AMenard

Received the 65XE today. It's in perfect condition with almost no yellowing. The PSU is a small model, that I don't intend to use once my switching 5v 5A PSU gets here. I'll crack it open this weekend to inspect and see what board rev is in there. To bad the emmu are unobtainium now because if it's the rev with the empty spot for the emmu and extra ram I'd be tempted to install sockets and mod it to 128k. In any case it'll be my spare machine for the 800XL that I do intend to mod to the max :-)

In my province, Quebec, you don't have to pay taxes on used good sold between individual. If eBay charge you taxes, you can always ask for a refund when filling your taxes. Of course if you buy from a commercial entity selling on eBay, ie an eBay store, you do have to pay taxes. Beside, in the good old days of early eBay, if you went to the forum and/or consulted the FAQ in regards to selling on eBay, they did say that you had to take taxes into account. They just didn't collect them for you, but you were supposed to declare your eBay selling as a revenu and pay taxes on it. Again, this didn't apply in my province for used goods sold between individual, but if you were selling as a business... Now, most governments have put legislations in place because a whole lot of sellers never, ever, declared any revenu from selling stuff on eBay. The side effect is that now when you purchase something from another country, you do end up paying taxes just as if you had walked into their store and bought the goods. I do end up paying US taxes on my US purchase even though I'm Canadian.

Hi, One book I got recently in a trade is "Programme Interne du C64", a french (well belgian edition but written in french) book that contains the whole assembly code for the C64 Kernal. There isn't any text other than the listing. I find it facinating that such a book exist.

Why? There isn't really an alternative to eBay for retro gear and part. Posting WTB threads on forum or Facebook doesn't really work for me and, at least for me, retro gear is hard to come by locally. Beside, check with your state/province revenue service. For example, used goods are exempted from tax in my province if it's a person to person sale, so I could ask for a refund during tax filling.

I wonder why the 8bit guy never considered porting Planet X2 to the A8 line...

Hi, Today people expect realism and high resolution images full of minute details from their gaming console. Which is fine for us with the visual acuity to resolve such detail. We also expect fast and involved gameplay, at least the younger gen does. But there's another use case for those old 8 bit console with big blocky graphic: Geriatric entertainment. I take care of an 84 years old parent. She's nearly deaf and her eye sight is also fading. She's also suffering from osteoporosis so she doesn't go out all that much anymore. But what she love, when there's nothing on the TV to watch is to play a game of Mouse Trap on the Coleco Gemini! She also enjoy the 2600 Pool cart and Donkey Kong. On the 42" TV those blocky low res, high contrast graphics are perfectly visible to her and even the dead can hear those atari sounds 🙂 The simple joystick isn't confusing to her at all with its single button. It would be a waste of time to make her understand how to navigate a PS4 interface and what buttons does what. But on the Gemini/2600, turn console on and start game.

Well... Something was bugging me with my recent purchase of my 65XE. I was happy to finally get back into the Atari club, but that missing PBI and all soldered chip, making modding more difficult, was a bit of a downer. So I shopped around and found an 800XL at a nice price for me. I'll probably get a VBXL and a U1mb next month for it. I also received my "Biggus Dickus" SIO2SD today.

My C64 breadbin has probably the best svideo signal I've ever seen and I've owned many C64, from the first early model with 5pin video to the C128. This C64 doesn't have any jail bar or artefact. I'm even reluctant to recap it as to not jinx it... I use a new Commodore4ever PSU with mine.

You barely register on the troll meter... Go on 4chan to practice a bit.

One to power the rPi as suggested by those before me, the other to a buzzer in the kitchen to let the wife know that you need a new beer and a sandwich 🙂

Get a C64 with a 1541 then.... BRRRRRRRRRRRR....toc-toc-toc-BRRRRRRRRRRR-toc-toc-toc-toc... 🙂

Got the last piece of my Atari setup. A fellow member here, Masschamber, sold me an SIO->Parallel interface. Back in the day I owned a 1027, but those have pretty much self destroyed by now. So to replace it I have an Epson ActionPrinter 4000 configured as an FX-80 via dip. It'll be shared via a switchbox with my C64. Now the hardest part, waiting for all of the stuff to get here...

I use a Toshiba DVDR myself (The same model that AVGN used to capture his gameplay back in the day). It accept RF, composite & svideo and output component & hdmi with or without upconversion.

Thanks! I always wondered about that. I was pretty much the only Atari owner in my neighborhood back in the day and I saw them advertised in magazine a lot but I was afraid of getting one and stuck with the 1050. Of course today those 3rd party drive don't popup on ebay often.

Hi, Back in the days, there were 3rd party disk drives available for the A8 line. Drives like the Indus GT and of other manufacturer. I'm wondering how compatible to the Atari drives were those when it came to copy protected software. I know that on the Commodore side, using a 3rd party drive was a hit&miss ordeal. How compatible were they?

The "specialised" tape drives like the Atari and Commodore have a fix audio level and tone adjustment, while on the general purpose cassette players those have to be set manually and are the main cause of load failure.

OH I love the XEGS! I just forgot to include it in the list. Also the modular design would have given me some trouble on my retro table 🙂 They also sell for a bit more. The 65XE will do the job, until I can afford a 130XE, as a code testing machine and for the occasional gaming session. Of course I could always fit a 1meg ram expansion in it but the IC desoldering scares me a bit. I'm equiped to do it and know how, but since I've been hunting for an affordable working atari for the last 6 month or so I don't want to risk it for now. If it was a socketed 800XL I'd do it in a hearthbeat.

I'm grateful to those who list stuff on ebay, especially those who takes the time to test their stuff instead of posting "untested" stuff. I'm grateful because in my neck of the wood, Province of Quebec, people don't put any value on older stuff. Even antiquities are easilly thrown away. This makes retro gaming and computing harder to do here since very few items were kept once they were replaced. Some brands of computers are really hard to come by locally, like Atari 8bit stuff for example. You can sometime be lucky, like I was this summer with a big Commodore lot from an ex pirate BBS owner who passed away, but those are rare.

Thanks!

How?

I bought a 1050 Floppy drive, a new Dos 2.5 floppy/manual & a 1010 in need of a new belt. Not even sure why I got the 1010 except maybe because I have the dataset with my C64 lol... So now I'm only missing the centronic interface. I now have both a C64 setup and an Atari setup. This should cover most, if not all, my 8bit computer needs. Sadly the Atari computer line wasn't all that popular in my province so I don't expect to find a 1,000 floppies lot like I did this summer for the C64. If I ever do, I'll get an Atarimax to rip them to files.

I know it may not be a solution for you but in my case I ended up buying a used, XP running DELL computer with a 3.5" floppy for $20 at a recycler. Windows 10 is bad at managing legacy hardware.

The VIC and C64 (breadbin) were built to be used. The urban myth is when a C64 stop working, you put it in a drawer for a couple of weeks and it'll heal itself 🙂 But there are a few things that are prone to go bad on the C64. The PLA is destroying itself due to the process used in making that chip. It can easilly be replaced by a modern part. The 78xx voltage regulators also have to be eventually replaced as they also wears out eventually and fail. Replacement are readilly available also. And of course the resin filled PSU which everybody should trash and buy a modern replacement from Ray or Commodore4ever or make your own.

Hi, I'm looking for some complementary bits and pieces for my setup: Atari 1010 working Pokey chip for my stereo mod. I live in Canada but will gladly pay for the shipping. Note that I don't need the PSU for the drives as I have my own homemade PSU for those.

Thank you so much. This will be quite usefull.