Urchlay

I'm in the "real hardware" camp... but using an SIO2PC to replace my drives. I just can't make myself spend $money on a lot of old disks (which may be dead of old age) that depend on cantankerous old drives (the 810, 1050, and Indus GT are amazing pieces of machinery, but mine are at that age where they require more care and feeding than I can stand). Add to that the fact that I can download thousands of games and not need to buy thousands of blank floppies... To my way of thinking (which may not be yours), it doesn't really matter how the software gets loaded into the hardware, as long as I'm using the actual hardware...

Have a look at this thread, it may be useful to you: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=120316

Commercially mastered (factory-recorded) tape software seems to survive a lot longer than user-recorded tapes... I've got a box of maybe 70 or 80 user-recorded tapes someone gave me, and almost none of them work with any of my 3 tape drives, but the 3 or 4 originals I have will load fine. I'd have to say disks last better than tapes... most of my disks still work, even though they're all over 20 years old and weren't stored in what you'd call optimum conditions.

I've only ever played a cracked binary load version of this game... can the tape version save user-created levels on disk, or only tape?

Little-known fact: if you boot a 1030's internal modemlink software, then unplug the 1030 and plug in an XM301, it works fine... I had to do this a long time ago, I had a 1030 with a broken relay that kept it from being able to dial out, but its modemlink s/w would still boot... and I had an XM301 that worked fine, but no working disk drive to load a driver and term program. The first time I tried it was out of desperation, and I was amazed that it worked (I didn't know the XM301 was just a repackaged 1030, back then). Scream and Fly: the special offer sticker has a part that's been covered with black magic marker... can you make out what's printed there? (not visible in the photo, but maybe if you turn it so light shines at an angle...)

I also vote for the Commodore 1702. I've been using mine for ages, and still it's crystal-clear. Don't let the fact that it's made by "the enemy" (Commodore) put you off

If the motor doesn't spin when you power the drive on, then the drive is broken. In cases like that, there are 2 possibilities: 1. The Atari can "see" the drive (and will generally give "boot error" messages, and/or make a nasty farting/tv-static noise). In cases like this, usually the drive electronics are OK, but the mechanism is either broken or not connected to the electronics. 2. The Atari can't see the drive, and acts like it's not even there... this seems to be what's happening to you, and it probably means the electronics are the trouble (the circuit board). The drive mech may be just fine, or not (no way to tell without swapping it into another drive). A bad SIO cable can cause symptoms like this, too, but in that case the drive would still spin at powerup. If you're not afraid of taking electronics apart, try looking inside the drive. Reseat any soldered ICs (can't remember if the 1050 usually has sockets or not), and reseat the connectors between the drive mechanism and the circuit board. Also make absolutely sure you're using the correct power supply. Atari made 2 different supplies that look almost identical. The 1050 needs the 9 volt AC supply, NOT the 11.5 volt DC one... though I've heard of cases where a 1050 worked fine with the 11.5V DC supply (wouldn't recommend trying it on purpose though). If your power supply is the correct one, it's worth checking it with a voltmeter set to AC volts. Expect to get a little more than the rated 9 volts (the voltage drops to 9V once it's under load). Also... if the guy who sold it to you said it was "tested, working", get your money back

The only way to avoid artifacting on NTSC is to use s-video (separate chroma/luma). If you use RF or composite, there's no way to avoid it (though it's possible to minimize its effects by carefully choosing foreground/background colors). Some games even require NTSC artifacting to display properly (Autoduel, Ultima IV). I don't know if these games had separate PAL versions or not...

The best modding machines are the 1200XL (lots of room in the case, and all the chips are socketed) and the 800XL (probably the most common Atari, sometimes the chips are socketed but not always). The XE series are kind of a pain to mod due to the cheap construction (chips are never socketed, and the traces on the board are really flimsy and easy to delaminate while desoldering). Also, on the few XEs I've worked on, the board labels (C123, R456, U1, etc) are hidden under the components instead of being visible like they are on the XLs.

Does the drive motor spin for a second when you first power the drive on? It's supposed to... If it does, and the computer can't see it, your next step is to get another SIO cable and try that. If it doesn't spin at powerup, the drive has something wrong with it.

That's pretty! Wonder if it's possible to modify a 1064 to make it an internal upgrade... guess it's not worth it, the 600XL 64K mod is already easy enough.

Your SIO cable could be bad (the cable that connects the drive to the Atari). Also, the drive might be set up for something other than drive 1. On the Atari drives, the drive number is set with 2 switches on the back. I *think* they're both supposed to be switched to the left, when looking at the back of the drive, for drive 1. I can never remember... but there are only 4 possibilities, not hard to to the trial-and-error thing. If the drive doesn't respond at all in any of the 4 positions, suspect a bad SIO cable. The Atari has "noisy I/O", so you can "hear" the drive loading through the TV/monitor speaker... different types of errors cause different sounds. Normal disk loading sounds like "beep beep beep", errors might sound like farts or "squelched" beeps, or might cause a long delay between beeps (during which time you should also hear the drive seeking repeatedly). If you get the drive so the computer makes a farting noise, but the disk doesn't spin, then you've got the correct drive number set, and you have either a bad disk, a bad cable, or a bad drive (or the door's still open!) You said you were holding down Option, but you got a READY prompt... that's wrong. Make sure you don't have a BASIC cartridge inserted. Without a cart, holding Option should get you to the self-test menu on an 800XL, if there's no disk to boot. The 400 and 800 don't have built-in BASIC, no need to hold Option there (they don't have a self-test menu either, just "memo pad mode" that you've already discovered). The vast majority of disk games on the Atari are either boot disks or "binary load" (aka com/exe/xex) files, which are loaded from the DOS menu. There's no 'LOAD "*",8' in Atari-land

Replying to an old post, but... Are you still looking for a perl/whatever script to do this? I threw something together in perl, see if this works and/or makes any sense: #!/usr/bin/perl -w sub fixaddr { my $addr = hex($_[0]); return sprintf "0x%04x", $addr + 7 if $addr >= 0x33d0 && $addr <= 0x59ff; return "0x$_[0]"; } while(<>) { s/0x([0-9a-f]{4})/fixaddr($1)/ge; print; } Paste into a text file, run it as "perl scriptname.pl colony.idc > colony_fixed.idc" Also attaching the output, in case it's inconvenient for you to install/run perl on your OS... colony_idc_fixed.zip

Is the CX80 the one that has a switch to go between joystick and trakball modes? Get a Stelladaptor, it will work at least in joystick (directional) mode, as a general-purpose game controller in your OS. The trakball mode should work at least with Atari 8-bit emulators running trakball software, dunno if it'll be useful as a general input device...

Reset is part of the keyboard, yes. Even without any software, you can boot a 1200XL with no cartridge or floppy, and you'll see a "rainbow" Atari logo... press the Help key to get into the built-in self-test, use Option/Select to choose the keyboard test, and press Start. Then you'll get a picture of the keyboard on the screen, and whatever keys you press will light up. If you have large groups of keys that don't work, it doesn't necessarily mean the POKEY is bad. The keyboard PCB is made of carbon traces that degrade with age. My 1200XL keyboard died just from sitting in (un-airconditioned) storage for 7 years, but its POKEY and other chips were fine. About the voltage regulator, AC vs. DC thing... if I were you, I'd fix that first, before considering chip swapping. It's possible that the POKEY is fine, but is getting the wrong voltage... or that it was damaged by getting the wrong voltage, in which case you don't want to put a good chip in there only to have it get fried, too.

No sound, joysticks don't work... could be a bad POKEY. If you have another working XL machine, you could swap them (some desoldering may be required). The POKEY IC should be labelled "CO12294". Another symptom of a bad POKEY would be that the keyboard doesn't work... have you tested this?

There were tons of 410 and 1010 tape drives sold in the US, but by the time the XC11/XC12 came out, disk drives had gotten cheap enough (and few/no tape games were being released) that nobody in the US bought the XC11/XC12... I've never seen one in person, even...

My first 400 developed keyboard troubles, groups of non-working keys. By the time it happened, I had another 400 (with 48K upgrade) and an 800XL, so I don't remember whether it ever got repaired. Actually I think that 400 got sold to the kids down the street, with a couple of cartridge games, for use as a console (joysticks and Start/Select/Option still worked). Hm, I seem to remember the keyboard connector looks the same in the 400 and 800... physically the 800 keyboard wouldn't fit, but electrically it might work OK. I haven't had a 400 in 10+ years, so I might be mis-remembering. Re: your nick... I can't resist saying this... Gespacho Soup!

Whoa... take a look at this: http://www.datamancer.net/keyboards/keyboards.htm I think I want one...

Ugh, I was typing on one of those new Mac laptop keyboards last night. Maybe they're an improvement on the original iBook keyboards: at least the keys stayed firmly attached. Everyone I knew who owned an original iBook had at least one key that just popped off the keyboard for no apparent reason... but then the only Mac-specific keyboard I've ever used that I didn't hate, was an old third-party ADB one. Apple really thinks nobody ever should type on their computers, I guess... and don't get me started on their mice. The absolute best typing experience you can get on a Mac is to use a PC keyboard (I recommend the IBM Model M!), possibly through a PS/2 => USB adaptor, and install some software to let you remap the keys so you don't lose the Apple/Option/whatever-it's-called key. While you're at it, get a decent PC mouse (Logitech, 3 button w/scroll wheel). Inconvenient for laptops, of course... I've owned two Sony Vaios, too... one from about 1997 or '98, and another I bought new in 2002. They both have rotten keyboards, but the older one definitely had a more firm feel to it, was a little nicer (though its keycaps were losing their lettering). The new one has basically no tactile feedback at all. Pretty much all laptop keyboards suck in one major way: there's always a "Fn" key in the lower left, where your fingers expect the Control key to be. Usually it's difficult or impossible to remap this key in software, and even if you do manage to swap the meanings of Fn and Ctrl, the keycaps are usually of different sizes so you can't really swap them physically. One thing I don't understand: most of the larger laptops (17" display) have plenty of dead space to the left & right of the keyboard. Why couldn't someone make such a laptop with a regular keyboard layout, maybe even squeeze the num pad in there, get rid of the need for the Fn key...?

That looks minty fresh... is it part of your collection? As much as I hated typing on the 400 keyboard, I wish I still had a 400 in good condition... if nothing else, it'd be good to use as a console in the living room. Does anyone know whether any of the various 400 keyboard upgrades are still available?

Montezuma's Revenge and Blue Max would be somewhere in my personal top 10. Also Alley Cat (though I didn't know about it "back in the day", just discovered it last year for the first time). Although... I'd have a hard time narrowing the list down to only 10. There are a lot more than 10 great games... Hm, Dropzone should be on there too... and Star Raiders (and maybe Star Raiders II/Last Starfighter, can I count those as 1 game?)... amd Gauntlet/Gauntletak... Already I'm up to 6 or 7, and I haven't even thought about any of the big (multi-floppy) games like Ultima IV, or straight arcade ports (Gyruss, Donkey Kong, Millipede, Q-Bert), or text adventures (Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide)... that's already more than 10 Also Mule... This is hard!

Oh, the memories... my first computer was a 400, I spent many hours hurting my fingers with it. I don't think the person who wrote the pcworld article actually used any of those old machines, he just looked at pictures of them. The Commodore 64 definitely doesn't belong in a "Top 10 worst keyboards" list.

I've noticed a minor bug in the atari800 H: code... it's impossible to create a zero-length file in either DOS 2.0, 2.5, or MyDOS 4.5 (not tried any others, I suspect the same thing would happen). OPEN #1,8,0,"H:EMPTY":CLOSE #1 That results in no file called EMPTY being created. With the D: devices it works as expected (you get an empty file called EMPTY). Copying a zero-length file from D: to H: results in the same thing (no H:EMPTY). Not sure if this is useful information to you or not...

You can't change a disk's sector skew in-place with a US Doubler (don't think you could with a Happy either, but I could be wrong). For your menu disks, try Hias Reichl's MyPicoDOS: http://www.horus.at/~hias/atari/ Basically you'll format a new disk with MyPicoDOS and copy the files from the old disk... when you boot from the new disk, you get a menu, and high-speed SIO is supported. MyPicoDOS has a pretty nice menu system (can choose the game to load with the joystick if you want), and even supports long filenames. For boot disks (non-DOS), there's not much you can do with a USD. Something like a Happy or Speedy upgrade (something with a track buffer) could load them at high speed, assuming the disks aren't copy protected.