Arcadia 2001 Fan Appreciation Thread

[Arcadia 2001 Fan Appreciation Thread]

On 12/14/2020 at 11:06 AM, carlsson said:

Yeah, Philips acquired Signetics in 1975, right when the 2650 was released. While the exact date for the first 1292 APVS systems is debated (1976 or 1978), I wonder if the support chips were developed over time. Clearly the 2636 Programmable Video Interface must've been ready for the first generation of games, while I don't know the date of the 2637 Universal Video Interface used in the Arcadia 2001. 

 

I have a few, never used 2637N and they are signetics  dated 7931 or maybe 30. Given to me straight from someone at philips. Never knew back then - mid-80s - how to use them without datasheet and only now I see these were used in this console

[Atari 600XL troubles]

Just did the upgrade and now it works fine. So even the sdrive menu requires the extra ram. Anyway great result, thanks!

[Atari 600XL troubles]

Yes that looks easy enough

[Atari 600XL troubles]

Tried booting with option held, sdrive menu also does not work. 

So I guess I need to find some other software or some RAM

Thanks for the help!

 

[Atari 600XL troubles]

I have an atari 600xl without any mods or expansions. I build the sdrive-max, but cannot run anything successfully. All self tests pass; keys work, ram/rom ok and audio also works. Simple 10 print goto 10 also fine. 

 

I opened it up and the board looks in pretty good shape, caps look fine, no leaks. Pressed down on the chips to make sure they are seated well.

 

Loading seems to work fine, but nothing runs. The sdrive.atr loads, shows black screen with a white row at the top, then blue screen with cursor after that it reboots by itself and repeats.

 

Some other atr files from tosec (boulder dash, dos 2.5) give a garbled screen looking like random colored characters or just vertical lines with different colors. DOS first shows something that looks correct (blue screen and text in white) but then also some garbled output.

 

So I could use some tips as I never used an atari before. I would at least expect the sdrive.atr (from v1.2 release) to work out of the box on the stock 16kb 600XL? 

Is that correct?

 

Does this point to some hw issue, and if so what might be wrong?

Or am I not using supported software, if so what would be a good demo to try for this machine?