Muzz73

Oh, man... what luck! I was about to say that I wish I had such good fortune, but at times I have... I have gotten two PS3000's in perfect working order/great cosmetic shape at two different times, from two different people in two separate geographical areas, both for free. Funny thing with that is that there are quite a number of people who would like to have gotten their hands on one of them, but I was never able to find anyone who wanted to trade anything for them when I wanted to part with them. I ended up donating them to two Atari collectors (one in the U.S. and one in France). At least they went to good homes! 👍

Yes, it's definitely a 600XL. If memory serves me (which isn't always the case), the owner had done the internal 64K upgrade and a composite video mod. I should get around to doing that with mine...

Technically, my 800XL has a hard drive... I use my 800XL as a games console, so it has a MyIDE2 in the cartridge port which hosts a 3GB Compact Flash Microdrive. While many people are converting their mechanical hard drives to solid state, I took the road less traveled and have an actual spinning hard disk on an old 8-bit machine. Why not, eh? 🤷‍♂️

I've looked in Europe as well and it just hasn't panned out for me. Perhaps one day... 🤞 Check this out... I was present at Atari Party 2014 here in the California (see pic below with my son and myself in the blue shirt on the right side). Why is this significant? Because there was a guy there with a 520STE, a 1040STE and a Mega STE, as well as another gentleman named Conrad who had a TT030; it was the first time in my entire life that I had ever seen ANY of those machines in person! I was pretty stoked just to be in the presence of such greatness.

Yeah, it's crazy for sure. I was definitely thinking about the Eiffel 3 and just getting a Mega2 or Mega4 without keyboard (cheaper than a complete 520 or 1040ST), but as far as I know, no one has made or sold the Eiffel for a few years now. I just saw a used Eiffel 2 on eBay recently and it went for over $60 before tax and shipping. Yikes. Another example is that I have wanted to get my hands on a 1040STE since about 1990 and they have always gone for ridiculous prices on eBay or via private sales on the rare occasion that I could even find one. I found one on eBay a couple of years ago that looked like it had been rolled down a hill and hit by a bus, but it still went for around $450 without a monitor or external drive. Even now, a NOS 1040STE motherboard is $645 from Best Electronics and he is the ONLY person in the world who still has them. I think they are down to their last few, which is why the prices keep going up. <sigh>

Monty Hall!!! I'm not sure what surprises me more - the price tag or the fact that there are 12 people watching it right now. I guess that if you REALLY wanted it, money would be no object... right?

I have the opinion that eBay is a dichotomy between good sense and extreme indulgence; you can get a good deal on something you really want, or idiots will fight over junk. I believe this because I have been on both sides of that coin... 🧐

Hello again! The case was $50, the keyboard was $125 and the motherboard was $125. Thus, I am in it for $300 + tax & shipping. I took into consideration that a used 520ST in excellent condition goes for around $300 here in the states and figured that this was my best option. That and piecing it together was a bit less painful than shelling out the entire $300 up front. I have software and the two funky floppy drives leftover from the last run of ST's that I had a few years ago. I donated several ST's to a friend who was going to start a computer museum and he was going to return one of the 520ST's (that he didn't need) to me. He ended up getting a divorce, moving clear across the country for a job and the museum never happened. I felt bad for him, but it left me without any ST's and I have been scoping for one ever since. Crisis averted. 😉

Hello all! Yes, it is a 520STm (not a 520STfm), but thank you for your concern. 👍 I have a modern PSU solution in the works and a rather nasty-looking SF354 that I am going to put a Gotek into. I also have another SF354 that someone has already hacked a (more) modern drive mechanism into. I think I'll just need a couple of floppy data cables and I should be good to go. On a side note; this board has all Motorola RAM and it's all socketed. If any of you saw me griping about Micron RAM in the 8-bit section, you'll know that I was very relieved to see this! LOL I'm sure that it originally came with TOS 1.00, but it now has TOS 1.04 across six chips. Bruce probably swapped all of the TOS on these NOS boards at some point, because all of the boards in this particular eBay posting have 1.04. Cheers to all!

It's a bouncing baby 520STm! Built from NOS parts a la B&C Computervisions. I have been without an ST for a couple of years and am very happy to have this one on board! In case anyone is interested in picking any of this STuff up, his eBay store (myatari) still has two cases, two keyboards and a bunch of motherboards as of my writing this. Just lettin' y'all know... Live long and prosper, fellow Atarians! 🖖

Man... I have owned two PS3000's and donated both of them to Atari collectors. I wish I could have helped... ?

Wow! That's a whole lot of Atari goodness! I will be sure to check them all out. ? No ingots here... I made sure of that! ? I sometimes wish I had an ingot laying around so I could hollow it out and put modern innards into it... ? Many thanks!

I haven't powered it on yet, to be honest. It's a NOS unit that I purchased from B&C Computervisions (I'm in NTSC land and wanted a PAL machine to play with) and I'm sure that it works just fine. I just know what a pain that Micron RAM can be, so I was thinking that if the machine had it on the board, I would just replace them on general principle. As far as I can remember, I haven't run across Hynix RAM in any of my Ataris before. While I haven't heard anything bad about them, I figured that I should ask. I'll leave the RAM alone then. As power supplies go, I have a rebuildable one that I got new from Best Electronics years ago for my 800XL. I also have an old 450w Mini ITX PSU that I have ordered a breakout board and 7-pin DIN cable for, just to try it... ?

Hello all! I've been missing from the forums here for several years, surely missed out on a lot of nifty happenings and have a lot of catching up to do. Meanwhile... I recently purchased a 130XE and figured that one of the first things I should do would be to pop it open. If it had Micron RAM chips, those would get replaced immediately. When I opened it up, I saw what appear to be Hynix RAM chips. Should I be worried? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance! Muzz/Louis

It's kind of the "luck of the draw", I think. I bought two NIB 800XL mobo's a few years ago and both are fully socketed, but I remember seeing a post somewhere that another user called on the phone to ask that very question and waited while they opened several of them up to find that none of those were socketed. :^\

Haha! Yes... good point! I may be totally off in what may have happened had Jack not bought Atari when he did, but I would certainly like to have seen where Atari might have gone had he not taken things over and put a lot of the currently-being-developed concepts/products on hold or completely squashed. I think that the 8-bit era was only beginning to wane, but it still had a few good years left in it and some of the 8-bit products that Jack either killed or delayed might have saved Atari long enough for them to regroup and formulate a new plan of attack. I do believe that Atari had good marketing in the Warner era, which seemed to go decidedly downhill after they sold.

I know that there are a lot of differing opinions regarding Jack Tramiel's management and acquisition of Atari, but I am definitely thankful for it. Yes, it wasn't perfect, I know... but without Jack, Atari would have crashed and burned a lot sooner than it did and we wouldn't have gotten the ST (and everything that stemmed from it). One of the times that I heard Leonard Tramiel speak, he had said that the ST went from concept to working prototypes in cases in six months. Wow. Pretty awesome. I wish the ST (and the lines that followed) would have been marketed better with advertising, sales partnerships, etc. When I was a teenager in Santa Cruz, CA (USA) I was only 45 minutes from the Silicon Valley by car and the only Atari dealer in Santa Cruz county was a toy store in Aptos. They didn't carry current models because not enough people knew to ask about them. This was in 1990 and the guy behind the counter (while very Atari knowledgeable) didn't have a single STe to show me; just a 520ST with an external FDD. By the time the Falcon came out, they weren't even interested in carrying them. It was pretty sad.

Hi! I would be using it as the A drive on an original 520ST w/TOS 1.04. My son loves classic machines and has several of them but he doesn't have any experience with ST's, so I was thinking of giving him my old 520ST to play around with. What do you think? Thanks again! Louis

Hello all! I have a poor, lonely, yellow and brittle SF354 that isn't getting any love right now and I was considering turning it into an external GOTEK drive. My question is: Do any of you know if I could simply swap the mechanisms and expect it to work, would I need to tweak/mod the SF354's internals, or is this simply not a good idea? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Louis

Many thanks! I'll give it a go tonight!

Yep... it's a sad, sad state of affairs. I have always told people that you have to be careful with eBay because you can get the deal of a lifetime or people will fight over junk. I know, because I have done both! I do see it from all sides, though. I get disappointed when I see prices that I think are extortionist level. At the same time, if someone offered me a lot of money for something I had sitting around, I'd probably jump on it. :^D

Yeah. it's really sad... some schlub buys a box of stuff for $10 at a yard sale and tries to wring $500 out of it from people like us who actually need it.

Hello all! My 800XL has recently gone to B&W output only and I was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers. First, I have tried different monitor cables with no luck. Next, I tried a spare motherboard with said cables and got a full color output without any problems. I'd still like to get this other one working at 100% functionality if I'm going to put it away as a spare. Disclaimer - I have no appreciable knowledge of electronics and am not particularly skilled with a soldering iron. Before I begin switching GTIA's around, can anyone tell me if there is something else I should be looking out for? Many thanks in advance! Louis

I loved that game back in the day (circa 1987)! It was one of the first ones I had for the 64. The games were cheesy, but there were a lot of them and I don't remember it having to access the disk much (or at all) during gameplay.

Yes... that! Put the mileage on the 800XL, get the 1200XLs working and keep them around because they're awesome.