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Ominon RAMROD XL in 130XE?


YSG2020

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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 by YSG2020
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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.

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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..."

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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.. :)

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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. 

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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

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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 by YSG2020
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