Grig Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 I just received my 800xl today from my trade with Outburst402 (thanks again) and I was hoping for some help with the upgrades as I do not know much about what they are. The 800xl has three switches. One of them appears to be the OS upgrade: It is Omniview 256k (1985), OSNXL/OMNI ... and then the tab is ripped, then Atari 800xl - so the red switch is up,center,down. The Omniview 256k seems to load up fine as does the regular 800xl os, the center selection of the switch loads up in a dark blue screen but I'm not sure what it is. I think the Omniview is 80 column, right? and the upgrade is 256k. The other switch (green) - I'm not sure what it is for - but it is next to the 80 column ouput (at least I think that's what it is). It has two positions. The last switch (red) is also two positions and I don't know what it is for. The 1050 has two switches - red and yellow. The red switch is three position - the paper I got with it says that it switches between write only, no writing, and read/write. The yellow switch and light I'm not sure - maybe the Happy upgrade? There's also a black switch in the back. Any help or information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!! Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 The drive looks like a Happy with the Controller board (which gives you the switches and light). The top switch is loading speed and the bottom one is write protect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grig Posted October 12, 2011 Author Share Posted October 12, 2011 Thanks for the info. Do you know what the black switch in the back is for? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+rdemming Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 It is difficult to tell what the switches are for without some pictures of the inside. So if you feel comfortable opening the cases, post some pictures of the modifications at the inside. Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grig Posted October 12, 2011 Author Share Posted October 12, 2011 I will do that asap. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welsh Wizard Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 not sure if its of any help, but I seem to remember upgrading a 1050 drive with a similar switch setup, but instead of the switch at the back it was put on the front on the other side of the floppy slot rather than the rear of the case, it was called a Quad drive, I think I got the upgrade kit from Steve Terrel in the UK, what the upgrade did was it gave you a standard 1050 OS, a Happy OS, a Laser OS and a US doubler, the evil little switch on its own allowed you to write to any disk even when the disk was supposed to be protected from being written two, ( it was to easy to leave the disk in the wrong position and write to a games disk when you weren't supposed to. I still have the drive some where along with the manual and installation info in storage some where as I had a number of other drives It was not needed at the time and once the hole had been drilled I could not think of another option to fill the switch hole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 Could the back switch be an extra bit for the device ID ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grig Posted October 13, 2011 Author Share Posted October 13, 2011 I'm still working on getting the inner pics for the 1050 and the 800xl. I should have them tomorrow evening. Thanks to all for the help and info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Guitarman Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 There are many "Happy" upgrade clones around. It would be nice if someone could rebuild the Happy controller board. It is a great addition to the Happy upgrade, but I have rarely seen them. I was lucky to get a Happy 1050 with the controller board in one of the collections I got. It is now my primary drive for imaging disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 There are many "Happy" upgrade clones around. It would be nice if someone could rebuild the Happy controller board. Steven Tucker (AtariMax) used to make Happy clone PCB's a while ago. They're are not listed anymore but you can ask him. Besides my 2 Happy 1050 disk drives, I have another 2 Happy (clone) PCB's laying around. One is populated, the other is still empty/unused. Used that as a basis to draw a new layout so you can make your own PCB if you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Guitarman Posted October 13, 2011 Share Posted October 13, 2011 Steven Tucker (AtariMax) used to make Happy clone PCB's a while ago. They're are not listed anymore but you can ask him. Besides my 2 Happy 1050 disk drives, I have another 2 Happy (clone) PCB's laying around. One is populated, the other is still empty/unused. Used that as a basis to draw a new layout so you can make your own PCB if you want. I'm not talking about the Happy upgrade. It was the optional Happy controller that you could install that has a speed control switch and a write protect selector switch with an activity light. Here is the drive I have with the controller board in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grig Posted October 14, 2011 Author Share Posted October 14, 2011 OK, here's the inside of my 800xl: You can see where the omniview cord is, which goes into the Omniview 256kxl chip and the OSN XL/XE Including Fastchip Omnimon XL chip. I have figured out the Omniview 256k upgrade, but what is the Omnimon XL/XE chip? There are also two black wires which came undone - must be why it was not working. There are three solder slots and the bottom is taken up by the red wire. Do the two loose black wires go onto the top and middle slots of the Omnimon switch? Any particular order? Also, the other switch goes into a board with a few chips on it which says "1985 Newall Industries". Any ideas? Thanks. Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grig Posted October 14, 2011 Author Share Posted October 14, 2011 Steven Tucker (AtariMax) used to make Happy clone PCB's a while ago. They're are not listed anymore but you can ask him. Besides my 2 Happy 1050 disk drives, I have another 2 Happy (clone) PCB's laying around. One is populated, the other is still empty/unused. Used that as a basis to draw a new layout so you can make your own PCB if you want. I'm not talking about the Happy upgrade. It was the optional Happy controller that you could install that has a speed control switch and a write protect selector switch with an activity light. Here is the drive I have with the controller board in it. This looks exactly like mine. So, the bottom switch is the write protect switch and the top switch is the disk speed - what about the small black switch in the back? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 Steven Tucker (AtariMax) used to make Happy clone PCB's a while ago. They're are not listed anymore but you can ask him. For me it is not that big deal that they are not listed on his side... I know a fellow (you know him too) that promised years ago to make happy prints for me... *whistle whistle* Hehehehe m. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 @jtoubeaux In my opinion you'd better get rid of that 'braindead' memory expansion. If you really want to keep it: keep it, but if you want a stable, good working Atari which you can trust in any case: downgrade it to a normal 64KB machine and get yourself a decent memory upgrade. The 'older' upgrades are so timing critical, they can not work REALLY well. They work... and they can work for days very well, but there always are issues from time to time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 This looks exactly like mine. So, the bottom switch is the write protect switch and the top switch is the disk speed - what about the small black switch in the back? I'd would not rely on just the positions of the switches. One can mount them where they want. One of mine, for example, looks similar but hasn't got a Happy at all, while another one looks very different but in fact has a Happy inside, without controller board, but with a switchable ROM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+rdemming Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 The left things seems to be a RAM upgrade. The switch on the left could be to switch between 64KB mode and expanded (256KB) mode. The board on the OS socket seems to be RAMROD board with three OSes. The default Atari OS, the OSNXL OS that includes Fast Chip XL (faster math routines) and OmniMon (resident 6502 monitor) and as third OS it could be OmniView OS. The three way switch selects one of those OSes. OmniView OS is 80 columns mode OS but it using GR. 8 instead of increasing the resolution. It only works with programs that uses the default screen handlers (E:). Programs using custom DLs won't work. It also contains a 256KB ramdisk handler for the Newell 256KB upgrade. So I suppose that is the type up ram upgrade you have. The DB-25 connector could be a printer port to use standard parallel printers instead of regular Atari SIO printers. Is there a second PIA chip on top of the original PIA chip? Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted October 15, 2011 Share Posted October 15, 2011 I owned a 1050 for a while that had two switches on the front like that, and in my case they were merely drive # selector switches. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grig Posted October 15, 2011 Author Share Posted October 15, 2011 The top switch on the 1050 seems to put the drive in warp speed loading mode. The disks load very fast. The left things seems to be a RAM upgrade. The switch on the left could be to switch between 64KB mode and expanded (256KB) mode. The board on the OS socket seems to be RAMROD board with three OSes. The default Atari OS, the OSNXL OS that includes Fast Chip XL (faster math routines) and OmniMon (resident 6502 monitor) and as third OS it could be OmniView OS. The three way switch selects one of those OSes. OmniView OS is 80 columns mode OS but it using GR. 8 instead of increasing the resolution. It only works with programs that uses the default screen handlers (E:). Programs using custom DLs won't work. It also contains a 256KB ramdisk handler for the Newell 256KB upgrade. So I suppose that is the type up ram upgrade you have. The DB-25 connector could be a printer port to use standard parallel printers instead of regular Atari SIO printers. Is there a second PIA chip on top of the original PIA chip? Robert Thanks for the info. I think there's only one chip. Anyway, thanks to everyone for their help and info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welsh Wizard Posted October 17, 2011 Share Posted October 17, 2011 (edited) , but what is the Omnimon XL/XE chip? There are also two black wires which came undone - must be why it was not working. There are three solder slots and the bottom is taken up by the red wire. Do the two loose black wires go onto the top and middle slots of the Omnimon switch? Any particular order? Also, the other switch goes into a board with a few chips on it which says "1985 Newall Industries". Any ideas? Thanks. Jon Omnimon is a monitor OS that if you load a program or game you can stop it on the fly with certain key being pressed, you can the disemmble the contents of the system I will look for the Newell instruction book and try and scan it for you if you want. You could also get the chip for the 800 computer, hence the marking for it being XL/XE compatible Edited October 17, 2011 by Welsh Wizard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grig Posted October 17, 2011 Author Share Posted October 17, 2011 , but what is the Omnimon XL/XE chip? There are also two black wires which came undone - must be why it was not working. There are three solder slots and the bottom is taken up by the red wire. Do the two loose black wires go onto the top and middle slots of the Omnimon switch? Any particular order? Also, the other switch goes into a board with a few chips on it which says "1985 Newall Industries". Any ideas? Thanks. Jon Omnimon is a monitor OS that if you load a program or game you can stop it on the fly with certain key being pressed, you can the disemmble the contents of the system I will look for the Newell instruction book and try and scan it for you if you want. You could also get the chip for the 800 computer, hence the marking for it being XL/XE compatible That would be great. I would appreciate the scan. Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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