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Atari 815 for sale on eBay?


fibrewire

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Are 815s actually that valuable, or is this just another case of a seller going fishing? I know they're pretty rare, but damn.

I won't be buying it. :) Relatively it has just maintained its value. I think the target price was $600-$800 in the early 80s so with inflation it is just about where everything else is.

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Are 815s actually that valuable, or is this just another case of a seller going fishing? I know they're pretty rare, but damn.

 

That may be a bit high, but they only made around 100 (possibly 200) of them total and who knows how many survived? This is the fourth or fifth one I've seen.

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You cannot just make an 815 DD disk on a USD1050 or XF551. The 815 writes data inverted to the other Atari drives, so you have to format your disk on the 815 itself.

 

If anybody up here buys this thing, I can send you a good 815 disk or I can walk you through it..

 

Bob

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A comment...

 

You cannot just make an 815 DD disk on a USD1050 or XF551. The 815 writes data inverted to the other Atari drives, so you have to format your disk on the 815 itself.

 

If anybody up here buys this thing, I can send you a good 815 disk or I can walk you through it..

 

Bob

So much for my dreams of getting one and installing a pair of 810 Happy Mods in it. ;)

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WOW, that is seriously expensive, looks great but the list of issues followed by the sold as seen and no guarantee it works would put me off even if I had the money to waste..

 

If it does not work and the parts are nil available then its a bit of a blast at that price..

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Interesting.

 

The 815 is DD only? Do we have schematics? Or a good picture of the board?

The seller provided a link (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/186285-atari-815-whats-inside/#) in the description of his eBay listing, which leads to AA (where else?). Judging by Fibrewire's photo's in that thread, there are quite a few Atari specific IC's (CO-nrs.) on the PCB. I haven't looked up the CO nrs. to check what IC's they are, but good luck getting a replacement if any of these is defective. And hopefully there are no PAL's or PROM's on board.

In this thread http://atariage.com/forums/topic/78379-atari-815-controller-source/# Curt Vendel posted the source of the 2 eproms, in post 15 Bob Wooley posted a photo of the PCB component side. The final post states there should be schematics available, but sadly they appear to be MIA.

 

From the description by the seller it looks like he will go about the deal reliably and responsibly, your everyday eBay seller would not even care to mention the missing parts and defects, or make statements about packaging and shipping.

 

That said, no matter how rare 815's are, I really can't jusitfy shelling out that kind of money for an untested unit that is sold 'as-is'. Besides that, I'm not in the US, so no shipping.

 

re-atari

Edited by re-atari
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I figured as a proto it might have Atari long forgotten parts, personally I hope it works for the poor sod that does buy it (maybe) but I'd be more inclined to get a box, scan the picture from the sale and put that on the front of the box..

 

It would be just as useful / collectable as that one..But waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper :)

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The seller provided a link (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/186285-atari-815-whats-inside/#) in the description of his eBay listing, which leads to AA (where else?). Judging by Fibrewire's photo's in that thread, there are quite a few Atari specific IC's (CO-nrs.) on the PCB. I haven't looked up the CO nrs. to check what IC's they are, but good luck getting a replacement if any of these is defective. And hopefully there are no PAL's or PROM's on board.

In this thread http://atariage.com/forums/topic/78379-atari-815-controller-source/# Curt Vendel posted the source of the 2 eproms, in post 15 Bob Wooley posted a photo of the PCB component side. The final post states there should be schematics available, but sadly they appear to be MIA.

 

From the description by the seller it looks like he will go about the deal reliably and responsibly, your everyday eBay seller would not even care to mention the missing parts and defects, or make statements about packaging and shipping.

 

That said, no matter how rare 815's are, I really can't jusitfy shelling out that kind of money for an untested unit that is sold 'as-is'. Besides that, I'm not in the US, so no shipping.

 

re-atari

The links you provided to the source code and pictures tells you enough to back guess what most of the parts could be. They used a Motorola chip for serial communication and three PIAs. Two of the PIAs would probably be 6520s and the third a 6532; They may be Atari numbers but they would refer back to those chips. A 6532 may explain the 1/2 page of stack space. $FF RAM at page zero so that would probably be an another 24 pin DIP. In a cursory look at the info, I didn't see anything that couldn't be reproduced even if there was a custom part.

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I figured as a proto it might have Atari long forgotten parts, personally I hope it works for the poor sod that does buy it (maybe) but I'd be more inclined to get a box, scan the picture from the sale and put that on the front of the box..

 

It would be just as useful / collectable as that one..But waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper :)

 

Wouldn't that make it a... printotype 815? :grin:

 

--Tim

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Looking at the case from the back, it looks like they just took an 810 case bottom, flipped it over and put it on top of another 810 case bottom, and then created a new front bezel for it. And, of course, probably some minor electronics changes.

 

I suspect that in this day of 3D printers it wouldn't be too hard to create an externally identical replica out of a pair of 810s. It might not even have to be a destructive mod - you could probably just set the spare parts aside and rebuild the 810s to their original glory if you ever wanted to.

 

I might need to play with this idea, should I come up with another 810 sometime.

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