Larry

If I buy a MiSTer off eBay (assembled), what should I look for about the MiSTer itself? There is a wide variation in prices, and that probably means there are things missing, etc. on lower priced units. (?) I want to buy an essentially ready-to-go device. Well, one "biggie" that I see is that the lower-priced units don't include the DE-10 Nano board which is another $200+.

Just wondering. It would be great to slow down the swing without slowing down the game overall. Cutting down the hook and slice would be nice, too.

@DarkLord I had forgotten how big the STacy was! But Atari eventually had a smaller one, didn't they? I suspect looking back through my ST-Log's and STart's will refresh my memory.

I had a 1040ST BITD and was later given a Mega, but never developed the attachment for them that I had for the 8-bit. So I've installed STeem on my PC, and am looking for something compelling do with it. (Had mouse trouble with Hatari, BTW.) If this pans out, I might get a MIST. So what do you do on your ST?

Thanks. I'm currently reading (on my Kindle app) "Commodore: The Amiga Years." There was a lot more going on with the Amiga project than I was aware of previously, but Jack had already left Commodore, so not so much about him in that one. I read "...On the Edge" when it came out some years ago. I'll have to revisit it.

I didn't think of YouTube. There are a couple of significant videos of Jack there (under "Jack Tramiel"). I'd never heard Leonard's comments.

I have not been able to find one. There are a couple of short articles that are quick biographical sketches. Love him or dispise him, the man had a very interesting and productive life. And he certainly changed the home computer market immensely. It would make quite a read! Probably the best depiction of him that I've read was in Michael Tomczyk's Home Computer Wars. Incidently, that Compute! book sells used for $113 on Amazon. Glad I kept my copy!

These were well done by the Portland folks -- better than most that I've looked at. I am curious why the scans are so large. This surely lengthens the time for archive.org's servers to send these out. 70+ MB for a 20-some page scan seems like overkill.

I had a similar issue with a Black Box/Floppy Board combo. The FB mounts inverted on top of the BB, and the chips are in very close proximity to each other. Add to that, CSS supplied a plastic case that trapped most of the heat. So I used one of those PC fans that mounted in a back plane slot, only mine was sitting on its side at the right end blowing air into the space between the boards. Ultimately I quit using the FB, so I no longer needed the fan. IIRC, @Mathy used longer connectors to join the two boards, thus increasing the air gap between them. Anyway, I share your concern about heat. If you could, please post a picture of your fan installation.

I am thinking very seriously about getting a MIST from Lotharek, and about the only put-off is the VGA output. Do the common VGA to HDMI adapters (typically under $20) provide a good display? BTW, I've done a fair amount of research on MIST vs. MiSTer, and I think the MIST is a better solution for me, especially the 1.5 version.

That's a nice tutorial! I prefer APE, but for this it's pretty much same as. An issue that I've always had with RespeQt is that the drag-and-drop does not work reliably. In fact, it mostly doesn't work at all.

I love my EclaireXL. But some things that I think were missing: 1. PCB form factor that would fit in a 600XL or 800XL case with most ports lining up. 2. S-Video in addition to the truly superb HDMI/DVI. (I'm probably in a minority, but being able to connect to CRT monitors with S-video is still pretty awesome.) BTW, Panos made a couple of the S-Video adapters, IIRC. 3. Ability to attach a real Atari keyboard. If you've typed on a real Atari for 40+ years, your fingers *know* where all those special keys are. IIRC, the EclaireXL will run at something like 30+ MHz, although I no longer think that is terribly important. A mere 7 MHz makes for a very snappy machine.

After my 1040 ST, I built a 386 system with EGA graphics, a "big" HDD, Windows 3.0 or 3.1, etc. I was never much of a gamer, but the PC business/productivity software was definitely of great interest to me. Somewhere along the way, I got Turbo Basic (for the PC), and started writing business software for work. (BTW, I kept the 1040 ST for quite a few years after moving to PC's.)

I just noticed the entry: "ARGS-OS (Ralf David ROM-Disk: Select+Reset) ARGS-OS." Never heard of it. Can someone elucidate? (There's a word you don't see every day!) 🙂

I'm focusing on the price for an original type replacement. BackSID at $32. Pokeymax 3 is going to be apx. 150 Euros + shipping. IIRC, TBA was selling used Pokeys for $65. On eBay, $60-$80 used. There is a Pokey One apparently for arcade machines for $50 and a Version 2 for $75, but at least the original version says "not for computers." Don't know about the V2 for computer use.

I was curious if anything like this has been done for Pokey replacements. I saw an advertisement for the BackSID for $32.00, so it seems logical that a Pokey replacement could be done for a similar price (say under $50). But no bells and whistles -- just a good Pokey replacement. https://store.backbit.io/product/backsid/

@Mathy said: "Didn't Atari already have something planned that was called 1600XL?" The closest thing that I remember was Chuck Steinman's (DataQue's) idea for an Atari on a PC board. I think that the idea was for it to be an accelerated Atari. He wrote an article about it and also gave a talk at the Chicago Atarifest (1990 or 1992 I think). He had two ideas BTW -- one was a stand-alone computer and the other an Atari on a PC card. Anyone know if Chuck is still with us?

Can the 1090 and cards be made any smaller without compromising assembly, etc. I realize that the 1090 is a 1980's reproduction, but smaller is better, I think.

Can anyone provide a link to the 1090 80-column card firmware and the charset rom? I tried to set this up in Altirra but can't find the roms. I searched using Altirra + 1090 in this thread, but didn't come up with anything.

What apps would work with the 80-column card? And (anyone) how big of a deal would it be to get one of the many word processors or text editors available for the Atari working with the 1090 80-column card? It may not be a killer app, but we need at least one app for it. Do BASICs work well with it? IIRC, some 80-column configurations only allowed 80 characters on a Basic line. The Bit 80 was that way, I think. And what are the dimensions (for those of us who are short on desk space)? Sorry for all the questions, but I think they are "good questions."

At this time, what cards are available -- 80-col., 320K ram, and CX85 keypad? Did I miss any? If one uses the 1090, they can't use a hard drive, nor have multiple OS? (Although I would think you could still have internal multiple OS, but the 1090 wouldn't work?)

What E: handler is used for the 80-column card? Is it in the 1090 firmware? How is it activated from stock 40-column?

Yes, from the context, I think "removal" would be a proper English word.

Wow! Never knew that was a toggle! Thanks, Roy. It appears the green dot does nothing currently. Do you know if it ever did in an older version of Windows? Maybe was put there for a purpose that was never implemented?

Thanks, I'll check out the ATR header bytes, and presumably write a little Basic program to change any errant bits so it will work with ATADIM. According to that ATR table, it looks like there is a difference in the bytes between the original Nick Kennedy scheme and Steve Tucker's.