chessplayerjames

I did try the INPUT_PULLUP code that you sent me. Unfortunately, it didn't work. However, now I manually hold the pins in the cable, so my transfers are now working well (slowly but surely). After a few hours last night, I managed to transfer 10 (out of over 50) floppy disks.

Hello all 8-bit Atari fans! I have finally managed to allow my Atari (800XL) to communicate with a modern PC, using an Arduino, and three cables (input, output, and ground), and it seems to work just fine, between Atari and PC. Using RespeQt, everything flows smoothly. However, if I throw an Indus GT drive in the mix, things don't work so well. I've tried an SIO chain, but the Indus GT drive goes kind of crazy (doesn't load anything, seems like it writes something...and the head moves around during boot). I have also tried a backup program (Disk Wizard), and reading from the Indus GT drive, and then (at the prompt), disconnecting it, and connecting the wires for the Arduino, and then writing the sectors to a virtual disk...it worked the first time (the first 198 sectors), but for the second try after repeating the process, I got an error saying Bad Checksum (in RespeQt, it gave that error), and then on the TV screen, an error message, and that the backup process had aborted... Is there a way I can overcome that error? Or something else I should (could) try? I would like to back up all of these old floppies, before any more bit rotting occurs... Thank you for any and all help!

Ok, I finally got it to work (turns out, I was supposed to connect to different pins on the arduino). Does anybody know how I could connect the Command Line and have this used in the SIO chain? I'd love to be able to back-up all of my old floppy discs.

I think I am very close to it working. I am using the following code in Arduino: AspeQt gives a "get status" message when I turn the Atari on, but doesn't really get past that. Cannot save (or load) anything. I have the Ground pin connected, and the TX and RX pins connected to their respective slots in the SIO cable.

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately, the government shut the mail service down a few months ago (and doesn't have plans on reopening it). My brother-in-law has an arduino...any chance I could use that? It uses serial if I'm not mistaken, has a USB interface, and uses 5V (I think). Has anybody had experience using Arduino as a SIO2PC? If so, what would I need to do? EDIT: I don't need SIO2SD, just a simple SIO2USB interface, that will work with RespeQt.

Thank you for your response. I finally had some time (and some jump cables) to try and put this together. Unfortunately, it is not working. Items used: I have tried this two ways: Connecting the USB to Serial adapter to my computer (USB), connecting the board (shown in above image) to serial cable (female and male RS232 9 pin), and then connecting jump cables from GND, TXD, and RXD, to pins 4 (tried 4 and 6), 3, and 5 respectively on the SIO cable (note, I connected the male connectors of the jump cables directly into the SIO cable connector. When I tried this, every time I would get a weird buzz, and then see the Ready prompt on the Atari (800XL). Connecting the USB to Serial adapter to my computer (USB) and then directly connecting the jump cables to the male serial connector, in the respective ground, TXD, and RXD pins, directly to pins 4 (tried 4 and 6), 3, and 5 respectively on the SIO cable. When I tried this, I would get a yellowish/brownish screen, but nothing would display, and there was no sound either. On both tests, I tried with RespeQt. I tried all of the handshakes available (I also tried connecting a jump cable directly from the RI pin in the Serial cable to pin 7 on the SIO cable, and trying that handshake. No luck either. Are there any special settings that I should try to change in Device Manager? I know I am on the correct COM port (4). Any advice? Thank you for any and all help!

Hello again everybody, I tried purchasing one of those USB to serial cables, unfortunately the package didn't arrive on time for somebody to bring it down to Ecuador for me. I purchased a USB to male serial (9 pin RS232) converter...would that be of any use? I also bought this other deal...not sure if either of these devices are useful or not...I do also have a spare SIO cable. Any ideas? A thousand thanks to all for any and all help! Pictures of purchased (hopefully useful) items:

Actually, I do have a couple of old computers with those serial ports, and was hoping I could go directly from the Atari to a serial port, with a serial cable (I thought I could do that, since others went from SIO to serial to USB, I figured I could go from SIO to serial directly). Thank you manterola and TGB for your advice I suppose I can try with a USB to serial cable. Edit: Would this be ok to buy?

Greetings to all Atari fans! I've finally given up on getting a costly cable/converter down to Ecuador, so I'm going to try DIY. Question, could I use a female to female Serial RS232 cable? (same on both ends) Could I cut one end off, and connect the three little wires to the internal pins of the Atari, and connect the other Serial connector to my computer? Is this possible, or would I need some sort of mid-translator/converter? Thank you, James Edit: Cable looks like this:

This solution worked perfectly. I officially feel stupid now. Thank you very much. Should I assume that I need to use semicolon in inputs as well?

STARTSTATE and NUMSTATES are 0 and 126 respectively (that is the number they should be giving, and they are "correctly" printed to the text file, except for the extra spaces). STARTSTATE represents the entry point of the automaton, and NUMSTATES is the number of states in the automaton. INPUTS$ is the list of characters that the automaton accepts. Although the order could be changed (I tried it just in case and got the same result of the spaces), it doesn't (in my theory) affect the outcome. EDIT: To be specific, there are ten spaces at the start of each line.

Good evening all, (Background Information) I am creating a program in BASIC, and sometimes when I write text files to disk, I get a weird "tab" character, comprising of several spaces at the beginning of each line. As evidence of so many spaces, the file size is considerably greater than it should be (is several bytes bigger for each line, and in one file that had hundreds of lines, the file-size was almost five times bigger). EDIT: There are exactly ten spaces at the beginning of each line. My code looks something like this: I have made other BASIC programs that do not do these weird tab characters. Example: This has no "tabs" or spaces at the beginning of each line (like the first photo shows). What am I doing wrong here? Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, James

Thank you for the reply, unfortunately I am limited to typing in the Basic code since I have no way to communicate with any modern hardware. I am looking into getting an SIO2PC converter soon.

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I cleaned the head with some alcohol and it seems it is now able to read some disks. About the CopyMate, is that a program for copying disks? I have around 30 or so disks, so it would take me quite a while to copy all of them. Thanks, James

Hello all retro Atari users, I haven't used my Atari for around a year now. I hooked everything up yesterday, and the Atari 800XL still works fine. However I am having severe issues with the disk drive. I was able to load one of my homemade Basic programs and some songs that I had composed. However, any further attempts to load any games, Dos, or reload the Basic program have failed. I get g4 and g5 errors on the drive on ANY disc that I am trying to load. I do not know much about drive maintenance (my young age relative to 8-bit computers may be involved). I do not know if I should try cleaning the head or if I need to put some kind of grease in the rails where the head moves. I know that the information on the disks is still intact (for the most part anyway), because I was able to load several things on my floppy disk, and later it would try to load and after a few beeps would give the error "blurp". After repeated attempts, it won't correctly load anything anymore, so that's why I think it's a drive maintenance issue. All help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, James

Interesting, I do have a disk that says "Pinball Construction Set" on it. I attempted to load it (I think it needs a translator) but I was unsuccessful. I did look at the contents/files on the disk, and they were indeed the same as the other disk I was mentioning. It must have something to do with the Pinball. Thanks.

Thank you for your reply. I did try, (presumably in DOS) and I did C and then DEMO1.PB,E: and I got a bunch of gibberish characters, but nothing really interesting. I have the impression that it's a graphic or something, but I have no clue on how to open it.

Unfortunately, I still have no way of allowing the Atari (or disk drive) to communicate with the computer in any way Thanks anyway for your help.

Thank you for your reply. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but if I put L for "Load Binary File", I input the name of the file, it looks like it does do some loading, but it never does anything. What should I do then? Unfortunately, I can't find any DOS with a command line...

Hello again everybody. I pondered whether I should open a new thread or not, but I couldn't really find this anywhere on the internet... Does anybody know what the .pb extension is or how to load it? I have a floppy disk with demo1.pb, demo2.pb, etc., but at boot time there is nothing that boots, and if I load DOS and try to LOAD "D:DEMO1.PB" it doesn't do anything (Error 21). How can one load these files? Thanks for any and all help, James

Thank you BikerBob. Could you please point me to one of those FTL boards that are so cheap? I can't seem to find the right one. Unfortunately those otherones are a bit out of my budget.

Hello again everybody. What is the best recommendation for allowing the Atari to communicate with a computer? I've seen some SIO2PC adapters and what not online; which one do you guys recommend? Unfortunately my wallet is quite limited, and whatever is cheapest would work best. Is there a way to make an adapter/cable, or would that be somewhat time consuming? Thanks for any and all help, James

Thank you very much feather! I have finally "perfected" (with your help) a little program that lists only the BAS program files, and it assigns a number for each one (also adding DOS at the end), and whichever number you select, it will immediately load that BAS program file into memory (or DOS if it's selected). Your help is very much appreciated (I had fun spending most of the afternoon coding). Unfortunately, I have absolutely no way of making my computer or any other device I have communicate with the Atari :'( Therefore, I don't think I'll be able to apply these instructions (if I read them correctly). Thank you though, for the time in helping me. Topic not closed, if anybody else would like to take a shot at any of my other questions, please feel free! Another Question! - Interference with TV set?

Good morning all! I hope you're all doing great. I kind of let off of Atari stuff for a couple of months due to work, school stuff, girlfriend, and relapsing back into my Final Fantasy addiction. Anyway, I've been doing some major work with my PC these days, and haven't been able to use it much due to doing resource intensive tasks, so I have returned to the realm of retro computing. I have several questions and what not, so I'll divide it all into spoilers because this is a long post... Background Information MAIN PROBLEM - BASIC Program Save Corrupted Floppy? Second Question - How to AUTORUN DOS? Third Question - .PB? Fourth Question - Faulty Keys? Fifth Question - Folders on Floppies? Sixth Question - Recover Seemingly Bad Sectors? Seventh and Thankfully Last Question - List Files on Disk? Anyways, I think that's enough for now. I'll be glad for any and all help, and I would like to thank each of you for reading.

Thank you everybody for your help. I have cleaned the head on the floppy drive so I think that's good. Two of the games that I want to play won't work... Boulder Dash is on a floppy with 3 other games, and they work fine. However, Bolder Dash being the first game, it tries to load but it won't...it makes that other beep that isn't the loading beep (it's the one I hear every time there is an error), and it hangs. The other ones load fine, just not bolder dash. I have tried various drive speeds, but the speed that is almost slowest works the best, but Bolder Dash still won't load. Another disk that has Lode Runner on it won't seem to work either...may be faulty sectors or something... Anyway, I've managed to create a BASIC program (one that was in the manual) and save it to disk, and after turning off, load the program from disk. However when I load the program, I can only run it. Is it possible to load the code and make changes to it, or would I have to write it all over again? Thanks for all of the help