cause the machine to invert colors (light blue background) and lock up. Sometimes I had success and saw the expected value printed.
Likewise doing something simple like 10 PRINT "HI" / 20 GOTO 10 will cause the inverted colors and lockup.
Booting with a BASIC cartridge installed seemed to improve things a little bit, where at least 50% of the time the simple programs would run. But then they also failed so it was not terribly conclusive.
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The 400 should 'boot' to Memo Pad with no cart insrrted. Do you have a cart to try?
Yes, for the 400, I tried with and without a BASIC cart. Either way, same result - blank screen. I also removed both of the CPU and RAM card, with the same result. So for the 400 I assume something more serious is wrong internally if the output is the same with and without the CPU. Hmm, not sure what next step is for that one.
But I digress... back to the topic of the 800XL....
The 800XL displayed video just fine at first - therefore I will rule out the TV tuning and the connecting cable as a source of error.
Today, following the suggestion that it could be a stuck key, I unplugged the connector for the keyboard and upon the next power-up, I got the READY message - so at that point I figured great - I just have another keyboard to clean. However, upon subsequent power cycles, it is back to the blank screen again. So it was not the keyboard after all.
It has been sitting off for several hours while I work on my 800 keyboard, and now I am going to turn it back on again. My theory is that it will work for a short time and then die on me again. If so I am going to crack open the shield and reseat some ICs.
Oh and I don't think I have the ingot supply - based on a previous post from russg it appears I have The White Brick supply. It is the brown & cream one that matches the 800XL's case.
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Tomorrow's project will be the resoldering and jumpering.Well I said "tomorrow's project" but I had other stuff come up so it took an extra day. Tonight I spent about 2 hours fixing a surprisingly large number of broken pads. Looks like there was some kind of impact to the keyboard that lifted a lot of the keys' pads.
Long and short of it -- all keys work 100% now!
I took pictures of the finished product. Should I post them? (need I ask?)
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Just purchased Atari 800XL and power supply separately, both appear in good shape, and initially it booted to READY prompt and all keys worked. When I held Option and rebooted it, the screen came up black (aka not snow, it had a signal) and stayed black through successive power cycles and resets. How do I get out of self-test mode? I don't find any mention of needing to exit self-test mode but it is acting like the option-boot persists across power cycles. Does self-test take a long time to display anything? Maybe I am not waiting long enough. Very confusing that it worked until I booted this way and now appears permanently "stuck". As an aside, I have a 400 that shows the same symptom - power-up to a black screen - so that makes me wonder if it is in some weird boot mode but I find no mention of it if so.
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I've had some 800 keyboards with cracked solder joints...
I re-opened my 800 tonight and yes indeed there are breaks in the continuity across the keyboard traces. There are at least 2 spots where there is a break in the traces, and several other places where the pad or solder is popped up. Using a multimeter I can trace the continuity back up through the matrix starting from where the ribbon cable connects, and also from key to key, and it is showing quite a few dead spots to fix. (It took me about 45 minutes to remove most of that double-sided foam tape that was under the ribbon cable.)
So good news - I tested a few of the non-working keys and they are actually making good contact when measured at the key itself. Just not getting across the board. Tomorrow's project will be the resoldering and jumpering.
Thanks for the suggestion!
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I've had some 800 keyboards with cracked solder joints. Look for fine circular cracks with a magnifier. Simply resolder them.
Thanks, I will do that.
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Most of the keys fall within an 8x8 matrix - having 8 that don't work sounds conveniently like a single severed connection, the keys in each row/column aren't necessarily adjacent.
Nice little representation of the matrix is on this page http://members.casema.nl/hhaydn/howel/logic/burched/b5_800xl_kbd.htm
Nice chart. Can I assume that the scan matrix of the 800XL is the same for the 800?
Failing keys are (from left to right, row by row)
3 9 0 e o p d L ; + * c b
Some fall into rows or columns but not all - as in, some but not all of a column are failing. Could be a break partway through.
If the other data is correct then I could find the 4051 multiplexers and reseat them. I don't think I need to reseat the POKEY since at least one key works out of each row and column.
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I have an Atari 800 with a keyboard that has 8 or 9 non-working keys. I have read on several threads about having to repair the mylar layer so I took everything apart and attempted the separation of PCB from key frame, but the PCB did NOT want to come off. I applied enough force that I feared cracking the edges of the PCB so I gave up. It was like the PCB was glued or soldered in place. While it was apart I cleaned all the card edge contacts and reseated all the boards (I did not reseat the ICs).
So then I reassembled everything including the case, added a small shot of De-Oxit into a few non-working keys. That did not help so far.
Further reading shows that there were several different makers. I did not know that while I had it open, or I would have written down the name from the board. I don't remember it.
Are there other variants that are not mylar based? And if so, what would be best? Just the repeated key activations?
I'll describe what I remember:
- The attached ribbon cable was fairly thick and multicolored with red-brown female connector.
- 9 attachment screws, could not find one under the tape area. However, removal of the screws did NOT loosen the PCB in the slightest.
- Heavy grey plastic frame - keyboard unit as a whole was very heavy and solid.
My next steps would probably be to spray under each non-working key with deoxit (I only did 2 so far), exercise them for a long(er) time, let it dry and retest. Should I open it back up and get the name of the board?
Any other suggestions are welcome.
thank you!
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810 drive ID always behaves like drive 1
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted
I just found the 810 Field Service Manual online. Thanks for the tips - the schematic for the switch positions shows they are read by the 6532, and also that one of the valid positions for each switch is open-circuit. So a set of dirty contacts probably manifests as the open position for both switches. It would make sense for the drive's default ID to be 1 in the case of switch failure or stuck open. Since the drive appears to otherwise work, I think it's more likely to be a dirty switch contact. I will try cleaning it and then check the switch operation with a multimeter. Thanks for the suggestions!