DavidMil

As with so many other Hi-Tec keyboards, the space bar quit working. Pulling the space bar off and checking the connector underneath showed that the two sides were making good contact. So I fired up the desoldering gun and when I tried to suck the solder out, both pins came right out of the board and into my desoldering gun. So now I desoldered all keys and removed the circuit board, and sure enough both are broken off at the plastic. I'm pretty sure I can solder a couple of new wires from the connectors to the circuit board, but that's not the only problem with this old keyboard. As DrVenkman noted above several of the white plungers are cracked and the keys tend to pop off. This can be gotten around with a little super glue, but I'd like to have a good replacement and keep this one as an emergency spare. David

That's what I wanted to know. Thank you JR> David

Brad at Best says he is out of Hi-Tek keyboards for the 800, but he has a couple of Stackpole keyboards left. I have no idea what the difference is, so could someone please enlighten me. Thanks, DavidMil

After thinking about what I did, I see the confusion (caused by me as usual). All I really did was use the SIO2USB device to load MYCOPIER via APE. Then I just copied disks to other disks with the sector copier. And that is why I am asking how do I copy entire disks to my hard drive? Sorry for the poor communication skills, David

I made exact copies of the disks using two drives with "MYCOPIER' after releasing the SIO drive . I never put them on a hard drive. David

1. From the bottom of the case to the bottom of the SIO connector is 30mm on both of my 800's. Be aware that both of mine have new feet from My Atari so this number could be a bit smaller on other 800's. I got this measurement by placing my 800's on a desktop and measuring the height with a metric tape measure. 2. The SIO opening (cut out) is 15mm tall (the SIO connector is 14mm over all height). 3. The depth from the farthest outside edge of the case to the face of the SIO connection is 7.5mm Hope this helps! DavidMil

Ok. I have a SIO2USB device, and have made quite a few exact disk images using 'MyCopier' but how do I back up a disk to my Windows 7 HD? Do I need to make a separate folder for each disk (I have over a 100 disks) and how would I point the backup to each folder? David

They also made great lunch boxes! David

Sure! They don't do me any good now. PM me an address and I'll mail them to you. David

I have noticed that quit a few of the white jackets look like they've been sitting in rusty water. Could this be the iron 'melting' off the disks? Although they have been in a sealed plastic container it was not in any way considered air tight. Here in Houston, with an average humidity of about 70% coupled with high temps from the attic, I really didn't think there was a chance for any of them! David

You always make me smile Paul! But to be honest, I fear my wife's big black cast iron skillet much, much more than any alien with a super duty Ray Gun! David

One was an APX disk, one was an No. 1 Elephant disk, and the last one was a ValuLife disk from Verbatim. David

Something that I have discovered (after loosing three old disks). These disks have been in a sealed plastic box for over 30 years in my attic and I have started looking at them. Here is the problem that I am having: The disks will read one time but NEVER a second time. In fact the disks are no longer usable after one time in any of the three 1050's that I use. But they will all read once. I've tried to recover the data after the first read with Disk Wizard II but each time through the recovery attempt the disks develop more and more bad sectors. Now these three disks can no longer be formatted! I don't have this problem with newer disks that I have purchased from Best, so I know it's not the drives. I guess the material on the disks has corrupted and one pass through the drive is all it's good for. So, what I have decided to do is use APE to make an image of each disk without even trying to load it. This is going to take some time but time is something I have a lot of these days. DavidMil

I can't say that I offered them commercially, I'd make a dozen or so and take them to the different user group meetings around Houston. They always sold quickly. David

Sadly many of the larger user groups were exactly the same. Very, very cliquish to say the least. I guess I was accepted by most because I had good products to sell. The write protect bypass and blank floppy disks for really cheap prices. The real fun was with the small user groups where everyone was a newbie. I remember one group that was amazed when I showed them a small basic program to write circles in graphics mode. I remember another group that watched in horror when I deliberately pushed my 800 off the edge of the table then powered it up to show them how tuff Atari's were built (I only did that on carpeted floors and not too often). But when Atari abandoned the 8 bit machines the user groups seemed to disappear too. David

Thank you Paul. I hope this holiday finds you all (notice I didn't say y'all) together and warm. And to everyone else: Merry Christmas to all, and I hope those of you that don't observe this holiday will still find peace and happiness. DavidMil Kingwood, Texas

I was looking through the two full shoeboxes of floppies I have when I came across a disk that had a hand written label on it that said: TOPDOS Eclipse software Anyone have any idea what it was about? This disk won't boot so I set it aside to see if the data can be recovered/repaired later. DavidMil

Thank you Tim! I'll have a look at it tomorrow. David

I found a source for the finial version of the 1200XL ROM chips ( the one with the 'R' on the rainbow screen). Brad at Best told me he is out of them, but I found a gentleman in Canada that will sell them for $55.00 a set, shipping included. These are EPROMs but I bought a set from him and they work fine. The reason they are so high is that he has to use an unusual set of EPROMs to make the copies. Anyway the company is HobbyROMs (www.hobbyroms.com). DavidMil

Will do Mathy! David

You can buy the SIO hoods complete with connectors for about $5.00 each from Best Electronics. Then you can cut to length the cables you want to make. Whenever I make an SIO cable I always solder the wires to the connectors and put a tie wrap inside the hood around the cable to keep the stress off of the connections. David

It was a version of MyDOS 3.05 that supported the 256K upgrade for the old Atari 800. This upgrade worked seamlessly with with SynFile+ and Syncalc. When you booted either of these two programs they would say "288K RAM Present". It also gave you a 946 sector double density RAM disk. Ross Beers created this version and it was originally put out by LAACE BBS under the file name MYDOS256. I ask this because I came across the RAM and ROM board upgrades while I was looking for a still AWOL 600XL system board that I got angry at a long time ago and shelved. As I recall this upgrade worked well with Omnimon! when I wanted to load a whole disk to be; well, modified (some would say hacked). Any help would be appreciated! Thanks, DavidMil

I'm going to hate myself later for not buying that when I saw it. The price included free shipping too! David

I've run across two 1200XL's that had weak connections in the sockets. One was on a RAM socket, and the other was on one of the ROM sockets. I've also had a delay chip go bad too. You might want to look for 5V DC on all the sockets first and then follow up with the logic probe. Look for discolored or burned components and also make sure you don't feel any hot components. One other thing... Are you using the same power supply on both the good and bad computer? DavidMil

If anyone is interested, I just saw an ATR8000 for sale on ebay. Says it's fully functional and has a list price of $265.00. This is not an auction. This is not mine, I just letting everyone know. David