Lardo Boffin

Hi all I have just got a 6 switch woody with what looks like a protective cover over the switch area. Or possibly the plastic has started to delaminate… Did these come with a protective cover on them? As can be seen in the last photo it is starting to peel away. As an aside the RF picture quality is really great on this! Thanks!

Voltage regulator is now firmly in place thanks to a nut and bolt from a ZX81 that no longer needed them.

Photos. The case on this is a real dust magnet.

I will take some more photos later but definitely has Atari on it (just to right of the power switch):

Thanks! I will desolder and reposition the regulator so it doesn’t melt itself! I did have a look at photos of the odd one that appears on eBay (where they posted photos of the underside) and most clearly have RF shields but some don’t so I guess its a relatively common issue.

Hello all I have just got my first 2600 Junior in black but the regulator is not attached to the metal of the PCB, nor is it lined up properly to allow it to be held in place by a nut and bolt. Is this normal or a manufacturing / repair defect? Also - no RF shield. Has they abandoned them by the time these were released? Many thanks!

That is an impressively clear screen output. ? How do you do it?

Mine boots every time on the fixed version but if I go ‘down’ several levels to load a game it fails - so if I select Games / A to Z / A and then a game starting with A it crashes. If I move a game I want to load to the first level of menu it loads fine.

There is a copy of this for sale on eBay in the UK at the moment.

Turns out I was over thinking the whole process. ? Just put all the discs in a separate folder called Phantasie II, call them D1, D2 etc. (so it is easy to see which is which on the LCD screen) and then use K2 to move between them at run time and K4 to mount. Simples! Spent way too much time setting up multi-disc .LST files etc. on the C64 so I can play Wasteland.

Thanks. Its one of these: https://www.lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=237 Sorry - spent too much time with C64s recently!

Hi Does anyone know how to work multi-disc games on the lotharek SD2IEC connected to an Atari 800 (not XL)? I have managed to put the four discs of Phantasie II into disc slots 1 to 4 (select the correct disc and then press 1, 2, 3 or 4. Simple once I worked out how!) but when I boot from disc 1 it soon asks for disc 3 but nothing I have tried so far allows me to mount disc 3 and load the rest of the game. Any help appreciated thanks!

I have put a little grease outside the white part that has split and although the key now feels different to the others it springs back happily into place! The others that were sticking have had the same treatment and are fine. Hopefully this is a reasonable long term solution. ?

The joystick works and any file I drag up a few levels works! Now I just need to figure out how multi load works... Managed to get the four discs for Phantasie II mounted in D1 to 4 (I think) but switching between D1 to D4 on the SD never seems to work - it keeps asking for side 3. Do I need to press some other key somewhere? A manual for this thing would be so useful!

Yes I used the fixed loader thanks. Will give the joystick a go.

Thanks all. It is now largely working! I bought the card preloaded from Lotharek and pretty much everything loads now apart from the Disc Images \ Alphabetical list. As soon as I drill down this far the keyboard stops making the ‘I’ve been pressed’ noise and it soon locks up. Might just be a limitation of the 800. When I get chance I will move some of the files up a few levels and see if they work then.

Thanks. Looking at the website there is sio high speed off and speed settings of 1 to 16 with 6 being default. Any idea how to access these settings? I have not played with any of the config settings beyond following the video on line that shows you how to set it to autoboot the loader program.

Superb thanks!

Thanks. It says 37902. I will need to watch the instruction videos for the SD (no manual) to figure out how to change how it boots. Will do that tonight. ?

Having got a mostly working keyboard I decided to try my SIO2SD (fromhttps://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=58) out and it doesn’t work. First question - should it? If it should where do I start diagnosing the issue? It works fine with my 800XL. I have cleaned the connector pins on the 800. I have got a pacman cartridge and that runs fine on the 800 so I assume it is mostly working. The SD boots up and shows the menu but then dies if you press a key:

My keyboard is back from being repaired and the space works nicely now! The whole keyboard was taken apart, the space bar fixed and all resoldered together. But another day another issue - the H key is now starting to stick down. I popped the keycap off and looking at the plastic part that moves up and down both corners are cracked. I assume when pushed down it splays out and wedges in place? A couple of the other keys are starting to do the same now. Argh. Any suggestions?!?!?

The bunny ears were not intentional but I found that a stiff piece of wire bent over gave the best contact.

I wimped out. I have put this is a box and sent it off to somebody who will do a good job of sorting this. These are just too rare and expensive in the UK to risk it further.

I went the bunny ear route for one side. ?

Yes. It could end up costing more than the 800 itself!