1st Atari 800, 2 questions.

[SnapCraft]

Got my first 800 and it's great! Very impressed how Atari products are built so well.

 

2 questions

 

(1) The Atari is missing pin #1 for the peripheral connection (apparently the Clock Input). I plugged in the 1050 Disk Drive and so far, so good [so the guy wasn't lying on eBay ]. I haven't done any writing tests, but the reading is great. So the obvious question: how important is this missing pin? I have a broken 850 that has the same part -- but I'm not a soldering guy.

 

(2) I read a little bit about the monitor output. I have the cable and it looks washed out on the TV. Is this normal? Do I probably need to hunt for one of those Commodore 1702 monitors?

 

Thanks

[Rybags]

1. No problem with any legacy periperals with that pin missing, AFAIK.

But, there has been experimentation currently with some guys doing ultra speed SIO testing which uses Clock In - so it might be the case in future something might come out which needs it.

 

2. Washed out isn't regarded as normal for the 800 - if anything that machine should be as near to perfect as any factory spec (ie unmodded) Atari 8 bit can get.

[sup8pdct]

Got my first 800 and it's great! Very impressed how Atari products are built so well.

 

2 questions

 

(1) The Atari is missing pin #1 for the peripheral connection (apparently the Clock Input). I plugged in the 1050 Disk Drive and so far, so good [so the guy wasn't lying on eBay ]. I haven't done any writing tests, but the reading is great. So the obvious question: how important is this missing pin? I have a broken 850 that has the same part -- but I'm not a soldering guy.

 

(2) I read a little bit about the monitor output. I have the cable and it looks washed out on the TV. Is this normal? Do I probably need to hunt for one of those Commodore 1702 monitors?

 

Thanks

Mine was also a little washed out. From memory, I had to replace the transistor array due mostly to cross talk between the transistors on the chip for audio. also from memory, I had to play around with the values on the the mother board or disconect the audio carrier inject circuit on the mother board due to feed back from that part of the circuit.

Have included a circuit diagram from the relevent part and noticed that there is no 75 ohm resistor for the composite or the chroma. Maybe I fitted a 75 ohm resistor in place of L104 and L105. Has been many years since I done this and memory is very dim at this moment......

 

P.s. ignore the circle I drew on the schematic. Was for something but cannot remember.......

 

James

[SnapCraft]

Mine was also a little washed out. From memory, I had to replace the transistor array due mostly to cross talk between the transistors on the chip for audio. also from memory, I had to play around with the values on the the mother board or disconect the audio carrier inject circuit on the mother board due to feed back from that part of the circuit.

Have included a circuit diagram from the relevent part and noticed that there is no 75 ohm resistor for the composite or the chroma. Maybe I fitted a 75 ohm resistor in place of L104 and L105. Has been many years since I done this and memory is very dim at this moment......

 

P.s. ignore the circle I drew on the schematic. Was for something but cannot remember.......

 

James

 

What about the S-Video cables on eBay, would that take care of it? Anybody ever use one of those?

 

 

BTW: It cleaned up real nice. Keyboard is shiny. Latch springs up super fast (little WD-40). Probably in better condition than my original 800. I'm am now a fan of MAGIC ERASERS!

[Rybags]

I suspect a different cable won't help much if at all for washed out colour.

Someone posted here an inline solution for a cable, but that was to deal with interference lines that mostly occur on later machines.

 

Can you run the program that shows the entire palette and take a photo? There's a few programs around here that people have posted to do it.

 

I'd say your solution lies within the internal video circuitry (ie, modifying it).

[SnapCraft]

finally figured it out...

 

I bought it as a package deal so I assumed that the monitor out cable was for it. Well it turns out it's a mono Sega Genesis cable. And like I read on another thread, it kind of works. The cables are swapped (didn't put 2 and 2 together until later on), white was video (poor) and yellow was audio.

 

So I'll be RF'n it until I get my cable.