Parallel Atari 1050 to 800XL interfacing system

[Curt Vendel]

I thought it best to post this here, its in the marketplace, but for those into 8bit computers, you may not want to miss this chance to get your hands on one of the rare Atari projects from Bob Wooley - the Parallel 1050 interface system:

 

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...E:IT&ih=009

 

 

You might want to also check out the other auctions, I've got wired and modified Atari 800 OS board/top setups with Omnimon and a lot of other very unique prototpe items up on ebay.

 

 

 

Curt

[joeventura]

Curt,

 

Is this hack documented anywhere?

It would be ashame for you to sell it and have the knowledge lost.

 

I assume this works about 8 times faster than a stock 800xl and 1050?

[Curt Vendel]

Hi Joe,

 

Yes, I have copies of the documents as well as the rom's.

 

 

Curt

 

Curt,

 

Is this hack documented anywhere?

It would be ashame for you to sell it and have the knowledge lost.

 

I assume this works about 8 times faster than a stock 800xl and 1050?

[ataridano]

When I first saw the thread I was really interested too, but when I took a look at the auction and realized that it wasn't a PBI parallel drive I lost interest.... why hack up the computer and drive to get a high speed SSED floppy when you can use one of the various harddrives or flash drives out there that's already supported by the OS?

[Rybags]

Quote from the auction: Included are original notes, source listings, instructions

and cable wiring details from 1986.

 

That's why.

 

Flash didn't exist (AFAIK). And, despite PBI devices being thin on the ground, common sense at the time would have dictated leaving the interface free.

 

Of course, if it went into production it likely would have had some other proprietry plug, and less obtrusive circuitry.

 

I'd be interested in speed stats too - but I doubt it would be much faster unless it at least had enough RAM to be able to buffer several sectors.

 

ed: that is, unless the 1050 firmware is just bypassed and the host machine assumes full control.

Edited January 2, 2008 by Rybags

[+Larry]

Quote from the auction: Included are original notes, source listings, instructions

and cable wiring details from 1986.

 

This info was posted on Compuserve for several years as PAR1050. However IIRC, the project archive was missing a file. I think it was the custom format program written in Atari BASIC. This program used the custom format facilities of the US Doubler (see Sparta Dos Construction Set, p.150) to allow formatting the disk with high-speed skew. I believe that this program (or one very similar) re-appeared in Bob's mod of the XF-551 - called XFMT.BAS.

 

I never built this - it wasn't too long after this that hard drives started appearing, and I decided buying a HD would be a much more useful. I looked for this file, but so far have failed to find it in my stuff. Perhaps Bob might re-post the archive at a later date?

 

Of course, having the completed, original hardware would be quite neat, but if you are willing to do some work and/or don't win the auction, then you can likely have one also.

 

-Larry

[carmel_andrews]

It seems as though this modded 1050 being sold works 2-3 times faster then normal modded 1050's

 

As most standard 1050 u/g's (Happy, SA/SA2/USD and variants) only took the 1050 to 2-3 times normal sio, ISplate and the 'Speedy' series of u/g's were only slightly faster (max 118kbyes p/s)

[Curt Vendel]

That is correct, in fact when I got the notes among them was the source listing of the US Doubler as well. All of the basic program listings are included.

 

For 1986 this is a very simple yet ambitious hack, giving the system some serious potential. Its a shame Atari didn't go out to the user groups and communities to pull in more projects like this, especially to tap someone so talented as Bob Woolley. Atari did tap Hybrid Arts for the MIDI interfacing, and an old friend John Russell, (JRI, Inc) did some incredible Gen-lock boards, instead of tapping John Russell, Atari tried to do its own Gen-lock clone, but didn't come close to what JRI produced.

 

What I really like about the hack is that the OS is switchable from standard SIO use to Parallel use, the disk drive of course is now Parallel only which is fine, why have it parallel capable to run it SIO based.

 

Its very true, today is easy to simply buy a $10-$15 SIO2PC interface and just use your computer for disk storage, rs232 and printing, but this is a truly pioneering hardware design from 1986.

 

 

 

Curt

 

Quote from the auction: Included are original notes, source listings, instructions

and cable wiring details from 1986.

 

This info was posted on Compuserve for several years as PAR1050. However IIRC, the project archive was missing a file. I think it was the custom format program written in Atari BASIC. This program used the custom format facilities of the US Doubler (see Sparta Dos Construction Set, p.150) to allow formatting the disk with high-speed skew. I believe that this program (or one very similar) re-appeared in Bob's mod of the XF-551 - called XFMT.BAS.

 

I never built this - it wasn't too long after this that hard drives started appearing, and I decided buying a HD would be a much more useful. I looked for this file, but so far have failed to find it in my stuff. Perhaps Bob might re-post the archive at a later date?

 

Of course, having the completed, original hardware would be quite neat, but if you are willing to do some work and/or don't win the auction, then you can likely have one also.

 

-Larry

[Math You]

I love the artwork auction. It looks like it was going to be an X Men/Fantastic Four type of game.