What original chips for the XL/XE are in short supply?

[+Larry]

In addition to the short supply, what are the replacements available?  I'm curious about this, but I do have quite a few spare boards and chips.  Of course, the SIO plugs and jacks probably fit into this, also.  And maybe keyboards, although a PC keyboard is a poor option (IMO). I suppose if I had to use the PC keyboard every day, I'd get used to it.

 

 

[+DrVenkman]

POKEY chips are the most expensive, given the demand from A8 enthusiasts who need them to repair units and build stereo upgrades, 5200 fans, 7800 homebrew carts, and all the arcade collectors/repair guys. There are a couple FPGA replacements available and/or in work to help put in this regard, though right now they’re not especially cheaper than real POKEYs, at least if you need only one or two chips. If you have a fleet of dozens of arcade machines, the FPGA replacements are cheaper, per one of my friends in the biz. 

 

SALLYs, GTIAs, ANTICs and PIAs seem to be pretty common/inexpensive still. For now. 

 

I expect the supplies will continue drying up in coming years and if enough of us remain alive and interested, more FPGA solutions will become available and hopefully cheap enough to keep machines running seamlessly.

[bfollowell]

Any idea where to get some of these Atari specific chips? I need to pickup a BASIC B or BASIC C chip, an OS ROM, and an MMU for my 800XL. Because of his ever increasing issues and cantankerousness, I'd prefer to avoid Brad at BEST. I've messaged Bruce at B&C using his jun.com address and his ebay store, but both have gone unanswered. Is anyone aware of any other sellers in the U.S. likely to have these?

 

Thanks.

 

[_The Doctor__]

I think/suspect Bruce's kid run the thing these days... so don't expect the awesome knowledge and support of days gone by.

[bfollowell]

3 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

I think/suspect Bruce's kid run the thing these days... so don't expect the awesome knowledge and support of days gone by.

 

Well, I don't really need awesome knowledge, because I know exactly what I need and the correct part numbers. I really don't even need awesome service. I would think that someone with even mediocre service could answer a message in something less than three weeks. I have to admit, this is a far cry from what I've grown accustomed to from Bruce. I hope he's OK.

 

Push comes to shove, I'll say a prayer and give Brad a call. One thing I can say for him, if I can keep my order simple enough, and manage not to aggravate him in any way, it's hard to find better or faster shipping. I know exactly what I want, it's only three chips, and he seems to have them all in stock, so it should be a pretty straight-forward, easy-to-fill order.

 

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, Larry said:

I suppose if I had to use the PC keyboard every day, I'd get used to it.

Believe me you would not only get used to it, but over time probably prefer it (I know I do). Reason being that moving between the Atari and the PC would be virtually seamless, with all the keys in the same place. And then there is the much better navigation capabilities of a PC keyboard vs. the stock Atari one, and you automatically get a numeric keypad instead of having to plug Atari's solution into a precious joystick port (as well as having full use across any program with no driver required).

 

I've been playing around with a customized version of the SDRIVE.atr that now takes advantage of the Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, and dedicated arrow keys of a PC keyboard. It's a night and day difference to ease of use. FJC's U1MB BIOS and The Last Word already do this (and I think the UNO cart might as well).

 

15 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

I've messaged Bruce at B&C using his jun.com address and his ebay store, but both have gone unanswered. Is anyone aware of any other sellers in the U.S. likely to have these?

There's always MacRorie's 'The Brewing Academy' store. I believe he tries to stock the Atari chips.

 

[Rybags]

I've got plenty of Pokeys.  Have to wonder if they are the rare ones though given there seemed to be lots of 7800 Ballblazer carts that served as donors.

 

I suspect the Sally 6502 might be in short supply.  Somehow the CPU is often the dead chip on nonworking systems.

Hopefully by the time we do get shortages of custom chips they'll all have decent modern tech drop in replacements.

[bfollowell]

1 hour ago, mytek said:

 

There's always MacRorie's 'The Brewing Academy' store. I believe he tries to stock the Atari chips.

 

 

That's true. I didn't think of that. I may have to touch base with Marlin.

 

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[+Larry]

2 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Any idea where to get some of these Atari specific chips? I need to pickup a BASIC B or BASIC C chip, an OS ROM, and an MMU for my 800XL. Because of his ever increasing issues and cantankerousness, I'd prefer to avoid Brad at BEST. I've messaged Bruce at B&C using his jun.com address and his ebay store, but both have gone unanswered. Is anyone aware of any other sellers in the U.S. likely to have these?

 

Thanks.

 

You will likely have a more difficult time finding the BASIC "C". "B" should be easy to find, but the errors in it may or may not cause you problems (if you write programs). OS rom is easy if you don't mind using an eprom. Dunno about MMUs. I think that B&C is pretty much an eBay operation now. I've had the same contact issues as you.

 

Just thought of a work-around, again if you don't mind using an eprom -- use an adapter like this 2364 --> 2764:

 

http://store.go4retro.com/adapters-1/ 

 

I'm pretty sure that I've used these in the past to put "C" in an 800XL.  Not sure about the RF shield still fitting, but I suspect that it does.

[+DrVenkman]

1 hour ago, Rybags said:

I've got plenty of Pokeys.  Have to wonder if they are the rare ones though given there seemed to be lots of 7800 Ballblazer carts that served as donors.

 

Given what my friends in the arcade biz tell me, POKEYs are the ones they need by the literal dozen to stock their repair departments. They were used in SO MANY Atari coin-op games plus almost every home cart system Atari made. Have you tried pricing BALLBLAZER or COMMANDO carts lately, by the way? There's a reason why POKEYs are the ones getting the FPGA implementations (PokeyMax; PokeyONE; something Lotharek has teased; plus an arcade-specific replacement for Quad-POKEY called QPokey.)

[ivop]

1 hour ago, Rybags said:

I've got plenty of Pokeys.  Have to wonder if they are the rare ones though given there seemed to be lots of 7800 Ballblazer carts that served as donors.

 

Ten years ago @jaybird3rd sold me 16 Ballblazer carts without casing for $25.75 USD including postage and packaging overseas. I kid you not. Had to desolder the Pokeys myself. I'm still very grateful I could acquire so many Pokeys at once. Have used a couple for stereo upgrades and gave a couple away. I think I have about ten left. Thanks jaybird3rd

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by ivop

[+mytek]

I am surprised that the arcade people are always needing Pokeys. I have yet to have a single Pokey fail on me, although I agree with Rybags on Sally which I've found several twitchy ones.

 

[Tickled_Pink]

PAL parts seem to be harder to find than NTSC parts, particularly the GTIA. Something that you can't seem to find anywhere other than Best is the delay lines, which appear to have been manufactured specifically for Atari. The same manufacturer made others but I have found sources for some of the others in China. Only Best seem to have the ones for the XL. And they don't appear to be in short supply there.

The Sally is readily available. Pokeys have become harder to get. Again, NTSC Antic is easier to find than PAL Antic.

26 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

Given what my friends in the arcade biz tell me, POKEYs are the ones they need by the literal dozen to stock their repair departments. They were used in SO MANY Atari coin-op games plus almost every home cart system Atari made. Have you tried pricing BALLBLAZER or COMMANDO carts lately, by the way? There's a reason why POKEYs are the ones getting the FPGA implementations (PokeyMax; PokeyONE; something Lotharek has teased; plus an arcade-specific replacement for Quad-POKEY called QPokey.)

I have looked for sources for the Quad Pokey as a curio, but haven't found anything in the wild.

[+DrVenkman]

3 minutes ago, mytek said:

I am surprised that the arcade people are always needing Pokeys. I have yet to have a single Pokey fail on me, although I agree with Rybags on Sally which I've found several twitchy ones.

 

Arcade operators have machines that run 8 - 12 hours a day on weekends, and several hours a day during the week, all day, all week, all year round typically in stuffy cabinets with no or minimal airflow. And it's not always that they fail to produce sound - I gather at least some Atari coin-ops use the pseudo-random number generators as part of their boot copy protection and if that gets flaky, the games don't run. Others use the PRNG to create the enemy/object spawns (like the layout of the mushrooms in Centipede), and if it's not right, the game gets weird. And of course, if one of the 4 sound channels goes wonky, the games sound wrong.

 

And if you're one guy with a few consoles and computers you don't run full-time, and you need to buy a single chip to repair something it's no biggie. But if you're an arcade operator, supply or repair company, try asking Brad to sell you 50 so you can keep your stock of a few dozen Atari arcade cabs running without poaching chips from working systems ... Apparently that doesn't go over well with him, lol.

[ivop]

12 minutes ago, mytek said:

I am surprised that the arcade people are always needing Pokeys. I have yet to have a single Pokey fail on me, although I agree with Rybags on Sally which I've found several twitchy ones.

The arcade people have one of these fail:

 

 

Each blob is a Pokey. If one fails, the board is useless. They use adapter boards that take four of "our" Pokeys. That's why I guess

 

[StickJock]

7 minutes ago, ivop said:

Each blob is a Pokey. If one fails, the board is useless. They use adapter boards that take four of "our" Pokeys. That's why I guess

 

Hmm.  I wonder if we could use these "bad" quad pokeys in our systems by wiring them up so to use only one or two good ones?  Kind of like how Intel used to sell larger RAM with bad chunks as smaller RAMs?

 

[bfollowell]

55 minutes ago, Larry said:

You will likely have a more difficult time finding the BASIC "C". "B" should be easy to find, but the errors in it may or may not cause you problems (if you write programs). OS rom is easy if you don't mind using an eprom. Dunno about MMUs. I think that B&C is pretty much an eBay operation now. I've had the same contact issues as you.

 

Just thought of a work-around, again if you don't mind using an eprom -- use an adapter like this 2364 --> 2764:

 

http://store.go4retro.com/adapters-1/ 

 

I'm pretty sure that I've used these in the past to put "C" in an 800XL.  Not sure about the RF shield still fitting, but I suspect that it does.

 

I thought about programming my own OS ROM and I read somewhere that we could program a GAL chip as a MMU replacement, though I'm not sure where I'd get the MMU code. The OS ROM code is readily available these days. I may look into those. It might just be good to know how to make these before we actually need to because the originals are even harder to get.

 

I'd like to put a BASIC C in my 800XL, but it came with BASIC B, and I'm not aware of having ever experienced any ill effects. I'm not even 100% certain that I need one. I'm just troubleshooting at this point. Would I be right to assume that there's a CO24947A BASIC C chip in every BASIC C cartridge? Though the thought of sacrificing a cartridge to get at the chip inside kind of goes against my nature. Can we use an EPROM to make our own BASIC C chip? Is that code available for download anywhere?

 

[ivop]

43 minutes ago, StickJock said:

Hmm.  I wonder if we could use these "bad" quad pokeys in our systems by wiring them up so to use only one or two good ones?  Kind of like how Intel used to sell larger RAM with bad chunks as smaller RAMs?

 

AFAIK Quad Pokeys don't do keyboard and SIO handling. Just sound and PRNG. But once it's known which blob of pokey is broken, you could utilize one of the other three blobs as a second pokey for stereo upgrades. Would need an adapter board with jumpers to select which blob is active.

 

 

Edit: an idea for the arcade guys could be to make an adapter board that takes two broken quad pokeys. Four jumpers to determine which of the eight blobs gets Chip Selected and Bob's your uncle

 

 

Edit2: re my first statement, IIRC the die inside the blob is a full blown pokey, but the keyboard and SIO pads/bonds are not routed to the outside world.

Edited June 20, 2020 by ivop

[_The Doctor__]

I can't count the number of times I've seen good pokeys tossed by the arcade 'cabinet collection crews' in the past, all they needed to do was replace a socket, clean and re-tin corroded legs or pull the chip clean up the traces and pokey then touch it up and re-install... but they didn't 'want to have to do it twice' and tossed stuff that was sometimes perfectly use-able. It wasn't just the pokeys they did this sort of thing with either.  I rescued what I could... they certainly regret it now. I'm sorry... but I won't give/sell/or cannibalize anything to help them out today. This is probably why they have to pay a premium today. Not one eight bit should die to fix a cabinet... Maybe they should install an 8 bit in the cabinet and play all the wonderful stuff it has to offer instead of only star wars etc.

Edited June 20, 2020 by _The Doctor__

[jaybird3rd]

1 hour ago, ivop said:

Ten years ago @jaybird3rd sold me 16 Ballblazer carts without casing for $25.75 USD including postage and packaging overseas. I kid you not. Had to desolder the Pokeys myself. I'm still very grateful I could acquire so many Pokeys at once. Have used a couple for stereo upgrades and gave a couple away. I think I have about ten left. Thanks jaybird3rd

You're very welcome!  I'm so glad they went to a good home!  I only wish I had more of them to offer, but my stock ran out some years ago.

[+CharlieChaplin]

5 hours ago, Larry said:

In addition to the short supply, what are the replacements available?  I'm curious about this, but I do have quite a few spare boards and chips.  Of course, the SIO plugs and jacks probably fit into this, also.  And maybe keyboards, although a PC keyboard is a poor option (IMO). I suppose if I had to use the PC keyboard every day, I'd get used to it.

 

 

 

GTIA, Antic, PIA, Sally and Basic Rev. C ROM (internal) are all available at ebay by vendors from GB/UK or vendors from the US. My Atari (B & C) also sells Basic Rev. A (brown label) and Basic Rev. C (silver label) on cartridge at ebay... but there are no Pokeys available...

 

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

ah, no soup for you! and that's all I gonna say. .... good thing there are alternatives now.

[+selgus]

I've gotten really good at removing 40-pin DIL chip packages from motherboards/cartridges lately..  

[manterola]

130XE emmu and XL delay line chips are also scarce. I guess Freddy (or Freddie? )  is not that easy to get. 

 

[Rybags]

I guess from an arcade standpoint the Pokey would be the needed chip.  A lot of those early 80s boards were largely using off the shelf chips which can still be bought.

By the look of the quad Pokey there, 4 dies on the one DIP might mean a lot of heat buildup.

 

I also benefited from jaybird3rd's Pokey sale.