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djglish

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Posts posted by djglish

  1. I have a VGA to HDMI converter box that will upscale the 15kHz signal from my Atari to show properly on a LCD TV.  I made a homebrew Atari to VGA cable a number of years ago when I had a monitor that would Sync to 15kHz.  I did buy the Dell SE2722h monitor that has been mentioned in other threads which does the color and mono frequencies. It works very well but needs speakers for sound.

  2. Forgot about this thread until today.

    Last fall I brought the 800XL motherboard along with me to the "Vintage Computer Fair Midwest" and did sell it for parts.  I had it priced at about $20 and it went quickly.

     

    I did finish the project and have it up and running with Altirra.  I brought it to a "Wisconsin Computer Club" meeting and people thought it was cool to see the computer switch between playing Galaxian and then switch to running a Windows 10 screen.  The only thing I wish I could change was to go with an Arduino chip that would let me add in the 5 silver function keys.  An Arduino Mega might work, but I'm not sure that it would fit well into the case and I don't have the programming skills to modify the Arduino sketch to the Mega and add in the extra pins.  I did map the Silver key commands to regular Control/x-key but it would look much better to be able to hit the original keys.

  3. I bought the Dell SE2722H back in November and have to say that it is great.  The mono mode isn't perfect, but the low and medium color modes are fantastic.  If you have an old video cable and a DB15 connector you can make your own adapter.  I built one a number of years ago with a switch between mono and color and recently made one for color only (mainly for gaming).  Making your own cable can be a little bit of a pain since the video cables use some really thin wrapped wires inside.

  4. I have a Mega ST motherboard that I'm trying to get working again.  I had it mounted in a tower PC case.  It was a little touchy on starting and sometimes crashed.  I think it may have been due to the motherboard being mounted vertically instead of horizontally.  I messed up the floppy drive connector on the motherboard and just had a friend help put a new floppy connector on the board.

     

    There is some type of modification to the motherboard.  I'm including a picture of the wiring.

     

     

    Meg ST.JPG

  5. I have an old 4 bay SCSI case with an ICD ADSCSI+ (originally came with a 105mb drive, for over $600).  Over time I added a CDRW drive, 105mb Syquest drive and a tape backup.  I replaced the tape backup with a 3.5" floppy drive and replaced the 105mb drive with a ZULU SCSI card and a 1tb micro SD card.  The Zulu SCSI works really well.  The Micro ICD card would be nice since it takes up much less space but that doesn't matter with my huge 4x5.25" drive case.

     

     

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  6. When getting used to Altirra I used the function keys on my PC keyboard but the 800XL keyboard doesn't have them.  It seems to work OK with these work arounds.  Now I just need to get the joystick adapter attached to the joystick ports and I should be all set.

     

    It seems really weird to see Windows 10 running on what looks like a 800XL. From the front it looks unmodified.  From the back you can see the back of the MiniPC.

     

    Next project is trying to put a wireless mouse inside of an old cartridge that I have.  I found a mouse that is small enough, I just have to figure out how to rewire the buttons.  I will probably have them sticking out the bottom of the cartridge.  Might make a "Mouse House" label for the cartridge.

  7. I mounted a Mini PC (Bmax B1 Plus) in an Atari 800XL case and used an Arduino board to allow the 800XL keyboard to work with the PC via USB.  The Arduino board did not have enough pins to allow the mapping of the 5 silver keys on the right side of the keyboard.  The Sketch I found online (by DJ Sures) did not have those keys added either.

     

    I want to remap some of the keys using the Altirra custom keyboard mapper too work with the XL keyboard.  The box type key on the bottom right also wasn't mapped in the Sketch so I won't be able to use that.  I may try to learn enough Arduino coding to be able to use that box type key.  Might be a good choice for the START key.

     

    Any thoughts on which key combinations I should use for the RESET, OPTION, SELECT, START and HELP keys?

    I guess I could use the Shift and first letter (except for the Select and Start).  

     

    I also bought a Joystick adapter from iCode that uses an Arduino board to allow the use of two joysticks.  

     

    Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

     

     

  8. Early 90's ordered a 486 DX33 with 8mb of memory and monitor from a builder that advertised in Computer shopper.  I specified a SCSI hard drive, 256mb, since I was familiar with SCSI from the Atari.  It also had a 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drive.  I don't remember what sound card it had.  Added a SCSI CD drive after a few months.  I also remember standing in line on the day Windows 95 came out to upgrade the OS (same with Win98). 

     

    Since then I've scratch built most of my subsequent computers.

  9. I have the April 1991 MAST newsletter (Not sure when they started).  It might be the first issue. I also have a few issues from 1994-1995 till they merged with MilAtari and became MCS, the Milwukee Computer Society.

     

    I've finished scanning the MilAtari newsletters.  I'm only missing about 15 (mostly from 1988).  It was a real nostalgia trip seeing all of the articles.  I signed up for an Internet Archive account and will work on getting the newsletters posted.

     

    Allan, I looked at your page on Internet Archive.  Do you know if there is a way to make folders on a page?  I'd like to separate the newsletters by year.

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  10. I had a couple of busy days scanning.  So far I've done July 1983 through March 1987.  Those were all in a binder that a member had given me a number of years back.  

     

    Last fall we went through the cabinets at our meeting place and found a number of things of the club's that we decided to sell off at the VCF Midwest.  One of the items I brought home was another binder that has the first issue of the Newsletter and goes just past the beginning of the other one that I've scanned.  This will be the next batch that I work on.

     

    From March 87 forward I will have to rely on the ones that I received (as a member) and didn't lose.  Unfortunately there are a number of gaps.  With Dennis gone I don't know where I would be able to get any of the missing newsletters.

     

    At some point I became editor so I should have those in digital format.  There was a period where we were sending a disk every month with articles and programs on the disk instead of a newsletter.  I have some of those and may have the files in digital format.

     

    My poor scanner hasn't been this busy since I digitized all of my families slides a few years ago (over 1000 slides).

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  11. I'm pretty sure that I don't have the first MAST newsletters.  I didn't join when they first split off.  I was one of the people that helped push to get the two clubs back together though.

    I also have the program from the 1991 LCACE Atarifest.  I can scan that also.  I know that I was at one or both of the MAST events but don't have the programs from them.

  12. There are 9pin Joystick to USB adapters available.  It seems like most of them come from small businesses in Europe.  iCode is here in the US and makes a couple of different versions.  The iCode ones are based on a Arduino  board.  I have one but dropped it and the micro USB connector broke off of the board.  Another project will be reattaching the connector.

     

    Here is a link to the iCode site  https://www.icode.com/product-category/gaming/gaming-adapters/

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  13. Hi Bob C. and Allan.  Good timing on your question.  I have almost all of the Newsletters from July 1983 to at least October 2007.  I was considering scanning them.  Now I guess I'll have to move that to the "to-do" list.  I was at the VCF Midwest and met a person that had a friend that is working on a book about the Computer gaming area of Gencon and gave him some info from the Newsletters.

     

    MilAtari is no more but a core group of us still meet (at the Church on 115th).  We get anywhere from 3 to 7 people attending.  Not too much talk about computers, a lot of talk about what's ailing us lately.  

     

    Dennis Wilson (a member even longer than I was) passed away back in September.  We didn't find out until Christmas time when his sister called after my Christmas card to him was forwarded to her.

     

    Allan, I'm also a member of LCACE for the since the Covid19 days.  I can check with JJ and see if he has back newsletters from them

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