Does anyone know any info about this PC to Atari interface?

[SS]

(I'm cross posting from rec.games.video.classic so I apologize if some of you have seen this question before)

 

Anyway ... does anyone know anything about this? :

 

http://www.atarimax.com

 

It seems to be a way to use your PC to act as a hard drive for an Atari 8Bit machine. The software is Win98 compatable and it does come with an interface cable. $104 does seem a bit steep perhaps but I'm pretty electronically dumb and don't know if I could build the thing myself. I'm wondering if I could use it to save programs onto a real Atari 1050 disk drive? That would be the best of all worlds.

 

Can anyone help to clue me in a little?

[Goochman]

All you really need is a SIO2PC cable which you can get for under $30 - The APE Software is the best/easiest way to hook up images and manage them(SIO2PC is a DOS based utility)

 

I have a SIO2PC cable and it is awesome having a CD with all my fav 8bit games ready to roll!

[oesii]

I agree if you have a slower computer (486/Pentium) that isn't doing anything the SIO2PC Dos program is a much better deal. The sio2pc also works on newer computers but you usually have to boot to dos. Here's where you can get that software along with instructions how to build your own cable:

http://www.tcainternet.com/wa5bdu/sio2pc.htm

 

There's a seller on ebay that sells these cables anywhere from $14-30 based on the number on interested bidders that week. He's from Poland and the cable gets sent in just a few days by airmail. Highly recommended.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=2049017035

[oesii]

not to be one-sided, I think people have compared the APE system versus the Sio2pc software by Nick Kennedy in previous threads on this board, here's an example if you want to search for more:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3579

[Hank]

So if I get one of these cables and APE, is there anywhere I can get a nice CD complilation of 800 software? Since that stuff's so old how do the copyright laws affect them? Anyone want to burn me a CD?

 

Hank

[oesii]

So if I get one of these cables and APE, is there anywhere I can get a nice CD complilation of 800 software?   Since that stuff's so old how do the copyright laws affect them?   Anyone want to burn me a CD?

 

Hank

 

 

I don't know if anyone puts together CD's for the community, maybe it's because of copyright issues with existing companies like activision, but you could get every file you've probably ever wanted at one of these 2 places:

 

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/atari/

 

ftp://ftp.spudster.org/pub/atari/CTH

 

I'm guessing you're on a modem because you're asking about a CD? If you have high speed access all these files would fit into 500 or so MB on your hard drive so you don't need a CD per se. If you are modem bound I wouldn't mind putting together a cd of 8-bit stuff for you once you get the cable.

[Gunstar]

I'm connected at 28k still where I live and I can download the average 8-bit game in literally 3 seconds. But when I ordered the registered version of APE, the guy sent me a cd full of 8-bit software for free with it. As for copyrights, yes, many of the games are still copywritten, but generally it's only the name companies care about and they don't seem to care if people download 20 year old software that they are no longer publishing and know isn't worth anything anymore really...but if you try to make a modern versionof one of these games and sell it under the same name you may run into problems with the copyright holders...many titles have been officially released into the public domain though...