YSG2020 Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 (edited) Just bought two 130XEs, a 1050 with a bunch of Action and C programming carts/disks/manuals and spartados for $100 at a garage sale. One of the XE’s has an aftermarket switch modded on the back of it. I was curious as to what this was for so I opened up the computer. There’s a bunch of wires soldered onto the motherboard, it looks like new RAM chips, and stack of ROMs soldered on top of the original ROM with the writing ‘Ominom RamRod XL’ on it. Can anybody enlighten me as to what exactly I’ve stumbled upon here? No idea. But I’m guessing someone used this machine for software development and it has a ram upgrade also possibly? Isn’t there a POKE command I can use to verify the amount of RAM in these things? Does that mod switch change OS or something? They seem complete and in good shape but I am having some different keyboard issues with both of them. Edited March 20, 2020 by YSG2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 (edited) http://www.bitsofthepast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/RAMROD-XL-OMNIVIEW-XL.pdf Also, Edited March 20, 2020 by Justin Payne 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 (edited) Should have included the users guide. https://archive.org/details/Atari_Omnimon_XL_users_guide/page/n7/mode/2up Edited March 20, 2020 by Justin Payne 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YSG2020 Posted March 20, 2020 Author Share Posted March 20, 2020 Thank-you. It would appear I’ve got an 8bit programmers dev set up here. I was planning on teaching the kids BASIC on this, but it looks like if they are ambitious and enjoy it, we can also do assembler and C too! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Payne Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 You're welcome. I'd skip BASIC unless you want to use a lot of the typed in programs that are available. BASIC worked for us back in the day but if you're starting from scratch, ACTION! is probably a better language. Assembly is hard core but kids might take right to that. You do have C but it's going to be somewhat limited. If you were on a 16 bit system, I'd definatly say C + Assembly. Of course, any interest they show in programming is an advantage. If they are really young, LOGO is a great language to get them to give the computer instructions and see results. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 1 hour ago, YSG2020 said: Just bought two 130XEs, a 1050 with a bunch of Action and C programming carts/disks/manuals and spartados for $100 at a garage sale. One of the XE’s has an aftermarket switch modded on the back of it. I was curious as to what this was for so I opened up the computer. There’s a bunch of wires soldered onto the motherboard, it looks like new RAM chips, and stack of ROMs soldered on top of the original ROM with the writing ‘Ominom RamRod XL’ on it. Can anybody enlighten me as to what exactly I’ve stumbled upon here? No idea. But I’m guessing someone used this machine for software development and it has a ram upgrade also possibly? Isn’t there a POKE command I can use to verify the amount of RAM in these things? Does that mod switch change OS or something? They seem complete and in good shape but I am having some different keyboard issues with both of them. OP: how about a picture or two of the 130XE? Especially the "stack of ROMs..." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YSG2020 Posted March 20, 2020 Author Share Posted March 20, 2020 (edited) Sure. I’ll open it back up tomorrow and snap a pic and post. I’ve looked around the forums here and still haven’t found a way to determine how much RAM this modified one has. Edited March 20, 2020 by YSG2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 As a kid, I wasn't a hardcore developer - I used a switchable Omnimon OS just because it had 800 compatibility for binary games boot disks, disabled BASIC by default, had a faster key repeat rate, and initialized faster from poweron.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YSG2020 Posted March 20, 2020 Author Share Posted March 20, 2020 12 minutes ago, Nezgar said: As a kid, I wasn't a hardcore developer - I used a switchable Omnimon OS just because it had 800 compatibility for binary games boot disks, disabled BASIC by default, had a faster key repeat rate, and initialized faster from poweron.. yes, I’ve managed to get one keyboard to work and try it. Everything you describe is true. I like it. Cool new text font too when this new OS is enabled. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted March 20, 2020 Share Posted March 20, 2020 43 minutes ago, YSG2020 said: yes, I’ve managed to get one keyboard to work and try it. Everything you describe is true. I like it. Cool new text font too when this new OS is enabled. The font should be the same as the stock Atari OS, just a darker blue background by default. If the font is different it could have been further modified prior to eprom programming compared to the original by whomever installed it... can you post a picture? To be sure, you can run this ROM dump utility with each OS: https://www.wudsn.com/productions/atari800/atariromchecker/help/AtariROMChecker.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YSG2020 Posted March 20, 2020 Author Share Posted March 20, 2020 (edited) Yup. I’ll post pics ASAP here. It’s definitely a different font. It has really cool square modern looking text. When I press the 3 function keys when in this OS it says something at the bottom of the screen like ‘Omnimon 1985 ...’ whoever installed it did a lot of work on the motherboard to mod it all in - There’s wires and IC pins pulled up and soldered everywhere. I’ve never seen ROMs all stacked and soldered together before. Looks like a rats nest. But they did a good job and knew what they were doing. It works great. Clearly a dev programmer did this back in the day for a much faster machine with I guessing much more ram too. Edited March 20, 2020 by YSG2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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.