cwilbar

@eightbit I'll keep that in mind, but as I only have one broken keyboard 'plunger' and one missing spring, I'd like to find the parts to fix this otherwise 100% keyboard before considering an entire replacement. Thanks.

My Vic20 has a broken plunger (black, presumably same as C64?). It is on one of the regular keys. It looks like I have springs under all of the keys too ? If so, I have lost the spring at some point in the past. I'm looking to get a plunger and spring from a parts keyboard. Anyone have spare VIC20 keyboard parts (or if C64 is the same, C64 kb parts) ? PM me if you have what I need to fix my kb. Thanks, -- Curt

You can find the Percom doubler recreation at: https://www.ebay.com/itm/153764663296 and http://members.iinet.net.au/~ianmav/trs80/newstuff.htm -- Curt

I have previously read that. While cool, I think the simplest approach would be to use one of the Percom doubler recreations and ?adapt? 1050 USD firmware. This would keep the requirements down to a Percom Doubler recreation and additional RAM to handle 256 byte sectors. A interleave scheme would be required since it would not incorporate an entire track buffer. At least that would be an interesting starting point.

The Percom doubler board (intended use in TRS-80) is reproduced. My intent is to try one in a Percom with the appropriate firmware. It opens up other thoughts, like if the 810 uses the same single density controller, might be able to put one of these in place of the Atari data separator.... but then custom firmware will be required. -- Curt

Is the binary for 1.20 available ? IIRC my AT88-S1 have 1.10 firmware.... but I don't know if that is different from RFD40-S1 (as an example)'s 1.10. I will pull one of my ROMs and read it with my programmer. We'll see if it matches up to any of the ones posted here, or adds to the collection. -- Curt

I have an AT88-SP1 (actually 3 of them). I'd like to try an experiment. The percom doubler hardware is reproduced.... I'd like to try that reproduction in an AT88-SP1, but I need a dump of the percom doubler firmware. Anyone happen to have it, or have a pointer to somewhere it might be ? I haven't had any luck finding it. I don't know if firmware from RFD-4x will work. If Percom used the same chips, possibly. I read that serial may use a different chip on the drives with parallel ports ? Its a long shot, but I thought I'd check. -- Curt

I have a 'sad case' 1050 that I've brought back to operating condition, but the top shell is cracked and has a small hole in it, the bottom shell is usable but has the little standoffs the position the PCB broken off, and the face is only half there 🙂 Anyone have any parts drives that can spare plastics ? Not sure if any parts are different in the shells based on mech, but IIRC this one has a Tandon mech in it. PM me if you have anything and what you would want for it. I am in MA in the US. Thanks.

Will there will be new firmware for SIDE2 cart as well as U1MB (as both the U1MB and SIDE2 (when used w/o U1MB) experienced the problem) ? Not pressing for me, as my SIDE2 is pretty much mostly for my U1MB system (eventually systems 🙂 ).

Possibly so. Wonder if 4464 or 41464 chips existed at the time ? Of so, they didn't use them for the 800xl, using 8 4164 chips instead. I don't recall what the 800xl pricing was initially, as I bought my original one ( which I still haven't located) when they were selling for $100 or less. Love the size of the 600XL though 😃. My favorite though is the original 800 and my first Atari... The 400. That was upgraded to 32I then 48k, bkey keyboard, and gtia. That computer was $400 and my best ever Xmas present of all time in my youth 😃. But at the moment my upgraded 600xl is my main Atari. -- Curt

I have an 800 with Omnimon... I'd sell it for $1000 without hesitation 😃 (at that price). Doubt we'll see these sell for that... Sellers can ask whatever they want.... Doesn't mean they'll get it. I am amazed how prices have gone up on this stuff. I like picking up a bargain and fixing it though. That's how I got my 1200xl, xegs, and 600xl. Bargains are out there, but getting harder and harder to find. Patience and diligence are key. -- Curt

I sold a couple of systems in the past for use in court cases. An Apple Macintosh IIrc and a Sun 3/60 (iirc). Never did get any info about the cases, then or later. Hopefully we find out about this one... I'm always curious in situations like this .

I selected my 600xl to be my first to upgrade. I did UAV and U1MB. As I never intend for this to revert to 16k, I cut traces and soldered wires to the bottom so that any future troubleshooting allows for 'pure' chip swaps. I don't recommend this as traces needed to be cut both on the bottom and under the ls158 sockets. Then a missing ground needs to be restored. Given that the design is nearly 800xl, I can't see this machine as having really worked out for Atari, as cost had to be nearly identical to the 800xl. Here is the uav and the bottom side mods for 64k. I don't have a good shot of the U1mb installed, but included is one of how I mounted it ( plastic mount made from leftover home depot stuff bonded to the case via acetone).

I finally got around to installing and updating my Ultimate 1MB, and SIDE2 cart. I found one odd thing that I don't know if it is related to @flashjazzcat's firmware (as I had not tested with older firmware), is that SIDE2 with or without U1MB will not load the uav.xex binary that is provided for use in setting up the Ultimate Atari Video upgrade. I ended up using an Ultimate cart in order to load that XEX. I'm still new to the U1MB, SIDE2, etc so I'm not sure if this is due to the location in RAM/etc where UAV.XEX loads and if that is colliding with something or not, but wanted to see if anyone else ran into this and to let others know in case they try to do the same and it fails.

I recently worked on my Indus GT. I found it had Indus 1.1 on it. I decided to go with the MrMartian firmware. While it worked fine, I did find one game incompatibility.... Super Bunny. With the Indus 1.1 and the tweaked (timeout/etc) Indus 1.2 ROMs load the game fine, the MrMartian firmware does not, and the game locks up. Oddly, I wonder if the game has multiple protections, as I don't think it gets to the weak sector check before it hangs. Due to that and that I primarily use my equipment for the old games, I am now currently running the 1.2 tweaked vs the MrMartian firmware. Has anyone else run into issues with games with his firmware ? Maybe I got super 'lucky' and found the only one :-). Maybe @MrMartian has an idea of why ?

Please add me to the interest list for the F18A MK2. Thanks.

Has anyone tried the 4:3 version with a 1600x1200 monitor (I have 3 Dell 2007FPb) ???? I only have one 1280x1024 monitor in the house, it is my wife's and has one bad pixel. So 1280x1024 is not a go. And I think most if not all of my widescreen monitors are higher resolution than most I've seen mentioned here.... plus since the Atari was never a widescreen display, I'd rather use a quality older 4:3 style. Before deciding on how many and which type to buy, I want to figure this out, as I've been told they can not be reprogrammed. So If I buy the wrong one(s), then I either need to buy the correct monitor, or have it sit on a shelf or something. So, hoping someone has tried that configuration and can report how it worked (proper aspect ratio/etc).

I just recently found out about this upgrade. It looks awesome. I do have a question: The initial version was RGB, the latest supports DVI. Does the latest version support both RGB and DVI ? If it does, is simply a different cable used depending on if you want RGB vs DVI ? Also, if it does, are the analog RGB signals wired to the DVI analog RGB connectors so that it could be used with a DVI to VGA adapter ? I'd like to get 2 (or more) of these (either an RGB unit and a DVI unit, or a combined unit with both cables, or if the latest DVI unit carries RGB on the DVI port, just 2 units with the DVI cables). I tried PM'ing but it said the user was not receiving PMs currently.