ClausB Posted February 4, 2021 Author Share Posted February 4, 2021 Looks to me like Z3, Z4, and Z5 perform the same functions as the same chips on the Atari OS board. So Z1 and Z2 must be decoding the various ROM selects. The solder points on the switches look different. Were they replaced, or just hand-soldered? Maybe clean the flux around them. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted February 4, 2021 Share Posted February 4, 2021 (edited) 10 hours ago, ClausB said: Looks to me like Z3, Z4, and Z5 perform the same functions as the same chips on the Atari OS board. So Z1 and Z2 must be decoding the various ROM selects. The solder points on the switches look different. Were they replaced, or just hand-soldered? Maybe clean the flux around them. THANKS !!! I guess I will start with the obvious one, Z1 at the far-left, which is socketed... Not sure why only that one is... Anyhow, this board was working well, until very recently, when it started with the stupid green screens. As for the soldering, there were some re-done by me (directly) months ago. What was before (on those specific locations) looked to me like utter crap (I am psychotic when it comes to crap-solder work and wiring, in general). I still wonder about right-cart blockage by Intec / 512KB expansion... let me know if you can ever reproduce that on your end... as it happens here on both my production and guts-for-testing bed. Edited February 4, 2021 by Faicuai Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted February 5, 2021 Share Posted February 5, 2021 14 hours ago, Faicuai said: I still wonder about right-cart blockage by Intec / 512KB expansion... Can you see if you get a lower ?FRE(0) with BASIC+Monkey Wrench, vs with BASIC alone? That would indicate if the OS is at least detecting the right cart memory area as ROM... If so, might also want to save out the memory from $8000-9FFF to disk (ie DOS 2 save memory) and inspect the result compared to the 8KB Monkey wrench ROM. Patterns in the corruption (or blank) might provide insight... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted February 5, 2021 Share Posted February 5, 2021 (edited) 20 minutes ago, Nezgar said: Can you see if you get a lower ?FRE(0) with BASIC+Monkey Wrench, vs with BASIC alone? That would indicate if the OS is at least detecting the right cart memory area as ROM... If so, might also want to save out the memory from $8000-9FFF to disk (ie DOS 2 save memory) and inspect the result compared to the 8KB Monkey wrench ROM. Patterns in the corruption (or blank) might provide insight... My apologies for not being clear... blockage = black-screen lock-up on boot... until offending component is removed from the system bus. Edited February 5, 2021 by Faicuai 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 On 2/3/2021 at 10:25 PM, ClausB said: Looks to me like Z3, Z4, and Z5 perform the same functions as the same chips on the Atari OS board. So Z1 and Z2 must be decoding the various ROM selects. Finally got my 52K/rom/eprom Ramrod OS board repaired and out of its green-screen comma! My board seems of later production, but with the misfortune of not being fully socketed. Now with all logic-support/decoding chips removed, and with full set of 14-pin and 16-pin sockets soldered back in place, plus a fresh-set of logic chips, it is now up-and-running on my reference 040-0077 800! Also included new, twin-Toshibas TMM2016-P 2x2KB ram chips (Japan-made), and passing any $C000-$CFFF ram test I could throw at it. Had to buy precision de-soldering equipment for this, no choice. But it was well worth it, because these boards are now pretty rare (and expen$$$ive)... have been years since I saw a single one on eBay.... looks like they just gone extinct. It´s amazing how the 800 can go from 16 KBytes to a little SDX power-house, with just a set of plug-and-play Ramrod, AXLON and AVG-cart gear, in about two minutes, and zero internal work (or parts dismantling) of any kind. Quite impressive by today standards, I would say! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 well... 4 minutes ago, Faicuai said: It´s amazing how the 800 can go from 16 KBytes to a little SDX power-house, with just a set of plug-and-play Ramrod, AXLON and AVG-cart gear, in about two minutes, and zero internal work (or parts dismantling) of any kind. Quite impressive by today standards, I would say! it was designed for this right on down to the personality cards, what folks don't realize is an Atari 800 might not even be running an Atari OS or even have the same look and feel as you'd expect. It was meant to be whatever you needed it to be, so long as you used the architecture and still utilized the Atari chip-set in some fashion it's still an Atari. It was intended to grow into whatever the future held. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 6 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said: It was meant to be whatever you needed it to be, so long as you used the architecture and still utilized the Atari chip-set in some fashion it's still an Atari No doubt! And (in modern times) we have just barely started exploiting it! I sometimes imagine the kind of 800 upgrades that could come out with just more focus and engineering / design around its architecture... with so much internal space, its expansion slots and and ample boards-surface available, the sky is the limit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted April 13 Share Posted April 13 On 7/29/2013 at 2:19 AM, fibrewire said: After running a few tests with the Axlon RamDisk 128K and Axlon RamPower 32K, I noticed a few issues. What works: * RamPower alone in Slot 1 shows up as 16K * 16K in Slot 1 and RamDisk in Slot 3 shows up as 16K What doesn't work * RamPower alone in Slot 2 or 3 - computer won't boot * RamDisk alone in any slot - computer won't boot Then to top things off, I believe Axon software identifies the OS ROM slot as Slot 1 for a total of 4 expansion slots. But even though the Ramdisk is in the last slot, memtest and ramscan still function correctly. I do have an Axlon RamPower 48K, but how to get it to work in Slot 1 without cutting traces? I"ll get some pics posted of the Axlon 48K board and IC module, along with a scanned manual soon. Has this software been dumped somewhere? I need to test my Axlon RamPower 128.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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