Black Box on UK ebay

[Marius]

3 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

I was tempted but as pointed out earlier in the thread, more recent devices can do pretty much all one needs (and without the need for the power supplies and desk space).

 

Here's hoping xrbrevin snarf'd it and its gone to a good home.

 

The most important feature (for me) missing on those modern solutions is that you can during the operation of a program jump into the config-screen and mount another partition. I know the modern solutions do have the 'rotation button' which is handy too, but not as handy as the way the black box handles this. 

@mr-atari Did an amazing job in MyBIOS to add this feature as well for the MyIDE and MyIDE2 interfaces. Excellent!

 

Just like operation on 'stock' equipment (where you can physically change disks or tapes) during the operation of a game, this should be easily possible with these harddisk interfaces as well. Sio2PC, Sio2SD, Sio2USB (Abbuc), Sdrive Max can do this as well. You don't have to leave your atari-program to mount another disk. 

I used the feature a lot back in those days with the BlackBox. And I also used it all the time on MyIDE. I wished IDE+ had this... 

I know Konrad is thinking about it, but the idea of rewriting the entire bios for IDE+ is not something that makes him very happy (and I can understand that). 

 

For IDE+ it would be amazing though. It would be amazing if I could mount another APT partition on the fly, or mount another ATR (stored on a SDFS formatted partition). Well there still have to be things to wish for.

A few big downsides of the BlackBox:

1. It does not support APT (partition format). So if you use CF cards like me, you can not simply remove the CF card and move to MyIDE or SIDE or IDE+ ... you can exchange CF cards between IDE+, SIDE and MyIDE (2) though. (It would be amazing if MyBIOS would also support APT so one wouldn't have to stick to SDX to use those APT partitions)

 

2. It is indeed very large on the desk (and so is the powersupply)

 

3. It appears to be slightly more problematic when it comes to stability on upgraded atari's. Probably due to the amount of logic IC's. 

 

4. It is kinda slow. Not a real problem for me, but it is true. Especially with the also not so fast Acard IDE -> SCSI adapters. 

 

Besides these points... it is a fabulous add-on. 

 

[xrbrevin]

4 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

Here's hoping xrbrevin snarf'd it and its gone to a good home

alas, not me - my deskspace is ever-shrinking and the blackbox demands too much turf!

i agree, it has been superseded in recent years by other devices so i think the demand is a more narrow market. interesting to see and discuss tho

[+MrFish]

Maybe the Black Box would be more accommodating if it lived in a full enclosure that connected to the PBI/ECI using a cable -- similar to an ATR8000 or MIO. I think a lot of people used ATR8000's as monitor stands in their setups; I'm not sure if MIO's were used similarly.

 

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

I've used the BlackBox a lot with the MIO extension board (the one that has a cartridge port and plugs between the XE and the MIO) and a flat cable.  It makes the connection between BB and XE more flexible, which reduces the chances of one moving relative to the other.  Which reduces the wear on the cartridge port and ECI.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

 

 

[Mathy]

Hello Marius, guys

 

14 hours ago, Marius said:

3. The power supply connector is different than original?

 

According to Bob Puff the BB came with many variations when it comes to power connectors.  Even a seven pin connector was used at some point in time.

 

CSS probably had a couple of batches made, so the color of the LEDs and the PCB could have changed with every batch.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[BillC]

6 hours ago, MrFish said:

connected to the PBI/ECI using a cable

It does connect to a 600XL(w/64k) or an 800XL PBI via cable, that is what the boxed 50 pin header next to the cartridge edge connector is for.

[Marius]

12 hours ago, Mathy said:

CSS probably had a couple of batches made, so the color of the LEDs and the PCB could have changed with every batch.

This is absolutely true, but I have 5 blackboxes from 3 different batches.

 

One of my black boxes is the oldest one, and comes from Bernard Kok (Becotel). It's my most favorite BlackBox. It has absolutely "everything" socketed and works the most stable from all Black Boxes.

 

Two of my black boxes had the 1.41 Firmware and are from another batch. I purchsed them from Bo and Ernest Schreurs

 

Then much later I purchased another one from Bo and Ernest Schreurs. I suppose this on is from the same batch as the 1.41 one. 

 

And much later I purchased one directly from Puff. That was the newest batch. 

 

All with green and red LED

 

Perhaps the yellow LED is a custom fix from the owner?

 

[themrfreeze]

21 hours ago, Mathy said:

Hello Marius, guys

 

 

According to Bob Puff the BB came with many variations when it comes to power connectors.  Even a seven pin connector was used at some point in time.

 

CSS probably had a couple of batches made, so the color of the LEDs and the PCB could have changed with every batch.

 

 

I'm the guy who most likely built that Black Box ?

 

If I remember correctly the early Black Boxes used a 7-pin power connector but there were problems with people connecting them up wrong and damaging their BB, so we switched over to the 4 (or is it 5?) pin connector that could only be installed one way.

 

Somebody mentioned a difference in the color of the PCB.  Bob sourced the PCBs from two different companies, one in Chicago and one in Canada.  The Chicago boards had thinner traces that occasionally caused us problems so he switched to the Canadian company who did a much better job in this regard.  IIRC the Canadian boards were a darker, more matte shade of green. 

 

I don't recall ever using yellow LEDs on BBes...only red and green. 

 

As for the cases, the black plastic case had to be removed if you had a Floppy Board....there's not enough room in it if you have both.  Producing a case that would hold both was not an option...the basic BB cases cost Bob a fortune and I'm fairly certain he sold them at cost. 

 

As for batches, there were a LOT of batches of BB/FBs.  If you're looking for rare, the earliest Floppy Boards had a serial number sticker on them so I could tell what batch they were from (in case there were any tech issues).  I don't remember exactly what nomenclature I used for the coding of the serial number but I'd love to see a pic of one after all these years!

 

It's hard for me to believe that something I was involved with all those years ago is now considered an Atari "holy grail" item.  Makes me wish I had stashed some of them away in my attic or something.   ?