a8maestro

Bit rot from cosmic rays, voltage spikes, static electricity, imperfect production methods, impurities. But cleaning the contacts is a must, reseating chip when possible, can help a actual good cart. Rick D.

My current jumpers for the Fujitsu M2551A are:resistor pack in and drive # jumper(DS1). Thats it. Rick D. ====================================== And it shows up under My Computer correctly as B: 5.25. The problem now is that when I try to read any disk, it gives me either a "drive not accessible I/O error" message or a "insert disk" message. It flip-flops between the two. I hear the drive spinning up, but nothing reads. The drive is new or like new, got it last year. I only want to copy over some vintage games I have sitting around, assuming they'll even run under my own machine's XP x64, which won't run the old Windows games. My machine is new enough that it's BIOS will not even recognize a 5.25" FDD.

In general, its difficult for the computer to kill a monitor/tv, more so the other way around. Something inside would have to break sending voltages much higher than expected thru the cable(includes shorting the signal to ground rapidly creating a voltage spike). This is kinda of possible with the A8 power supply, but tends to kill the a8 first. But, much easier for the monitor to do that. How old is the TV? I'd suspect possibly solder joint problems on the connector on either/both. As dmlloyd asked, you tried other video cables, right? Rick D.

I mostly use original disks/carts/hardware. But I will soon go Ape pro so I can start getting all of the disks archived at least. Rick D.

Hi, Since atari 8 bit files won't run on a pc, and when they are used to download a file, it wants to, the current standard is just to rename the extension to something the PC doesn't normally know, hence .XEX. Just rename it back to .EXE. The 8 bit and the emulator will run them fine, or just Binary Load the file with the complete name. Doctor Clu explains how to get the file to something Ape can use. Rick D.

Almostrice and Sauron were at the show. Don't know about next year. Depends on many things. Sunday Sep 07 is First Sunday pizza night. Actually having pizza this time. If there is enough interest to meet up sometime, we can halfway between Austin and San Antonio. Rick D.

Hi, One of the things that can help is removing the quad pin chips and using a contact cleaner pen on them and the sockets. It can help regular chips too. Always use antistatic precautions. Rick D.

I am in Austin, TX. Have a Mega ST I use, one I need to fix, several 520s and 1040s. Five hard drive units, 4 I am trying to fix. Working on ethernet card. I have several clubs libraries of disk software. Rick D.

I finally have my ST lists up at: http://morethangames.a8maestro.com/prodst/sale-sta.htm http://morethangames.a8maestro.com/prodst/sale-stb.htm Thanks, Rick D.

Hi, My top 5 are : 1)Time Bandits 2)Omnitrends Universe 3)Infocom-any of them 4)Archepelagos 5)Terrorpods Rick D.

Hi, My Favorite Lynx games would be(in no particular order)... Bill & Ted, Casino, Chips Challenge, ElectroCop, Gates of Zendocon, Klax, Kung Food, Lemmings, Shanghai, Xenophobe, Xybots, Zarlor Mercenary. I have a few I haven't tried enough. Rick D.

Hi, Since the other most likely causes have been mentioned, I'll add that the broken item that I have to fix most often is the power jack. 2 or 3 pins loose from the circuit board that have to be resoldered. Has fixed 2 dead lynxes for me. Rick D. P.S. Look in bright light at angles...if the backlight isn't working you may still see an image moving.

Hi, My question then goes the other way.. It has the PAL sticker or other marking on the 130XE right? And, Do you get the lines using RF? Composite? Rick D.

Heh, That is mine. Using an atari for the external video source is something I have not tried. I can if interested. The device does exhibit some jitters though. Rick D.

Hi, ports 3 and 4 were probably used more than expected. But when designing the XL, Atari needed to be cheap, and needed a way to soft control the Diagnostics, OS, and internal Basic at least. So instead of spending money for another hardware chip, they took over the less used ports 3 and 4. With the XE, they added Antic and CPU controll for banked ram. Dandy Dungeon is great with four joysticks, I was playing it just recently. I have it on my site at : http://www.a8maestro.com/atari/info/ballsg.htm. Rick D.

Yes, to an old box I haven't had time to check in a bit. I emailed you today. Rick

Hi, 99% of the time my website email works just fine. For some reason, a few places, gmail, and now microsoft have something in the way of spam filters that do not like my website ip. Gmail either bounces the msg back instantly saying "blocked" or in some case, takes a week with "undeliverable"(nonner242) . Neither my host nor I find any reason for this internally. I need to explore this with gmail. I created a new gmail account just to be able to send a few msgs, which I do NOT look at much. I did send replies on the 18th and the 24th from gmail. I will ALWAYS answer pertinent emails, I can NOT guarantee them to be received(can anyone?). Does not mean I am ignoring you. Nor am I sitting at the computer always checking email. It can take a day or two depending on how busy I am. Rick D. MTG

I PMed you. Rick D.

Hi, Ten or so years ago I got a call from a place in South Texas that does store liquidation. They saw my advert in Nuts and Volts magazine, so they sent me a list of a LOT of atari stuff they had. Things were still o.k. then, so I bought it all really cheap. There was a bunch of stuff from other computers and game systems, but mostly atari 8 bit. I wish these had been mixed systems. So I ended up with around 500 to 700 of them, I forget. Now I have around 200+ left. But I want the space back. I didn't sell that many at the auction, so I am now dumping 100 of them. Stripping them apart, I will keep 400 push buttons with caps, 200 500K slide pots, 100 joystick cables(8 wires), and spring/screws. Cardboard will be recycled, plastic thrown away since there are no numbers. I will still have more than 100 left, whcih I will decide what to do with later. I will also add to my collection different versions(at least two so far, three maybe). Much of this lot stuff remaining(that I didn't add to my collection )is in the clearance sales I am having. I can do a pretty good deal on a case of 12 in the US. The ebay pricing is ending in a day or two. Rick D.

Doing it myself was never the idea. Those that were interested didn't follow through. There was no choice. One person setting up a show is enough, it got done. More people following thru would have made it better. There hasn't been an atari meeting here in 5 years(You remember the last one?). There doesn't seem to be much going on in any other brand of system(though amiga is rumoured to meet). I've long since learned that even though clerks at stores are interested, owners rarely get involved. They certainly didn't last year. They didn't this year. I see a trend. Its been five years since AGE, things have changed a lot. Since I didn't hear from them, I have no idea what could have been done. The next show is waiting for interest. I will NOT bite the bullet again, however. My mistake was thinking interested people were still out there, thinking stores would want to advertise in this way, people would want to get involved, or that having a room and a date would make a difference. Now I need a lot of proof. Getting people on board is great? Who are they? Where are they? What are their emails? They have yet to let me know they are interested from the flyers and signs I left at stores. If they were ever put out. Rehashing what didn't get done doesn't help as much as Who and HOW, to get it done next time. Edit:P.S. Five years ago we routinely had 15 to 20 people on the various chats. We are lucky to get 5 now, and many are only 1 person. Locally, I get people every year wanting me to take their system, sometimes I do, sometimes I send them to Goodwill. Rick D.

Do you still have the A8 BOB available? I make 58 things(so far), and keep them in stock for 1 day or 1 century till someone wants them, OR until I get so busy with work/traveling I just have no time for it. The A8 and Jaguar bobs are in stock. I am in the process of making more tube cases for them. Thanks, Rick D.

I'd be interested in learning about your weather station -- software, hardware, etc. Maybe you could start another topic describing the system? I'd love to have another use for my A8. It was a trivially simple system with wind direction (5 wires) and speed(2 wires) to joystick ports. The computer just displayed what the original neon bulb display did, but added history to each. Never finished the part that would show what the averages were a year earlier. Never add temp, rain guage, pressure, lightning sensor, or eathquake detector. I was/am in the process of building new sensors(wind dir with 8 points). Maybe something atarilab would have helped with. Rick D.

I'd be interested in learning about your weather station -- software, hardware, etc. Maybe you could start another topic describing the system? I'd love to have another use for my A8. I am interested too. Perhaps you use AtariLab's hardware? Nope, not really played with that. Rick D.

True, OVGE was that date. It never turned up in searches and no one on chats ever mentioned it until it was too late. Along with other shows on other dates and other types of shows such as VCF. Will usually have conflicts. The 1.5 to 2 months was the final push if there was to be anything. I had already spent 2 years trying to get interest from vendors and feedback, the show website has been up since 2006, talking about it on chats, posting notes where I could find forums(some got removed or never published), emailing those I thought interested, dropping info at as many stores as I could, emailing dealers anywhere I could find. But even the vendors(and home brew enthusiasts) at age2003 seem to have all disappeared, a lot of emails never replied to. But always those interested in having it, though no info on who to contact. Never heard again from those that said they were interested. But it was either do it or drop it(I could move on to other interests). Hence the flurry of posts during the last month and a half. While the feed back is great, saying where and when I should have done things doesn't help and much as how to get people interested BEFORE the event. Maybe I did this completely wrong. What is the right way? Thanks all, Rick D.

Hi, I have had Gamelink I and Gamelink II info on my site for a few years. You can get the demo and multiplayer versions of Maze of Agdagon there. I don't have a cable done yet(sigh) but the adapter is available. I had three computers setup with this game running at my Gamer Expo. Rick D.