Weird Old Hardware Question -- Failed Disks with Scratched Out Magnetic Rings...

[Weird Old Hardware Question -- Failed Disks with Scratched Out Magnetic Rings...]

If it is only on some disks, but others work fine, and it doesn't seem to "infect" new disks, there is a good chance that some grit got stuck in the liner of the plastic disk envelopes of the bad disks.  

If new disks get damaged, then it is likely the drive.  If it is the top/label side of the disk that gets damaged, there may be some grit in the rabbit fur pad that presses on the top of the disk.  If it is the data side ("bottom") of the disk, then your head may be dirty.

 

I clean my drives using a Q-tip with denatured alcohol. 

 

[48k Atari 400 upgrades available]

And not to overlook the obvious... the keyboard!  😀

 

Starting to sound like a Monty Python skit!

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to the Pope!

Um, I'll come in again...

[sio2pc USB by Lotharek]

Drive 3 is fine.  Just leave that drive empty in Respeqt.

 

[Weeko, Wicko, Wieko?]

1 hour ago, Gearhead Lu said:

How do you pronounce deja vu?

AA post-How do you pronounce "Wico"?

😉🕹️

Sure, if I wanted to know how TI99/4A users pronounced it.... 😀

[anyone have a 1200XL with rev 11 OS?]

6 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

Modern LEDs are a lot brighter than the vintage originals. You will likely need only one. In fact, I ever do decide to fiddle with my power board mod again (not likely), I’ll probably change the current limiting resistor to a somewhat higher value to reduce the brightness of the red LED. It overwhelms the green when my HDD activity light activates. And on *that* note, if like several of us your HDD light doesn’t work as installed, you might need to remove the on-board SMD LED on the Incogito. Driving both that one and an external caused too much voltage drop. Once I removed the SMD LED from my Icognito, my new HDD light came to life. 

My thought on using both was 1) keep the red & green lights even instead of biased left/right (granted, I don't know if this is an issue or not), and 2) don't need to cut a trace on the power board.  I figure that I also don't need to drill the hole for the wires, though I do plan on hot gluing them down.  Now, if I can figure out a way to not have to drill the hole for the standoff....  (I like the idea of being able to undo the mod and "leave the campsite cleaner than it was when I got there", even though it is unlikely that I would ever undo it)

[Weeko, Wicko, Wieko?]

I think most of us probably started out with the CX40s.  For me, they always ended up getting flakey.  This was usually caused by the snap domes drifting under the tape.  I would peel the tape up and put them back where they belonged but then, of course, the tape didn't stick as well and they would drift again even sooner.  I think the plastic may have gotten deformed or cracked on some of them, too.  The Wico was a big upgrade for me. 

 

Although, now that I think back, I also had to do a repair in my Wico as well - I think one of the switches mount had broken or something. 

 

I also added a left forefinger button on the "front" of the base & a toggle to switch between all buttons work / normal / button held down.  I must have bought a pack of the little red pushbuttons from Jameco or something since I found that I had also added them to the other side of the paddles, and I have one on back of my 320XE as a Freezer button (makes warm resets into cold resets).

[anyone have a 1200XL with rev 11 OS?]

9 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

Hey, getting that ATR swap switch to work smoothly and reliably is a pain in the ass. I could sand the bottom of the light pipe a bit to drop it back down a tiny bit but screw it. No one unfamiliar with the 800 notices anything until the green HDD activity light shows, and those who do notice it usually realize there’s an Incognito in the machine. 

 

And if they don’t like it, frankly I don’t give a damn.  

Yeah, I guessed what it was.  I'm still waiting on receiving a dupont kit from AliExpress before I begin my install.  I was going to just flip the original 6-pin connector over so that the 3-pin would fit next to it, but one of FJC's videos says that the included cable's wires going to the CPU card are too short, so I figure I'll wait a bit longer and do it all at the same time.  

I am planning on using a pair of 2-color red/green 3mm LEDs with the green leads bent up, so I'll have to do a bit of extra filing on the light pipe.

[*New* pictures of our Atari 8-bit setups]

Man, tough crowd.

 

I'm glad I didn't make a joke about DrVenkman's 800's power light looking like it was sitting a little higher than OEM....  😀

 

[anyone have a 1200XL with rev 11 OS?]

Now that's weird.  I thought I posted that in the New Pics thread!

 

[anyone have a 1200XL with rev 11 OS?]

EDIT:  This got posted in the wrong thread!  Leaving it here since it got quoted already.

 

Man, tough crowd.

 

I'm glad I didn't make a joke about DrVenkman's 800's power light looking like it was sitting a little higher than OEM....  😀

[Floppy Drive head lubricant dispenser ??]

I use silicone spray, sprayed into the cap from the can, and applied with a q-tip.

[Weeko, Wicko, Wieko?]

My next door neighbor had that one, with the interchangeable handles.  I like my bat handled one, but I tend to hold it down near the base with my thumb & forefinger to shorten the throw.

 

[*New* pictures of our Atari 8-bit setups]

3 minutes ago, brenski said:

well it probably doesn't as:

a: i don't intend to sell it, and

b: if i did, i have a spare case

It was a joke, referring to the under-inflated footballs scandal, sometimes called "deflate-gate".

I kinda dig the red-faced 1050, though.

[*New* pictures of our Atari 8-bit setups]

17 minutes ago, patjomki said:

 

Well, this computer for sure looks ...different... 😈

Are you saying that his paint job "deflated" the value? 😀 🏈

[Weeko, Wicko, Wieko?]

Growing up, my friends & I always referred to this (my favorite joystick) as a Wicko.  Looking at it now, I think I would call it a Weeko.  How should it be pronounced?  How do you pronounce it?

 

 

Not that it matters much.  I'm pretty set in my ways - just ask my wife!

(Now get off of my lawn!) 😀

 

[Atari 800 - what causes it to freeze sometimes?]

Does the old card fail right away if you put it in the first ram slot?

If so, then you can swap the ram chips, one at a time, into a good board in the first ram slot until you get a failed boot. Do this with each chip on the bad board to identify all of the bad ones. Then, just order replacement chips for them. 

 

[Early 800 bragging rights...]

Wait a year and go back to Dec 12th, 1980 and buy Apple stock instead!  Then you can buy all the 800s you want in the present!

 

Funny idea, invest in Apple in order to buy Ataris!

 

["Weak bits floppy disc protection"]

I remember the first time that I discovered that custom formats were possible.  It was in the computer lab in high school, and we were trying to copy a friend's Drol disk.  A straight copy, IIRC, would format itself on boot.  We were looking at sectors in a sector editor when we saw something weird happen.  Sometimes, certain sectors seemed to change when we reloaded them!  Weird.  We were able to confirm that this was happening, that somehow certain sectors were "doubled", so we called them "double sectors".  Somehow, in this investigation, we managed to overwrite the doubled sector on his disk so that both sectors read the same thing.  Oh Oh Crap!  I don't recall if maybe his was an Original disk that had a write-enable notch, or if maybe his was a Chip copy.  Also, I don't recall if we ended up with his disk formatting itself, but the end result was the same.  We hosed his game.  So, we were forced to crack it so that he could have his game working again. 😀

 

The track with the double sector also had a bad sector, so we hypothesized that the track still had 18 sectors, but doubled one and skipped another.  We didn't know anything about how soft-sectored disks held sector information, but this made sense to us.

 

[130XE 576K upgrade by Scott Peterson]

Oddly enough, during my epic cleanup of old stuff last week, I came across a printout of this upgrade!  Also the 1 meg upgrade.  Strangely enough, I did not find the printout of the 320K upgrade, which is the one that I did BitD.  These would have been printed out in the 80s.  Yes, you can expect to see me on an upcoming episode of "Hoarders".

 

 

[Looking for a working CX85->USB connector]

It also uses POT B.

 

Here's the schematic for the CX85, which includes the truth table for the output.  You need to read POTB in order to differentiate between '0' & 'F1 (ESC)'.

 

 

 

[Free Byte Magazines]

The vintage Bytes have been claimed and mailed off.  Thank you all for playing!

 

[Does anyone make new Atari 8-bit cartridge shells?]

I think that the first time that I got paid to program was in high school when the computer programming teacher told one of his students to pay me to write the homework assignment program for him.  I got $10, and iirc, I wrote him a piano program for the Atari 800.  I sort of remember writing programs for several other people for cash while in high school.  I also had a college professor pay me $100 to write him a word processor for his Kaypro PC-compatible in 1985.

 

Good times!

[Atari Liberator (C) 1982 Atari - can someone upload it?]

The Wang 2200VS system that I used in high school also used removable disk packs.  I don't know if they would be compatible or not, but it would be about the same time period. 

 

I remember going to a scrap yard in the mid to late 80s looking for some brass scrap for a project.  One of the big dumpsters that I looked in was filled about halfway up with disk packs.  There must have been hundreds of them! 

[How to display a help page only as long as the HELP key is pressed?]

29 minutes ago, freetz said:

Thanks, I tried this, but this results in screen flickering due to the switching between main and help screen, at least with HELPFG (732) because I clear the register and when reading it again, it is still cleared or has just been set to 17 (HELP key pressed) again.

As for KBCODE, is there a way to clear it? As its hardware register is "dual use", poking a zero there will start some POKEY timer, IIRC...

 

That's why you need to check the timer - to delay before you test the keyboard again.  Use a long enough delay that they keyboard has been scanned again, but short enough that the program feels responsive to the key being released.

[How to display a help page only as long as the HELP key is pressed?]

The Atari keyboard controller isn't designed to generate a key release along with the key press. Try clearing the key scan code, and then when the timer increments read it again. If you read anything other than the help key, such as no key or a different key, then clear your help screen.