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NEW MIO production run.


MEtalGuy66

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3mios.jpg

 

The MI0 case from PacTek is available in two colors: Black and "PC-Bone". Initially, I ordered them all black because I wasn't sure what "PC-Bone" was.. Well, it turns out that "PC-Bone" is a pretty damn close approximation of the off-white on the XL series of machines.

 

So heres some pics of various case color combinations:

 

miowhite.jpg

mioblack.jpg

mioblackwhite.jpg

 

The half black, half white one looks pretty consistant with an XL styled device.

Unfortunately, if I build someone a white/black one, I also have to build a black/white one at some point to use up the other two case halves.. So for now, that's gonna be a "subject to availability" item, unless you REALLY want it and are willing to pay $20.00 for an extra case.

Just to let everyone know that I just checked out these cases on the PacTek website, and instead of ordering the complete case you can order the individual components instead to make a dual colour case, with very little price difference. This option is probably not available through resellers, but is if ordered directly from PacTek, shipping could be more expensive since they only use FedEx:

http://www.pactecenc...d=45&classid=26

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  • 6 years later...

ITS HERE !!!!

 

Well, after paying good old Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs £31.00 in VAT and Parcelforce Worldwide £8.00 in "handling fees" I finaly got my hands on the package I've been waiting for from MetalGuy icon_mrgreen.gif

 

attachicon.gifMIO 001.jpg

attachicon.gifMIO 003.jpg

attachicon.gifMIO 004.jpg

 

Only bummer now is I have to work today icon_sad.gif

 

Thanks again Ken. I'm sure I'll have some questions for all you MIO users once I get it set up, but I'm planning to read through the relevant threads here again today.

While humming the "It's a small world after all" theme....

 

I just bought this one off ebay.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-XL-XE-Reproduction-MIO-Interface/323197471159?hash=item4b401209b7:g:K-QAAOSw4N1ayjBO

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Just one question.....

 

Got my "Paul Baker" MIO today. Didn't come with a power adapter (which of course I expected, so no biggie).

 

Just wanted to confirm it uses the same one as the old MIO. I know it's 99% the same, but... well... given the $ involved, we're going to play "better safe than stupid" since I didn't see anything specific about it on the Rasterline website.

 

Thanks in advance.

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Just one question.....

 

Got my "Paul Baker" MIO today. Didn't come with a power adapter (which of course I expected, so no biggie).

 

Just wanted to confirm it uses the same one as the old MIO. I know it's 99% the same, but... well... given the $ involved, we're going to play "better safe than stupid" since I didn't see anything specific about it on the Rasterline website.

 

Thanks in advance.

From the schematic available at Rasterline.com it uses a 9VAC power supply, same as the original(also the 810/1050/XF551), but since internally it only uses +5VDC a 7.5VAC(maybe even a 6VAC) power supply with enough current should work(the reduced voltage would also mean less heat dissipated by the 7805).

Edited by BillC
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From the schematic available at Rasterline.com it uses a 9VAC power supply, same as the original(also the 810/1050/XF551), but since internally it only uses +5VDC a 7.5VAC(maybe even a 6VAC) power supply with enough current should work(the reduced voltage would also mean less heat dissipated by the 7805).

 

Interestingly, the power supply ICD supplied for my MIO was a 9V DC supply, and I happily ran my BBS on it for 10+ years. Guessing they maybe got in on excess 5200 supplies, like Indus, and maybe others (trak/rana?) I know now that because of the rectifier diodes, it would have been better to use a 9VAC supply to make each only 50% active.. using lower voltage like you say would also have been good for heat reduction. Luckily I never had issues with mine, but there is definite 'browner' spots on the PCB in the power area...

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  • 1 month later...

I dasn't know but it konnectz to dah Atahrey!

 

The bus on this one appears weak and intermittant.... first idea on where to look? I thought recap and power supply to start, but these are your area of expertise.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Hello The Doctor

 

My first guess would be the flatcable.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy (who never owned a MIO, but the flat cable on his BB with FB got damaged somehow (no strain relief. He fixed that!) making his (parallel) floppies go "format disk" all by themselves.)

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Nice to know he is alive and well... I am tempted to send it in for the full treatment... but there is that pride you get when you do it yourself..... and there's no shame in getting ideas from the community to get it done with the least grief.

 

MetalGuy are ya into this sort of thing anymore....

 

What might you still have for to buy MetalGuy?

Might be cool to support some of those efforts old and new...

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  • 7 months later...

Or have these features integrated into the 1088 or U1MB. I really enjoyed the MIO's ability to carve up bootable ramdisks, swap devices around etc.. serial, parallel and scsi were nice bonuses.

And hardware flow control... printer buffer... persistent ramdisk (that was faster than most (any?) PORTB ramdisk) RAM based hard disk cache... so many innovations for it's time.

 

Really showed what was possible with a XL/XE with PBI bios.

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And hardware flow control... printer buffer... persistent ramdisk (that was faster than most (any?) PORTB ramdisk) RAM based hard disk cache... so many innovations for it's time.

 

Really showed what was possible with a XL/XE with PBI bios.

 

Hi!

 

Just like you I also have very fond memories of my old Harddisk interface. I used the Blackbox, which I quite similar to the MIO. But today we should not confuse things. The features the MIO/BlackBox offered were hardware-related. Hardware flow control (it is no coincidence that the word hardware is used) can not be achieved by an Atari PBI Bios, and that was of course also not the case with MIO/Blackbox. It was simply the used components in the RS232 circuit.

 

Ramdisks where fast back in the day because those old interfaces were slow. IIRC the newest firmware of the MIO were faster than the Blackbox SCSI port, but seriously, I do not see any use of ramdisk today. A printerbuffer, yes I would like that too. But I guess there are not so many users that would need that, and I would not ask for a feature that will be rarely used.

 

So... although I have also very fond memories of my blackbox, I am pretty happy that I upgraded to newer solutions. Sometimes I think of going back to BlackBox but most of the times within a few hours I already detached it and moved back to IDE+ or FJC's SIDE2 PBI solution with U1MB.

 

It is great and not comparable with MIO or BlackBox.

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