Weekend Craigslist-inspired trip

[JohnBuell]

So I went down into Chicago's southern suburbs over the weekend to pick up some XL-era gear. For $125 I came away with an 800XL, a 1010 and a 1050, a couple of Atari Basic books (and another copy of the original BASIC cartridge), a warped and unusable DOS 3 disk, and DOS 3 manuals (which I had already). When I finally got a chance to start plugging things in and testing them last night, I couldn't get the 800XL itself to start The power light would come on, but my monitor stayed black and I never heard any of the usual 'startup' noises. The 1050 plugged into my existing setup just fine, so I have a D2: again! Yay! And the 1010 is the silver backed one (I already had the orange backed one), so now I have one each of both kinds of 1010s. However, playback on a regular audio cassette was VERY noisy, so I'm thinking a cassette head cleaner is in order.

 

So, questions:

1) Do you just pick up an "off the rack" cassette cleaner for 410s/1010s?

<Nevermind, I needed a little better forum search kung-fu; I'm going to try one of these from RadioShack:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3964917>

2) Anybody want a seemingly dead 800XL for spare parts?

Edited August 9, 2010 by JohnBuell

[sloopy]

So I went down into Chicago's southern suburbs over the weekend to pick up some XL-era gear. For $125 I came away with an 800XL, a 1010 and a 1050, a couple of Atari Basic books (and another copy of the original BASIC cartridge), a warped and unusable DOS 3 disk, and DOS 3 manuals (which I had already). When I finally got a chance to start plugging things in and testing them last night, I couldn't get the 800XL itself to start The power light would come on, but my monitor stayed black and I never heard any of the usual 'startup' noises. The 1050 plugged into my existing setup just fine, so I have a D2: again! Yay! And the 1010 is the silver backed one (I already had the orange backed one), so now I have one each of both kinds of 1010s. However, playback on a regular audio cassette was VERY noisy, so I'm thinking a cassette head cleaner is in order.

 

So, questions:

1) Do you just pick up an "off the rack" cassette cleaner for 410s/1010s?

<Nevermind, I needed a little better forum search kung-fu; I'm going to try one of these from RadioShack:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3964917>

2) Anybody want a seemingly dead 800XL for spare parts?

 

2) yes :')

[qix_maniac]

hmmm...sorry dude, you were taken.

 

$125 for a broken atari with a working drive and few books isn't great...better luck.

 

I'm looking to sell my atari 800,1 joystick 1 set of paddles, couple of booxs/manuals and 20 cartridges for $150.

 

I have an atari 800xl myself and like it much better then the heavy 800 system.

[JohnBuell]

hmmm...sorry dude, you were taken.

 

$125 for a broken atari with a working drive and few books isn't great...better luck.

 

I'm looking to sell my atari 800,1 joystick 1 set of paddles, couple of booxs/manuals and 20 cartridges for $150.

 

I have an atari 800xl myself and like it much better then the heavy 800 system.

 

I have no idea if they'd tested the 800XL. But hey, another 1050 and now owning both types of 1010s, I don't think I got hit THAT bad.

I'm probably going to start selling extra books/cartridges soon, or at vcfmw.

[tjlazer]

$125? Damn that was a rip off. Sorry man. But hey atleast you got something for it.