Atari-Collector

I have a couple DMV and one analog multimeter. That all pretty much agree with each other, one of the DVM's is a $5 cheapy from China. but works surprisingly well.. but i find my older Radio Shack DMV from the 90s a bit more responsive. But I won't have as much faith in what sold be RS (aka "The Source" in Canada) today. I'd expect to to be no better then the cheap stuff from China. If you really want accurate today, go look for a Fluke brand and be prepared to spend a chunk of money on it.

I sold my original Atari 800 system early/mid 80s to get my first PC, an 10MHz Turbo XT made by 'Hewitt Rand'. A company the store convinced me was a big brand name... Always regretted selling the Atari, somewhat out there is an 800 and 810 that have green LEDs in there power lights. (I thought they'd look nicer with green power light...) While not exactly the same setting up, I now have a Atari 800 system again, but with 1050 floppies instead of the 810 (which I couldn't find any worth buying...) and a 850 instead of the P:R: interface I had back then.

I can defiantly say yes, a regular dial-up modem with work with a Magic Jack Plus, because I have in fact done it using a US Robotics 56K modem over my cable internet connection. I'm in the final stages of getting my new Atari 800 system fully set up, and once don'e I plan on using that modem on it and find a couple real dialup bbs' to call

Not an ebay purchase, but just got here. Was hard to bring myself to open it being still sealed... Haven't tried it or the other cables yet, been dealing with a major dental emergency this week. friday will be my 3rd trip to the dentist this week...

Surprisingly this si not encouraging me to ever buy from him again... If this had been an eBay purchase I'd be open a depute on the purchase with Paypal. If our going to keep somebody's money, you send their purchase, that simple. It's not that hard to put 4 cables and a box and mail it.

I know, but I think 3 weeks is quite a bit of slack already given. As of right now, tracking shows them at the sorting plant in LA. I paid on Nov 13. They will get hear some day. I see he has a lot of cables listed on eBay right now, if he's shipping them as slow as he did mine his feedback score is going to take a hit. I may go see if I can find some more on ebay too.. What puzzles me, is all the drives and stuff I've bought used from various people never came with SIO cables. So makes me wonder what the previous owners did with them....

Nice 1050 box pic. I have bought 2 1050's recently, each having a different style box. Unfortunately, I can't hook anything up yet.. I bought 4 SIO cables from B&C Computer and he didn't mail them from a few weeks. Tracking shows they are in a sorting facility in Los Angeles still.. If he wasn't going to ship for so long he should have gave me the option to cancel the order, especially when I paid extra for priority shipping.. So I'm a bit tick off about that.. It's unlikely I'd buy from him again and just still to gerneral ebay hunting...

OK, first of, amazing display jacobus OK, even though the 1050 box aren't mint, they will stay. I know with collectable conditions is everything, so that's why I asked, maybe in time I'm frame some of the flyer and manuals myself. Of course my main thing is the hardware itself, both functional and cosmetic. I'm waiting on SIO cables from myatari.com, and once they get here I'll be able to do a final setup and maybe post a pic of what I have. I'm using my 90's entertainment center as a Atari work station.

Great buy! Nice upgrade from the Commie OK, I never cared for Commodore but I still like seeing them preserved these days also. I got my 600XL last winter for $12 plus shipping, just the computer itself with the memory upgrade and original manuals. For the TV switch you could try some contact clear on it (do it well away for the Atari itself and left it all dry because that stuff can attack plastic) or get an RCA to F type connector adapter that's what I use. I use to sell them on ebay but there was so little profit in it it wasn't worth the drive to the post office. I ended up add AV outputs on it, not hard and cheap if you can make it yourself, like $1 worth of parts..

Having just bought a couple 1050 drives and an 850, all with original boxes, I am wondering are the boxes that collectable and worth saving? The 850 is like new (as was the 850 itself), the 1050 boxes are a bit on the rough side, torn end flaps, one is got brown packing tape on it and a bit on the grungy feeling side. I'm limited on space and as much as I hate to say it, are the boxes (especially the not so good one) worth hanging on to? Not that I ever plan to sell these drives, they are mine til I croke.

Well I finally got my new used 800 set up, but jsut using the RF cable for now, and it looks ok, but I am going to make a AV cable for it. Here the question, we all know the 800 is mono sound. And I was going to wire a cable up with just the one RCA for sound, but I stumped across a youtube video of somebody that had made a cable using a stereo cable with the left and right channels both connected to the audio pin inside that DIN plug. I me that seems like it would goof up the impedance level of the sounds and maybe harm the computer and maybe even the TV (I'm using a 29" LCD I bought a couple years ago) Just looking for some technical comments on this. Sound from both speakers would be nice, but not worth damaging with piece of hardware.

Oh i remember when they started metric in Canada in the mid 70's.. I Even though I was a kid at the time, I already knew everything in imperial and that's how I still think today On the other hand my weirdo uncle switched everything to meter instantly "because the government said to.." He trashed anything with imperial on it and if you said anything in imperial he world refuse to acknowledge it.. ok that's just a whole other weird topic

In an email a couple days ago, Bruce (B&C) said is was selling out of SIO cables... "I still have I/O cables but they r selling out fast." So I ordered the three I needed and one spare.. It's kind of a scary prospect that the odd connectors are becoming scarce. Has anybody played with the idea od 3D printers or resin casting them?

Thanks, my 800 (tank case) arrived late today, so I'll hook it up tomorrow and give her a try at the tape. https://twitter.com/VE3KNT/status/532308912163524608

The post has changed direction a bit, but in a good way. I know I've learned a few things from all the posts, I'm willing to bet others have benefited from it also. Not sure if I can change my order for the UPS still of not.. But the UPS I just ordered is going on all modern hardware. Power failures here are not very common, so I think I'll just stick to surge and noise protection for the Atari stuff. Maybe invest in some newer units though since my Isobars are all at least 10 years old now. It's not like I plan on leaving the Atari's on full time like I do my PCs, not to mention modern TV, games like the PS3 and so on never really shut off completely. And when the power does fail, I usually start turning things off after a few minutes anyway. My main reason for using UPS's is those brief glitches that are enough to crash something and have to wait to get the stuff rebooted or reset.

I know my oldest UPS, a TripplIte BC400 is stepped. It's on a old PC right now I just ordered a TrippLite ECO850LCD for my TV and Playstation3 and related gizmos. So is PWM sine wave Atari safe?

I think with gas it'd be cheaper to pay the shipping from Digikey.ca, they have a flat rate of $8 with in Canada. Or I could drive up to Cambridge and go to Sayal electronics. I use to go to their Toronto stores when I lived there and they have a huge selection. But mail order is probably easiest. I have a 2AMP 18volt with 9volt center tap transform that I bought new probably 30 years ago and only use briefly in a project back then.. So it should make a good transformer for a new power supply, mainly I need a case and power transistor, the rest I have in my parts box already or I could just add a crow bar circuit right inside the 600xl...

I was reading it off the label, when it booted it was 850 express.. weird..

Those old disks were all used on the 810 drive I had back then. I'm thinking maybe some just aren't boot disks.. Not giving up on them eyts.. Most of my olf floppies do seem to still work:)

Looks like my 600XL has the INGOT power supply, I'll have to figure or an order to build a all now supply for it. I guess I could just add a crowbar to the Ingot's power line, but may as well go all new and put the Ingot aside.. I have the SCRs i need, but the only Zener diodes I have are 15 volt I'm thinking a 7805 to give a reference voltage to a good size power transistor to keep it simple.

Another yippe type post:) I was just moving some boxes to make room for moving some furniture around and down between the boxes i found two boxes of old floppies. The disks I've been looking for since I decided to get back in to Atari computers!!! including Express 850, Kenny Aproach, Riverraid, Arcon, SAM, Ghostbusters, Dandy, Wolfenstien, Express 1030, (on a true Atari floppy:), F15, Atariwriter, Buck Rogers, Jungle Hunt, and that's just the one box of disks A few of the disks seem to be not working.. but it's been so long I may be doing something wrong.. But I have another drive coming so maybe it'll have better luck read these 30 year old disks. Still a great find tonight:)

Just reading though this posting and didn't see anybody mention what I have used.. So here it goes. I have had good luck with using antibacterial "Wet Ones" wipes (the on with the pink top). They are sold in a plastic bottle that you put a wipe out the top. (Sold in Walmart near the pharmacy) They do not attack the plastic or paint and do a good job cleaning off dirt and grunge. I started using these on ham radios I bought used (because a lot of those old hams have a way of just making radios gross...maybe why lost interest in radios..) So they take care of the dirt and germs. I've used the wipes on my 2600, 600xl, all my cartridges and so on. A cotton swaps wetted from the extra liquid in the container is good for cleaning out the grills and corners a wipe won't go in. A popsicle stick or coffee stir dtick can also be used to push the wipes in between keys and in slots. When I clean contacts, I tend to use rubbing alcohol and dry it off fast. So I hope this is useful to somebody.

One thing you have to watch with UPS' are their surge protection often isn't as high as a good power bar. I know that sounds strange, but I've seen that on a lot of them.. I have my TrippLite Isobar's plugged in to the wall, then the UPS in to the Isobar for two layers of protection. OK, I'm a bit paranoid As for surge suppression, I have my 8-bit daily driver on the desk next to my PC plugged into 1000W UPS for power filtering/suppression/battery backup.

You have good point there, especially considering buying used hardware we never know how it was used/abused or whatever by previous owners. I guess it depends partly on if the voltage regulators are in the brick or the computer part how to handle them. Thinking about it off hand I'd tend to want to build my own power supply and include a crow-bar circuit for extra protection.. A crow-bar circuit is across the output of the power supply that if it detects going over a set voltage it goes into a dead short to kill the power supply and protect the connected hardware, it's commonly used in amateur radio power supplies. I sense a call to Digikey is coming to order some transformers and power transistors is in my near future....

Well Turkey Day in Canada has already pasted for this year, but maybe ET for Turkey Day? OK, I love bad puns