Larry

Update: Short-lived success. WinTV put in the infamous "viedo buffer" that causes a lag in response. Press a key -- and a second later the display responds. How about playing a game with that lag! Back to the drawing board, and the All-in-Wonder still maintains its seat at the table. -Larry

Thanks for the suggestions. I've been working on this off-and-on for about a year, and I finally have had success! It was not with the new capture card, but with a quite old Win-TV product that had "stealth" Vista drivers that worked (well enough) with Win-7. It is a PVR-150 and I'm using it with WinTV V6. V6 has the advantage of having adjustable picture attributes. AFAIK, versions 7 and up did away with being able to adjust color, brightness, etc. That seems like a very poor decision, IMO. The result of not having adjustments is that in many cases the picture is VERY dark and the colors are wrong. (Internet has plenty of complaints about this issue). This means that I can update to Win7 and (probably) retire my old ATI All-in-Wonder card. It is still a really great capture system, but I've never been able to get it working with Win7. As much as I like XP, fewer and fewer things support it, and at the top of that list is that it has no TRIM for SSD's. -Larry

I'm trying to get a new TV capture card working with my A8. (My goal is to get a good Atari display device using Win7 rather than XP.) https://www.ebay.com/itm/TV-Tuner-Video-Capture-DVR-DVD-Maker-PCI-Card-Analog-NTSC-TV-PCIRC-Sabrent/282399603772?epid=1000476192&hash=item41c053fc3c:g:-6sAAOSwhQhYzCut At least one person here said that this capture card was working well with their system, but I can't seem to get it to recognize the Atari S-video or composite signal. Anyone using this? Can you tell me what settings you are using? I'm using this with Win7. The software installed without incident and everything seems to function properly, except no picture with the Atari. -Larry

So far, I'm happy with PC-Matic. It hasn't burped once, even with full scans, and have a 30-day refund period if it starts acting up. I've done a complete clean install on my XP computer, and overcome all the hurdles that has thrown. I now have (I think) a "good PC" and have backups in several locations including USB and thumb drives. Now if I can just keep those safe. Incidently, I've got a 3 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of DDR2 ram, and the PC-matic scan says my computer ranks in the bottom 43% of computers in the world. Well, it's plenty fast enough for my uses (although I hate being in the bottom half of anything!). I do plan to see if there is any way I can get my ATI capture system working with Win7 compatibility mode. I suspect not, but I'll give it a shot. -Larry

Moved to PC-Matic to give it a try. Hopefully it will be more co-operative with my programs. So far, so good. I like the idea of an easy-to-find and use Whitelist. Norton 360 didn't like APE, nor did it tolerate ATADIM + some older regular PC progs. -Larry

I'm having lots of issues with Norton 360. It is bound and determined that several of our Atari "helper programs" are malicious. What are other folks using for XP? -Larry

Hope the PBI comes to fruition. I really like the idea of being able to plug real hardware into the Eclaire, and I've been a fan of hard drives since the original MIO and Black Box. However, in Turbo mode, APE should be very impressive. (It is on bob1200xl's XL14.) -Larry

Presume this is it...

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

Any background you can provide? Magazine program, etc.?

That fix supposedly was to make it work with 800 OS-B. Did it fix another problem for you, or were you using another non-XL OS? -Larry

In early 1982, I remember getting my first 810 drive with Dos 2.0s which came with two disks that were "fast formatted." The docs said that you could use the spare disk but the drive could not format others in the "fast format." I could see no difference with those disks, and then timed some operations with a stopwatch - still no difference. So I took my drive to our user group meeting and had a techie member look into the matter. Taking off the lid, he said (to the effect) "oooh, you've got one of the new ones with the data separator and new rom." Pleased as punch! -Larry

Hi Roy- Thanks, I have all that stuff but really nothing for Pajero/Madteam. Thought there might be something on one of the Polish sites that I could translate with Google. But that does give me an idea -- I'll see if I can't get the PDF for V3.0 translated. There might be some similarities to 2.5. -Larry

Now that my SIO2SD is working again, I'm on a quest to use the XEX file(s) that can display 8 drives at the same time. Regular V2.5 has 28 display lines -- too many lines for my display and becomes corrupted. Regular V2.3 with only 25 lines works great. It only displays 4 drives at a time. The Pajero/MadTeam V2.5 is a really nice display with 26 lines of text and dis[plays all 8 drives. Perfect -- except it doesn't work properly on my system. As far as I can tell, it has two failures. When booted, it will keep searching the files on the SD card continuously until an Atari key is pressed which shuts off the search. The second issue that I can see is that it is not possible to write to the drive ATR's. Reads fine, but won't write. I'm using it with the Pajero firmware version 2.5. I looked at the MadTeam site: http://madteam.atari8.info/ but nothing there about the SIO2SD other than a project showing mounting it in a computer. Does anyone know if there are any docs or code available for this Pajero V2.5 SIO2SD software? It would be great to get it working. Thanks, Larry

Just curious -- what are you builders going to use for keyboards? Do you have one picked out (link)? If you are going to use a stock PC keyboard, are you going to be satisfied with the PC key layout and the "substitute" keystrokes it provides? Just personal preference, but I've never been happy with using the PC keyboard with Atari emulators. Or maybe the PC keyboard can be re-mapped somehow for this project? @Michael -- how many hours do you estimate to assemble/solder the pcb? -Larry

The last sector of the Basic file on my disk is missing -- all zeros. When loading, the file system thinks that instead of Speed file, that the last sector belongs to file #0, which creates the mismatch error 164. It is a Dos 2.0s disk. I have no idea what happened to that missing sector. I'm pretty sure that at one time, the file was intact. -Larry Speed-Error164.atr

Thanks to Roy and Madi. I'll add those to the RPM testers in my utility collection! The first one of these I think that I ever used was from Analog -- SNAIL.BAS? Probably around 1983. I hadn't had my 810 too long when it was published. -Larry

Thanks! Outstanding -- that is the program. Did you have an uncorrupted copy or somehow fix the error? AFAIK, I've never been able to fix a 164 error on a BASIC program. -Larry

Does anyone remember this program? It is just one of many BASIC programs to check your drive speed. But it has an Error 164 (file number mismatch) on my disk, and I thought that someone might remember it and could provide a copy. I think it is about 12 sectors long, and definitely BASIC. Please don't do a deep dive to hunt for it. I have backup copies of the disk, but they all have the same file system error. I just thought that someone might be able to put their finger on it easily. Thanks, Larry

I was looking at replacement voltage regulators for a LF33CV low-drop 3.3 volt regulator and was surprised to see they are in the range of $6-$10 each. I'm used to seeing 7805 at less than a dollar each. Any thoughts on why these are so expensive? 3.3V stuff is pretty common now. Perhaps there is an alternative for a 5V -- 3.3V regulator that might be less expensive? -Larry

I am told that you have to make a couple of changes on the pcb to go from V1/V2 ---> V3. So I've avoided trying that one.

Solved! The culprit was a cracked solder joint on a voltage regulator connection. I retouched all three connections, and then the SIO2SD took right off! And I learned quite a bit about programming the Atmega32. "No pain; no gain" I guess! -Larry

Jurgen, you were right. They were all 32768. I was thinking of the internal flash files. The device starts up again, but right back to "card init error." Sigh...

Thanks Jurgen! I'll check that for sure. I d/l those particular files this AM. Maybe I looked at them wrong, but thought that Windows said: Size 30720; size on disk 32768. -Larry

My SIO2SD stopped working after updating the firmware to V2.5 via my programmer. My MiniPro programmer supposedly will program the Atmega32, but I get a non-functional device, even though I get a SUCCESSFUL prompt after programming. All I get is a blank LCD screen. I'm using the 2.5 "ALL" .bin file which is 30,720 bytes. All the 2.x firmware .bin files are this same length. The programmer identifies the IC as Atmega32 with $8000 + $400 bytes. I don't understand the $400 bytes. Is that some type of ram that is not involved in the reprogramming? I'm using fuse byte settings of (low) $3F and (high) $C3. I've loaded the .bin file into the buffer and programmed it. Does anyone have a table available of the fuse byte settings for the various firware releases? Lock bit is 0, BTW. I must be doing something wrong such as missing a setting somewhere. Anyone have experience programming these that can offer any suggestions? Can't believe that the Atmega died immediately after the internal programming. Thanks! -Larry Edit: Some success: I double-checked everything and re-programmed it again with 2.5. Now I'm back to "Card Init Error." So I'm going to go back and reprogram with the last one that worked which is 2.2 or 2.3. Can someone tell me the fuse settings for 2.2? I believe that 2.3 uses the same fuse settings as 2.5.