What is your 8-bit Daily Driver?

[pixelmischief]

I use an Atari 800XL with s-video, double Pokey, Ultimate 1MB, SIO2SD/PC Combo, SIDE2 cart, Dragon ethernet cart.

 

DSC01616-2.jpg

What is that monitor you have connected? It is incredibly clean and matches the system really well.

[pixelmischief]

This is what i'm doing with my Atari 800 right now:

Dude, what are those blue things on joystick ports 3 and 4?

[+remowilliams]

Hmm, current daily? Okay, I'll risk a lynching...

 

 

[Bryan]

Dude, what are those blue things on joystick ports 3 and 4?

Hard drive interface.

[pixelmischief]

Hmm, current daily? Okay, I'll risk a lynching...

Your collection of Origin and Infocom titles is truly enviable.

[+Philsan]

I use an Atari 800XL with s-video, double Pokey, Ultimate 1MB, SIO2SD/PC Combo, SIDE2 cart, Dragon ethernet cart.

 

DSC01616-2.jpg

 

 

What is that monitor you have connected? It is incredibly clean and matches the system really well.

 

It's a Commodore 1084ST (post-Commodore but before Escom); you can find specs here: http://gona.mactar.hu/Commodore/monitor/Commodore_monitors_by_model_number.html

 

Color matches XL line and it doesn't have any Commodore logo!

 

An old Italian Commodore seller has them and I bought two four years ago.

[+JAC!]

65XE but only since my 800X Ls are all out of order and I can't find the time to fix'em.

[Android8675]

When I moved to Scotts Valley, CA, shortly thereafter a new family moved in next door. I found out shortly thereafter that the father (who had 2 cute older daughters) worked at Atari. He was my hook up and facitlitated the purchase of my first Atari 800 + 810 which I still own to this day. I bought a 520ST when they first came out through him, but sold it after a few years. (Ran a BBS on BB/ST, one of the best BBS software i've ever had the pleasure of messing around with)

 

Within the last 5 years I've picked up a 130XE, several mods including a Incognito for the 800 and other various this and thats.

 

Never got too big into collecting as money has always been tight and I discovered comics in high school which most of my extra income went into, but Atari Stuff comes and goes. I always try to have one system setup at all times to show off to guests.

[fibrewire]

Fibrewire, that is a great picture, thanks for sharing! Love that you can clearly see all the exposed LEDs in the photo.

 

..Al

 

Thanks! I'll be photographing my whole collection soon and posting it in the gallery. Hopefully people will find stuff in storage / garage / estate sales and NOT throw it away because a google search pointed them to AtariAge.

 

Your setup is excruciatingly beautiful. Wowsers.

 

Thank you! I want to get a nice modem with ring detection hooked to it so others can dial up and play with it. I guess I could get a UDS-10 for now.

 

An yes, those blue things go to the Corvus Interface which is the small beige box in front of the two 810 drives. A 34 pin ribbon cable comes out of the interface and goes into the Corvus Disk System. The two disk drives are daisy chained together.

Edited July 16, 2014 by fibrewire

[Subby]

Daily driver sitting on my desk:

Atari 800, box stock.

ATR-8000 with pair of DD 5 1/4" and that 8" I keep going on about.

Amdek Composite monitor

(410 is being repaired and upgraded)

Al asked for more pics, who am I to deny him.

[Subby]

Pixelmischief said about remowilliams

Your collection of Origin and Infocom titles is truly enviable.

 

And do I see some shrinkwrapped Avalon Hill games?!

[+remowilliams]

Your collection of Origin and Infocom titles is truly enviable.

 

Thanks : )

 

 

And do I see some shrinkwrapped Avalon Hill games?!

 

Sure do.

 

 

I'll add these here I guess as 'near my daily driver' Not going to bother moving the stuff in back of whats shown to the front though for pics

 

 

 

 

[low.blow]

@Remo that is beautiful.

[Stormtrooper of Death]

2 standard 800XL

1 standard 130XE

2 standard 1050 (one has a drive r/w switch)

1 XC-11 tape recorder

1 1020 printer (untested)

[pixelmischief]

I love collection porn. Nothing better. I just picked up a major new addition to my little collection. 221B Baker Street. See it there in the middle, nestled between "Goonies" and "The Eidolon"? That Bob1200XL. You're a g.d. humanitarian, you are.

 

I was crazy about this one as a kid. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries were a major influence on me from a literary standpoint and the game really captured my imagination because of it. My brother and I played the cases over and over again, pretending we didn't know the answers to the mysteries; tooling around London, decoding the messages. Great fun. Later, I bought a Sega CD system just for the "Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective" pack-in (middle shelf, right CD stack, second from the top). FMV gets a bad wrap nowadays, but I loved this one. The acting was good, in a PBS/BBC kinda way; especially the Dr. Watson narration. Genius. There are quite a few games for Windows now, which are based on the Sherlock Holmes universe, but they fail miserably at capturing that magic.

 

 

[Subby]

Aww. You guys.

You are going to make me "rebuild" my office just so I can compete!

Don't know why I'm going to do this, my collection is absolutely nothing compared to most of you. But hey, at least I'll get my office cleaned up! (Now the question is, how many years will it take me to get done?)

[MEtalGuy66]

http://www.rasterline.com/labcam/i1.html

[pixelmischief]

http://www.rasterline.com/labcam/i1.html

 

Dude. I thought your profile picture was a Photoshop trick. "Ha ha! Look at me! I have eight XF-551's! Wouldn't that be funny? Woo hoo!" But there they are. Eight XF-551's. Wow.

Edited July 18, 2014 by pixelmischief

[Mclaneinc]

In the real world I use an Atari 800 and an 800XL for testing of stuff, I prefer my 800 because of the superb keyboard and the fact its a beast

 

Sadly the XL gets more use simply for compatibility reasons, both machine are as factory, no fancy upgrades here (not that I don't want them, I'd love the Incognito for my 800 to make it the main machine but as always in my case the cost of such things has to be the last priority purchase.)

 

In the emulation world most people know I'm a HUGE Altirra fan from day one, it actually gets way more use than the real machine purely because of its customisation ability, its the Jack of all trades and it does it so well.

 

Learning wise I taught myself some assembler, did a few bits here and there but never got serious with it, as most know the Atari was my livelihood back in the day as I worked as Tech sales for Maplin Electronics who were a huge Atari dealer back then.

 

The rest is history..

Edited July 18, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[MAC-42]

I've been running on an XEGS for about a year, but I picked up a nonfunctional 600XL on the Evil Bay a little while back. Brought it back to life--needed a new PIA chip as the old one was gumming the works up completely--and decided to brave the internal 64k upgrade. (My skills with solder require me to be brave. Heh.) After a small mistake, I got her up and running on 64k yesterday. Now I intend to part with the XEGS. I'm only allowed one example of an old machine at a time, y'see, and my wife sees all A8s as the same as all A8s. So I'll lose out on the Late '80s pastel buttons and the angled design I lusted after since I was young, but I'll get a super-compact computer with a fair keyboard. Good enough.

 

I never had an Atari computer when I was little. But, boy, did I want one! I would see them in the stores and long quietly for one. And, yes, I really did fall in love with the XEGS. But, I had an Aquarius computer when I was a kid. And that was good enough for my parents. Never did get the XEGS because my parents had just bought me a 7800 and thought I didn't need another game system. What did they know from computers?

[MEtalGuy66]

 

Dude. I thought your profile picture was a Photoshop trick. "Ha ha! Look at me! I have eight XF-551's! Wouldn't that be funny? Woo hoo!" But there they are. Eight XF-551's. Wow.

Theres 11 on the shelf there.. I have 2 more somewhere in that room..

 

And yeah.. the avatar photo is real.. but I don't have 4 of them with D4-D8 ROMs.. I don't think 8 of them on the same machine would be very reliable.. Even 4 of them on the same SIO chain get pretty flakey due to noise on the SIO bus. I just basically stacked it all up like that one day to make a kewl avatar picture..

Edited July 18, 2014 by MEtalGuy66

[joyfulcoder]

My current setup is the 800XL my folks bought for me back in 1983, an Amiga 1080 monitor given to me by a friend, and most recently a MyIDE 2 cartridge and an SIO2Arduino.

 

 

[HiassofT]

But hey, at least I'll get my office cleaned up! (Now the question is, how many years will it take me to get done?)

Forget about this, I cleaned up my desk 4 days ago and this is what it looks like now (sorry for the crappy picture):

 

That's my main 800XL, with 1MB RAM upgrade and LEDs for the selected bank, switchable OSes - using real hardware switches, internal 8-char debug display between label and switches and of course a Turbo Freezer plugged in - as usual, without a case :-)

 

Only the top 1050 is connected - I'm currently working on a upgrade as you might guess from the cable mess - plus a SIO2PC interface going to my linux box.

 

Due to limited space I don't use a dedicated monitor but hooked up my 800XL to my Hauppauge TV card via S-Video - so I can view the Atari screen in a window on my PC.

 

so long,

 

Hias

[+Stephen]

Forget about this, I cleaned up my desk 4 days ago and this is what it looks like now (sorry for the crappy picture):

mydesk.jpg

Awesome setup. What kind of scope / logic analyzer is that?

[HiassofT]

What kind of scope / logic analyzer is that?

That's the brandnew Rigol MSO2072A. Just got it 2 days ago and haven't been able to explore all features yet. But I can say I really like the intensity graded display and segmented memory features. They come in very handy when analyzing occasional glitches etc.

 

Here's a screenshot of PHI2 vs A4 to illustrate the famous PHI2 problems (note that A4 changes up to 10ns before PHI2):

 

And here's a single shot of one of the bad cases:

 

so long,

 

Hias