Local seller with a 600XL for sale... worth getting into?

#1 King_Salamon OFFLINE

Stargunner

1,967 posts

Location:Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Posted Wed Sep 28, 2011 3:42 PM

Hi everyone, I was looking around and found someone who received a 600XL as a retirement gift in the 80's and never used it. As a result, it has been brought out of a closet and it's for sale. I've never been into the Atari computers back in the 80's (I was a C64 guy) but with it being basically NOS, I thought it might be worth picking up for some gaming.

Being a 600XL, are there limitations to what I can play on it? I would likely be using carts only as I don't want to get into disk media for these old systems. And seeing as there are a ton of great games for the Atari computers, this would be a great setup as opposed to trying to get a 5200 and all the trouble that comes with them (poor controllers and the cost of getting a 5200 shipped etc).

Anyway, I believe the seller is selling the 600xl for $25 so the price is right... just wondering if I can play all the carts on this system.

#2 King_Salamon OFFLINE

Stargunner

1,967 posts

Location:Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Posted Wed Sep 28, 2011 4:06 PM

okay... sounds like the memory is limited on the 600 and requires a memory expansion card... how do I get one of those or are they extremely rare? What kind of cost am I looking at? I'd like it to be a 64k system so I can pop in any of the Atari carts and not have issues.

#3 orpheuswaking OFFLINE

River Patroller

4,017 posts

Lone Raider Time!
Location:Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Posted Wed Sep 28, 2011 4:26 PM

The easiest way would be to do an internal modification (two chips and three wires) to bring it to 64k, if you are not handy there are people here who can do it. Otherwise a Atari 1064 memory pack can be purchased from Best Electronics ($49.99 I think)

Also if it is a NTSC unit you will be limited to RF out only and subsequently a poorer picture than composite or sVideo (again there are mods that add a monitor jack for you)

A lot of carts will run ok as is, but there is a large number that require higher memory.

At $25 I'd buy it

#4 sloopy OFFLINE

River Patroller

2,258 posts

lookin for bits, i like bits...
Location:in my cave of despair, surrounded by toys...

Posted Wed Sep 28, 2011 4:29 PM

if you have any kind of soldering skills, you can do the upgrade for under $5-6... its basically replacing the two 16k DRAMs with 64k DRAMs, and soldering 3 wires...

the only other thing would be the video, it doesnt have built in composite video like a 800XL (or C64). Otherwise it would be identical to a 800XL software wise...

but either way they are good machines, and def a keeper, and you got it for a great price...

sloopy.