StickJock

I like that your "safety bag" has a target on it. Seems appropriate, somehow.... 😀

And Byte is probably 50% ads! The Media Mail notably does not mention periodicals in its list of allowable stuff. Although, this line can technically cover pretty much anything. And as we all know, technically correct is the best kind of correct! 😀 Computer-readable media containing prerecorded information and guides or scripts prepared solely for use with such media.

No, not 256K... Quarter-Meg! Sounds much more impressive, doesn't it? Like a Half-Terrabyte instead of 500GB. Now that I think about it, my 320XE is soooo close to being a Third-Meg!

The stack of Bytes is 4.5" thick, so it should fit in a USPS medium flat-rate box.

While cleaning up, I came across 8 Byte magazines, dated May 1985 (Vol 10, No 5) to December 1985 (Vol 10, No 13). The September 1985 issue has an article "The Quarter-Meg Atari 800XL" by Claus Buchholz, whom I am assuming is @ClausB. There is also a sort-of Atari related article in the June issue, "6502 Tricks and Traps" by Joe Holt. If anyone wants these, they can have them for the cost of shipping. Otherwise, they are getting thrown out next Wednesday for trash pickup.

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Do the individual keys have any kind of tactile feedback, or does the entire surface feel the same (key & non-key area)? I'm wondering if it is implemented as a simple resistive panel, where the two pots read X&Y, like a Koala pad. Do you have to do any kind of calibration when you use it?

What pins on the joystick port does this use? Is it using a resistor network to give each key its own resistance value which goes to a paddle input?

I finally got my microSD to CF adapter, and am ready to install my Incognito. And now I have another issue - I don't have a 3-pin connector to plug into P6. I found a 4-pin connector of the right pitch (from a CPU fan), but it won't fit next to the 6-pin connector on P5. It is too thick. Can someone recommend a place to get one cheap & fast? Maybe Amazon? Thanks!

The faceplate & the top piece of the case have a few differences. IIRC, one of the hold-down posts on the top shell is in a different place, so it presses on a different part of the drive mech. (I've got a drive where someone put the wrong top & face on it). This post shows the difference between the Tandon & WST drives.

Maybe it is not sitting on the posts properly?

You will want to work with PORTA ($D300) and PACTL ($D302). Here's what Mapping the Atari says: Edit: sorry about the formatting - I just cut & pasted from Mapping. Here's the URL for it: https://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/ 54016 D300 PORTA (W/R) Reads or writes data from controller jacks one and two if BIT 2 of PACTL (location 54018) is one. Writes to direction control if BIT 2 of PACTL is zero. These two port registers also control the direction of data flow to the port, if the controller register (54018, below) is POKEd with 48 ($30). Then, if the bits in the register read zero, it is in input (R) mode; if they read one, it is in output (W) mode. A zero POKEd here makes all bits input, a 255 ($FF) makes all bits output. BITs 0 to 3 address pins one to four on jack one, BITs 4 to 7 address pins one to four on jack two. POKE 54018 with 52 to make this location into a data register again. Shadow registers are: STICK0 (632; $278, jack one), STICK1 (633; $279, jack two) and PTRIG0-3 (636-639; $27C-$27F). Bits used as data register 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 --Jack 0-- --Jack 1-- --Stick 1-- --Stick 0-- Forward = BIT 0, 4 = 1 Backward = BIT 1, 5 = 1 Left = BIT 2,6 = 1 Right = BIT 3,7 = 1 Neutral = All four jack bits = 1 PORTA is also used to test if the paddle 0-3 triggers (PTRIG) have been pressed, using these bits: Bit 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 PTRIG 3 2 - - 1 0 - - Where zero in the appropriate bit equals trigger pressed, one equals trigger not pressed. The PORT registers are also used in the keyboard controller (used with a keypad) operation where: Bit 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Row 4 3 2 Top 4 3 2 Top Jack ..........2.......... ..........1........... Columns for the keyboard operation are read through the POT (PADDL) and TRIG registers. See Micro, May 1982, and the Hardware Manual for more information on jacks and ports. 54018 D302 PACTL (W/R) Port A controller (see 54016 above). POKE with 60 ($3C) to turn the cassette motor off, POKE with 52 to turn it on. You can put a music cassette in your program recorder, press PLAY and then POKE 54018,52. Your music will play through the TV speaker or external amplifier while you work at the Atari. You can use this technique to add voice tracks to your programs. To turn off the music or voice, type POKE 54018,60. PACTL can be used for other external applications by the user. Bit use is as follows: Bit Function 7 (read only) Peripheral A interrupt (IRQ) status bit. Set by Peripheral (PORT) A. Reset by reading PORTA (53774; $D20E). 6 Set to zero. 5 Set to one. 4 Set to one. 3 (write) Peripheral motor control line (turn the cassette on or off; zero equals on). 2 (write) Controls PORTA addressing. One equals PORTA register; zero equals direction control register. 1 Set to zero. 0 (write) Peripheral A interrupt (IRQ) enable. One equals enable. Set by the OS but available to the user; reset on powerup.

So I've still been going through stuff and throwing away a lot. Like all of my notes & tests from all of my EE & CS classes in the 80s. One amusing (to me) thing that I came across was a datasheet for the Intel 8088, which was marked "Preliminary". I was amused because I don't even remember having this, and my first job out of university was doing BIOS development on an 8088 PC! Anyway, among boxes & boxes of old schoolwork, I came across 8 Byte magazines, dated May 1985 (Vol 10, No 5) to December 1985 (Vol 10, No 13). The September 1985 issue has an article "The Quarter-Meg Atari 800XL" by Claus Buchholz, whom I am assuming is @ClausB. I'm reading an article right now in the June issue, "6502 Tricks and Traps" by Joe Holt. Anyway, if anyone wants these, they can have them for the cost of shipping. Otherwise, they are getting thrown out as part of my long overdue spring cleaning. Sorry about the glare on the left side of the pic. I didn't notice it until I uploaded the pic here.

The TrakBall did direction plus movement, but it only used a 1-bit counter for the movement. 😀 Also, without a 2-way communications protocol, there would be no way for the device to know that it had been read so that it could clear it's counter. I suppose that the host could just subtract the previous count from the new count to get the delta, which would preserve the sign as well. You could do an I2C-like communication on a couple of the port pins, and use a third as an ATTN signal to the host. How about use the button as an ATTN signal, bit 3 as a clock, and then bits 2:0 to send data. That way, you can send 3 bits at a time. The host sees the ATTN go low, so it grounds the CLK pin for short period of time. The device sees CLK go low, so it latches it low as well (like I2C) while it puts the data on the data pins. Then it lets go of CLK so that it can get pulled back high. When the host sees CLK go high, it captures the three data bits and drops CLK again to read the next set of data. Repeat until all of the data has been read in. The device would need to use some timeout to keep it's data in sync (after xx time with no clk activity, reset to first data tribit). Maybe the first data tribit has a fixed pattern as well to help keep the host in sync? Anyway, a protocol like this would allow the device to accumulate data, and then it can push it all out to the host when the host has time to read it. Three tribits could contain two 4-bit signed values plus the button. That would let the device accumulate up to +7/-8 in each axis. Go with 4 tribits, and you can have two 5-bit signed numbers (+15/-16) and two buttons.

The driving controller just has the two pins wired directly to a mechanical rotary encoder, so you get pure 2-bit gray code out of it. 2-bit gray code: 00-01-11-10-00-01-11-10-00-01-11-10-00 Moving left to right or moving right to left is detected by comparing the current state to the previous state. In the code sequence I show above, if your previous state was 11, then if you move right your new state is 10, and if you moved left then the new state is 01. If the new state was 00, then you moved 2 steps either right or left (indeterminate). If the new state is 01, then *either* you moved one state to the left, or you moved three states to the right. The Atari Trakball, in trackball mode, uses a direction+movement encoding scheme, where one bit in the bit-pair indicates that motion has occurred, and the other bit indicates the direction. Using this method, which requires some smarts in the device (pretty cleverly implemented, if you look at the schematic), you do not get the direction confused if the encoder moves more than one "tick" between pollings, but you can miss out on motion. For example, you will know that the X axis motion is positive, but any number of odd ticks between polls would be interpreted as 1 tick, and any number of even ticks between polls would be interpreted as 0 ticks. If you poll the trackball at a constant time interval, you may end up hitting a beat frequency where a constant speed is read as no motion. By this, I mean that if you read the trackball at a constant frequency of every X ms, and the ball is moving at a constant speed such that the wheel is changing states every x/2 ms, then you would read the same motion bit (it toggles twice) every time so would never see the motion. So it may be better to poll the trackball at uneven time increments.

More about the Atari Driving Controller and how it may impact you. It uses a mechanical rotary encoder, which outputs 2-bit gray code consisting of 16 phases in 360 degrees. That equates to a new phase every 22.5 degrees. The rotary controller is wired to the up & down pins of the joystick, and the button is wired to the standard joystick trigger pin. If you don't read the port fast enough, you can miss phases. If you go two phases, such as 00 to 11, you don't know if you went clockwise or counterclockwise, so you would suppress motion. If you go three phases between reads, it will be interpreted as going one phase in the opposite direction. If you go four phases between reads, it will look like you didn't move at all. OK, so what does this all mean in terms of reading the Driving Controller? In my experiments, I can get up to 15 phase changes in 3 VBIs. My code reads the port in a bunch of spread out DLIs and increments/decrements a counter. Then, in every 3 VBIs, I am reading & clearing the DLI counter. I added some debug code which reports the counts. Here is where I am seeing counts up to 15. 15 in 3 VBIs implies 5 per VBI (but it could also be 4+5+6, I suppose). Anyway, this implies that to use the Driving Controller in a robust manner, the code should read the port at least 5 times (preferably 6 or more for safety) per VBI. So you pretty much have to set it up to have it read in 5+ DLIs. If it had been implemented more like a serial/ps2/usb mouse, the controller would accumulate motion and then report the accumulated motion either when polled or at some pre-determined rate (old-fashioned ps/2 mice generally support a 40Hz & 80Hz report rate). But since the phases are polled directly, we are stuck with having to use a very high polling rate to make it work well. I know that there are not a lot of programs that use the driving controller, which is a shame, but I thought that this might be useful information for you.

Or driving controller.

BTW: I found a loose sheet of paper in the binder of Adventure Games that has notes translating taste to words. Does anyone know what game this is from so that I may file it appropriately? My notes have a section that looks like this: (sweet/sl.bitter) (sweet/very-sour) (sweet/very sweet) (sour/bland/bland/sour) (very salty) (very sweet/bland/sour) (bland) (bland/salty/sour) (bitter/sour/very sour) (slightly sour) (bitter/salty/bitter) (very sweet/bland/sour) (bland) (bland/salty/sour) (bitter/sour/very sour) (slightly sour) (bitter/salty/bitter) Does this "taste" familiar to anyone? Maybe an Infocom game? Thanks for any help!

I'm glad that I could bring back some memories for you. I had never heard of these stores before or since. As I said, I must have found them by ads in magazines. I subscribed to Byte for most of the 80s (probably where I ordered my ZX81 from), and I think I may have had either an Antic or Analog subscription in the mid to late 80s, but I'm not positive. I haven't found it yet, but I think I have a box full of old Atari magazines & newsletters. The price sticker on my Atari 850 box says $95.00, but IIRC, I got either 25% or 50% off. I got it at the PX and was a special sale, where they would ring up your stuff, and then you would draw a tag out of a big stocking (must have been Christmas time in 1983 or 1984 - probably '84) that would have a discount amount on it. IIRC, they were mostly 10%, with a few larger values. I was lucky enough to get the big one! I don't remember if this is when I got my second 1050 or not. It came in a white box with plain red lettering saying "Atari 1050". It doesn't even identify it as a disk drive! One end of the box has a white sticker that says, in red, "Reconditioned". The other end of the box was sealed shut with a yellow sticker bragging about how they have replaced DOS 3 with DOS 2.5. 😀

I'm finding things that I didn't even know I had! One box was filled with binders full of documentation. Each binder had a handwritten table of contents sheet in front. Most of the docs are photocopies, or printed out Soft Docs, but there is also a good amount of original material as well. There are also a lot of handwritten notes & maps from various adventure games. For example, I had no idea that I owned an original Sams ComputerFacts for the 800. And inside the jacket, along with the 800 ComputerFacts, was a photocopy of Sams ComputerFacts for the 130XE. I knew that I had an Atari Assembler/Editor cartridge, but don't remember where I got it from. Apparently, I must have purchased it since I have the printed manual for it as well. Mac/65 was what I mainly used back in the 80's , though. I found 1050 manuals for both Dos II and Dos 3. About the only thing that I know that I had that I cannot find is the SpartaDos book that came with my US Doubler. I actually have the sleeve from it with the two pieces of styrofoam that held the new ROM & RAM (currently holding the original ROM & RAM), but the book itself is missing. One thing that I found particularly interesting was that tucked in the front flap of one of the binders, I found the receipts for my modems. I ordered an Avatex 1200 in September of 1986 from Black Patch Systems in Maryland for $79 + $3 shipping for a total of $82. Then, in February of 1988, I ordered an Anchor 2400 External from Nickel City Electronics in NY for $149.95 + $7.95 shipping for a total of $157.90. I am positive that I ordered both of these from ads in magazines. IIRC, I offset the cost of the 2400 baud modem by posting flyers in the engineering buildings at university and selling the 1.5 year old 1200 baud modem for $100. 😀 Anyway, it's funny what you come across when you unpack boxes that you packed up nearly 30 years ago!

Hmm. I wonder if we could use these "bad" quad pokeys in our systems by wiring them up so to use only one or two good ones? Kind of like how Intel used to sell larger RAM with bad chunks as smaller RAMs?

It's possible that you had some corrosion built up on some of the GTIA's socket's pins that scraped off when you swapped chips. The corrosion would increase the resistance on those pins. You may want to try cleaning the socket and try your "bad" chip again. Easy enough to test, and it just may save you a chip.

Search is your friend! 😀

I don't know about other vendors, but the mylar that I got from Brad was rolled up & put in a little plastic tube. I was also worried about it getting folded/creased, so was pleasantly surprised by the packaging method.

It could be a broken trace, but I remember reading about issues with the console keys on the XEs. IIRC, the console keys were especially susceptible to failing due to increased resistance on old keyboard membranes. The concole keys go to the GTIA chip instead of the Pokey (via the 4051s) like the rest of the keyboard. One fix was to gang additional resistors in parallel with the resistors on these lines on the PCB in order to lower the overall resistance of these buttons.