Did you guys see the price on this MIO/RT8 combo?

[+warerat]

You're right, head in the clouds. Do you know where I can get one of these except with more ram?

 

I do! In my closet. I have a working Axlon Rampower 128K as well as a 32K Ram-cram.

[+warerat]

Do we have to torture you (by putting a link inhere to some "this is better then that" topic or by inviting Carmel to tell us what he thinks about the question at hand) to get you to tell us what this special mods are?

 

Hi Mathy, my response was intended to be more tongue-in-cheek. But for you, $100.

[fibrewire]

You're right, head in the clouds. Do you know where I can get one of these except with more ram?

 

I do! In my closet. I have a working Axlon Rampower 128K as well as a 32K Ram-cram.

Dumb Question of the Day: Would you be willing to sell the Rampower 128K? *flinches*

[+warerat]

Nope. Nor would I trade it for a Corvus or your ICD setup.

[fibrewire]

Well, what else would you guys expect from a poor boy outta Lake Charles? Someday I'll get an A8 interface for the Corvus. Maybe even an Axlon 128K

[MEtalGuy66]

Oh hell... You're a swamp-dweller.. Now it ALL makes PERFECT sense..

 

I know damn well better than to tell folks from Lousiana something is impossible..

 

Btw, the AXLON is pretty rare these days, but not NEARLY as rare as the Corvus stuff you are looking for.

 

I've at least heard of people having the AXLON in their 800s quite a few times through the years. In fact, if you ask people about 800 ram expansions, its one of the better known ones that usually comes to mind.

Edited March 19, 2011 by MEtalGuy66

[fibrewire]

Nice... at least there is hope

[+wood_jl]

The corvus equipment, itelf wasnt nearly as rare as the ATARI specific interface. The middle school I attended had one of those 5meg Corvus drives. They had it someohow hooked to like 20 Apple IIs.

 

My high school had this setup, on Apple IIs. It was the first hard disk I ever stood over and looked at, and it was the first that pretty much every staff member had ever seen or dealt with. They referred it to as "The Corvus" rather than as a hard drive, imprinting on it since it was the first they'd ever seen.

 

It was much later that I heard Corvus sold a system for the Atari. Of course I've never seen one, but I have seen one sold on Ebay before (before fibrewire's). I wonder how many were sold? I'll bet the number was staggeringly low, as Atari computer customers (in those *earliest* years, before Atari computers had a chance to prove themselves) typically tended to be those who were either unwilling or unable to spend on an Apple. These budget-conscious customers were hardly willing/able to lay out for floppy drives (as Metalguy alluded to above), so this must be super-ultra-uber-rare. That makes it kind of cool! Difficult to support!

 

What kind of speed would the joystick ports have for a hard drive interface, though? Technical-minds, please chime in and speculate!

[BillC]

The corvus equipment, itelf wasnt nearly as rare as the ATARI specific interface. The middle school I attended had one of those 5meg Corvus drives. They had it someohow hooked to like 20 Apple IIs.

 

My high school had this setup, on Apple IIs. It was the first hard disk I ever stood over and looked at, and it was the first that pretty much every staff member had ever seen or dealt with. They referred it to as "The Corvus" rather than as a hard drive, imprinting on it since it was the first they'd ever seen.

 

It was much later that I heard Corvus sold a system for the Atari. Of course I've never seen one, but I have seen one sold on Ebay before (before fibrewire's). I wonder how many were sold? I'll bet the number was staggeringly low, as Atari computer customers (in those *earliest* years, before Atari computers had a chance to prove themselves) typically tended to be those who were either unwilling or unable to spend on an Apple. These budget-conscious customers were hardly willing/able to lay out for floppy drives (as Metalguy alluded to above), so this must be super-ultra-uber-rare. That makes it kind of cool! Difficult to support!

 

What kind of speed would the joystick ports have for a hard drive interface, though? Technical-minds, please chime in and speculate!

According to an old article I found the speed was comparable to a SCSI HDD connected to a Black Box. This may have been using the Black Box's ability to store 256 byte sectors on a drive with 512 byte sectors which slows data transfers, the article didn't give specifics.

 

The article is available at:

http://www.atarimax.com/freenet/freenet_material/5.8-BitComputersSupportArea/9.ProductSummaries/showarticle.php?47

[+bf2k+]

Just as a frame of reference...

 

In 2004, I sold a non-working ICD MIO on ebay for $60 plus s/h. Can't remember if it was 256k or 1Meg.

 

In 2006, I sold an ATR-8000 (condition unknown) on ebay for $25 plus s/h.

 

Personally I think bidding $300 on a non-working MIO is absurd.... but where were they when I sold mine??

[fibrewire]

Turns out, MEtalGuy66 was totally right! I was spending too much time trying to invent something that Atari already made. I still anxiously await the day that I will get to use my Corvus 5MB drive on my Atari, but until then a project to interface the Atari SH204 is probably more realistic. Does something already exist to do this?

[sloopy]

Turns out, MEtalGuy66 was totally right! I was spending too much time trying to invent something that Atari already made. I still anxiously await the day that I will get to use my Corvus 5MB drive on my Atari, but until then a project to interface the Atari SH204 is probably more realistic.

 

something like that has already been made... its called a MIO :'D

 

sloopy.

[MEtalGuy66]

Yep.. You see that board on top that says "Host Adaptor Card Rev C" ?

 

Remove it, and put it somewhere for safe keeping (in case you ever wanna turn that back into an ST hardisk unit)..

 

The 50 pin cable you unplugged from that board, plug that directly into the MIO.. Use the ORIGINAL ICD MIO firmware..

From the MIO config menu, Set it to:

 

SCSI ID: 0

LUN: 0

Heads: 4

Cylinders: 615

STart sector: 1

End Sector: 65536

 

Oh wait.. With the 800?

Heh. Nope..

 

But that's a damn nice "vintage" hardisk setup for an 800XL or 130XE...

 

You know what you could do.. FInd An ATR8000 that has the fabled SCSI controller installed. (Probably almost as rare as that corvus atari interface.)

 

Man, I really do appreciate what you are trying to do. People who know me realize that I'm not trying to discourage you. I'm just being the voice of realism here. It doesnt benefit me one bit to keep you from wasting your money. Nor does it benefit be one bit to keep you from endlessly searching for something your not likely to ever find. And I wont reccomend you STOP dearching for it. It would be REALLY kewl if you found it.

 

But in the meantime, to the best of my knowledge, the cheapest/quickest "means to and end" here is for you to get an SIO2IDE. If you want the vintage look/feel, maybe you could find the oldest, noisest desktop IDE drive available, and mount it, along with the SIO2IDE, inside an atari 810 case or soemthing, and use one of those black faceplates that they used to use on the front of fullheight harddisks on old XTs in the early 80s..

 

That'd actually be a really kewl piece of "vintage-like" gear, and you shouldnt have too much of a problem finding everything to do it in the short-term....

 

Dont give up on the Corvus though.. It'll be kewl as hell if/when you do get it going. Just realize that you are searching for something really rare.. and it may take a LONG TIME.

Edited March 22, 2011 by MEtalGuy66

[fibrewire]

Also, when it comes to the MIO stuff, I don't really expect to win, just getting a feel for MIO pricing. Otherwise sniping the MIO at $500 wouldn't be as useful as sniping that boxed CX70 at the same price. And the way this 8 bit hard drive stuff is going, I can see a video in my near future of all my 8-bit stuff going into a wood chipper

[charliecron]

How could he use an ATR-8000 with fabled SCSI controller? As far as I know the Mydos that supports it has not been found.

[fibrewire]

meh... it was just MG way of saying "it's all ridiculous, but good luck anyway"

 

Would have been easier to 'borrow' someone's corvus interface and rework a new pcb with pad2pad

 

I'd even make it to fit into an XM301 case or something similar

[MEtalGuy66]

If you actually KNOW of someone who HAS one, you REALLY COULD do that, for much less money than you are spending on this other stuff..

[fibrewire]

If you actually KNOW of someone who HAS one, you REALLY COULD do that, for much less money than you are spending on this other stuff..

joeventura and Curt are the only two i can think of offhand, and only curt has more than one interface to chance loaning one out.

[fibrewire]

Even if Curt were to remove all the components from a board, and use a flatbed scanner to scan the PCB front and back, I could probably take it from there. I'd even go so far as to take calipers to the front port joysticks and make a custom right angle dual joystick port cable so the damn interface would be out of the way

[+Stephen]

If you actually KNOW of someone who HAS one, you REALLY COULD do that, for much less money than you are spending on this other stuff..

joeventura and Curt are the only two i can think of offhand, and only curt has more than one interface to chance loaning one out.

It couldn't hurt to ask them for hi-res photos of the front & back of the interface.

[fibrewire]

I'd need to find something like this for a dual serial port style cable to keep the cables out of the way.

[+Stephen]

I'd need to find something like this for a dual serial port style cable to keep the cables out of the way.

Digi-Key or Mouser are pretty well stocked.

Edited March 22, 2011 by Stephen

[fibrewire]

I still use my Mouser catalog from 1997

[MEtalGuy66]

DONT ANYONE BID ON THIS

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 260760425214

 

This guy obviously bid-shielded this thing up to 500, and when noone bid over that, he relisted it..

 

Link to Original Auction: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 260753330437

 

And anyone who does not appreciate paying rediculous prices on stuff (due to idiots doing stuff like this) should report this seller to ebay..

[+wood_jl]

DONT ANYONE BID ON THIS

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 260760425214

 

This guy obviously bid-shielded this thing up to 500, and when noone bid over that, he relisted it..

 

What is bid-shielding? Not a reserve? How does that work?

 

edit: somebody already bid

 

 

 

 

 

Link to Original Auction: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 260753330437

 

And anyone who does not appreciate paying rediculous prices on stuff (due to idiots doing stuff like this) should report this seller to ebay..