Need Help! Just bought an Atari 400!!

[GameGod]

I just picked up an Atari 400 with a huge power supply... The thrift store had the 410 tape deck thingy too, but when I plugged it into the wall and pushed play, nothing happened.

 

There were also 2 tape games there (which I did not buy because I didn't get the deck).

 

I also suspect that there probably was a Basic cartridge hiding somewhere because I got a manual for that with the system (and the games need one).

 

Could you give me some info on the 410?

[Tempest]

The 410. Boy does that bring back memories...

 

The 410 was Atari's first tape unit for the 8-bit line. The 410 is pretty unreliable, it has a bad tendacy to crap out when loading tape games if it's bumped or even breathed on wrong. The two little prongs that turn the tape wheels are also known to go bad. Mine had trouble after only a few years, sometimes one of the prongs wouldn't turn when and I had to smack it a few times to get it to rewind.

 

The 1010 vastly improved on the design of the 410. It was smalled (much smaller) and much more reliable (I haven't had any troubles yet). It's basically an upgraded tape drive. Much like the Atari's disks drives (the 850 vs. the 1050).

 

If the unit didn't do anything when you plugged it in and hit the play or fastforward buttons then there's a good chance it might be bad. Sometimes they're fixable but usually it's not worth the bother. You can find them fairly cheap on the net, and I'd recommend getting the 1010 instead unless you really like the look of the 410.

 

BTW, most tape games required the Basic cartridge (not all, but alot did). If you can't find the Basic cart it's not a big deal, it's one of the most common 400/800 carts and can be found on the web for $2 or less.

 

Oh, and be careful when picking up tape games at flea markets unless they're stored in their cases. They have a tendacy to go bad when exposed to dust.

 

Tempest

[GameGod]

Cool... thanx...

 

Yeah, the tape games were in original boxes.

 

What can I hook the 400 up to? I used to have a commodore (sp?) monitor in my basement... but I think it got ditched some how.

 

 

 

Oh well.... So is there anything I can do with just the base unit and a power supply? What happens when you just turn it on?

 

P.S. Can it use 2600 joysticks?

[Tempest]

It hooks up to your TV just like the 2600 (with an RF switch box). And yes you can use 2600 joysticks, actually it came with the same old standard one button joysticks.

 

Without any cartridges plugged in the Atari 400 will go into Memo Pad mode. Basically you can just type what ever you like, it's just a big note pad.

 

Games are farily easy to come by on ebay, but I haven't seen many in the wild. Usually the common ones are $2 to $4 and even the ultra rare ones go for $50 or less. It's a great system to collect for, out of all the systems I own (and I own alot) I play the 400 the most.

 

Instead of investing in a tape drive I'd try and hunt down a 1050 disk drive. Almost all the games that were available on tape were available on disk as well. Plus you don't have the horrendus load times (some games take 10 min. or more to load!).

 

One thing your going to find is that the 400 only has 16K. This is fine to play most games, but the later games (most of the XE games) require 64K. Many of the disk and tape games need at least 48K. The 400 will last you for awhile (I used mine for 15 years) but if you want to play the more advanced games I'd get a 800 (48K) or an Atari XEGS (64K). I use a XEGS right now and other than the different look and detachable keyboard it functions exactly the same as the 400 (plus 48K).

 

Tempest

 

[ 08-01-2001: Message edited by: Tempest ]

[GameGod]

More thanks!!!

 

I don't feel so bad about the commadore monitor anymore.

 

I keep my eyes peel for a 1050 disk drive. I doubt I'd have much trouble getting one, in my area there is a huge place called "The Reuse Center" and it's full of old junk. Think of it as an organized flea market. I've picked up several 2600 related items from there, so it shouldn't be a problem!

 

Thank you very much! Knowledgable people are hard to come by (except on this forum!)

 

Thanks again!

[Tempest]

No problem. The Atari 400 is one of the systems I know alot about because it was my first computer system.

 

I got it for Christmas in 1983, it came with the 410 Tape Drive, Donkey Kong (the absolute best version ever!), Buck Rogers, Centipede, and Pac-Man. While digging through some old photos I actually found a picture of me holding up the boxes for Centipede and Pac-Man Christmas morning. I've got to scan that in for everyone (I was such a cute little kid).

 

Anyway, back to the 1050 Disk Drive. Make sure it works before you buy it (if you can). The Atari disk drives also have a bad tendacy to break over the years. I've found three so far and they've all worked, but I've heard the horror stories from my friends. Apperently the drive head can get bumped and it won't load disks anymore. Oh, and when you turn it on it will make this nasty grunting noise, don't worry it's normal. The first time I heard it I thought it was destroying my disk.

 

In case you don't have any instructions for the tape or disk drive, to use it you've got to hold down the Start key as your powering up the system. You'll get a blank blue screen with the cursor in the upper left corner and it will make this weird computer beep sound (you'll know it when you hear it). Then you put your tape or disk in the drive and hit enter. It should start loading then. Some game manuals tell you how to do this, but most don't.

 

If you have any more questions feel free to e-mail me (reicher6@pilot.msu.edu).

 

Tempest

 

BTW, if you want to see all the various Atari computers look here: (http://www.atari-history.com/computers/a8bit.html)

[GameGod]

hmmm.... That's good to know....

 

 

The system works great. The little memo pad thing works perfectly. Thanks again!

[Gunstar]

Just a couple of things that need to be added that I think Tempest just overlooked; it is possible to upgrade the 400 to 48k, if you can find an 800 48k memory card (I think Best Electronics Or B&C have them-see links here at atariage under dealers), but of course the 800 has a REAL keyboard. Also, you hold down the OPTION button for the disk drive, the START is for tape only! Another thing is that, as far as I know, the 400 can only be upgraded to 48k, at least using Atari memory upgrades,there may have been some 3rd party memory upgrades that allowed the 400 to be upgraded to 64k, I don't remember. I do remember that the 800 cna be upgraded to 64k and beyond...with third party memory upgrades(these might work on the 400). But Your best bet to finding these upgrade items are the dealers mentioned above. In it's current 16k form, the 400 will only use cart and tape games with a max of 16k, anything more, and you need to upgrade. Also, no disk drive; 810, 1050, xf551 or other Atari compatible drive will even work on the 400 without upgrading it to at LEAST 32k! That's minimum memory for operation of disk drives on Atari 8-bit computers (400/800/xl/xe). Again, BEST or B&C are your best bet for finding the memory upgrades and BASIC too!

[Tempest]

Yeah I didn't know how the disk drive would work with the 400. By the time I got one I had the 800. True you can upgrade the memory in the 400 beyond 16K but it involves soldering in memory and most people don't want to do that. In fact I don't see any reason to upgrade the 400 at all, it's just easier to get a 800. That "real" keyboard comes with problems, usually when you get one from a flea market theres always a few keys that won't work. I've never had that problem with the 400's membrane keyboard.

 

I think if you upgrade the 800 to 64K it will still have problems running some XE games. I think a few need the XE's OS as well.

 

Tempest

[atari70s]

Hey all im looking for a 830 and 835 for the 800 series. i sw 1 835 with a system btu didnt need teh system no use goign for it . but has anyone seen any sold seperately?

[Nukey Shay]

Tempest--

I didn't know that the 800 could use the XL OS at all (I thought that the extra controller ports would wreck havok, as these control memory in XL's). Or maybe I'm just a confused mug.

BTW all 1050 disk drives' head's drift over time, and you can fix the timing by opening the case and turning the small screw near the power jack with an eyeglass screwdriver (can't miss it, the pot is usually blue and square...with the screw on top slightly off-center). If you have a Dos or program that shows disk speed, I think you keep it 285-310 rpm...but you should still be able to guess at it (just boot up and adjust until it stops giving the error message). With the volume turned up, you can tell by the blips if you are going faster or slower. If you think you've got it, try writing on a DD disk that is nearly full with verify on...errors will pop up if the drive head is truly misaligned.

 

Gunstar--

The 1050 disk drive does indeed work with a factory 16k Atari 400 (I used to try to write stuff that would work with that combo). If you have Basic plugged in and Dos booted up, I believe that you just barely have enough memory to call GRAPHICS 8 (DOS.SYS eats up roughly 3.5k, and each drive will use 128 bytes of buffer space). Many commercial games just use a bare minimum of a "Dos", so many that were created with 16k in mind will run (unless the game squeezed every last bit of that).

 

[ 08-01-2001: Message edited by: Nukey Shay ]

[Tempest]

I didn't mean the 800 needs the XL's OS, I meant that he might need an XL to play some games. But that does raise an interesting point, I know the XL can use the 400/800 OS (through the translator disk) but I wonder if it could work the other way around. I'd doubt it, I'd imagine it would need some of the XL's chips as well.

 

Tempest

[Nukey Shay]

Bloody cable...

A fair bet...since the chips were not designed or even considered to be replacements for the 800. The XL series had backward-compatability in mind, but a lot of those still needed the Translator "fix" (load in the old OS...how tacky is that?)...and even that was no guarantee.

[Nukey Shay]

Scratch that...you only get an out of memory error trying to call Graphics 8 when using Dos & Basic on a 16k 400 (but all lower modes work).

[Gunstar]

Well, I never owned a 400 or a 600xl, so I'm certainly no expert on those specific machines, I just remember reading in an Atari mag, years ago, that the Atari drives required a minimum of 32k. I don't know if that meant to load DOS up, or what, and it is quite possible that the person who wrote that it needed 32k in that old article was mistaken. But even if you can manage to get it working with 16k memory, obviously, you can't do anything worth while anyway (except call up a graphic mode?); so maybe you could write a very small program in basic and save it to disk? Well, whatever, I still think that you would need a minimum of 32k to do anything "substantial" with the disk drive. Unless you think that having basic on, DOS loaded, and then have enough memory left to call up a graphic mode that uses less memory than GR.8 is substantial. Oh,yeah! think of the possibilities of what could be done then! (some lite-hearted sarcasm )

[Nukey Shay]

Yeah, you'd still have more resources than the Atari 2600 has. /sarcasm

Anyway, back in the day when anything above 16k of RAM was considered a luxury...it was common for most commercial programs to use less than that (unless they were looking to sell to the top % that could afford a $1200 48k machine).

BTW the graphics mode thing was just a figure of how much was left...if you were programming in assembly and used your own disk loader, you could pretty much use the whole 16k. For those who perferred Basic, almost anything published as "type-in" programs could be saved to disk (that's how come my interest).

True, it would never be Quake or Half-Life.

[scotty]

GameGod:  The 410 play button does not function like a normal play button.  You can press it, and you will wait for the end of time, and it still will not go.  It waits for the computer to tell it to start.  That way you can have a tape in there, press play and the computer will start and stop the tape when it needs it.    This works great for thing like the Conversational Spanish, and other languages as well as a lot of other educational tapes that have voice tracks on them.  I never had a problem with my 410.  It was very reliable.  I can almost guarantee you will have to replace the drive motor belt though.  That is the case on ANY cassette/CD/DVD drive.  They are basically a rubber band, and as you know, rubber bands only last a few years before they dry rot.  I would go back to the thrift store and get the 410 if it still available.  Just like the 400/800, they were built like a tank.  They came out before the cost cutting and cheaper materials that were used in the XL/XE product lines.

[scotty]

Quick and easy way is (in Basic if you have a cartridge) type POKE 54018,52 and press the enter key.  That will tell the motor to turn on.  Replace the 52 with 60 to turn it off, or just hit stop on the 410, or turn the computer off.

 

Pro tip:  if you put an audio tape in the 410 and do this, you can listen to music while you do stuff in Basic.  

 

Also, there was a version of Pole Position that had this enabled back in the day, So you could have a cassette deck in your racecar, listening to music while going 240 MPH.  Not sure if this was done by Atari, or if someone hacked it.  Not sure if it was all versions of the game, so your mileage may very.

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

• Game God,
• Content Count 22
• Joined June 15, 2001
• Last visited March 26, 2019
• Thread last active
• Posted August 2, 2001

 

Should be interesting if he responds from the eddies of the past!

Edited May 3, 2020 by _The Doctor__

[+DrVenkman]

Hell of a necrobump! 18 years and 9 months, just about! 

[jamm]

Do we have winner?  This may be a winner!

[_The Doctor__]

nope, there was an anniversary post, with congrats as the oldest necro, afair

[jamm]

Necro affairs?!  Now we're getting off topic...

 

The earliest forum posts ("Welcome" posts from @Albert) are from April 22, 2001, so this one is definitely up there!

 

Of course, this also means we're quickly coming up on the 20th anniversary of these forums... ?

Edited May 3, 2020 by jamm

[_The Doctor__]

you mean like this mwah ha ha ha ha...

 

 

Atari 2600 NEXUS is AtariAge for the most part if you want to go all the way back...

Edited May 3, 2020 by _The Doctor__