Simon Carter Posted March 14, 2023 Share Posted March 14, 2023 Hi folks, just purchased my first 810 from eBay and whilst not expecting it to work, did not expect to find what I did. Can anyone identify the upgrade, purpose, or indeed the reason for existance of the horsef***ery that seems to exist in this little bleeder... And no it doesn't work! It does power up and the mechanism seems to operate, but does not read disks. It's a bit of a state, I think something with more legs than me made its home in here. Will probably put this in a cave on Good Friday and hope for the best on Sunday... As always, looking forward to your replies, and TIA Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted March 14, 2023 Share Posted March 14, 2023 Homemade Happy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted March 14, 2023 Share Posted March 14, 2023 Early Happy mod. Additional SRAM, replacement ROM, and the switch is likely a "slowdown" mod to be able to write more than 18/19 sectors on a track. Good that the drive appears to pass POST, as it suggests the powers/controller boards are all OK. It has the "grass valley" board set, which means improved power board, separate analog board (on top of the mech) and data separator (daughtercard hanging off the side board). It could just be an issue with the mech.. Test formatting a disk to see if the blank sectors are readable on another drive / if it actually erased a disk if data is written to it prior. If you have another 810, you could try swapping in another mech. There's a collection of old happy 810 utility disk ATR's, you could run those to run some diagnostics to test the RAM/ROM, which might also help match up the right version of happy software to your particular drive.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted March 14, 2023 Share Posted March 14, 2023 I guess also remember that the 810 can only read SD, (90k) disks, just in case you are trying DD disks. Unless of course the mod in question allows it to(?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_810 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Carter Posted March 19, 2023 Author Share Posted March 19, 2023 I had tried the drive with a DOS 2.0 disk, resulting in Boot Errors, but this disk also did the same in a known working 1050, so guessing the disk is shot. Tried a known working Caverns of Mars disk in the 810 with the same Boot Error result. Will try the basic servicing and see we that gets me. Don't particularly want to mess too much with that homebrew soldering effort! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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