atarifanboi

All of the Atari 8 bit kit I had in the 90's that I sold to buy a Megadrive (Genesis) By then I also had an Amiga 500 and Atari ST and Mega ST 2, so I guess I felt that the 8 bits were outdated. Atari 800XL, 1050, 1010 and a shed load of original software collected over 10 years. I have now got these machines again, but the original software? Nope.

As BillC stated, and I mentioned, you will get a voltage drop across diodes in the rectifier, and since you are only using 2 out of the 4 diodes within the rectifier, and it is expecting AC, you may get some big peaks and troughs in the output. Since this is also a 36 year old computer, it is very likely to have tolerances that are much wider, and probably also lacks any capacitors for smoothing a DC input (I may be wrong here, I'm a bit of a lay engineer), and Atari were not notable for good circuit design, or for using the best components. I guess all I'm saying is that I don't want you to damage a potentially good 800, and I know I would not pump DC into an AC device. I didn't with a relatively uncomplicated 1010 tape drive, with the much more complex 800 I simply wouldn't for fear of damaging it. I know it's a bind, since I have limited funds myself, but surely getting a proper PSU would be better than having to replace the 800? Just my thoughts, honestly I understand the conundrum, I've been there myself as I have a number of old Ataris, and PSU replacement is a bind.

My 2 cents. I'd suggest you have a look at the info here: http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-are-the-power-requirements-for-my-atari-components_44.html It goes into the specs for power supplies for lots of Atari's, 800 included. A swift look confirms that the 800 requires an AC/AC power supply, so I would recommend you don't try and pump DC through the rectifier, as you may well get a voltage drop across it that means you don't have the required power to run the 800, plus given the recifier's age, it may not handle it well. IMHO, you'd be better off hanging back until you can afford a replacement form Best, or try somewhere like Element14 for an equivalent. I got a PSU for £6.52 from Element 14 in the UK that is AC/AC for a 1010 which meets the specs on the link above, I'm sure that they will have something that will work for an 800. Less risk of fried 800!!

What are people's experiences with Coleco Adam, I did always like the look, but don't remember them being that easy to get in the UK?

Thanks, I'd forgotten about that, I'll have to try and pick them up! I'm amazed that I've been able to get a Wii and a Gamecube for under £40 for both! I'd like to get a NES as I already have a SNES, so I'd then have everything but an N64, so I at least have my next targets to buy! Trouble is, both the NES and N64 are currently more expensive, so I'll just have to keep a close eye on what's for sale on eBay.

In a similar vein, Gloom on the A1200, even with my accelerator, is pretty demanding.

I've gone a bit modern lately, picking up a Wii yesterday for £17.

OK, this is a blast from the past, but I'd like to add in 3d Monster Maze for the Sinclair ZX81. I was truly amazed when I got this game home and it consumed many hours of my childhood! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze

Yep, I have a 2TB external drive and it MUST BE USB 3.0 in order for it to perform properly. Mine cost about £80 and there is no obvious difference in running games between the internal and external drives, and in fact in some cases I'd even go so far as to say that the external drive can be faster. Also, when buying an external drive for your Xbox One, there are a lot that state they are Xbox specific, and they charge more for them. Steer clear and just get a decent USB 3.0 drive with its own power supply. Mine is a Seagate.

I had limited success with retrobrite, getting a smooth consistent mix was the main problem.

In fact, Wind Waker has to have the biggest variance in price I've ever seen!

You can actually scratch £200 I've just seen a sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda: The wind waker for £499! I doubt any one in their right mind would pay that when the same game can be had unsealed for £25. Most games on eBay seem to fall in the range of £10-£20, which is acceptable I think, though I have yet to look at used game stores.

If you have any desire to boot from disk, then you'll want 2.06, but you can always check out Exxos' web store as I know he's got some TOS switcher kits that will give you options. You may also want to check out the Cosmo Ex, though there are none available until September.

Yeah, I've seen some rarer games for the cube out there at £200, needless to say I won't be spending that! There's quite a good variance with the other games, I think I'll be shopping very selectively!

For me, the first thing I like to do is a full teardown, that way you can document what is fitted, what version and year of motherboard you have, what's socketed, what's not etc, is there a blitter? That way you can make sure any upgrades will work with your machine. Also gives you a chance to clean out the years worth of crud and fluff that's acumulated!!

Ok, so I bought a Gamecube today for the princely sum of £17 or $24.55 if you happen to be reading this on the other side of the Atlantic! Not boxed, but that doesn't bother me massively.

Sure, I get that, but there are countless threads on this forum that have strayed from the original intent, my intent was only to add something of interest, because thats how I've been able to expand what I know. In an effort to get things back on track, as I said earlier in the thread I use, and have used in the past with a lot of success: Steem SSE Hatari Altirra Atari Win800 Mess (Atari 7800) Stella (Atari 2600) But the first two are what I prefer.

It does take the guesswork out of it though

Even if you can't afford a gold account now, it's definitely worth having in the future, and it is only an annual subscription, so for me in the UK it costs just £3.33 a month, and with the free games and discounts, I think it's well worth it, and I have had a Gold account since day one with my original chunky black XBox I expect the cost in dollars will be similar, and it sounds like you can get good discount deals, I've seen offers over here fo as little as £30.99, so £2.58 a month, which I've easily redeemed in free games.

In addition, for the Rasperry Pi, theres RetroPie here: https://retropie.org.uk/ Which turns your Pi into an emulation powerhouse!!

Steem SSE and Hatari for me. Hatari will also run on a Raspberry Pi There's also a version of Hatari for Android called Hataroid, which runs pretty well.

Trawling through eBay, Gamecube's are pretty cheap at the moment in the UK, so it may be wothwhile investing before the prices get pushed up.

Exactly what I did

On my second 360, first one had some random error that meant it would sometimes work, sometimes not. It's possible that too much Halo killed it. Later one had the cooler running chipset plus HDMI out, and is still running fine, despite the 2 controllers I have looking a bit dog eared. I still have my original Xbox and controller and it all runs fine

I'm pretty sure that it says somewhere in the docs for the serial port version of the SIO2 PC by Atarimax, that it DOESN'T work with USB to serial adapters. The USB drivers for APE only work (AFAIK) with the USB version of SIO2PC. I have a Windows 10 PC running APE and it took a while to make my serial card actually work with it due to driver issues, but it does indeed work.