moonlight_mile

I know this is for old pics but I just spent a number of hours cleaning up my Atari Desk so I figured I would share it here. All the Percoms work. The Atr-8000 is still a work in progress.

Ouch. I get the strange feeling, since it isn’t widely know, that price fell faster than a lead balloon.

Come to think of it I think I had an official copy of it. As I remember an official looking disk label. I think it was given to me by one of the local sysops.

I think it was just a 1030 Modem conversion of AMIS. (Which explains the crashing issues. Lol).

I know I had a copy of Gardner bbs. But I think when I was testing it, it was always crashing. I probably had a very early version, but that was what was most frustrating about the bbs programs written in basic. Crash crash crash.

What kind of printer interface is that?

That really is a nice one but $515. Yikes. I think I got mine for $300 or less. Granted, it doesn’t seem to be working and there were no disks or cables but I don’t think those items are worth and additional $215. Ouch.

Luckily, I never had to be strapped with a cassette drive. When I go my 800xl I was determined to get only a disk drive. My first computer was a TI/994A. I think it was a gift when they were dumping them for $49. I had fun with it and got the cable to plug in a standard cassette player to save programs. I absolutely hated it, for the obvious reasons. Maybe a few months later a regional department store named Hess’s had a few of the expansion boxes. I can’t remember what they were liquidating them for but it was fairly cheap. (Not $49 but cheap enough). I wanted that because of the disk drive. Well, that was kind of a nightmare. We had to go to the downtown Hess’s store as that is the only place that had them. My dad took me but I don’t think he was all that keen of spending any money. We hung around for hours to get to talk to someone who could help us and when the guy went back to check if any were left he came and told us no. Whether or not they were really sold out I don’t know. Needless to say, after that my ti did very little. (I did like playing Parsec). Then I got my hopes hung of on a Coleco Adam. That got squashed when all the problems with the Adam arouse. Finally, I won $100 from a local radio station and used that to get my 800xl. I got that because. Student of my dad told him if I got one of those and a disk drive he could get me all the games that I wanted. The rest is history.

Well said. I do know a big complaint was the tractor feed “crumbs”. The 1027 printer used regular paper and I know on my epson printer I did use the tractor feed paper that left “virtually” no fragments when the feeds were removed. That was a big selling point for that paper.

That’s also a demon dialer in my desk. I am pretty sure I still have that but I never really knew how to use it and I don’t think it ever worked properly.

If anyone in the Lehigh valley area of Pennsylvania knows who bought all this stuff off of me let me know. I would love to try to track down the last known owners of my beloved Percom and quads. Lol I am thinking it was sold late 1989 early 1990. There was also an astra 2001, usr 9600 baud modem and a metal blue box with all my software.

That was probably right before I started fooling with putting up a bbs. I had a ring detector for the 1030 modem. It was in a blue project box but it isn’t on the desk so this was probably a few months before I put up my bbs. I used the hell out of that 1027 printer. I remember the apostrophe was different than most of the current typewriters apostrophe and I took a bunch of heat from teachers who demanded my papers be typed up! (Can you imagine that in today’s day and age) They always complained that the apostrophe wasn’t right and would claim I used a dot matrix printer which for someone reason was off limits in the mid 80s.

Found a pic of my original Percom and Drives. RFD Board and Mitsubishi Quads.

Been going through some of my parents old pics. Found these two from the past. The second one was by original rig before I put up the Alcatraz bbs, and the first one is a pic of my Percom RFD with Mitsubishi Quads and a Supra 10 Meg Hd. Along With the old Lightning 2400 Baud Modem.

Well, before a year or two ago I never had an At-88. In the 80s I only had the rfd for my bbs. I find them really both functionally the same. The At-88 may be a little quicker to recognize a disk and start booting. But that could be because it is a single density drive. Otherwise, I would say they are pretty much the same. I haven’t pulled the At-88 out in quite some time so maybe there are some differences that I don’t remember. Will have to drag her out and play around with it.

Well, I have just about got all my Percoms back up and in running shape. However of the big rfd-s2 it is missing the board cover plate. Does anyone have a spare they would sell? Or better yet does anyone know of someone/somewhere I can have one made or 3D printed? I would prefer a metal one but I don’t have a brake to bend the metal and don’t think any of my local hardware stores will do that for me. So I would love to have one (or 3) 3D printed. Again I don’t have the equipment or the skill to do this myself. Any suggestions? I did see someone was selling a tandon 100-1a with it attached on ebay. But 1 it was too overpriced and two I have enough full height drives floating around. Lol.

I actually got another rom programmer. A GQ-4X. I can’t remember but I may have used that one to dump the AT-88 rom. I can’t remember. I got that so I could program the 2716 I had because the eeproms I ordered got canceled with all the Covid-19 stuff going on in China. Not sure if it matters but I figured I would let you know.

Here is a pic of my At-88 Rom

Figured it out. I forgot to convert the .st to .hfe

Hey all, It has been a couple of years that I touched my ST, but I am getting it up and running again. Quick question. I have an HXC2001 external model, and I updated the firmware and autoloader. Now, I am having issues with loading images with long filenames. Does the HXC firmware not support long filenames? Or is there a setting I need to fix? Thanks! Craig

Here is my AT-88 Rom dump. at88.bin

Here is my latest Percom acquisition. It is the at88 expander drive. I never saw one of this back in the 1980s, so when I saw this pop up, I grabbed it. Also solves my hunt for a case for two half height drives. It is nothing special, just a single sided tandon 100 and a power supply (missing the fuse holder) but thought it was somewhat unique.

Hey guys, I have been search on and off over the last year for a singe full height/double half height 5 1/4 inch floppy case. Some pop up and usually has drives in it and is overpriced. I don’t need the drives. I have an 80track 5 1/4 and a spare 3.5 inch drive that I would like to put in the case. Does anyone have any leads on these cases. I know back in the 80s they were a dime a dozen but can’t seem to locate any for a reasonable price. Thanks!

hmmm. couldn’t attach the rom file on Tapatalk. here it is. atr8000.BIN

Hey guys, couple months ago I got an ATR-8000. I finally got around to getting it out. Haven’t tested it yet but I did dump the rom if anyone is interested. I included some pics in case there is something else interesting about this particular unit. Craig