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Welcome to another thrilling installment of my 1200XL's story. Prior to fitting the Ultimate 1MB board when it arrives, I decided to install the Mega-HZ stereo board. Unfortunately, I'd neglected to request turned pins from Wolfram, so I decided to replace the square header pins on the stereo PCB myself. I have no problem with the square pins as...
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Flashjazzcat's Blog
Welcome to the final installment in the saga of the "Poor Man's 1400XL"! After rectifying some problems with the VBXE board, we're now all set to finish the PBI and realize perhaps the nicest Atari 8-bit imaginable...
PBI wiring wasn't quite as bulky as I'd expected, and although I wanted to leave plenty of "slack" in case I need...
PBI wiring wasn't quite as bulky as I'd expected, and although I wanted to leave plenty of "slack" in case I need...
After a short respite (time spent finishing the SIDE driver), I'm back onto the 1200XL and pushing ahead with the PBI connector. Wiring the 50 way ribbon cable was less difficult than plain fiddly, but the tinned wires seemed magnetised to the solder cups. So - reasonably neat by my lowly standards:
It would be...
It would be...
It seems I left the most important part of this mod almost till last: the PBI itself. I'm following the (amended) instructions by Bob Wooley (PBI for 1200XL), but it took me a week to find a suitable bracket for mounting the 50 way Centronics connector to the back of the motherboard. I...
Centronics connector arrived from RS first thing on Monday morning, but we need to finish the VBXE installation first before figuring out a bracked for the PBI socket. Following Bob Wooley's article, we use a piggy-backed 74LS08 (although Bob recommends an HC) to create the EXTSEL line which is absent on the 1200XL. This is required not only for the PBI...
On Saturday evening I had time to securely fit the sockets and wire everything up. I'd have felt more confident if I actually knew what I was doing; my knowledge of electrical circuits being nil, there was every possibility that some disastrous short or otherwise bad connection would result in the whole thing blowing up. However, dumbly following a plan...
Straight on with stage 2 of the project, and it's time to start drilling and cutting. No turning back now!
The DIN7 (for the new power connector) arrived this morning so I now had all the parts required to perform the basic modifications. I wanted the DIN sockets to fit properly in the board (not just sit in a pool of hot glue), so clearly it was...
The DIN7 (for the new power connector) arrived this morning so I now had all the parts required to perform the basic modifications. I wanted the DIN sockets to fit properly in the board (not just sit in a pool of hot glue), so clearly it was...
The Poor Man's 1400XL (or Adding a rear-mounted PBI to a 1200XL and making it run off a 5v PSU)
Posted by flashjazzcat,
09 September 2011
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249 views
In light of all the excitement surrounding the recent 1400XL and 1450XLD developments and the speculative $1000 price tag for repro models, I decided my 1200XL offered me a better stab at a bit of Atari luxury. It had lain in the cupboard for most of the time since I received it (as a very generous donation from a Canadian forum member) a year or so...
Writing a Graphical User Interface for the Atari 8-bit: Part 2
Posted by flashjazzcat,
08 February 2011
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171 views
Last time, I took a brief look at the history of GUIs on the Atari 8-bit, and I want to spend some more time looking at them before we move onto a detailed description of the new GUI project. Since I wrote part 1, I remembered another fledgeling GUI which was in development around the same time as Diamond: GOE (Graphical Operating Environment) by David...
Writing a Graphical User Interface for the Atari 8-bit
Posted by flashjazzcat,
30 January 2011
·
127 views
When Diamond GOS was released in 1988, it seemed that the Atari 8-bit finally had a GUI to compete with the Commodore 64's enviably slick and professional GEOS operating system. A very young Alan Reeve had churned out Diamond while studying Computer Science at Northern Illinois Universty. In the face of various marketing and technical problems he...
Recent Entries
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The Poor Man's 1400XL Part 818 November 2011
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The Poor Man's 1400XL Part 725 September 2011
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The Poor Man's 1400XL Part 623 September 2011
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The Poor Man's 1400XL Part 517 September 2011
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The Poor Man's 1400XL Part 414 September 2011
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The Poor Man's 1400XL Part 4By flashjazzcat
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Oct 7 2011 3:05 PM
