Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

800_Rocks

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    136

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by 800_Rocks

  3. Posted

    Hi - Welcome to the club.  I have my 1982 800 as well but have numerous working drives (810, 1050, XF551).  I have not used SIO2SD so I can't comment on that.  What I do use and what has worked well for me is the SIO2PC that Steven J Tucker sells over on https://www.atarimax.com/sio2pc/documentation/

    I use the one described as 'USB Interface w/ SIO JACK' which I've had for many years.  I have a licensed copy of the 'APE for Windows' software which works great.

     

    I attach one or two of my Atari drives to the SIO2PC via the Atari SIO cable.  Then the SIO2PC connects to my Win7 PC via USB.  I run the APE software, it sees my drive(s) and allows me to create .ATR files from disk images.  I can also do the reverse, create a diskette image from a .ATR file.

     

    I also have an SDMax Drive.  So I can copy all of my .ATR disk images to a microSD memory card for the SDMax Drive for solid state enjoyment of all my original diskettes.

     

    Note:  the SIO2PC setup, running APE also lets my PC act as a set of emulated Atari drives too.  So to my Atari it looks like one or more Atari drives.  Use APE to find and mount disk images in virtual drives 1-8, etc.  I used to use an old laptop just for that before I bought the SDMax Drive.

     

    Hope this gives you some ideas.  Good luck and enjoy!
    -dan

    • Like 2

  5. Posted · Edited by 800_Rocks

    I had a 1040ST in the 90s, regret that I sold it.  I kept many of my original 3.5" diskettes.  I am getting back into the ST and now have a nice stock 1040 STE+4MB.  Seriously looking at the UltraSatan (cased) but have a couple of basic questions.  I did purchase a little video to VGA adapter so I have it working nicely on a Dell P2314Ht (3 images attached).

     

    1) Does UltraSatan play nice with the original/internal 3.5" floppy drive (can you copy files to/from floppy to UltraSatan)?

     

    2) What is the boot order with an UltraSatan?  Does the ST/E still look for and utilize a floppy first (if present)?  If no floppy is present will it boot from UltraSatan?  Is there any long delay if no floppy is present at boot?

     

    3) Any differences to answer for 1 and 2 if the original/internal floppy drive is replaced by a Gotek drive?

     

    4) Can I keep my (currently working) original/internal 3.5" floppy drive and have a Gotek as a second drive (or vice-versa)?  If 'yes' can I copy physical floppies to 'new' Gotek floppy images as a way to preserve/backup physical floppies?

     

    Bonus Questions:

    5) What are the best was to get all my 3.5" floppies preserved?

    - I assume if the answer to '1' above is 'yes' I just copy my floppies to the UltraSatan.  Can I create ST diskette 'images' or only copy the individual files themselves to the UltraSatan?
     

    6) I have been reading about the Greaseweasel (https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle) as a way to get most any format/filestructure floppy into an image file on a PC.  How many are doing this with old ST/E diskettes?  Are you having success?  Do you recommend?  Can you share your Greaseweasel setup/specs?  Are there any Greaseweasel docs/guides that are very ST specific?  Can you (would it make sense to) replace the original ST/E 3.5" floppy drive with a Greaseweasel capable drive?

    7) Once you create a floppy drive image, presumably on your PC (with the Greaseweasel) what are the ways you can get that image to and use the image on the ST/E?  Do you need a Gotek drive to use the images?  Other ways?

     

    Lots of questions... Thanks! for any/all replies and guidance.

     

     

    IMG_0705.thumb.JPG.99a1e8dae82ef77b8f6bf399e527fc5c.JPG

     

    IMG_0688.thumb.JPG.9743186a3e883567efc87c293995ef96.JPG

     

    IMG_0690.thumb.JPG.ef3b1c8f866ef9b63a2129c722df5dd4.JPG

     

  6. Posted

    Seeking recommendations for reliable, experienced, US based Atari 8bit repairs and installations/mods.  I am US-North Carolina based and thinking about mods to existing/working 8bits such as the following:

     

    800XL:  Ultimate 1MB and better video option?

     

    600XL:  Increase RAM to 64K (or better), Ultimate 1MB and better video option?

     

    800: Recapping, Incognito 1MB and better video option?

     

    I see  https://thebrewingacademy.com/ offers this service (however their website says they are doing inventory thru the month of January so they may be delayed a bit).  Have you had good experiences with their services?

     

    Thanks

  7. Posted

    Hi - Some very basic questions.  Sorry if they have been asked before.  So far I am mostly pure old school hardware (400, 800, 600XL, 800XL, 130XE,  several 1050s, an 810, a XF551 and a couple 1010 and a 410 recorders with lots of carts, 5.25" diskettes and many tapes).  I do have SIO2PC/APE and I continue to convert many of my diskettes to ATRs (so ATRs are very important to me).  My one big 'new' technology is an SDriveMax which is nice in that it works with my physical drives and recorders.  I'm studying the new tech for the 8bits such as FujiNet and SIDE3.  I have my eye on SpartaDosX and a battery backed clock would be nice.   I have zero solder skills.  I am US-based (North Carolina).  The SIDE3 looks very nice.  I appreciate help with these questions:

     

    1) Which unmodified 8bits can I use with SIDE3?  Is there a minimum amount of RAM required for 1a) SIDE3 and 1b) SpartaDosX?
    2) If SIDE3 works with an 800 (or 400) can I still close the cartridge door? (obviously I would not have access to the SIDE3 buttons)

    3) Can I continue to use all of my SIO devices (physical disk drives and recorders and SDriveMax) with SIDE3?

    4) If 'yes' for '3'   Can I copy physical diskettes to 'new' ATRs on SIDE3?

    5) Given the rear cartridge slot of the 130XE I assume a 600XL or 800XL would be ideal for the SIDE3 given the open, top cartridge slot.  Repeat of question 1 but can an stock 800XL with 64K of RAM support SIDE3 and SpartaDosX?

     

    I see the SIDE3 available at the https://thebrewingacademy.com/ in the US and https://lotharek.pl/ in Poland.  However, I do not see answers to my questions in the descriptions or list of capabilities on these sites (perhaps something that should be added).  I note that their website says The Brewing Academy will be taking inventory in the month of January so orders may be delayed.

     

    6)   Other than the two sites listed above, are there other US sites where SIDE3 can be purchased?

     

    Thanks in Advance!

  8. Posted

    13 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

    One question, is your 800 modified i.e. U1M or any memory upgrades that could affect the Cart

    Thanks for asking this one... I nearly forgot that 'Yes' my 800 has an AXLON Rampower 128.  So AtariWriter must not like it.  When I moved the little switch on the AXLON card (I assume making it act like 16K instead of 128K) AtariWriter works fine (does not show the garbage graphics as in my original 3rd picture).  Mystery solved!!  Thanks.

     

    IMG_1639b.thumb.JPG.6d5f7ee61deedf98e3b2ceef7a106e7c.JPGIMG_1641b.thumb.JPG.e85ad3fa8bbef3f6f3bbf5fba9a19630.JPG

    • Like 1

  9. Posted · Edited by 800_Rocks

    I have several AtariWriter carts and most or all of them act as follows on my 800.
    The title/copyright screen comes up, then menu screen 'Select Letter' for a function/action, then it flashes back and forth to garbage and back to the menu screen every 1 or 2 seconds.

    I run several dozen carts and have no other issues with my 800.  Is this a known issue with AtariWriter carts?  I don't have any drives attached.  Could it be that this cart expects/requires a drive?

     

    IMG_1624.thumb.JPG.3b8d947cdbe4fbd4d3013f2563210e22.JPGIMG_1625.thumb.JPG.b3a6198f3a236613e7b50e0224938c58.JPGIMG_1626.thumb.JPG.f17934a961ad15830c6f76ef4949a7df.JPG

  10. Posted · Edited by 800_Rocks

    7 minutes ago, Justin Payne said:

    Everything is valuable to someone. 😉 The good news is some of this has been saved to PDF so it's mostly about having a physical copy of it for nostoga purposes since the Atari Compendium is pretty complete. Best guess $10 - $15 but might worth just donating to someone local who is interested in such a thing.

    Where you at?

    Located in NC, USA near Charlotte.  Oh and don't tell everyone about the scans... I may market these as rare originals 🙂

    • Haha 1

  11. Posted · Edited by 800_Rocks

    I am seeking interest and estimates of value for this unique item I want to offer for sale.  I want to measure interest and get an idea of its value.  This is a notebook that I assembled to hold a collection of ATARI ST programming manuals that came to me as part of a bit lot purchased on eBay last year.  All of the pages are in good shape.  Questions:  Is this of value to anyone?  Estimates of value?   Note:  it weighs about 6 pounds.  I suspect it will cost about $10 USPS Media Mail to ship to the U.S. lower 48.  Thanks for your opinions/advice.   Located in NC, USA near Charlotte

     

    eBay_01.thumb.JPG.4a33ccd788fb5dde92b5eae50cbadb63.JPG

     

    eBay_02.thumb.JPG.b9b43a5b0bc8135d9a8d11aaab692da1.JPG

     

    eBay_07.thumb.JPG.209a3d1b63ef5a1cc7e2e0438c2f118c.JPG

  12. Posted

    I have extra issues of these (perhaps others as well):  1,2,4,5,6,9,11,12,13,14,17,24,59,60,61,63,72,73,75,79

    PM me if you are interested.  I'm looking to get what I paid + $1 per issue (it's the principle... so I can tell my wife I made a buck) + shipping

  13. Posted

    I have extra issues of these (perhaps others as well):  1,2,4,5,6,9,11,12,13,14,17,24,59,60,61,63,72,73,75,79

    PM me if you are interested.  I'm looking to get what I paid + $1 per issue (it's the principle... so I can tell my wife I made a buck) + shipping

  14. Posted · Edited by 800_Rocks

    [Update - I sold this 9/2020]  I have this very rare, complete OSCAR device for sale.  The box is open however the device itself and some of the contents are still in their factory shrink wrap.  Please see the pictures I attached 8/6/2020 in the thread below.  This is an interesting device that was designed to work with a special magazine and could optically scan the programs/software in the magazine printed in barcode form.  The company failed and there were only a few (or one) issue of the magazine.  Take a look at the pictures I posted on the linked topic (scroll to the bottom of page1, see my Aug 6, 2020 post).  Also the topic tells a lot more about the device.  Message me if you would be interested in purchasing this unique bit of 8bit history.  Thanks!!

     

     

  15. Posted

    The STE has two extra joystick ports on the side.  These are labeled as 'A' and 'B' and are female ports whereas the primary mouse/joystick and joystick ports under the STE are male ports. 

     

    1. How does one use the two extra joystick ports on the STE? 
    2. Do you just need an adapter to reverse the port gender and otherwise use standard joysticks?
    3. Are these ports transparently supported by games?
    4. If you have joysticks in these ports do they replace joystick ports 0 and 1 or do they allow for a total of 4 joysticks?
    5. Any other uses for these two extra ports?

     

    image.thumb.png.872a55cc299b41b81e8f0e310c14745c.png

     

    The dual mouse/joystick port 0 and joystick port 1 under the STE.

    image.thumb.png.02a0861712bb43298b0405fca4154edf.png

  16. Posted · Edited by 800_Rocks

    I acquired what appears to be a complete OSCAR Optical Scanning Reader by Databar Corp. that has never been used!  The box is in pretty good shape.  The device itself is still in the factory sealed plastic.  It includes a separate sealed plastic bag containing the RCA to Atari SIO plug.  Also, appears to have all the original paperwork and inserts including the 'Premier Issue' of 'DATABAR The Monthly Bar Code Software Magazine' (for Atari), the OSCAR User's Manual, a couple separate/individual programs for scanning, a 'Your Important First Step (For Atari)' guide and a plastic 'guide' that you place over the printed barcodes when you are using the scanner.  Pictures to follow. 
    262E5B10-B08F-4EAF-A4A1-77A37569B54C.thumb.jpeg.ffa77195a2db066753cdc4080ddfe859.jpeg51F97B0C-E0E4-4549-B475-38D49D9AA445.thumb.jpeg.c1f17b2923f879515b003ecb9b933b92.jpeg3C5300E7-12D8-460C-AC9F-D54ECDCE9E09.thumb.jpeg.30c24969008eccea8a80e456d7155609.jpeg62361F61-8CE5-4C76-AC87-CBAF816439D5.thumb.jpeg.a28742c70cdd0fc621d73b0740627765.jpeg044C4513-50D1-439E-BEF8-324B5085950F.thumb.jpeg.d051a238fb30fce16b3428f19ae01cb7.jpegD046CC41-B4B8-4013-B2FD-4579FCFB9D9A.thumb.jpeg.20e98195aa4fd8c9f72a5e3ccb8f265f.jpegFA14BE78-F267-459B-BE26-1E8F59633148.thumb.jpeg.5aed0b511335e05358385fe87cebf9e5.jpeg

    • Like 9

  17. Posted · Edited by 800_Rocks
    Resolved

    [Resolved but read on] Reading another thread in this forum I changed the ‘FastSIO’ setting in my SDriveMax from from $06 to $0a and now Spartados 3.2d loads!  What follows is my orig post with a few other questions at the bottom that O am still seeking answers to. 

    I know nothing about Spartados. I have a good 130XE. I was told that Spartados 3.2d was good for loading from disk. I found several .ATR images that look promising based on their names. However none of them load from my SDriveMax. They star to load for a few seconds then just stop leaving the 130 hung until cycling the power switch. Also using other DOS versions like 2.0s and 2.5 and MyDos3, etc. I can not read the Spartados 3.2d .ATR.  Is that expected? Maybe I have a bad .ATR but I’ve tried several. Is there any trick to booting Spartados 3.2?  See the image names in tiny font at the very bottom of the image. What do the words in square brackets mean?  [dirt] and [fte] for example?  Do you have a good source of a known to work spartados 3.2d?  Note I have the same problem with all the Spartados .ATRs that I have found so far. So 3.2g fails the same way.  Thanks for any help.

    57EEEE9B-5293-4CB3-8957-1AA0E7B3CBE0.jpeg

  18. Posted

    Encouraged by _The Doctor_’s response I tried more things and although I’m not positive of which action helped, I now have the desired change. I responded N (no) to the question (image above) then on the screen asking me for drive numbers I entered instead the numbers corresponding to the ‘drive types’. See the next two images. Of course you must Save a new DOSXE.SYS to preserve all this for the next boot. So when I entered ‘3 2 1’ I was indicating that drive 1 is of type 3 (XF551) and drive 2 is of type 2 (AT1050) and drive 3 is of type 1 (AT810). Previously I was entering ‘1 2 3’ thinking these were the drive numbers rather than the drive types. Last picture shows a disk initialized (formatted) for full DSDD and with DOSXE written to it and with ‘323 K BYTES FREE’!  Yeah!  I’m not sure why it still says my 1050 is an 810 but I will figure that out too. 

    6AB8A483-CDB9-4A04-80AC-CD08EAECAA36.jpeg

    528294FF-C7EB-401F-92BC-2634FB342D30.jpeg

    45FF76C6-465C-4769-977E-FF43BD3A0A55.jpeg

    F284F119-36A0-4176-A908-27A3DDA5B6C3.jpeg

  22. Posted

    Update: 

    1) I got some replies via FaceBook.  The most informative are added here:

    - I modified mine back then using the internal pots. I do recall there were claims that when you do so it was pulling "more power" through other components that could cause them to fail.
    I have no idea if there were any truth behind those claims though.

    - Yes. There were several ways to do this, and at least one of the published methods was responsible for a large stack of dead SM-124 monitors. From what I remember, but this may be oversimplified, the correct way to do this required careful tuning of horizontal and vertical parameters which was difficult to get right. But there was also an 'easy fix' published in some magazine which increased the screen size in perfect ratio by tuning one pot, but that increased the voltage on the beam controls and eventually killed the monitor.

    - You can, and it is not advised. By expanding the screen size you could push the deviation circuit too much and fry it. I have adjusted all mines and never ran into problems (well, there are many other problems you can run into but never fried one. For example, there is a capacitor by the adjustable inductor that is prone to high-pitch ringing).
    Anyways, if you open it, make sure you know what you’re doing!

    - You have to remove the back cover and use a plastic screwdriver (no metal!!) to adjust. It's quite dangerous (high voltages) ... Your viewable screen is also not in the centre, right border is much bigger..

    - Old caps that are not used in decades also run the risk of drying out. I have a similar vintage C1802 monitor that, when I received it, had terrible vertical height compression and horizontal distortion. I noticed that after I had it on for 20 - 30 minutes, the picture started expanding and filling out a little bit. After a couple hours it expanded a little more. So I made it a point to power it up and feed it a signal every day for a couple hours to see if it would continue improving and sure enough, after 10 days or so, it looks almost perfect. There’s still a bit of trapezoidal distortion at the top right, but it’s not bad at all for a 33 year old screen. So yeah, some dried out electrolytics can be “re-formed” by doing what I did . I *should* disassemble it, replace those caps and do some geometry adjustments but I’m getting too old to find excitement in possible electrocution

    - It's not hard, but dangerous voltages are present. Also, there is a NP cap that should be replaced with a film cap, apparently the word is that cap can be stressed by "expanding" the horizontal & vertical size of the display.

     

    2) Also, I found this video that is helpful.  Seems there are a number of pots (only accessible inside) that could perhaps provide more vertical screen image.  I will give it a try.  

     

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    I just unboxed my first SM124 and it works!!  With my 1040STE.  The image looks good but smallish. There are no external adjustments other than Brightness and Contrast. Is there a way to adjust the image to be larger (to use more of the screen real estate)?  OR is it time to replace caps?  Thanks in advance for your ideas/advice. 

    90BE4F12-FEA7-464B-8F90-89F37644D5AC.thumb.jpeg.918c1071e5a9334d9ad7ace1c551eee2.jpeg

     

  25. Posted

    I have several XE carts (the light grey ones) that have something rattling around inside when you shake them. Sounds like little bits of plastic. Is there a safe way to open these carts without damaging them so I can remove the noisy bits?  Extra points for a how to video. Thanks!

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...