Turbo Freezer XL Questions

[Tempest]

I picked up an original Turbo Freezer XL several years ago, but never actually got around to using it and promptly forgot about it. While digging around in my drawers today I found it and I'm curious as to how it works. I have a 1200XL with a PBI mod (currently using 800XL OS), so plugged it in and pushed the button and the Turbo Freezer menu came up, but no matter what option I selected it appeared to crash. I'm hoping I just don't have something set up right (I didn't have a cartridge plugged in) and that the Freezer itself isn't bad.

 

I also have a few questions about the Freezer itself:

 

1. In addition to the button there appears to be a sliding switch. When I have the switch in one position the Memo Pad comes up before I push the button (and all the options on the Freezer screen cause a crash). When I have the switch in the other position BASIC comes up and when I push the button I can't even select an option on the Freezer screen. Maybe it already crashed?

 

2. My Freezer appears to have a wire soldered in the lower right hand corner (when the board is plugged in) that leads to what looks like a serial port and connected to pins 6 and 7 (the first two in the bottom row). What on earth could this be used for? The wire is very frayed and the soldering job is suspect, so unless it's something I need I was thinking about just disconnecting it.

 

3. The Freezer came with two EPROMs. The one that's plugged in says:

 

OLD OS

CRC D163

16K 27???A (I can't make out those three digits)

 

The other EPROM says:

 

SPOS

v 1??? (can't read those three digits either)

 

I assume these are different OS's for the Freezer. The OLD OS is what's plugged in right now, but what is SPOS?

[Mclaneinc]

Careful, if mem is right one of the positions is a programming / flash setting....

 

I'll try and find the docs, it goes through the whole thing..

FreezerManualEn-3.10-130330.pdf

Edited September 5, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[Roydea6]

2. My Freezer appears to have a wire soldered in the lower right hand corner (when the board is plugged in) that leads to what looks like a serial port and connected to pins 6 and 7 (the first two in the bottom row). What on earth could this be used for? The wire is very frayed and the soldering job is suspect, so unless it's something I need I was thinking about just disconnecting it.

Some Atari's like the 800XL line usually don't have power to the PBI and the interface needs to be powered to work properly So it your 1200XL doesn't have power to the PBI connector then you will need to use Joystick power or other external power..

[Mathy]

Hello rdea6

 

If my 1200XL had a PBI added to it, I'ld make sure it would also have 5 VDC on it. I never liked the "plug a wire into the joystick port" option. ("never liked" is an understatement!)

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[Tempest]

I'm pretty sure it has 5v. I doubt it would boot the freezer without it. Plugging the plug into the joystick port didn't do anything.

[Marius]

If my 1200XL had a PBI added to it, I'ld make sure it would also have 5 VDC on it. I never liked the "plug a wire into the joystick port" option. ("never liked" is an understatement)

 

I feel the same (although I'm always 'happy' that the possibility exists in case it is needed). Since a while I'm focussing on unmodified, original, stock atari 8bit computers. I try to accomplish everything I need on original atari's, everything with external solutions. The only exception on this rule for me is the +5V PBI mod. (Well ok... I admit... and the internal 64K 600XL memory upgrade)...

[Tempest]

Bob1200XL did the mod, so I'm guessing it has 5v. Would the Freezer even work without it?

[+rdemming]

I picked up an original Turbo Freezer XL several years ago, but never actually got around to using it and promptly forgot about it. While digging around in my drawers today I found it and I'm curious as to how it works. I have a 1200XL with a PBI mod (currently using 800XL OS), so plugged it in and pushed the button and the Turbo Freezer menu came up, but no matter what option I selected it appeared to crash. I'm hoping I just don't have something set up right (I didn't have a cartridge plugged in) and that the Freezer itself isn't bad.

 

I also have a few questions about the Freezer itself:

 

1. In addition to the button there appears to be a sliding switch. When I have the switch in one position the Memo Pad comes up before I push the button (and all the options on the Freezer screen cause a crash). When I have the switch in the other position BASIC comes up and when I push the button I can't even select an option on the Freezer screen. Maybe it already crashed?

 

2. My Freezer appears to have a wire soldered in the lower right hand corner (when the board is plugged in) that leads to what looks like a serial port and connected to pins 6 and 7 (the first two in the bottom row). What on earth could this be used for? The wire is very frayed and the soldering job is suspect, so unless it's something I need I was thinking about just disconnecting it.

 

3. The Freezer came with two EPROMs. The one that's plugged in says:

 

OLD OS

CRC D163

16K 27???A (I can't make out those three digits)

 

The other EPROM says:

 

SPOS

v 1??? (can't read those three digits either)

 

I assume these are different OS's for the Freezer. The OLD OS is what's plugged in right now, but what is SPOS?

 

From you description I understand you have the original 198x version of the Freezer and not the 2005/2011 remake. I've one too and it looks likes this:

 

 

 

But this is a newer version without extra memory. The earlier version is much bigger because it also has 256KB of ram that could be made "XE ANTIC" mode compatible by adding an extra signal to the PBI bus.

 

The sliding switch is to enable the 800 OS to make the XL compatible with software that only runs on the 800 OS. The Freezer software and the 800 OS are both in the same 16KB EPROM. The other chip is a static RAM chip that shadows the contents of the hardware registers. The third big chip is a programmable logic chip.

 

The wire is indeed to supply the Freeze with 5 volt as a normal 800XL has no 5 volt on the PBI bus. I removed the wire from my Freezer because I modified my 800XL to have 5 volt on the PBI bus. My wire was just a wire that had to be connected to the correct pin on the joystick port, it did not have a 9 pin connector.

 

Without 5 volt I believe the Freezer does nothing as the chips are not powered then. So it seems your 1200XL has 5 volt on the PBI bus as the 800 OS works.

Pushing the button can be tricky because that moves the freezer causing bad contacts with the PBI connector. If the contact is bad, you usually get a green screen with corrupted graphics. Cleaning the contacts could help or using some tape that the freezer can't move when pushing the button.

 

 

I've never heard of an alternative OS for the freezer. Maybe someone replaced the 800 OS in the freezer EPROM with another OS. In that way you could use for example the Omnimon OS without soldering.

I searched for SPOS and found the Speeder Plus OS. So I suspect this is the freezer software where the 800 OS is replaced by the Speeder Plus OS.

 

Robert

[+rdemming]

Turbo Freezer XL 1987 manual

 

 

Turbo Freezer XL 2 (with RAM expansion):

 

 

 

 

Turbo Freezer XL 3 (newer version without RAM expansion):

[Tempest]

I have the Rev 2, but it only has 4 chips instead of 8.

 

Since the power wire was hanging on by a thread, I just removed it. Much nicer looking now (and less chance of a short).

 

Since I'm plugging my Freezer into 1200XL PBI extender board, it could be losing contact due to the bumping. I'll try and find a nice what to keep it steady.

[Mathy]

Hello Robert

 

800-OS on the PBI? The 800-OS doesn't support the PBI. Neither does the 1200XL OS, which is why most people replace the 1200XL-OS with a later OS (like the 800XL-OS) when they want to add a PBI (or replace the NTSC-OS with a PAL-OS).

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[Tempest]

Hello Robert

 

800-OS on the PBI? The 800-OS doesn't support the PBI. Neither does the 1200XL OS, which is why most people replace the 1200XL-OS with a later OS (like the 800XL-OS) when they want to add a PBI (or replace the NTSC-OS with a PAL-OS).

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

Yeah I'm using a 32 in 1 OS so I have 800XL selected at the moment.

 

what about the later version of the 1200XL OS? Does it support the PIB?

[Mathy]

Hello Tempest

 

When I wrote "later OS" I meant an OS from a later version of the XL or from the XE.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[+rdemming]

800-OS on the PBI? The 800-OS doesn't support the PBI. Neither does the 1200XL OS, which is why most people replace the 1200XL-OS with a later OS (like the 800XL-OS) when they want to add a PBI (or replace the NTSC-OS with a PAL-OS).

 

The 800-OS does indeed not support PBI devices such as harddisks because it lacks the API for that. But nothing stops you from attaching ROM chips to the PBI bus as it is very similar to the cartridge port with additional signal lines (see XE computers that replace the PBI with cart port + ECI port that adds the PBI signals not on the cart port).

 

Normally a PBI ROM can only map ROM to the address range reserved for PBI devices. But the Freezer uses a hardware trick to "override" access to the internal ROM and maps is its own ROM in the OS region.Thus you can run the 800-OS from a PCB connected to the PBI bus but of course you can't use any (PBI compliant) harddisks the might also be connected to the PBI bus.

 

The 800-OS on the Freezer is only intended to run software that does not work with the XL OS. Without the freezer you must replace the OS ROM in the computer itself (preferably with both 800 and XL OS and switch) or use the translator disk that loads the 800-OS in the RAM under the OS ROM.

 

Robert