Larry

Hi drac030- Connector issues aside (for a moment), are there any changes on this V2 to improve the WRITE speed with 256-byte sectors? Or will it use (essentially) the same manipulation as the earlier model(s)? Are any of the 5 prototypes mentioned in the possession of folks with XL's? If so, do they have any feedback? @Jon - could you post a picture of your custom cable that you have for your IDEa (or link it if it posted somewhere else)? -Larry

Outstanding!!! -Larry

Thanks Sloopy and BillC! @Sloopy- I've never seen a "standoff socket" like this before. (At least I think that the lower socket and the "extender pins" are one piece.) Any idea what these are called? I'm assuming that the pins are not just pressed into the lower socket. -Larry

I purchased one of the 2364 adapters and installed it in an 800XL, using a common 27C64. "Plug and Play" -- works great. http://store.go4retro.com/products/2364-Adapter.html (also shown above in post #7). When you go to this link, the pic/price is for bare board only. I found a post of the Commodore 2364 Rom pinout and it appeared identical to the pinout of our Atari. Thought it would be good to check. I also have a 4-in-1 OS in this computer so it is a snug fit, but works fine using a tall socket or two sockets stacked for the OS. (Not my first choice, but I don't see any reasonable way around it.) It looks to me like using a 27128 -- 27512 would be no problem, except that I'm not sure yet how to wire those using the provided connections on the adapter board. No docs come with this, so I'm trying to find out more, or one of our better tech folks will need to take a look. Note that there are what looks like to be 1/8 watt resistors on the board, and those may be to replace the resistors on the switches for the bigger eproms. (?) Possibly, one could use the board alone (no adapter) to make the wiring of a 4-in-1 a little cleaner with no bent pins and resistors soldered to the pins. (?) Final note. Don't know about compatibility or need for this if you install one of Candle's "ultimate 1 MB upgrades" ??? -Larry

Hi Steve- Got a chance to find VTOC FIXER 2.0 last night. I don't believe I had ever heard of that one, but I do remember the author -- seem to recall he had some articles published way back in Analog or Antic. (?) Looks like a nice program. -Larry

>same board, aren't they...< Oops -- didn't see that Sebastian addressed that. SAT. -Larry

Hi- Two, please. (HQ) -Larry edit: If the ribbon cables are of a different length, please make them both the longer style, so I can move the upgrade, if necessary. Thanks.

Hi- Mine is a "9000 Pro" circa 2003. I think it is still a Radeon model -- they have made these cards since the days of ISA slots. Mine is getting some age on it -- an AGP 4X IIRC. An I/O cable plugs into the card, and on the cable there are inputs for Composite, S-Video, and L-R Audio. I use a little Radio Shack amplifier/speaker for convenience, since my TV is also connected to the AIW. I can use the Atari -or- watch (U.S.) football while surfing, etc. Here is a link to a current model: http://www.amd.com/us/products/pctv/all-in-wonder-cards/Pages/all-in-wonder-cards.aspx You can usually find a gaggle of these on eBay -- from really old to brand new models. It is similar to the ATI (now owned by AMD) TV Wonder card that is an add-on TV card, rather than an all-in-one. The TV Wonder is (was) also similar to the WinTV cards (which were good, also). Don't know how they are today, but this setup has worked well for me for many years. I got off the upgrade-go-round at Core 2 Duo and Win XP. Certainly not SOTA, but still very good for my needs. -Larry So are you saying that the Atari is plugged into this card in your PC? If so, what is the model # of that card?

Hi- I use an All-In-Wonder video card, which allows a scalable window for the Atari screen. I keep a Windows folder on my XP desktop with lots of images. So APE is there, the Atari screen, and several hundred ATR images. Works really well for me, and the ATI display of the Atari video is most excellent. I just slide and click away. Of course, the "mother load" of my ATR's is safe on my USB backup drive. BTW, I quoted someone else about the "proper Dos..." Sparta is nice but I like MyDos best of all. I'm just glad that we have so many nice choices. -Larry Just curious. Where do you keep your ATR (APE) Images? The Sparta-Dos disk format (and RealDos) is o.k. but the DOS itself is not suitable for many games. The solution is using MSDOS (Micro Sparta-Dos).

There's one other thing that may relate to the issue you had. On the "Misc Settings" tab there is a check-box for "Remember Size and Position" The Ape drive image titles (which includes PATH info) is right justified, so you are always likely to get the image file name. So you can make the GUI the size you want and where you want it, and APE will always "remember." That is a simple but neat feature, IMO. -Larry

Hi Bob- Unfortunately, there is no manual for the Windows version of APE. There is a nice manual (4.17 I think) for the Dos version and that takes care of maybe 80% of the issues, and the other 20% you have to get from the "intuitive" interface (and trial and error). To create a blank disk (image), click on "File" and from the drop-down, select "New" then "ATR DISK Image". A new dialogue box appears and you pick what kind of image you want (default is 720 sectors, SD). After selecting the size 720 to 65535, then click "Create." A new dialogue box opens up for you to select where you want the image to reside within Windows. (I keep a folder "ATR IMAGES" right on the desktop for easy access.) Then you give the image a name and click "OK". You go back to the "Create" dialogue box where you can create another or "Exit". If you exit then you will find a box for mounting the image (or exiting). You can drag the new image to the drive that you want to use. With most images, you can double click on the image and it will automatically go to D1:. Then you can click the swap buttons to move the images around at will. Also note the padlock to write protect the image (or an image may be READ ONLY which also write-protects it. Note that APE accepts ATR's XFD's and DCM images. DCM's are READ ONLY, IIRC. If you click on LOAD for a drive, then APE will display the a dialogue box for "Load Image" and it will show contents of any image that you highlight. If you use a windows search on APE images, I think the only thing that you can do is use "words in the file." which is pretty slow. I rarely have used that, but I'm pretty sure it works. So if you know part of the Atari file name, it should find it. Lots and lots and lots of features. Wonderful software, especially the "Virtual MX" printer function. Hope this helps. Ask away if I can answer anything else. -Larry

Since other folks are offering opinions, I'll offer mine. A hard drive is not a suitable permanent storage device. They do get corrupted. They do need backing up to avoid loss. So I keep my HD use limited to things that I access a lot. I used to make my MyDos hard drives 60,000 sectors, but I found that 75% of that was stuff that I never used. So now they are all 20,000 sectors, and I don't miss a thing. Everything else is on APE images that are better organized and can be readily found using the Windows search function. To be honest, yes, I've wished for a 128 file limit, but it's 64. It's a price you pay for the convenience of an Atari Dos-type system. Subdirectories go a long way to mitigating the issue, but it's not always a perfect solution. -Larry

What was the first version of MyDos that supported high capacity drives? The older (3.0x, 3.1x) versions of MyDos supported double sided drives with at least 80 tracks, but not true high-capacity drives. I use "support" to mean that the configuration command "O" asked "number of sectors." I seem to remember that 4.2x did support big drives, but earlier versions may have also. For instance, a specific release (3.13b IIRC) supported the ATR 8000 hard drive. However, I don't believe it supported an Atari (PBI) hard disk. Also, did anyone ever use the MyDos "RomDos" in an 800? This was a specific MyDos version that significantly lowered LOMEM -- not one of the recent "MyDos in a cartridge that is moved into RAM" releases. -Larry

Thanks Rybags and BillC and Marius! I scratched off a minute section of line "A" on the pcb and indeed it is now a true 8K cart, but very easy to reverse if needed. Interestingly, I had to scratch like heck to cut through the trace, even though the cut is only about .010" and the trace is even thinner. I learn something new almost every day at this forum! -Larry

Wow -- I never realized that. I have made several "8K" eprom carts using the nice (U.S) Deico 8/16K eprom carts, but I never realized that my "8K" were effectively "16K". I'm looking at one of those cart pcb's right now, and according to this diagram, I do find RD4 http://www.hardwarebook.info/Atari_8-bit_Cartridge (same diagram as yours) Any particular place to break the trace -- just someplace that is convenient and can be jumpered easily to restore if needed? -Larry

There used to be a place where you could buy a small adapter that allowed just plugging the 2764 into the board and "presto." I think that a C64 guy did it and had something like 1000 "mini-boards" made up. Admittedly, this rewiring is not difficult, but plug-and-play is always nice. But let's take this a step further -- how about a 27128 with both Basic and AsmEd in it - switchable. Can someone please show the wiring for that? -Larry

Hi Bob- Very nice! Very compact and with few connecting wires. The controller chip is under the ribbon cable? Presume you are planning on putting together a .doc file so they can be built? Any additional issues in putting it in an 800XL? What does the ram emulate -- or does it use it's own driver to create another kind of ramdisk? -Larry

First, those are nice pics! And I like the way you marked the "big chips" with magic marker -- I never can remember which one is which! Have you tried more than one memory tester? Admittedly, "7" is a weird number of banks, but worth a check -- especially XRAM021.COM. It's posted here several in several places. Some memory testers will show the total 256K and some will show only the extended banks -- 192K. You mention that you have more than one of these boards -- have you tried yet swapping the Newell board and leaving the wiring intact? Does this board work in the other computer (if installed)? That should help narrow things down a bit. If the alternate fails, then I'd check the solder connections on the bottom of the board. My earlier version connects to the top of the board. Sometimes there's not much to "grab onto" on the bottom of the board, especially with fairly big wires. Let us know how this goes. -Larry

Hi Russ- Very interesting -- your Newell 256K is of a different design than mine. Presume yours is newer since the docs say "XLE." Mine has more connections, I think, and the upgrade board is of a different shape. I didn't realize that Wes had made more than one version of this upgrade. Always something new... -Larry

I have an 800XL that has recently had stability issues with some (but not all) PBI devices. I've seen this before, but not for a long time with my XL's and XE's. This 800XL has a 256 Newell upgrade, a 4-in-1 OS, and Super Video 2.1. It is actually the very first 800XL that I ever purchased at Zayre (if you remember them) for about $50. The PBI instability issues appear to have been cured by the Puff Stable XL/XE fix #2. Since #2 deals with the eprom OS, it got me thinking -- what is the difference and why? I disconnected the "fixes" and took out the 4-in-1 OS (27C512 -- 90 ns) and replaced it with a single stock rom OS. The instability vanished. I put in a single 27128 (200 ns.) OS and still no instability. So what gives? Is it the particular eprom? The switches? Are the "pull-up" resistors used with the 4-in-1 the real culprits? Could be all of the above? Let's get to the resistors... This is an old issue -- what is the "right value?" Are there trade-off's implicit in this choice? If we use large value resistors, is it more likely that we'll have timing issues caused from the eprom? I'm thrilled that my problem is fixed, but I'd sure like to have a better understanding of "why" so as to help avoid it in the future. -Larry

Thanks, Ken & Marius. I didn't really think it would be harmful, but now I'm comfortable that something isn't going to get damaged. Why don't some of you other guys post pics of your MIO setups? Always interesting, and I suspect to more than just me. -Larry

Hi Marius- As far as I know, the Acard 7720U must be powered separately. I have never gotten one to work from an unmodified MIO (or BB). I use a small regulated +5VDC PS. Is yours is powered from the BB (or MIO)? How about posting a picture here of your BB and/or MIO setups. Thinking about my original question, I guess it's no different than a drive supplying the term. power, but then it still seems like you are "back-feeding" power to a pin in the MIO that was not designed for power. Dunno ??? -Larry

I do have a question about the term power... I know that if the Acard is supplying term power, you should not apply the term power from the MIO. But if the Acard supplies the term power is anything else required in the MIO (diode, etc.) to prevent damage? Or is it OK as-is -- no mods needed at all? -Larry BTW, I'm sure this is posted somewhere, but only the upper half of the MIO 27128 eprom gets programmed. $2000-$3FFF. I doubt if it makes any difference if there is anything in the bottom half, but I don't know that for sure.

Hi Marius- Thanks for your input. Yes, the days of $25-$35 may be gone forever, but $79 (U.S.) sounds pretty reasonable. -Larry

No, that is an extremely high price, IMO. I paid around $25-$35 for mine including postage, although that was a few years ago. Keep looking! I'd set up a search notification on eBay. And good luck! -Larry