YSG2020

I agree. There’s no way I’m hacking up a 1200xl. Anything I do to it will be reversible to stock.

Just down the road and around the corner. :)

Anybody have an extra working spare 1200XL with 1050 they are not needing that is original, working, and not modded in good condition? I’m buying. Thx kindly.

After listening to this fantastic interview it is clear that he is entirely correct that Apple became what Atari set the foundation for. Atari should have and would been Apple. Jobs and Woz made some better strategic business/marketing decisions and took advantage of hiring away and continuing the unique Atari creative culture and engineers as it crumbled. Also fascinating that the Amiga would have been an Atari had the company not been sold. Atari’s downfall was that it saw itself as a consumer gaming company and that limited its computer market potential tremendously. Atari is very likely the most important and influential early IT company of all time, or at least in the Top 4 or 5. (Xerox, IBM, HP, Atari) The Macintosh, iPod, iPad could have so easily have been an Atari products (decades earlier too) instead of an Apple if Jobs and Woz had not started their own breakaway company.

They do seem to be collected and hoarded now for sure as they age and the original owners are no longer in possession. I suspect in the near future the way to get A8 stuff will be in huge lot hoarded collector estate sales where their relatives just don’t want or know what to do with these collections. Frankly, unless our kids understand and take an interest in this stuff, there’s an awful lot destined for landfills. It would be like us collecting old typewriters or tube radios. Pretty rare. An unopened and unmolested A8 of any model is like gold though now... Buy it on the spot if the price is reasonable.

Estate sales and garage sales.

The problem being (and he knows it) that actual items he sold for a fair price are then turned around and listed on eBay for profit the next day.

You’d be surprised. I live in a rural area and there are A8s stashed in attics and crawl spaces everywhere just waiting to be sold by someone’s relatives. Another source is Brad at Best Electronics who has warehouses of cheap brand new oem nib A8 parts. The only problem being he’s like crossing The Bridge of Death in Monty Python and the Holy Grail... Wrong Answer! Zap! Banished. Lol. I’ve heard from the source that B&C is liquidating and downsizing. Wish I lived in California.. I’d go visit Bruce and help him clear out some of his stock and lighten his load.

Any thoughts, strategy or advice on buying used A8 equipment? What do you prefer? It’s obviously getting rare and harder to find. I personally shy away from EBay as it’s hard to get a good deal there unless you can convince a seller to sell direct without an auction driving the price up. I find Ebayers purposely capitalistic. Craigslist, Estate sales, and garage sales on the other hand have always been gold for me as you can find the uneducated and uninterested sellers who just want to part with their ‘junk’ for a few bucks to clean up their house. I personally have found anything on EBay can be bought elsewhere for 1/5th the price if you know where to look and are persistent.

Recessions/depressions great time to buy anything... if you have the cash reserves. People in crisis often have to sell at a loss for cheap to make ends meet. Sad reality of this unfortunate situation. Priorities change also. The wealthy will get wealthier. The poor will get poorer. There will be some good deals soon on A8s (and everything else) online as the prices inevitably drop considerably from the silly highs they’ve been at recently. Bubble broken.

I’d try and negot down the price a bit but they are easily fixable if they have not been previously opened up and monkeyed with by the previous owner. Usually just needs a modern new power supply and replacement of a few ICs. What usually happens is the original power supply fails and someone plugs it in which overpowers the unit frying the RAM, OS, etc. If it has a socketed motherboard you are in luck and it’s quick and easy. Non-socketed, if you know how to desolder and solder and have some basic tools and electronics knowledge also relatively easy quick fix usually . A8 parts/components can still be sourced and purchased new online and usually shipped within a week. The nice thing about the early Ataris is that they are made well and are non-miniaturized electronics so they are still accessible and serviceable by laymen non-engineers. I’d say grab it for parts at the very least. That’s why you have offers here for it already. Everyone who has a working A8, also has some parts machines.

When do we get an A8 port of Galagon?

Time machine mod.

Yup. That’s it. My plugs are all inserted correctly then. Hmm. Has to be faulty ICs then. Maybe I’ll give the drive switches another shot of cleaner. It’s odd actually. They move really loose and easily. On my working 1050 they are tight and slide more with a definitive click. Different manufacturer?

I saw that also. Thankyou. My drive is from the other manufacturer. Totally different plugs and wiring harnesses in it. Mine are clear plastic with all colored wires and totally different designed and shaped plugs also.

Mine has the clear plugs with the colored wires in it for the longer plugs. And the red plugs for the shorter plugs. I’m guessing it’s a WST? So for the WST there does not appear to be one of the plugs inserted backwards? It’s odd this unit doesn’t work, it looks absolutely mint in and out like brand new. Not a mark on it. Not even yellowed. ?! I don’t think it’s ever been opened up or hardly used. Caps look good. Spins good. Gotta be fried IC’s. I bet it was victim of a power surge. I’m terrified to open up my cherished original and only working 1050 to swap ICs into this one. Going to have to find another cheap used 1050 as a parts donor to experiment further.

Checked voltages. Ok. Reseated all the socketed ICs. Worked the drive select switches well. Still just spins continuously with both LEDs on as soon as it’s switched on. I have a hunch someone may have plugged the cable plugs on the board backwards. Does anybody have a photo showing the correct jumper/plugs inserted properly? Thx.

Yup. I’ll post pics ASAP here. It’s definitely a different font. It has really cool square modern looking text. When I press the 3 function keys when in this OS it says something at the bottom of the screen like ‘Omnimon 1985 ...’ whoever installed it did a lot of work on the motherboard to mod it all in - There’s wires and IC pins pulled up and soldered everywhere. I’ve never seen ROMs all stacked and soldered together before. Looks like a rats nest. But they did a good job and knew what they were doing. It works great. Clearly a dev programmer did this back in the day for a much faster machine with I guessing much more ram too.

Where to get new 1050 IC’s? Please don’t say BEST. Lol. I don’t play well with Brad’s unpredictable idiosyncrasies. Anybody else have these avail? Thx.

I knew when I bought this 1050 drive at the garage sale it would be the non-working item in the collection. Sure enough, when it’s switched on, it just runs/spins with the LED on constantly. Doesn’t stop, regardless of the latch being closed or not. Doesn’t do the self diagnostic spin and then stop. It just keeps spinning... Computer doesn’t even recognize it’s connected. No response nor errors. Nothing. On the upside, with a disk in it, it seems to spin it at the correct rpm so it would appear the belts are ok. Any ideas where to start (besides the dumpster?) Thx.

yes, I’ve managed to get one keyboard to work and try it. Everything you describe is true. I like it. Cool new text font too when this new OS is enabled.

Sure. I’ll open it back up tomorrow and snap a pic and post. I’ve looked around the forums here and still haven’t found a way to determine how much RAM this modified one has.

Thank-you. It would appear I’ve got an 8bit programmers dev set up here. I was planning on teaching the kids BASIC on this, but it looks like if they are ambitious and enjoy it, we can also do assembler and C too!

Just bought two 130XEs, a 1050 with a bunch of Action and C programming carts/disks/manuals and spartados for $100 at a garage sale. One of the XE’s has an aftermarket switch modded on the back of it. I was curious as to what this was for so I opened up the computer. There’s a bunch of wires soldered onto the motherboard, it looks like new RAM chips, and stack of ROMs soldered on top of the original ROM with the writing ‘Ominom RamRod XL’ on it. Can anybody enlighten me as to what exactly I’ve stumbled upon here? No idea. But I’m guessing someone used this machine for software development and it has a ram upgrade also possibly? Isn’t there a POKE command I can use to verify the amount of RAM in these things? Does that mod switch change OS or something? They seem complete and in good shape but I am having some different keyboard issues with both of them.

How about this beauty: