DavidMil

I thought everybody played the Ultima series. What was the name of the game that had the big lion or tiger guys and Luke Skywalker and then all had been digitized? Seven Cities of Gold. There were other, but it's 1AM here and I'm too tired to think of any more. DavidMil

When you first turn the drive on, do you hear the head move? If you're not sure, you'll have to open it up to see (easy to do). Also at that time you can see if the drive is spinning the disk. If both of those actions seem to occur, then you'll need to clean the head thoroughly. DON'T put a good disk in for these tests until after you have cleaned the head! I've seen everything from dust bunnies the size of a pickup trucks to a dead lizard stuck to an 810 head. DavidMil

YAC is the one I have almost always used the most. The book unfortunately shows it. It's almost like having a bunch of loose leaf pages in a very dog eared cover. There are so many cryptic notes in there that I just shake my head in wonder (and confusion). I could download the books but I like to have them in my hands when I'm other places besides in front of the computer. Plus reading from an electronic screen seems to give me headaches after a while. That makes me grumpy and even the dog avoids me then. Anyway, thanks for all the tips. I'm going to buy several that have been suggested and a better copy of Your Atari Computer. Thanks again, DavidMil Kingwood, Texas

Well, this is kind of embarrassing, but I need some suggestions for good beginners Atari basic programing books. I used to do a lot of it and didn't need the beginners books any more, so I gave them all away. Now all my books are about memory locations, calling machine language subroutines, and graphics. These books all assume you know all the beginners stuff. So..... Help please! Here's a list of what I have: Computes first and second book of Atari Your Atari Computer (a guide to Atari 400/800) Mapping the Atari Player Missile Graphics Scrolling Made Easy and several books on Assembly Language. Thanks for any suggestions, DavidMil

Memories of Atari I have! Not going to use any names but let me tell this one... When Atari announced that they were going to destroy stock that they couldn't sell, it just so happens that I had a friend in the trucking business that was an Atari fan. When he won one of the contracts to haul stock to a dump site, apparently some of his trucks got 'lost' and ended up at the docks. From there the lost stock went to warehouses in the Caribbean to sit for awhile. Then one day someone called me and said that they had discovered a large supply of blank Atari diskettes and was I interested? He wouldn't say how many he had but he was selling disks for 5 cents apiece in lots of 10,000. I bought one lot. Them my wife and I started to go to all the computer user groups in and around Houston, Texas and sold the first 10,000 at 25 cents each in a week. There was some background work that had to be done to the disks before any Apple or Commodore or IBM or TI or any other user group would buy them; we had to remove the Atari labels! Enter my two preteen boys whom I now thank God didn't know about child labor laws. I gave them a penny apiece for each label they pulled off. They'd pull off a couple hundred labels and I'd let them play on the Atari (they did insist on the cash immediately as they finished. Smart boys!). Anyway, we were making about $5,000 dollars a month then (remember this was when you could buy a new car off the showroom for less than that) and I thought about quitting my job, which got VERY stern looks from my wife. That was a wonderful summer, and then one day two men in suits showed up at our front door and flashed their FBI badges at us. Where had we gotten all those disks? I got the receipts (thank God the wife had insisted on them) and they proceeded to tell us that this was all considered stolen goods and we may have to give up all the money we had gotten from the sales. You talk about parts of my anatomy puckering up! That was over $20,000 dollars. I said ok; what else could I say? They took all the diskettes I had left (about 200) saying I should retain a lawyer and that I may be called me to court. The good news here is that my 'friend' fled the country, and I never heard anything from him or the FBI again. Like I said, it was a wonderful summer, we bought a new car, spent two weeks in Disney World (Florida), bought many Atari games, and my wife liked it because we ate out a lot! DavidMil

If Memory serves me correctly, there needs to be three holes in the middle somewhere, and maybe some more around the edges . Other then that, construction paper is fine. David

When I was in high school all us eggheads carried slide rules. There was no such thing as a calculator except as a big 110volt table top device that was about the size of a type writer. The first 'computer' at our high school was just a keyboard and a dot-matrix printer (really just a terminal). No monitor, no mouse, not even a computer. You would type your question on the keyboard and it was 'echoed' on the dot-matrix printer. The computer also typed it's answer on the printer. 99% of the time you would get a 'that does not compute' type answer from the mainframe (wherever it was). To this day you can still type 'echo off' to turn off the visual display of keyboard input. The first real computer I saw was in the basement of Rice University. It was bigger than a two car garage, and colder than a meat locker. Data was fed into it from shoe box sized trays filled with punch cards ( about the size of lottery tickets). It was my first job after I got out of the service (military). I was a runner, meaning I took the boxes of punch cards from the data entry clerk and took them to the techs at the computer so they could feed them into the computer. If anybody cares; this was when Richard Nixon was being reelected. David

I'm sorry but I gave up on cassettes after my lab decided that they were all very crunchy. David

I have the pinouts for the 850 interface parallel port, but I was wondering if anyone has a correct wiring diagram and a program to test the port. A standard 25 pin loop back testor won't work on Atari's 15 pin port. I really don't want to start looking for an old Atari or Epson dot matrix printer to test the port. Thanks, DavidMil

Playing Warcraft/StarCraft is a LONG way from being fascinated by a little white dot that bounced around on a TV screen in the arcade at the bowling alley in the late 1970's. This wasn't a pinball machine. What could it be? It only cost a dime to play back then, and then I remember the guy at the desk telling me they were closing. Where had the time gone? When I got home I was all excited and told my wife about this electronic marvel! We bought a Pong game for Christmas that year and about a year later we bought a 2600. A couple of years later we bought a 400 and a magazine. We proceeded to type in a three page program from the magazine (and that wasn't easy on a 400 keyboard), and after twice the time to find all the problems; it worked! Ok, so how do you get the 400 to save the program? No one told about tape drives or disk drives. Finally with a heavy hearts (and some cussing) I turned off the computer. Next payday we bought a 410 and a game called, "Crush, Crumble, and Chomp". The kids played that game till I was sick of it! I was happy when our dog wanted to play and eat the cassette. We finally got an 800, which still worked when I pulled it out of the attic after 30 years. What really surprises me is that so many of the games on floppy disks still work after sitting up there for 30 years. Now that I'm retired I've got time to play them again. If this is growing old and becoming a kid again; GREAT! I like it! So let me hear your old stories. Even the ones where your spouse tells you to go sleep with your computer! DavidMil Kingwood, Texas

Soldering wouldn't be a problem. Been doing it for many years. Hardest thing was always those tiny three legged SM transistors and the tubular diodes! Thanks for the info. I'll have a look at myatari.com. David

Looking through all my old stuff I found two Omnimon plug-in boards for the old Atari 800, an actual RAMROD MMOS board still in the box with the docs for a 800, and a small Rambo XL board with a long five wire connector attached to it. Anyone have any idea what the Rambo XL board is? Thanks, DavidMil

What ever happened to Archiver Chip for the Drives? Anyone still make them, or know where one can be had for a 1050? DavidMil

As promised, here is a compilation of what I had learned. Again this is only enough to get started. I didn't add anything about pirating, or mining, or buying and selling stuff, or exploring other systems. I never found anything interesting about the drive in my exploration. If you find something please let me know. Thanks, David Milsop Kingwood, Texas Omnitrend's Quick Start.pdf

I never got any further than I am now. But I'll post what I have. Mainly it concerns buying the best ship and getting credits quickly without getting: blown to pieces, crashing on a planet, being left behind when you shuttles leave, running out of ore IV, or starving to death. The info also included using two drives so as to cut way down on disk swaps, and a set of coordinates for the fasted hyper drive jumps. Give me a day or so and I'll post what I have in a pdf file. David

If you've not done much solder/desolder work, the main thing to remember is don't PRESS the soldering iron down into the solder joint!!! Let the weight of the iron do the work. Someone said to snip the legs off the IC. This is the way I've done it for years, and it works very well, but remember to use a very sharp and very pointy set of cutters(don't try to use diagonals). Keep the cutters perpendicular to the board and cut the legs as close to the IC as you can. When you've cut all the legs off and removed the IC, flip the board over and cut off as much of the legs that protrude through the board (don't cut so close that you scratch the board). Now you can flip the board back over and use a fine set of tweezers at the top of each leg while you apply the soldering iron to the base of the leg. Again don't press hard, be patient, when the solder melts just pull the leg of the IC up and out of the circuit board. One of the best things you can do to when desoldering, (and I highly recommend this) is that you buy a small tube/bottle of liquid flux. Use it liberally on all the solder joints. Flux servers as a transfer medium for the heat and will cause the solder to melt MUCH faster. It also helps to prevent solder bridges from forming. After you have removed the legs of the old IC, you'll need to get some solder wick (braded stranded copper), again apply some flux to the wick, rest the wick on the solder joint and put the iron on the edge of the solder joint. This will draw the solder from the hole into the wick. Don't remove the iron too quickly as this may leave some of the solder in the hole. One more thing; good soldering starts with a clean soldering iron tip. A dirty tip prevents heat transfer. When you get flux and desoldering wick, also get some sort of soldering iron tip cleaner. After you clean the tip flow a liberal amount of solder over it and keep doing that each time you heat the tip and then again when you power the iron off. If the solder doesn't stick to the tip, clean the tip some again using the tip cleaner . Also I use a wet sponge every so often on the tip while using it (this removes any crud that collects on the tip during use) just drag the soldering iron tip over the wet sponge so that the direction is from the handle to the tip of the iron (the tip of the iron is the last thing to touch the sponge). All this stuff (flux, desoldering wick, and tip cleaner) can be purchased through Radio Shack or any online electronics parts outlet. WOW. This turned into a beginners lesson on soldering. Sorry, my wife says I'm long winded too! David

I believe that you can get any of the 1050 chips at Best Electronic [email protected] This doesn't sound like a power problem to me, but it wouldn't hurt to look at all the electrolytic capacitors in the back half of the drive to make sure none are swollen or leaking. David

Well, I just typed a highly intelligent, amazing reply to both of you and was about to post it when it just disappeared! About six lines of jabber, Gone! So I'll try it again, but keep it shorter... I had a lot of notes in my original manual, so it was easy to start over a week ago. The ship is paid for and I've got lots of ore and credits, Just no leads. I'd like to tell my 42 year old son that after 32 years I finally finished the game. We both worked on the game a lot together when he was about 10. Thank you both and I'll post a final answer if I figure it out! David

Anyone know how to find the missing hyperspace booster? After 32 years, I discovered that two of the four disks still worked. Filled in the gaps from Atarimania's sight and started over. I've got plenty of money and ore, I just don't know where to start looking! Thanks, David

It is also possible that one of your RAM boards has a bad chip in it that is preventing some of the larger games from playing. I had this problem once and could load smaller games but not larger ones. Try switching the RAM cards around too. Super Salt Diagnostics is what you need to really test the PC. David

Remember that it is imperative that Q6 is electrically isolated from the aluminum heat sink that it is attached to by a thin plastic strip behind the TIP 110 (Q6) and a plastic sleeve around the screw. If the TIP 110 shorts to ground your 7812 (Q8) is going to get VERY HOT very fast. Someone earlier said that he lifts cap legs to try and remove shorts. Before you start doing this, look to see if any of your electrolytic caps are swollen on the tops or sides and also look for any that appear to be leaking fluids. If you have a good volt meter you can set it to the lowest setting and start checking the positive side of the electrolytic caps to ground. On the schematics follow the circuit where the short appears to other components and see if the readings on you meter go up or down. This will give you an idea of the correct direction to go to find the short. The lower the reading ( and we may be talking about milliohms difference) the closer you are to the actual short. If one of the three big caps is bad, I would recommend you replace all three to be safe. David

Does anyone know if Newell Industries 'Ramrod MMOS Custom Operating System Board (with Omnimon)' supports David Byrd's 256K upgrade for the Atari 800? If memory serves me correctly (and that doesn't happen a lot lately), there were some chips that needed to be added to the 10K OS board too. Anyway if it doesn't support the RAM upgrade; does anyone know of a RAM upgrade that will work with the Ramrod Board? Thanks, David

The link you sent me worked fine to create an ATR file for the 1050 diagnostics disk. So if you have some type of SIO2PC adapter you should be ready to test. After you download the file (make sure your 1050 is turned off) and load it into your SIO2PC adapter you can unplug the SIO2PC adapter, turn on your drive and press one to start the tests. If pressing one doesn't work you can press two a try individual tests. David

You can't run the diagonstics from another drive (as one and two) with the Atari Diagnostic disk, so you will need two drives (both set to drive one). Make sure the bad drive is turned off, boot from the good drive and then turn it off. Then turn on the bad drive, and put the diagnostic disk in the bad drive and then run the diagnostic tests. The SIO2PC would been the good drive, then you'd have to unplug it after you load the diags, turn on the bad drive, insert the diags disk, and then start the tests. This sounded good until I discovered that the file dump on Atarimania is blank. So on top of the SIO2PC adapter you'll need to get the Atari 1050 diagnostic disk. At this point I would really recommend you send the drive to someone to fix. It costs about $50 to $60 dollars with shipping. I can give you the name of someone that I use, he is in Alabama. David Milsop Kingwood, Texas

"Fiddling' with things inside a drive when you don't know what's what is a very bad idea. Buying a SIO2PC , and then running diags on your drive is the best option at this point if you still want to do it yourself. But for about the same price (or a little more) you can send it to someone who can fix and adjust it to run like new. David