OldAtarian

Great. Another undocumented cart variation to collect.

I do not even want to see the squeal like a pig scene from the Deliverance game.

It looks like the LEDS are burning out. It's not likely that replacements are to be had unless you strip another Indus GT for parts.

There is a thread from a few years back, 2006 to 2008, in the vintage computer forums about a government supplier who still manufactured floppies at that time. The company still has a website listing their products, but without pricing. The thread: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/archive/index.php/t-5069.html The company: http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html It figures the government would still be using 5.25" and 8" floppy drives. It really makes you feel good about the security of our personal information that they have on file.

Any floppy disks you find, even unused ones from back in the day still sealed, will likely not have much reliability left. They do deteriorate over time and most of the ones you find will be 20+ years old which is already beyond the normal lifespan for floppies.

Someone offered $200 and he took it. Still seems high for a program with no useful purpose other than window dressing.

He describes in the listing as a game. I don't think he realizes it's an app that has no usefulness anymore. He may as well be selling a brick for all the good it does. An app that does not function any longer reduces the value as far as I'm concerned regardless of how rare it is because it has no useful purpose other than to fill a hole in your cart collection. At least a rarity 10 game can be played giving it more value, this cart does nothing. It's like collecting all the early AOL floppies and CD's that you can't connect with anymore. They're just fancy coasters with no server to connect to.

Depends who made it. The Axlon RAM-Cram 32K board could work in a 400 or in slot 2 of an 800, but not in slot 1 (because they did not follow Atari's scheme, as noted in the first post). The Intec 32K board could work in either slot 1 or 2 but not in a 400 (they didn't quite get it either). The Austin Franklin flyer claimed their 32K board worked in either slot 1 or 2 and in a 400 (maybe they got it, though I have never seen one to verify). I don't know about the Best 32K board. No 32K board could work by itself in the 800 because no slot has all the select lines S0, S1, S2, and S3 (without loopbacks or jumper wires). So, all the boards above required another RAM board in the other slot. So you're saying the RAM slot in the 400 is wired differently than the 1st RAM in the 800 since 32k boards will work in that without any other RAM board but not in the 800 without another one? That doesn't make much sense. Wouldn't they have used the same process for wiring up the RAM slots on both machines so as not to complicate production unnecessarily?

A BASIC cart is rare? I'd never know it from the couple of dozen I have. What revision BASIC is that?

In the original box and play the games from a flash cartridge Robert I sleep in bed with all my carts! Don't all those hard edges hurt?

And if you hadn't negotiated the deal it would have been relisted wouldn't it? So you DID make a side deal because you used ebay to contact the seller and make a private deal that ebay doesn't get their share of.

Astra Big D

They didn't need it for 8K, 16K , or even 32K boards. The select signals handled those boards fine. But if you try to make a 64K RAM board that covers the whole address range (like the XLs) then you miss A14 and A15. You can get A15 from the OS ROM slot, though, and could jumper it over to the RAM board. In fact, you can regenerate A14 using A15, S0, S1, S6, and S7 (all of which can be found either on the OS ROM slot or the 1st RAM slot) but it's inconvenient (and perhaps not obvious). So maybe they just did not foresee the need for more than 48K RAM in the 800. Just like Bill Gates didn't foresee a need for more than 640K.

DOS 3 originally came with the 1050 disk drives but it uses a very inefficient format that wastes a lot of space. The sectors are huge and if you have a file that goes just one bit over a sector boundary the entire sector is marked as used even though it is mostly empty. Multiply this by several files and the wasted space really adds up especially with small files as every file takes up a minimum of one full sector no matter how small it is.

What the heck did I just watch?

I have a Mosaic 32k board but it's inside one of my 400's and it's too hard to get to to photograph. Have to completely disassemble the 400 to get at it which is something I promised myself I would never do again once the upgrade board was inside. Still, it would be nice if someone had a webpage dedicated to these upgrade boards so that when someone is selling any of them they will be easier to identify. It's too hit or miss buying every 800 or batch of boards that has one in it that you don't recognize. You end up with a lot of junk you'll never use that way.

Atarimania shows it as a 10, but who needs it if the service it connects to no longer exists? It's like buying a Compuserve or DJIS starter pack.

Whatever happened to side dealers being reviled here on AA?

Action! cart. Woo Hoo!

First I finally got a MAC/65 now I got an Action! cart. I also got a huge lot of programming books for the 8-bit which contained the binders and manuals for most of the OSS carts. It's getting so difficult to find all this stuff for reasonable prices anymore. Are there really that many people still programming for the 8-bit that it is jacking up the prices on programming tools and reference books so much?

Doesn't Curt have one? Curt has EVERYTHING.

Not necessarily. How do you prove a video game manual is a fake when you don't have an original to compare it to? How does ebay/Paypal know it's a fake? It's not like currency that can be easily proved a fake. You think they'll just refund your money on your word with no proof? From what I have seen Paypal always sides with the buyer. But I still don't believe this will ever happen. Making a truly convincing fake would take too much effort for not enough pay-out. It is a one time scam at best. That said, if it did happen, I think almost anyone can tell the difference between something printed on a modern printer verses an original doc. Unless someone went all out and got vintage paper and ink stock and used a printing press, but that takes me back to my original point ....too much effort for a one-off scam. So I can buy a $50,000 gold coin on ebay, receive it, then claim it's a fake and get my $50,000 back? Ebay wouldn't have many sellers if they allowed that.

Makes sense - by the time GTIAs were in place, all machines would have been 16K. I have never seen a machine with a CTIA or less than 16k That may be so in the US, but as far as I am aware the UK only ever got 16K GTIA models, you could buy 48K ones later in the 400's life though When did the 400 ever sell with 48k? The 400 only has one memory slot so all 48k would have to have been on one board. I have yet to see an Atari 48k memory board. If I had I would have bought three of them for my 800 long ago.

Ah, you found pictures taken in my livingroom. Yes, honestly that setup belonged to me. It consisted of one 6 MB, two 10 MB and one 20 MB Corvus drives, HardBoxen to interface with Commodore PET, a few multiplexers and of course all the boring Commodore PET hardware you Atari guys surely are completely uninterested of... However it should be noted both 10 MB drives were dead on arrival, so mostly deadweight. The 6 and 20 MB drives were working OK. Most of this stuff now lives in Germany. I still have the 6 MB drive, two HardBoxen and a few selected PETs left in my collection. A friend of mine hosts one of the broken 10 MB drives, which I may pick up. Since it is very heavy, I suppose only selected spare parts might be worth shipping around if you need something. That's the problem with most vintage stuff. It's so damn bulky that it costs more to ship than what it's worth.

Unboxed 1200XL=$50 so this poor git paid $300 for a box with the word 'Atari' printed on it. Oh, and I'll bet he opens it up and the keyboard STILL doesn't work.