toddtmw

Wouldnt a simple analog TV tuner work? Something like this? https://www.amazon.com/Analog-Tuner-Output-Satellite-Receiver/dp/B01CWRVBZG/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1495304649&sr=8-11&keywords=analog+tv+tuner+-atsc Hook the Atari to the antenna/coax in, tune it to channel 3 and then use the RCA jacks out of it. I mean, this is basically a VCR without the tape part... It's not very cheap, but it is smaller than a VCR.

The name and address thing is what really annoyed me about RS (I know, this thread isn't ABOUT RS, but still...). I had a friend who worked at RS when he was in college in the late 80's. He never asked for name and address and then at the end of his shift (or between customers) he would randomly pull names and addresses out of the phone book (remember phone books?) and put them on the top of his receipt book so he wouldn't get in trouble. -Todd

Okay. Now that we've established left and right. Pull up gently on the left front corner. Does it lift at all? If so, that is what mine did. I then lifted and gently twisted it toward me to get the back left ports free and then slid the joystick ports out. This video shows it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXiToMX_JV0

This is so weird. This picture is backward of what mine looks like. All of my ports are exactly opposite what yours are. My joystick ports are on the right side, not the left. I see two holes where the screws were supposed to be. One on the left corner and one about 3/4 toward the right rear corner. Maybe someone took it apart before and didn't put those back... I stil think the principal would be the same. You should be able to lift up on your right front corner and then twist that corner toward you to effectively get the switches and ports on the back clear of the case and then pull to the right to clear the joystick ports from the case. (The SIO connector is more recessed, doesn't stick through the case as much, but you will kind of have to clear that too.)

I was thinking the same thing as I read this. And also, doesn't Radio Shcek GET most of its stuff from China? So, can't it use that loophole to save shipping costs when it ships items to its stores? Finally, I've ordered things from China. It's SLOOOW. I've always been willing to pay more to get it faster. *THAT* is what Amazon does better than most. It gets stuff out their door and to YOUR door better than almost anyone. I've reached the point now, where I'm buying more and more stuff from them rather than running to the store. If I don't need it *RIGHT NOW!*, I wait 2 days and save the trip. This includes most of what Radio Shack used to sell. IMHO, Amazon is a bigger threat to Brick and Mortar than cheap shipping from China. Todd

There are six screws on the bottom. One on each corner and then two in the middle under the keyboard. Remove those and then flip it over and lift the case up to the right (there is a mylar ribbon attaching the keyboard on the right.) Pull that out and then set the keybard part aside. Then there are three screws holding the motherboard down. One on each top corner and one by the joystick ports. Then, you kind of lift and pull it toward you. It's complicated to describe, but basically, you want to pull back on the left to get the power switch and the channel selector and the other ports away from the case and then you slide it to the left to get the joystick ports out of the case. Todd

I do not have a tape drive, but perhaps I should look into getting one. Thank you.

Mature response: "I understand your concern. I've been working with Steve for a long time, and he typically doesn't respond to inquiries about orderes, but I'm sure you will receive your orders in a timely fashion." Why are so many people on this board so negative all the time? I sent him an e-mail on 5/12 asking about something I wanted to order, no response. On 5/18, I ordered the thing I was asking about even though there was no response. On 5/19, I ordered the SIO2PC, based on recommendations in this thread. And then I e-mailed him asking if the two items could be shipped together to save postage. When I didn't receive a response and after looking at his forum and seeing an inquiry about an order there that had not received a response after a month, I thought, I would ask the helpful community here. Maybe Steve is having health issues, or is on vacation and someone here might be able to let me know that. I did receive a helpful response from someone via personal message, but out here in the public forums I got attacked. WHY? I just don't understand this. We all share a common interest and it is my goal to try to be helpful when I can. As I am relatively new here, I am not always in a position to provide assistance, but so many people have provided knowledge and assistance to me and I am learning and hope that in time I can "pay it forward". Comments like the ones quoted above serve no positive purpose and only work to make this a place where people will not want to frequent. There are not enough Atari enthusiats that we can afford to alienate any of them. Thank you to everyone who has provided help to me. I do appreciate the positive posts on this board. Todd

WOW!!! Do you think you will be able to get it working?

The new one I bought is REALLY stiff. I thought it would loosen up, but now I'm wondering if the rubber grommet has just gotten hard over time.

I bought an Atari 800xl with a 1050 drive. The drive did not have a power supply, so I bought one of those. Who got the 130XE with the non-working A key for $51? Whoever you are, you're welcome. (I stopped bidding after $50 because I didn't want to run the price up...)

Steve doesn't seem very responsive. I sent him an e-mail about a week ago about something and there was no reply. Now, I've placed 2 orders on his site and sent another e-mail. No reply. There is a forum post from back in April from somenone asking about an order they placed and never received. Then a follow up post a while later. No response. The forum there does not get a lot of posts. Am I going to have to file a credit card dispute to get my money back on the orders I placed?

Thanks. The device Lotharak is out of right now acts as both a siotopc and as a 1050topc. I'd rather be able to do both things.

Is there anyone that happens to live in the Cincinnati, Ohio area that would let me copy a DOS disk? I have acquired a computer and 2 1050's but am waiting for lotharak to get the 1050toPC in stock so I have no way to get content onto disks. I'd like to play around writing some basic programs, but without DOS, I cannot save anything. Thanks. Todd

It looks like some (alll?) 800XL's do not support S-Video. It sounds like some of the later ones do? Does anyone know how I can tell without an S-Video cable and without opening my 800XL? (Serial range, some sort of BASIC program graphics test, etc) Is there a better (read cheaper) place to get a monitor cable than the B&C Computer Visions eBay auction? Sorry, a lot of questions. Thanks! -Todd

It was software we got with the plans that showed us how to make it. I do not remember what it was called. Todd

THAT'S IT!!! Where did you get it?

Well, it seems similar but mine were home made. I don't think the software we used was called the pill. Thanks.

Back in the mid 80's, I made a device that canibalized a standard atari 800 cartridge and there was a circuit you could build in there (seems like Radio Shack sold a board with the correct cartrige pins on it that you could solder components to) and you had to file out part of the cart case to put a switch in it. Then you could stick a pencil in the door switch on the Atari 800 and then load a piece of software and then select a cartridge dump to load from disk and then you would flip a switch on the cart (which is why you had to jam the pencil in so you could boot the computer with the door open) and the cartridge would play, I thought it was called Cart Key or something liket that. I made a few of them and sold them to my friends, but do not have them anymore and I cannot find anything on the Internet about it. Anyone have more information on this. (My memory isn't what it used to be...) Thanks.

I figured out what I did. I changed the VM sharing permissions on my host and didn't realize that Altirra was using a path on the host to get to the system BIOSes. When I re-installed it, I copied the BIOS folder locally, but I guess it was still pointing to an old path until I manually changed it and then it found one at the new path.

Well, I just changed firmware to autoselect and it booted. Weird. Nevermind.

Today, I went to use Altirra and the screen is just black. If I click close, it goes grey and then if I pick Display from the view menu, it goes black. Inserting disks or cartridges or changing the machine type seems to have no effect. I tried redownloading it and going through initial setup again and it still just shows a black screen. Does it store settings somewhere that may need to be deleted to reset it? any other ideas? Thanks. -Todd

It looks like most of the SIO2PC devices only support one SIO connection, so how do you go from physical disk to physical drive to atari to SIO2PC adapter to PC to ATR (or vice versa) when you cannot have both the disk drive and the PC plugged in at the same time? Thanks,

It's weird, I've been reading threads here for a while and with all the talk about Altirra emulating different drives, it sounded to me like it was actually working with the hardware. Just looking at the changes for the latest release of Altirra it has this line: Added a power-on delay setting to deal with slow disk drives. This gives the disk drives more time to init before the computer powers on. "Auto" automatically applies a delay for the 1050 Duplicator, ATR8000, and Percom drives. This really makes it sound like it is waiting for a physical drive, not a virtual one.

Wait. What is the 1050 2 PC, then? http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=198 I guess this is just to copy disks to ATX files or copy ATX file to disk?