New to collecting atari 400/800/XL/XE questions

[Steril707]

Bought an 600xl on Ebay for a halfway decent price, which I hope will arrive next week.

Want to upgrade its memory off course, but if this can be done with only an AVG cart and that cable, that would be the best solution.

 

What are the drawbacks here?

I read on https://avgcart.tmp.sk/:

Quote

• when used with optional ECI/PBI cable, it can expand ATARI memory to up to 576kB, it can also provide extra 48kB RAM to stock 16kB 600XL machines (some limitations apply)

 

[Beeblebrox]

Great - congrats as 600XLs are great.

 

Hmmm not sure re the AVG cart limitation in the above setup. With any 600XL I've had I've always just upgraded from the stock 16K to 64K by default, (as detailed in my signature). That is even if I wasn't using the U1MB. Then it is on the same level as an 800XL or 65XE in terms of RAM.

 

EDIT: on the link you provided is a further link to the De re ACGcart here which will no doubt tell you more: https://atari8bit.net/tutorials/de-re-avgcart/

Edited September 1, 2022 by Beeblebrox

[tmp]

2 hours ago, Steril707 said:

Bought an 600xl on Ebay for a halfway decent price, which I hope will arrive next week.

Want to upgrade its memory off course, but if this can be done with only an AVG cart and that cable, that would be the best solution.

 

What are the drawbacks here?

I read on https://avgcart.tmp.sk/:

 

current (known) limitation is that games/demos that are available only as 1MB cart image and require 64kB ram won't work on stock 16kB 600XL (from top of my head that includes space harrier and bad apple demo, atari blast! works because it can run on 16kB machines)

 

(i think that those few titles could be made working, i need to try eventually)

[+Larry]

What is "CIO FAT DOS" as shown in the comparison table?

[Steril707]

41 minutes ago, tmp said:

current (known) limitation is that games/demos that are available only as 1MB cart image and require 64kB ram won't work on stock 16kB 600XL (from top of my head that includes space harrier and bad apple demo, atari blast! works because it can run on 16kB machines)

 

(i think that those few titles could be made working, i need to try eventually)

Coming from the horses mouth, so to say...
Thanks, mate. 

 

Seems you got yourself a new customer...

 

[Beeblebrox]

52 minutes ago, Larry said:

What is "CIO FAT DOS" as shown in the comparison table?

@LarryFJC has spent around 11 months creating the new (currently being tested by the community) BETA firmware for the SIDE3 cart loader. Alongside this he created a FAT file management system (FMS) from scratch for it. Gives both read and write access to FAT in the DOS itself as well as in the loader. Very cool stuff.

 

More info here on the beta website including two extensive videos and also on the AA beta testing thread.

 

for a very quick video there is this teaser FJC released last year. Says it all really 😍:

 

 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Beeblebrox