XEGS

[R.Cade]

My XEGS has an issue where I have to turn it off for 10 seconds or more to do a cold boot (a really long time compared to my XE). I finally just replaced the ROM with one that has a cold boot feature to "fix" it.

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by R.Cade

[gilsaluki]

4 minutes ago, R.Cade said:

My XEGS has an issue where I have to turn it off for 10 seconds or more to do a cold boot (a really long time compared to my XE). I finally just replaced the ROM with one that has a cold boot feature to "fix" it.

 

You are correct. The XEGS's ram does take a while to draw down.

[+Eyvind Bernhardsen]

16 minutes ago, gilsaluki said:

Again, I qualified all of this by saying, "My opinion".  I knew this would anger some.  Tolerance, huh?  I think I am allowed to have my opinion voiced.   Not trying to be toxic.  I am trying to voice an obviously minority opinion.   

You have not used the word “opinion” once, and you “qualified” the post I quoted with “Finally, a brother in arms!”

 

Your claims of oppression ring hollow when you’re the one accusing other people of molestation for daring to improve their hardware beyond what it was capable of when it was new.

 

Sorry for going off topic. Peace out. 

 

[gilsaluki]

Well, I respect your opinion.  Peace be with you and yours in these trying times.   I hope all is well with you.  I hope your life is going well.   All is well.  

[+Stephen]

37 minutes ago, gilsaluki said:

A normally outfitted A8 can do Sparta Dos X.  I would like to try Last Word.  Demos, Okay.  But a meg of Bank Switched RAM, why?  Mine RAM is bigger than your RAM?   Just my opinion.   Neat upgrades and all. I appreciate the effort and ingenuity, but needed?  Naaaawww.

It is quite hilarious thinking of 1MB in a machine which only came with 16kB when I bought it.  I do see the 4MB upgrades as crazy insane.  Even with my blazing fast 90k/sec HDD, that would take quote some time to fill.  It's ok though, this is all in fun.

[gilsaluki]

7 minutes ago, Stephen said:

It is quite hilarious thinking of 1MB in a machine which only came with 16kB when I bought it.  I do see the 4MB upgrades as crazy insane.  Even with my blazing fast 90k/sec HDD, that would take quote some time to fill.  It's ok though, this is all in fun.

EXACTLY!   It's about the fun. Mod, don't mod, who cares.  I just think (opinion) some new folks should know the realities/benefits (or lack there of) of doing these mods.  I bought a lot of hype, both back in the day, and later about the "benefits" of certain mods.  Most did not materialize.  I do like the PS2 Keyboard adapter, makes typing long sessions much easier.  A tool I can use.  I like  to play cool demos every now and then.  128K memory is fine for most of those.  Just have fun.  Stay safe.   Social..distance.  Wear a face covering if that is what you want to do, or not.

[Simply_Graham]

I guess late to comment, however of all the Atari's (All 8 Bit) the XEGS has always been my favourite.

Many years ago I was creating upgrades for the 8 bit line, and using the XEGS, for Computer house based in Chelsea, London UK, I also used the 130 XE to trial these but the XEGS with the space available, and with its detachable keyboard always drew me in.

To this Day I have the original, plus three others although not 4 matching keyboard’s I only have two. 2019 I purchased two XEGS bare main boards from Best and I'll be using these to create updated versions of the originals I have, and leaving the original boards alone.

I've even considered what Mytek has done and producing a replacement PCB with all the modern enhancements’, at least there will be room to add all the nice bits we have available today. And I can still swap back to the original.

 

[Guest]

On 5/13/2020 at 8:55 PM, Colleton said:

Bought one of the XEGS systems that myatari sells on eBay, and it arrived today.  It's my 1st XE system.

 

It's beautiful, in new condition, and I am digging it pretty well.  I can install a Sophia DVI or RGB in it, right?

 

 

Congratulations! I'd love to see your setup, and hear what games your into... good times I tell ya.

[idavis]

I have had one for years and years and today was actually the first time I ever fired it up. Having a problem with the keyboard. When it boots to Basic, the break key, Shift B, and Ctrl K are the only key combos that seem to be recognized and they only move the cursor down one line. When I go into the diagnostics, ram and sound pass, but the keyboard doesn't recognize anything, including the above key combos. Not sure how it would recognize at least some kind of keypress in Basic, but absolutely nothing in the keyboard test.

 

Anyone have any initial thoughts? I took the back off the keyboard being careful with the ribbon connector and don't see anything visually bad on the keyboard controller board.

[Sugarland]

6 hours ago, idavis said:

I have had one for years and years and today was actually the first time I ever fired it up. Having a problem with the keyboard. When it boots to Basic, the break key, Shift B, and Ctrl K are the only key combos that seem to be recognized and they only move the cursor down one line. When I go into the diagnostics, ram and sound pass, but the keyboard doesn't recognize anything, including the above key combos. Not sure how it would recognize at least some kind of keypress in Basic, but absolutely nothing in the keyboard test.

 

Anyone have any initial thoughts? I took the back off the keyboard being careful with the ribbon connector and don't see anything visually bad on the keyboard controller board.

 

Yes the mylar is probably failing. There is a resistor mod you can do that might help for a while but perhaps a better fix is a new mylar. The Brewing Academy has them for $15. Not a 100% guarantee fix but 95% chance. If you have a desoldering gun you can socket the two keyboard decoder chips on the motherboard and swap them as a test. Same with swapping POKEY with a known working but the keyboard mylar is the easiest and most likely what is the problem.

 

 

[idavis]

Thanks for the link. Mylar has been ordered. I will give that a try first. It will be a few weeks before I can even attempt it though, but at least I have one on the way.

[+Nezgar]

BITD, the 320K upgrade in my 130XE was a godsend with SpartaDOS X with a single disk drive. It allowed me to leave all 4 original "XE" banks unused, 1 bank for SpartaDOS buffers, and still have 11 banks (176KB) for a RAMDisk that could hold almost an entire double density disk. I would collect/copy all the files I wanted from various disks (Games? )into the RAMdisk, then I could write  them out in one go with no further disk swapping.

 

Of course with "USE OSRAM" and skipping reserving XE banks, I could have a full 256KB of RAMdisk... I still like to have a large RAMdisk today as a "scratch disk" as I still like to reduce the 'write cycles' on flash disk used in my Side2, and it reduces clutter on the flash partitions as I never have to "empty the trash" deleting unneeded files. They dissapear on their own

 

Plus BITD when programming it was a lot easier to skip learning safe direct use of banked memory and just use standard file I/O from BASIC to load other programs or chunks of data on demand from files in a Ramdisk drive...

 

Today, more than 128K allows SpartaDOS X to use a bank to free up RAM under the OS, other things like DOSKEY can take a bank, and still leave the original XE extended banks (64KB) free, regardless if you use a RAMdisk or not for maximum software compatibility...