Jeffrey Worley Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 I recently came in to five Atari 800's. I'd like to run SDX on the things instead of sd 1.1 and would like to add some memory to one of the machines to make this more useful. The machines all have 48k. I've surfed like crazy looking for plans for Axlon compatible ram upgrade plans, and keep finding the original D.G. Byrd 288k mod. My problem is that all iterations of this mod I've seen posted refer to diagrams not included in the posts. The way the mod is presented, these figures are absolutely necessary to complete the project. I'd also like to see the 560k, and 1088k versions of these mods, though a quarter meg is plenty for SDX to work optimally it would be fun to have a 1meg 800. In my travels on the net I found a board called 'Incognito' which is just ideal, but made of unobtainium and probably too expensive for me as a consequence. Boy howdy what a neat board that is! I tried the Side2 cart in the 800 and it works well enough. The Hard disk partitions on the SD card are not accessible, I think this may be due to not having enough memory to properly load the drivers. Else, the SIde loader works and does what it should, the SDX works and does what it should, and the 800 compatible oss carts onboard work as well, Basic XL, Action!, Mac65... RSVP YHOSvt. ** TNM ** Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 You nee to update the OS on the 800 to handle PBI devices even if they are cartridge based.... You can also do cartridge signal mod and if you really want add the standard PBI to the 800... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 You may find this topic of interest, which includes a ready-to-go pcb design for a 512KB Axlon compatible board: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddtmw Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 I bought a board from retrocanada76 and it works great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 If available, an Incognito would be my suggestion. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 I have an Incognito and it's great. FJC's latest BIOS / Loader are amazing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddtmw Posted July 28, 2019 Share Posted July 28, 2019 is incognito available? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted July 29, 2019 Share Posted July 29, 2019 No. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffrey Worley Posted July 31, 2019 Author Share Posted July 31, 2019 An email last night from Lotharek indicates that they are 'working on Incognito 3'. So the board is not dead it seems but will be available in a new incarnation at some future date. I will keep abreast of this as I REALLY REALLY WANT ONE. RSVP YHOSvt. ** TNM ** 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+orpheuswaking Posted July 31, 2019 Share Posted July 31, 2019 5 hours ago, Technoid Mutant said: An email last night from Lotharek indicates that they are 'working on Incognito 3'. So the board is not dead it seems but will be available in a new incarnation at some future date. I will keep abreast of this as I REALLY REALLY WANT ONE. RSVP YHOSvt. ** TNM ** Incognito 3 has been in the works for some time. I wouldn't hold out hope on getting it any time soon sadly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted July 31, 2019 Share Posted July 31, 2019 "Incognito3" (what happened to "Incognito2"?!?) or "SIDE3", which has also been teased and hinted at but still hasn't materialized? Color me confused ... 1 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1050 Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 On 7/28/2019 at 8:24 AM, Technoid Mutant said: The machines all have 48k. I've surfed like crazy looking for plans for Axlon compatible ram upgrade plans, and keep finding the original D.G. Byrd 288k mod. My problem is that all iterations of this mod I've seen posted refer to diagrams not included in the posts. The way the mod is presented, these figures are absolutely necessary to complete the project. That would be the fault of the poster of the text you have to not mention it comes from addmema.arc over at UMich archive where inside the arc are the instructions along with .PIC files which are the diagrams referred to. http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/xlsearch/ enter addmema into the search box and download it directly. And then open in a new window the UMich link for more. And more info here, 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted August 3, 2019 Share Posted August 3, 2019 Love the Atari Artist (or similar) drawn schematics! Wasn't Incognito 2 simply the second run but with identical specs while Incognito 3 is SD-based instead of CF? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted August 3, 2019 Share Posted August 3, 2019 2 hours ago, slx said: Love the Atari Artist (or similar) drawn schematics! Wasn't Incognito 2 simply the second run but with identical specs while Incognito 3 is SD-based instead of CF? No one knows what it was or was purported to be. Lotharek teases it for awhile but so far as I've seen, nothing but a photo or two ever showed up in public. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 On 7/31/2019 at 9:06 AM, Technoid Mutant said: An email last night from Lotharek indicates that they are 'working on Incognito 3'. So the board is not dead it seems but will be available in a new incarnation at some future date. I will keep abreast of this as I REALLY REALLY WANT ONE. RSVP YHOSvt. ** TNM ** I certainly hope that it has reverted to the FASTER CF/ATA compatible slot. SD cards SUCK. The Toshibe WiFi ones are kinda cool, though. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 19 minutes ago, Kyle22 said: I certainly hope that it has reverted to the FASTER CF/ATA compatible slot. SD cards SUCK. But they're ubiquitous and CHEAP! That's gotta count. Every time I look to buy more CF cards, they've gone up in price. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 You can buy a cheap adapter to use an SD card in a CF slot. We want FAST drives that can run VIDEO. Faster is better. For the slow people, use the CF->SD adapter. Incognito must remain CF/ATA. This is NECESSARY! The SD card slow down is unacceptable. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 not only that but the cf slots adapt to other drives/devices very well, sd cards not so much 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidMil Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 Seems like I remember a word we Atarians learned a long time ago... Vapor ware? David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 9 hours ago, Kyle22 said: You can buy a cheap adapter to use an SD card in a CF slot. We want FAST drives that can run VIDEO. Faster is better. For the slow people, use the CF->SD adapter. Incognito must remain CF/ATA. This is NECESSARY! The SD card slow down is unacceptable. Read up on that very topic in the XEL and XLD threads. The CF/SD card adapters don't work terribly well, and there are SD cards capable of faster I/O speeds than even the fastest CF cards; it's all about the interface hardware and what it's optimized for. Read up on THAT in digital photography forums. And there is absolutely no doubt that SD cards are larger capacity, cheaper and still in active development (which means capacity and speed will continue to improve while prices will drop). So you can make it personal with "slow people" bullshit, but the reality is CF cards are a dead-end technology, even more so than our 8-bit computers. Video on an 8-bit is a fun tech demo but no one is watching movies through an Atari. Real-world use will always trump someone's stupid-tech-tricks for a production device. And if you unclog your brain and think about it a bit, explains nicely why Rapidus and VBXE have been such niche products in the A8 community despite vastly increasing capability over stock machines. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddtmw Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 Heck. I was surprised the EclaireXL had a full-size SD slot. And maybe I’m missing something, but it seems odd to me that 35+-year-old devices need 600megabit speeds. I mean, most memory upgrades top out at a megabyte. Do we really need to be able to turn the entire contents of memory over every couple of seconds? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 (edited) dupe Edited August 4, 2019 by Mclaneinc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 @DrVenkman Did you just refer to Avery's brilliant ANTIC DMA player as a stupid-tech-trick? Shameful... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 8 hours ago, Kyle22 said: @DrVenkman Did you just refer to Avery's brilliant ANTIC DMA player as a stupid-tech-trick? Shameful... Yep. It's brilliant to be sure, and I'm certain the code is utter genius, like basically everything Avery does. But it's a trick. It's something to show off to impress people with. So to me, it's a trick. Just like the handful of fancy VBXE demos that show advanced graphics modes. Just like using Rapidus to run some mathematical benchmarks. They're all fun. They're all to play around with. But that's not how nearly every current Atari user actually uses his machine 90% or more of the time. Sure I can get the NWS forecast for my area through my Atari and my Lantronics box + P:R:C. Most of the time I'd rather get the more detailed forecast + Doppler radar imagery on my phone instead. So yeah, chalk that up as another stupid tech trick. It doesn't make any of this any less fun, mind you. Life's too short to tell anyone how to have fun so long as no one else is getting hurt, in my book. But just because some small percentage of an already small group of hobbyists wants to do something with their machines, that doesn't mean that particular use case should be the singular design driver for a major upgrade that a much larger group of hobbyists might be interested in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted August 4, 2019 Share Posted August 4, 2019 Well, any SD-card based storage device which doesn't permit 500KB/s transfer speeds is going to be pretty limiting whether one runs the video player on it or not. If the Atari's CPU has to drive the SD card in 4-bit serial mode I expect it to be a regression performance-wise. Perhaps some kind of IDE emulation layer is what's taking the time. AVG takes this approach, but it's still slower than a real IDE device for single sector IO. The SD/CF adapters have basically zero performance overhead. Regarding neat tricks: the key difference between Avery's video player and VBXE/Rapidus software is that the former can run on an unmodified Atari with little more than a Compact flash connector wired up to the cartridge port. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.