Urchlay

I vote for the 1200XL... though the 800 is a close runner-up. I really like the XL styling, and the side cart port seems somehow more "classy" than the 800XL's top port. I showed the 1200XL and 800 to my friend the art major (and Mac user who buys computers based on looks), and she wants a 1200XL now... though I don't think she quite grasps the concept that she wouldn't be able to run the Mac OS on it I also showed her the XEGS.. she agrees with me: it's tacky looking. The XEGS is actually a pretty cool Atari (detachable keyboard!), but it looks awful to me. She also liked Star Raiders II better than the original Star Raiders... just based on looks, I guess she's right, but the original game is so much better to play... The 800 wouldn't look out of place on the bridge of the starship Enterprise (original series version). I can just picture Chekhov using it to aim the phasers, or Spock using it to scan for life forms... Capt. Kirk would probably just play Star Raiders while pretending to look busy

Bug fixes?

I used a lot of 130K disks, once I got hold of DOS 2.5. I was *poor*, so I couldn't just throw away a third of the storage on each disk... I even wrote a utility that turned off the "uses extended sectors" bit in the directory, so my 130K DOS 2.5 disks would work with Fenders 3-sector game loader, and SpartaDOS/MyDOS could read the files in the extra sectors (the versions I had normally couldn't read the files with <> around them in DOS 2.5).

I had (still have?) a copy of this that someone gave me a long time ago. Do you have any information about where it came from, what it was designed for? The guy who gave it to me told me the "F" is for "fast I/O", but I never noticed any speed boost. Was there ever any documentation for DOS 2.6f? Was it intended to be released, or was it just something someone was messing around with? How did this random guy end up with a copy of it? (Downloaded from a warez BBS, sure, but how did it get leaked in the first place?) Heh, I don't ask for much, do I?

The Flight Simulator II cart won't work on my 800, but will work on my 1200XL, so it apparently needs 64K. The disk version of FS II will work on the 800, though.

My first 1050 came with DOS 3, which didn't make me happy... I don't remember whether my copy of DOS 3 came with the white card or not, but I do remember one bug: If I ever tried to access the drive when the drive power was turned off, I'd get the expected error message (139, I think)... but if I then powered on the drive and tried again, I'd keep getting the same error! I actually had to reboot the Atari when this happened: there was no way to use the drive again after that happened. Why did I turn off the drive in the first place? It ran hot, and I'd heard horror stories of overheating drives... Later on, I discovered that the guy with the overheating 1050 actually had a stack of 3 1050s and an 810, and the 1050 that had problems was the one sitting on top of the 810... and that my 1050 was fine even if it felt a little warm. Does anyone remember the "extended DOS 2" from Bill Wilkinson's "Insight:Atari" column, in Compute? He rewrote parts of DOS 2.0S so it would work with the 1050 and actually use 1050 enhanced density, and published it as a set of patches (probably BASIC DATA statements and a loader). Did anyone ever actually use this DOS? I remember wanting to, but it was a set of patches to DOS 2.0S, which I didn't have... by the time I found a copy of 2.0S, Atari had already released 2.5, and I already had a copy of it.

Look here: http://www.langesite.com/atari/Holmes/Holm...ications%20A-Z/ I have one, and love it. However, the two OSes I use the most are the Ape Warp OS (gives really fast transfers with SIO2PC cable) and the MyIDE OS (because I also have an internal MyIDE + Transcend 128M drive). If your only purpose is to play a few games that need the 800 OS, the translator disk might be enough for you... unless maybe the 800-only game(s) in question are your very favorite games that you will play every day. In that case, you may get really annoyed with the translator disk. Whether you're annoyed enough to make the 32-in-1 worth it, is a question only you can answer...

Holmes Archive has ATR images, several versions. Look here: http://www.langesite.com/atari/Holmes/Holm...ting%20Systems/

Sorry, I got a little carried away... as you can probably tell, I'm really interested in data security. I used to have a utility that was pretty good for recovering files with broken sector links... it may have been called "Disk Wizard", I'm not sure now. There was also a sector editor called "Sherlock 1050", but I don't think it would fix the links for you (it's just a sector editor, you have to edit the link bytes manually). I'll rummage through my floppy collection... I remember the disk had "DOS 2.6f" on one side, and the disk-fixing tool on the other (I even remember the floppy has a Datalife label on it). My head's full of little details like that, whether I want it to be or not

Probably so. Originally, the 2600 was designed to play 2K and 4K games, which doesn't give the programmer a lot of room to write a user interface to allow the player to choose difficulty options in software (e.g. a menu or menu tree you navigate with the joystick). Same reason that the "game select matrix" was in the manual instead of onscreen.

Well, you could always just format the disk... it depends on how paranoid you are, and who you're trying to hide your data from. Just the fact that it's an Atari disk will be worth something: an amateur detective would probably try your disks in a PC with a 5 1/4" drive, see that they don't work, and assume that they're blank or have been erased. A professional would probably be able to find out you have an Atari, though (by surveillance, wiretap, B&E, etc). Even if you format the disk, or overwrite sectors with garbage data, it's always possible for traces of the former data to remain, and it's possible for the FBI, CIA, NSA, Illuminati, or anyone with the right equipment and expertise to recover the original data. The most secure way of permanently deleting your sensitive data would be to shred the disk, then burn the shreds... or dissolve the disk in acid... or grind the magnetic coating into dust with a belt sander... Here are a couple of links you might find informative: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manu...reutils_69.html It's probably worth noting that, if the FBI or DHS or any real law enforcement/intelligence agency are after you, the contents of your Atari disks are the least of your worries. Basically, you have to pick a level of security that's appropriate for your needs, and within your means. Someone running a (mildly) illegal football betting pool or cheating on his wife has a lot less to worry about than someone plotting to overthrow the government or selling classified documents to the bad guys (somehow I doubt people involved in real espionage or terrorism would be using an Atari 800, though...)

Sadly, the Stelladaptor doesn't support the 2nd button on the 7800 controllers... it's the one thing I'd change about the Stelladaptor, if I were able to.

Both these limitations can be overcome quite easily with careful planning OT questions, but I'm curious and I've never seen any Quick code before... If there are no arithmetic expressions like "c=a+b", how do you do simple math? Are there functions like "increment(a)" or "add(a, b)", or such? Does "no boolean expressions" mean that there's nothing like "if b=1 then...", or does it just mean no "if b=1 and c=1" (combinations with and/or)?

Can't forget what I never knew I have a Gemini, but it didn't come with any controllers... sounds like I need a pair of these paddles. I've actually broken an Atari paddle once during a heated game of Super Breakout Actually I guess I have two Geminis (Geminii?), one's a standalone unit and the other's a Colecovision 2600 adaptor. Neither one came with paddles... bummer.

Oh really? I always thought that they were all shipped with faulty GTIA's... That'll be great if these are good. I understand that the GTIA is not socketed on the XE's so it'll be unpleasant desoldering job to replace it if it is. Apparently it's a particular batch or run of GTIAs that were defective. I think the Wikipedia article for the Atari 8-bit says the bad GTIAs were manufactured in China in 1991... but I'd take that with a grain of salt (I thought Atari 8-bit manufacturing was already shut down before 1991). AFAIK, nothing is socketed in any of the XE machines, unless you're lucky enough to get one that MetalGuy has repaired or modded (he desolders all the chips and solders in sockets).

Hm, even on the Atari 8-bit? I've always thought of that as the definitive version of the game. Maybe it's just because I've played it so much, but the controls seem just right to me. OTOH, I suck at the 5200 version, even though it's identical to the 8-bit... I feel like I'm fighting against the 5200 controllers.

Good point. The original post was about a table-top unit, so I was thinking in terms of a big "spinner" knob, like a Tron cabinet has... but you'd never find a pot that spins that freely, so 270 degrees would be too much. Hey, that's a really good idea. Another idea: use a standard 1 meg pot, but add some mechanical stops to keep it within the range most games use (the stops might need to be movable). I always hate it when I flip the paddle over to the right (or left) edge of the screen in a hurry, and move it too far... then if I want to move a little in the other direction, I have to turn the knob through the dead zone before the player goes anywhere. Mechanical stops would keep the same sensitivity as a stock paddle, but avoid the annoying dead zone behavior. I guess it wouldn't be too hard to glue some little plastic tabs to the controller (two on the body, one on the knob) with rubber cement... they wouldn't be movable, and they'd probably break easily, but I might try it anyway just to get a feel for how it'd work. Actually it's kind of surprising nobody ever made a set of paddles like this, back in the day. There were dozens (hundreds?) of aftermarket Atari-compatible joysticks made, but I've never seen any aftermarket paddles, ever (unless you count the weird paddle-and-joystick controller for the Sears Video Arcade). The original poster was talking about building a homebrew controller... probably wouldn't be a lot of trouble to add some mechanical bits to keep the paddle from moving too far, if you're already doing a custom mount.

A while back I was messing with paddles, the following is a brain-dump based on some notes I made: Regular paddles are already overly "tight". The paddle's full range of motion is 0 to about 290 degrees of rotation, but most games are only sensitive to a small part of the range (about 30 degrees' worth). This is because the games reset (dump) the capacitor at the beginning of every TV frame, then start reading it every couple of scanlines for the rest of the frame. In theory, you could write a 2600 game that takes 2 full frames to complete a paddle scan, which would give you a wider range of motion at the expense of less-frequent position updates. I don't think anyone's ever done this, though. With a regular game, you could use a smaller value of potentiometer to give you smoother movement over a wider range... I haven't checked with a meter, but the "all the way to the left" position in Super Breakout should be something like 300K ohms, and the "all the way to the right" should be about 100K. Anything less than 100K is a dead zone that keeps the player at the right edge of the screen, and anything more than 300K keeps him at the left edge. So, in theory, you could use a 200K or 250K pot in series with a 75K-100K fixed resistor (or trimmer), which would give you the full range of motion with no dead zones. The above numbers are guesstimates: you'd want to actually meter a real paddle, and try several different paddles on several different consoles, to come up with real numbers. Also, I'm only talking about NTSC consoles: I'm willing to bet the values are different in PAL-land (would depend on the game's code, probably not the console itself).

You don't. My Clearpic-modded 1200XL has nice looking video, almost as nice as my unmodded 800. Atari got the video circuitry right in the 800, but they screwed it up badly in the 1200XL, for some reason.

I'm pretty sure Missile Command, BASIC, and the OS ROM are all stored on the same 32Kx8 ROM chip, with the upper address lines connected to various bits in PORTB ($D301). Disabling the entire ROM would kill the OS, so that won't work. It might be that you could lift (or ground?) one of the address pins on the ROM to disable the Missile Command address space, but I'm not sure whether that'd give you RAM at the cart port address, or unwired address space (bad), or the BASIC ROM instead (still no good for your purposes). You probably want to talk to someone like Steve Tucker about this (aka "classics" on this forum). If you have a few bucks to spend, you could get the 32-in-1 OS upgrade that Steve sells... I've got one in my 1200XL, and it works like a charm: the 1200XL appears to be an 800, an 800XL, or whatever I need it to be. I think you'd lose the Missile Command ROM with the 32-in-1, but you probably won't miss it (it's a very common cartridge, if nothing else).

He said they both work fine on his 800XL, which means they don't need OS B... and holding down Option works the same way on the XEGS (hold down to disable BASIC), or at least it does on my XEGS. I doubt this would be different in different revisions of the XEGS, but you never know with those wacky Tramiels... It's a puzzler... If the games are enabling the Missile Command ROM, I don't think there's anything you can do about it without doing a hardware mod to remove Missile Command (basically turn your XEGS into a 65XE), or disassembling the games and fixing them so they don't do that.

The Indus GT definitely works fine with 1050 enhanced density, for reading, writing, and formatting. If you press the "Drive Type" button on the front of the drive while there's a 1050-enhanced disk in the drive, the LED shows type "C" (whereas "A" is single density and "B" is true double density). I've used a GT with DOS 2.5 quite a bit, and it acts like a drop-in replacement for a 1050. I never had any other 3rd party drives, so I dunno about them...

Eh, you probably already are doing this, but... you do know to hold down Option while booting a disk game, right? The Star Raiders 2 cart *should* work on your 800XL if it works on an XEGS. They're basically the same machine. I've run into trouble trying to use the late-model XEGS-style carts on an 800, but then they weren't really designed for the 800. Have you cleaned the cart connector contacts, tested a different cart in the 800XL, all the standard troubleshooting stuff?

The aspect ratio is wrong though... the picture is being stretched horizontally so it takes up the whole 16:9 widescreen area, so everything's wider than it should be. That doesn't drive you insane? (Maybe it's just me, I see TVs set up like this just about everywhere I go, and it makes me want to kick the screens in).

Pretty cool but... ARGH! Why does everything have to come with those stupid over-bright blue LEDs? No reason it shouldn't work with an 830, but even if you find a dialup BBS or a UNIX box with dialup shell access, I doubt you'd be allowed to connect at 300 baud. I remember having to spend money I couldn't afford to upgrade to an SX212, because the local boards all started refusing 300 baud connections. (I wanted a faster modem anyway, so it was mainly just a good excuse to spend the money)