kheller2

Week 25 of 1983.

Is there an ink stamp of "203" on the sticker?

The 1050 probably isn't loading anything anymore because U1 LM3086 is fried (Easily happens) or the heads are dirty from reading your old disks (often happens). Make sure your cartridge socket teeth are not bent and shorting. You should be able to get into diags with option, that button goes right to the GTIA. Ground pin 12 of the GTIA should do the same thing. Part of me thinks the BASIC ROM is toast. You could remove that, and it should boot w/o it. Remember to give time during power cycles, at least 5 seconds. If you can turn it on now with start down and hear the buzz, that at least signals part of the OS is still working. Turn on the 1050, then the 800XL, do you still get boot errors? - again signs the OS is working. StarRaiders doesn't have any diagnostic code (the self test is in the OS ROM). Star Raiders is considered a "diagnostic cartridge" because it has bit set in its own ROM (the diagnostic cart bit) that bypasses much of the OS initialization. SALT probably does too (but I'm not sure).

Couple of thoughts…. keyboard not working: ribbon cable issues/ corrosion/ not seated right, goes through 4051s, then to pokey. Silver keys go to other chips. You said you don’t have the power light coming on, check your ribbon and how it’s plugged in. how can you get boot error messages from the 1050 yet also a blue screen and stuck cursor? Is the cursor only when not hooked to the 1050? That sort of implies BASIC or MMU or PIA. however, can you boot with option down and run the self test…or is SALT the only thing working?

So, the later in the year 1984 stamp on the serial number will indicate if you have all sockets or not. Put another way, before summer 84, all were socketed? And basic C is also an aid for socketless boards.

Neither the Dynasty short boards or the TONG long board were designed with CGIA. There are '83 800XLF schematics with CGIA, but I don't think any samples exist in the wild. Designs moved to using KERI instead.

Some of the Avalon Hill games were on cassette and in big boxes just like the disk version, for obvious game playing reasons.

Why yes, there is a whole population of French folk in Illinois that brought SCART to the states in the 70s. 🤥

I said this many pages back. yes, people are crazy on eBay. Case in point: https://www.ebay.com/itm/313835006515? $1200 for a 65XE, $100 shipping. But I think it does come with a monitor, and 2 game cards.

@Dropcheck How are things going?

I need a 1400XL and a 1200XL. Of course custom ones are nice too, like a 1250XL, 1200XLS, ...

@Beeblebrox Are these 600XL board different from the one you converted here, which is a CHELCO REV 8A? I was comparing it to this PAL 600XL that was for sale:

There should only be two main 1050 bezel types, as there are two different 1050 cases: tandon vs world storage mechs.

Oh, all the DOSs are okay. In fact, I used Atari DOS 3 for a while before switching to Sparta with a USD kit. Atari DOS 4 was some historical fun playing. Even DOS XE was briefly used, but I sort of stuck to Sparta land.

I think there was a large effort involved in getting the proper DD disks created for Indus and ATR. It might be better to stay in the DD format, but that wasn’t Atari’s direction with the 1090 or sweetpea.

I'm assuming that the same software that runs on the ATR8000, INDUS and even C128 would work just fine once the IO is worked out. Assuming we get them converted to the 1050 ED/SD format? Another thread that was used to build disks :

The motherboards for NTSC and PAL are identical, just the components vary -- like every XL

Interesting that the 600XL service manual has slightly different instructions from the original schematics, I think. PAL should have R140 removed, R200 removed and C200 should be 100PF not 4.7PF (NTSC).

Assuming these are Z80As in the 1090, there are plenty of Sinclair 1000, TRS80s and Colecovisions to contribute

But there are DOSs to avoid... like 3, and 4. 😇

So here is where I need some education, not being that familiar with what sophia2 provides to a PAL system. This is what I've gathered: You have two NTSC 600XL boards you converted to PAL. You know PAL 600XL composite output (on PAL manufactured boards) is great. You even have a dead PAL 600XL you can use as a reference. You did not install the passive components needed for PAL video because sophia2 provides these? That's where I'm confused. According to the official, and probably not correct schematics, PAL boards should not have W2 and R140. W2 being removed feeds into U24 and also needs a R120 pullup. W2 is what ties the GTIA OSC line through the crystal Y1 and then feeds into GTIA PAL line.

I would be interested. But realistically how many of these do we think people would ever want? 100 (and I think that is a stretch). Z80s are laying all over the place in tons of things. I'll spend $500 to hoard 50 of them if that's what people need to keep this project going. I never even booted up my Indus CPM system! But sure... I'll pitch in to help.

The MIO and BB would probably have a problem since the V: and T: and D: are bus devices.

I few random things I remembered today, that I had forgotten... FREDDIE has pin 36 marked as " 16KCAS' " "In Atari 600 with 16K RAM, this line connects to RAM chips; CAS' connects to PBI." Not a single 600(XL) ever shipped with FREDDIE, AFAIK. The "XL COMPUTER WITH MUFFY & KERRI" (circa 8/28/84) came in 64K and 128K varieties, both with a WD1770 & 8049. This was to be the 800XLD (800XLF + Keri and DISK), a low cost 1450XLD. The intent was to eventually have XL's with built in floppy controllers and then sell low cost disk drives (just like the ST). MUFFY=FREDDIE(s?)+MMU 68PIN Package. "Dynamic Memory Management Unit" #65105 (This also had AMY chip select lines, along with the 8049 and WD1770) KERI= CGIA (ANTIC+GTIA) + POKEY -- this was also supposed to be used on the SUPER XE GAME MACHINE (65C816) along with a new(?) "FREDY" -- June 88. The XLCR = FREDDIE, SALLY, PIA + KERI FRED was the original FREDDIE design for the original 600. FREDDIE was for the XL line. PORKEY (circa 3/9/83 for the LIZ NY board) was Pokey + 4050s (no POTS), supposedly later renamed "MEG" and in CMOS.

Are .bin files .rom files? Not to be confused with .car that have binary loader headers. 😛