AtariGeezer Posted March 23, 2018 Share Posted March 23, 2018 Found this so far, some notes from Bob Cool, thanks I logged all the usr calls last night and added those to the Dis6502 workbook today, This will help out with the variables too... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triads Posted March 25, 2018 Share Posted March 25, 2018 Just a bump to keep the thread fresh. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted March 25, 2018 Share Posted March 25, 2018 If anyone wants to play with the Puff BBS, this ATR has all the Directories with the mod files moved to D1::>MOD. The required dongle acts as if the Trigger is pressed on Joy Port 1, so to run this just hold it down at all times PUFFBB21.atr 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triads Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 AFAIK it just requires Atari Basic. Don't recall that it has any specific dependency on either Rev B or C, but BasicXL, etc is out. As for the PROMPTS.DAT and stuff, I'll have to go find the bbs hdisk, as I don't seem to have archive copies of those. Wondering how the recovery process is going.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 I'm not working on this much. I've got some 40 odd boxes of hardware, cables, etc. that have been packed away in the barn for twenty years. I pulled out six 1050's a couple years back to ATR some diskettes and only two of them still worked. I need to find the hardware, find power supplies that actually still work and find something to use for a display. I've got three 1702 monitors, but last I recall only two of them maybe worked. If you look in my members gallery, I posted a few photos of the last time the systems were powered up in use. 100_790 show my main 256K XL, with the T-816 and it's 256K card hanging out the side, and under the whiteboard is the mux master with it's 250mb hard disk attached. That's the drive I need to find. You can't see them, but on the floor behind the 1050 stack is the ATR-8000 with the two 8 inch floppy drives and their 50lb power supply. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Ok, so I've dug out five black boxes and a pair of xl's, along with about 30 power packs and a few 1050 drives, so I'll see if I can get something working. The main stumbling block at the moment is a display. I don't have a tv that takes an RF or even cable input, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to display the output from an XL, assuming I can even find the DIN to RCA plug cables I have somewhere. If I can't find a working 1702, I'm not sure what the solution is. What do people use these days for a display for their Atari machines ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndusGT Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 People have different opinions, but I have been using a converter composite, s-video to VGA, any cheap monitor or otherwise that has a vga port can be used: http://www.ambery.com/vitoxgacoscs.html I used this one for many years, it can do PAL as well as NTSC: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Grandtec-GVC-1000-Grand-Video-Console-Video-to-VGA-Converter/123020112489?epid=1800353184&hash=item1ca491f269:g:SEMAAOSwgbhaOfPU Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndusGT Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Ok, so I've dug out five black boxes and a pair of xl's, along with about 30 power packs and a few 1050 drives, so I'll see if I can get something working. The main stumbling block at the moment is a display. I don't have a tv that takes an RF or even cable input, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to display the output from an XL, assuming I can even find the DIN to RCA plug cables I have somewhere. If I can't find a working 1702, I'm not sure what the solution is. What do people use these days for a display for their Atari machines ? oops forgot to click quote, see my post above Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triads Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Ok, so I've dug out five black boxes and a pair of xl's, along with about 30 power packs and a few 1050 drives, so I'll see if I can get something working. The main stumbling block at the moment is a display. I don't have a tv that takes an RF or even cable input, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to display the output from an XL, assuming I can even find the DIN to RCA plug cables I have somewhere. If I can't find a working 1702, I'm not sure what the solution is. What do people use these days for a display for their Atari machines ? Thanks for taking the time to dig out what sounds to be a treasure trove of atari goodness.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 Well I made some progress. Found a 1702 that works, found a DIN cable, it all looked good but the damn drive wouldn't spin. Played with a few different PC power supplies and finally found one that worked without a motherboard attached. So the drive seems to be ok, I see all eight partitions. Now I just need to get this stupid SIO2USB working, APE is being recalcitrant. Oddly enough, I don't see a PROMPTS.DAT in the main dir, must be elsewhere. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triads Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 Well I made some progress. Found a 1702 that works, found a DIN cable, it all looked good but the damn drive wouldn't spin. Played with a few different PC power supplies and finally found one that worked without a motherboard attached. So the drive seems to be ok, I see all eight partitions. Now I just need to get this stupid SIO2USB working, APE is being recalcitrant. Oddly enough, I don't see a PROMPTS.DAT in the main dir, must be elsewhere. iirc PROMPTSx.DAT is in the PAS folder. PROMPTS3.DAT if you have one should be on drive 3 Best bet is to just archive the whole drive, there are file creation utilities, MOD files, and text files necessary to run... Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 (edited) Yeah, I saw a PROMPTS2 and a PROMPTS3.DAT. Anyway, APE is a worthless piece of sh-t that doesn't work using the sio2usb interface. Not using ultraspeed it writes maybe 8-12 sectors and then it locks up. Obviously never really tested before he released it. I have enough cables here I should be able to lash together some kind of null-modem cable to connect to one of my older machines that still has a com port on it, cuz I don't have one of those usb->rs232 dongle things. If I can find my zmodem for the 8bit then I can blast stuff over at 19.2. Edit: yeah, theres msg, desc, files, pas I think are the directories I saw. Edited March 28, 2018 by Alfred Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 I don't think you do, but in case you use SpartaDOS to do the file transfers... disabling it's keyboard buffer (KEY OFF) solves a lot of high speed problems... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 29, 2018 Share Posted March 29, 2018 Yeah, I'm a full time SpartaDos user. I guess I can try that. I also remembered I bought one of those Lantronix things a few months ago, so maybe I can connect to Altirra with it and transfer files that way. I had no trouble using the Pro thing to make ATR disks from just the 1050 drives; it worked perfectly. That's why I'm so surprised and angry that it is so worthless as a disk emulator. Anyway, I can try doing a key off. There's something else you have to key off for, one of the carts or something, I can't remember now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 29, 2018 Share Posted March 29, 2018 I don't think you do, but in case you use SpartaDOS to do the file transfers... disabling it's keyboard buffer (KEY OFF) solves a lot of high speed problems... Ok, that was it. The Puff BBS partition is currently being copied by FlashBack. I'll do all the partitions and then sort stuff out. Most of the drive is just files for download, unlikely I need to save most of them. I do hope there's some source code on there that I didn't save before, like AlfCrunch. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted March 29, 2018 Share Posted March 29, 2018 (edited) Ok, that was it. The Puff BBS partition is currently being copied by FlashBack. Let's hope there aren't too many sub-directories on that disk. and using hardback may wear out your "N" key... Edited March 29, 2018 by Fox-1 / mnx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 29, 2018 Share Posted March 29, 2018 (edited) haha, no. 18 subdirs and 371 files for this first partition. One fatal (144) disk error so far in one of the file description files, DESCFTRN, something like that. I couldn't use Hardback because I have no idea what my serial # is any more. I was going to use the hd back pro thing I wrote for CSS but I couldn't remember if it did files or only went to floppy. Edited March 29, 2018 by Alfred 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted March 29, 2018 Share Posted March 29, 2018 Copy /r in sdx will recursively copy an entire directory structure to another disk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 29, 2018 Share Posted March 29, 2018 Cool, but the problem is that when I plugged in my SDX cartridge, Express Term came up instead, haha. I'm not going to search around for the cart, I'm pretty sure FB can do the job. I didn't tend to create too many subdirectories. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 (edited) The BBS partition is copied with just the one error. I'll have a look at it tomorrow maybe, meanwhile I'm copying off the rest of the partitions. Was worried a bit on the programming partition when I saw the dir count hit 120 and the files go past 3700 but Flashback didn't squawk. Going to let it run all night, hopefully not too many bad sectors. Edit: Anybody know if Ledbetter is alive so I can ask him what my serial number is ? lol Edited March 30, 2018 by Alfred Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 Alfred, Do you need a SDX cart? I have a spare 8Mbit Atarimax cart and can make you a copy... and ship from Ontario. Let me know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 No, I don't need an SDX cart, but thanks. I found the SDX cart to be too flaky to use with my main machine, which was pretty flaky itself. It's an 800XL with 256K which I further modified by wiring the chips for a mux slave into it, a stack of five OS roms then the T816 with its mods. I did some other stuff to it at Puff's direction to fix some clock2 flakiness to get the Black Box to work and the end result is it won't boot unless it's own particular Black Box is attached, lol. After all that the SDX cart never really worked right, half the time it wouldn't boot at all, so I quit trying to use it. Here's my Puff BBS partition. I've left most of the files on it. PuffBBS.atr 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triads Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 (edited) No, I don't need an SDX cart, but thanks. I found the SDX cart to be too flaky to use with my main machine, which was pretty flaky itself. It's an 800XL with 256K which I further modified by wiring the chips for a mux slave into it, a stack of five OS roms then the T816 with its mods. I did some other stuff to it at Puff's direction to fix some clock2 flakiness to get the Black Box to work and the end result is it won't boot unless it's own particular Black Box is attached, lol. After all that the SDX cart never really worked right, half the time it wouldn't boot at all, so I quit trying to use it. Here's my Puff BBS partition. I've left most of the files on it. Up and running.. Impressive size BBS you ran. So far only thing missing is the HELP folder. Thanks for taking the time to Archive this, must've taken quite a bit of it.. Edited March 30, 2018 by Triads Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 No, I don't need an SDX cart, but thanks. I found the SDX cart to be too flaky to use with my main machine, which was pretty flaky itself. It's an 800XL with 256K which I further modified by wiring the chips for a mux slave into it, a stack of five OS roms then the T816 with its mods. I did some other stuff to it at Puff's direction to fix some clock2 flakiness to get the Black Box to work and the end result is it won't boot unless it's own particular Black Box is attached, lol. After all that the SDX cart never really worked right, half the time it wouldn't boot at all, so I quit trying to use it. Here's my Puff BBS partition. I've left most of the files on it. Thank you for looking for this and archiving a long lost BBS So far only thing missing is the HELP folder. Those seem to be the S, T and V folders... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 (edited) Up and running.. Impressive size BBS you ran. So far only thing missing is the HELP folder. Thanks for taking the time to Archive this, must've taken quite a bit of it.. No point in asking me anything about how it works, I haven't the faintest idea after all these years. I just know it did work. Edited March 30, 2018 by Alfred Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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