a8maestro

Well first, I make cables to use the A8 with Svideo. My BOB brings out all of the lines. The two cables cheat, they jumper the composite signal for chroma to create an acceptable svideo for the A8, since most A8s past the 800 do not have chroma connected. Second, you can add the missing components to create a true chroma line on the 800xl, the pin is on the jack. Third, you can just run a jumper for chroma. Its acceptable. Rick D.

Hmmmmm... Part of my weather station was running on my 600XL till it died a couple of years ago. Will get it fixed soon I hope. Should just put an 800xl on it. A little X10 control is in the works. Working on a train control interface for the table my Dad and I were building. Should have caller ID logger/control on it soon, too. Still manage a little of my business inventory control on it. Haven't finished the bar code reader/label printer, yet. Otherwise, testing software and gaming mostly. Rick D.

There is a dutch auction on this item now. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=220269676761 Rick D.

Now that the Gamer Expo 08 is over, I am having a clearance sale of 90% of the misc stuff I have. Go to: morethangames.a8maestro.com/ Click on the Clearance links. 8 bit and game systems now. ST soon. Thanks, Rick D. MTG DO NOT REPLY TO a8maestro"a t"a8maestro.com as above. Use mtg2008 " a t " a8maestro.com instead.

(old) Hi, I need to make space, so I am having a clearance sale of 90% of the misc stuff I have. Go to: morethangames.a8maestro.com/ Click on the Clearance links. 8 bit and game systems now. ST soon. Thanks, Rick D.

Hi, The catnip cable is as very interesting thing. Is there any more info on it? Is someone making it now? It is something I can probably do if there is demand and it is o.k. I have no clue on what software is needed on the pc side though. Rick D

If you find yourself in the Austin, TX area on August 9th, 2008..... While I envisioned this for as many console and computers systems from that era, it has turned into a mostly World of Atari show. Really surprised that Atari is at the top of the classic activity with very little on any other system, inculding MAME. Will have lots of stuff for sale, 8 bit and ST network gaming, solitary systems to play on, and a computer museum. Entry is free, so come on down. Thanks, Rick D. Gamer Expo Classic, retro, arcade, console, and computer gaming+ show 70s, 80s, 90s systems August 9, 2008 10A-5P Austin, TX Northcross Mall See site for latest info.....http://gamer.a8maestro.com/ email:[email protected]

GAMER EXPO happened, was a lot of fun, but needed more people and vendors. Rick D.

Well, it may not be totally dead. First thing is make sure Reset/Option/select/start are not stuck down. Try the drop fix, from a couple *inches* max, off a hard flat surface, drop it. Then try to power it up again. Check the SIO jack, make sure no pins are bent/touching. Next step is opening it and reseating all of the chips that are in sockets. You will not know how many till it is opened. Pry up each chip from the ends a little, push back down. Then test again. If this doesn't work, then you will need to start swapping chips. You can put each of the large chips into a known working xl/xe to see if its good. Or, put in a known good chip into the xl. This is too much for a lot of people to do. That is normal. Hope this helps. Rick D.

From what I see, the OS V.3 is 800XE, a european flavor only. Not US XL standard. It does not load with my XL, my XEGS, or my 130XE. A more conventional OS is almost always preferred. Thanks, Rick.

Hard to remember details.. A friend and I played her lynxes for a while in the middle 1990s. She gave me one for my birthday. I have since bought a couple of lynx II for $10 and $25. Dead, but easily fixed. And I now have around 40 games, some doubles. Mostly from Arlington-EDS, Gamefellas in Austin, and some flea market/shows. No one to connect with any more. But I do love playing the games. Electro Cop, Zarlor, Klax. I have some stuff on Handy. Rick D.

I have yet to find a way to tell the difference between DD and HD drives. Still looking for a list. The drives I use are: 360K...Fujitsu M2551A and Matsushita Ja-551-2 1.2M(1M for now)...Panasonic(Matsushita) JU-475-4AKJ Others..DFC22A17, Mitshubisi MF501C-318UG(360K), Newtronics(Mitsumi) D509V3(1.2), Compaq (1.2) 141367-001. And I have used 720K 3.5" as well. The only jumpers set on any of these more modern drives is drive number, sometimes DS. Rick D.

Sorry but I have no advice to offer as to what drive models to look for. I've been considering getting a couple 360K drives myself. I've have had single-sided drives (from an old DEC Robin computer) from day 1, circa 1984. but ufortunately I think the drives (TEAC FD-50A) finally need pressure pads. I'm not sure how that is done. - Steve Sheppard Open the drive up. Above the read/write head is a flexible tongue that has the pressure pad under it. Pull off pad, put another on. I think you can still get pads from Best Electronics at least. Rick D.

I have a Portfolio with parallel and serial interfaces. I have done the system clock update, low battery update(supercap), and backlight, and have a 128k memory card. Will do memory upgrade one of these days. I also have a zip driver from germany with zip drive for 100 megs of storage in 3 partitions, accessable with my laptop pc. The zip drive with battery works very nicely. I do some work with it when I travel. But mostly now I use it for figuring out prices for things I sell thru paypal. I input shipping and base price, it gives me paypal/non paypal, tx/non-tx totals. I do like to play with it and library software from time to time. I still have about 100 programs to run I do not know anything about. Rick d.

I can only think of 2 things...maybe showing 746 for any errors would shed light. And make sure you set the IOCB in X and it doesn't get changed. Also, Standard RS232 routine has a 32 byte incoming buffer and 32 byte outgoing buffer by default. Rick D.

Do make sure you are using the right type disk with the drives. 360K do not require anything special to use. You can use 1.2 meg drives/disks if the DOS supports them. I don't have an error list for Auto-Term. Typical jumper settings are drive number, head load with drive select, and mx. Newer drives only need number. Make sure you either have seperate drive numbers and a non twisted cable, OR all drive 1 with a twisted cable. It would be easier to boot with a DOS and see what happens when trying to read or format a disk. If the drives have not been used in some time, the may need the head(s) cleaned. Rick D.

Due to a few requests, I laid out the Multi joy onto blank plain perfboard. It can be wired as shown or used as a template. The size is a standard from Radio Shack. Just remember to attach all of the jacks with nuts and bolts to the circuit board. Finding a box could be more difficult. This layout has not been tested yet. Here is the link...http://www.a8maestro.com/sites/gamelink/index.htm#multijoy. Rick D.

Hi, There is nothing special you need. Anything that can use a printer will work with it. LPRINT "This is a test" will print but cr/lf may need setting. Make sure the 9volt DC supply is working and the correct polarity. Do you get any errors? Open the unit and reseat any socketed chips. The internal jumpers starting at the SIO jack are...transformer power/printer power, Add space on blank lines, Tie data 8 to gnd, Pass chr$(155) unmodified, Tie printer fault line high. The Printer MUST do LF! Hope this helps. Rick D.

Hi, This chat was created for our European Atari Enthusiasts to have a time and place to chat, with or without us. But for quite a while it has been down to 1 person showing up on a regular basis. He hasn't been there in months. The 3 or 4 others that used to show up, rarely if ever do now. Would the old Red Eye Friday chat be better? It looks like Atari Eurochat is dead. This is sad. I had hoped that with so much going on in Europe, we'd see people stopping by. But, the Sunday morning chat(10A CT) will go on as long as people attend. We really do like having you stop by and tell us what you are doing or get help. We have 2 other chats(irc and or telnet) during the week as well. 8PM central time for us(-6 GMT). a8maestro

I'd make sure to try the disk drive using both sio jacks. I'd also test both sio cables.(4 tests total). Try using the shorter 3' cables. If all works, I'd plug in the drive and printer, send a file to the printer while flexing the cables at the drive slowly. As said in another post, may have to resolder the sio jack points, or start testing the computer replacing the pia. There could also be a situation where the drive is not correctly releasing the sio port. Rick D.

Unfortunately, as a raw lcd screen, its a bit of work to do anything useful without driver hardware, except use it in a lynx. Rick D.

Near as I can tell...P-Code is just the original basic tokens, with all rems removed, line numbers(and gotos, gosubs) converted to address jumps or jsrs, and numerics as integers only. Then there is the runtime module to execute the tokens, possibly with faster code for some of the stuff. Hence "compiling" rather than "assembling" in the atari world. "Compiling" seems to be a stopgap between text based BASIC and full on assembly. PS. This seems to be true for "C" compiling as well. Full on Assemblers were available for "C", though I think they had bugs too. Rick.

O.k. The terminal disk looks to have booted you into cp/m. You just need programs to run besides stat and pip. Not too different from the ATR-8000 stuff I have played with. There is a lot of software for it, much should run. Rick

I frequently use Basic XL or rarely, Basic XE to program in. I can then compile(ABC) the program to run faster and from DOS, or use it as the logic basis to redo in assembly. Rick D.

Mostly, I prefer EXE, COM, SYS, and OBJ. Files. When compressing, I use .ARC usually, sometimes .ZIP. When compressing boot/whole disks, .DCM. Its failing is you don't know the format of the source. Rick D.