31 replies to this topic

[Scream And Fly]

I have one of these in the box from when I was much younger. I never see them on Ebay or anywhere else. Are they rare?

Thanks,
Greg

[Tempest]

Not sure about 'rare' but they tend to go for a bit since they're a very nice 5.25" drive. Boxed it might go for $100 or more.

Tempest

[Gunstar]

I have been looking for one on E-bay the last couple of weeks and you are right, they don't seem to show up there much. They are definately rarer than 1050 and 810 drives, as the 8-bit line wan't as popular by the time they came out, so far less were made. B&C and some other dealers are selling them for $150-$200, but then, they are way overpriced to begin with on most things. I'll buy it off of you for a $100, you may or may not get more for it on E-bay, but I won't pay more than that for it.

[Mindfield]

XF551s were very nice indeed. I had one back in the day and loved it -- true DS/DD capability was great, and it was a nice quiet drive besides.

[svenski]

Pretty rare outside the US and Germany, due to poor distribution.

Finding a boxed one that shipped with DOS XE would be even rarer . although DOS XE is pretty easy to get by itself nowadays.

Great drive though, apart from not reading a minute number of disks , and with DOS XE was well ahead of its time in my opinion.

[mos6507]

These things use standard PC-like drive controllers so one of the big things people did with them is swap out the mech with a 3.5" 720K drive from a PC.

In combination with a US Doubler or other SIO accelerator, that made for the best experience you could get outside of a hard drive interface.

[Bryan]

mos6507, on Sat Jun 25, 2005 4:43 AM, said:

In combination with a US Doubler or other SIO accelerator, that made for the best experience you could get outside of a hard drive interface.

I'm not sure what you mean. The US Doubler was an upgrade for the 1050.

-Bry

[mos6507]

Bryan, on Sun Jun 26, 2005 2:54 AM, said:

mos6507, on Sat Jun 25, 2005 4:43 AM, said:

In combination with a US Doubler or other SIO accelerator, that made for the best experience you could get outside of a hard drive interface.

I'm not sure what you mean. The US Doubler was an upgrade for the 1050.

-Bry

Stuff like this:

http://www.nleaudio..../XFsingdrup.htm
http://www.nleaudio....ts/XFupdate.htm

[Shannon]

Yeah the XF551 came out late in the atari 8-bits life and I'm sure the Atari ST was well on it's way by that time. So I would consider them fairly rare.

[orpheuswaking]

Well this one just went on ebay for $55.44

http://cgi.ebay.com/.....AMEWA:IT&rd=1

[Zybex]

In Chile XF551 was very expensive in the 80's, but now you can find them very cheap... (about U$ 5)

I have 4 Xf's but none of these are working

Edited by Zybex, Sun Jul 3, 2005 5:32 PM.

[Tickled_Pink]

Zybex, on Sun Jul 3, 2005 11:30 PM, said:

In Chile XF551 was very expensive in the 80's, but now you can find them very cheap... (about U$ 5)

I have 4 Xf's but none of these are working

From what I have seen of the XF551 they don't seem to have been as reliable as the 1050.

Still ... wouldn't mind one.

[www.atarimania.com]

I remember a time in the mid-90's when Atari Benelux was clearing inventory and getting rid of everything 8-bit. If you knew the right guys, you could get as many XF551's for less than $5 each... Stupid me, I didn't get a single one...

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Edited by www.atarimania.com, Mon Jul 4, 2005 1:45 AM.

[themrfreeze]

Tickled_Pink, on Sun Jul 3, 2005 4:52 PM, said:

Zybex, on Sun Jul 3, 2005 11:30 PM, said:

In Chile XF551 was very expensive in the 80's, but now you can find them very cheap... (about U$ 5)

I have 4 Xf's but none of these are working

From what I have seen of the XF551 they don't seem to have been as reliable as the 1050.

Still ... wouldn't mind one.

Back when I was working for CSS, one of the things we did was to fix broken 8-bit equipment sent to us for repair. I distinctly remember that there were real problems with the XF551's SIO ports....the circuit board inside the drive that they were soldered to were single-sided boards, leaving only a tiny solder pad to solder the SIO ports to. Removing an SIO cable from the 551 would often put enough stress on the solder joints to break them, rendering the drive nonfunctional. Try resoldering the joints and/or running jumper wires to replace broken traces and see if that fixes your drives.

[walter_J64bit]

my XF551 has been down for some time I need to get a new motherboard

Edited by walter_J64bit, Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:53 PM.

[smartwhois]

mos6507, on Sat Jun 25, 2005 2:43 AM, said:

These things use standard PC-like drive controllers so one of the big things people did with them is swap out the mech with a 3.5" 720K drive from a PC.

In combination with a US Doubler or other SIO accelerator, that made for the best experience you could get outside of a hard drive interface.

thats bad azz....3.5' drive on atari!

[kheller2]

You know, I had asked Curt a while back to take a look at the Prototype 3.5" 8bit drive Atari had and compare that to the XF drive. I was wondering if they were the same inside with a different ROM ... and then compare that to the patches CSS and others did for the XF to use 3.5". I was just really wondering how good that prototype rom is. I went through the same phase with my 1400 and 1450XL boards and the PBI roms.

Of course the XF351 was SS. The 1053 was DS/DD.. I think. been a long time...

Edited by kheller2, Wed Jul 13, 2005 9:20 PM.

[mos6507]

kheller2, on Thu Jul 14, 2005 2:58 AM, said:

You know, I had asked Curt a while back to take a look at the Prototype 3.5" 8bit drive Atari had and compare that to the XF drive.  I was wondering if they were the same inside with a different ROM ... and then compare that to the patches CSS and others did for the XF to use 3.5".  I was just really wondering how good that prototype rom is.  I went through the same phase with my 1400 and 1450XL boards and the PBI roms.

Of course the XF351 was SS.  The 1053 was DS/DD.. I think.  been a long time...

What did you find out re: 1400 PBI ROMs?

I was told by Bob Puff that the 1400XL couldn't be used with the Black Box because the modem and/or speech chip were accessed as PBI devices and the Black Box wanted to monopolize all the device IDs.

There is a way to get the PBI working but I think you have to remove the speech chip or swap OS ROMs or something and then you are pretty much left with an 800XL in a 1200XL style case because the special hardware is disabled.

I was able to get it (and an XEGS) running off a hard drive via the Multiplexer, though.

As I recall, I/O speed via the multiplexer was pretty much as fast as with the Black Box. But you couldn't run a high speed serial port through it the way you could with the Black Box.

Bob Puff used to run his BBS on a custom high-speed SIO-based RS232 adapter. That adapter presumably had hardware flow control. The only other adapter that had that was the Black Box. the MIO or 850 and others would lose bytes on fast modems with compression enabled. Bob claimed that the adapter could run up to 56K but I don't think he ever marketed it.

I wonder how fast one could run a BBS through a SIO2PC bridge without losing characters. I don't know if SIO2PC supports hardware flow control does it?

[Bryan]

I don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet, but a very common problem with the XF551 is that the traces to the SIO ports are thin and tend to break.

-Bry

[walter_J64bit]

Hmmm Tempest what is the robot doing in your Avatar?

[Xebec's Demise]

He's lubricating

[doctorclu]

Xebec's Demise, on Sun Jul 17, 2005 11:10 AM, said:

He's lubricating

"Do Androids dream of electric women?" (Blade Runner gag there...)


Anyway to date I have picked up three XF551's... none have worked very well. Though I have better drives, I would like to get one of these working just to say I worked with one of these drives.

In the meantime, they have served to make great cases. For the longest time the MyIde drive I had was powered in a XF551 case. Over time this became more and more unstable till finally the power board was not able to support that drive. The drive is now in a old tape backup case.

To me, there are just some drives that survived the ravages of time better than others. My 1050 drives, Rana drives, and Indus drives have faired far better than any of my Percom drives (which were excellent drives), and the XF551, which from what I'm gathering, finding a working one is difficult.

On a similar token, while the drives themselves are dead, they can be replaced easily. And then double checking the mother board.

[highendsystems]

kheller2, on Wed Jul 13, 2005 8:58 PM, said:

You know, I had asked Curt a while back to take a look at the Prototype 3.5" 8bit drive Atari had and compare that to the XF drive.  I was wondering if they were the same inside with a different ROM ... and then compare that to the patches CSS and others did for the XF to use 3.5".  I was just really wondering how good that prototype rom is.  I went through the same phase with my 1400 and 1450XL boards and the PBI roms.

Of course the XF351 was SS.  The 1053 was DS/DD.. I think.  been a long time...

What? I've seen pictures of them in the Atari catalog that came with my
800XL, but I was told the 1400XL & 1450XLD were never released. That
whoever had one had an extremely rare prototype....Can you post a
picture of them? Not that I don't believe you....If you have a working
1450XLD then I bet it's worth a bunch!

[MEtalGuy66]

highendsystems, on Wed Mar 8, 2006 2:19 PM, said:

kheller2, on Wed Jul 13, 2005 8:58 PM, said:

You know, I had asked Curt a while back to take a look at the Prototype 3.5" 8bit drive Atari had and compare that to the XF drive.  I was wondering if they were the same inside with a different ROM ... and then compare that to the patches CSS and others did for the XF to use 3.5".  I was just really wondering how good that prototype rom is.  I went through the same phase with my 1400 and 1450XL boards and the PBI roms.

Of course the XF351 was SS.  The 1053 was DS/DD.. I think.  been a long time...

What? I've seen pictures of them in the Atari catalog that came with my
800XL, but I was told the 1400XL & 1450XLD were never released. That
whoever had one had an extremely rare prototype....Can you post a
picture of them? Not that I don't believe you....If you have a working
1450XLD then I bet it's worth a bunch!

I can fix any ATARI 5.25" drive including the XF 551 drive for a flat fee of $20.00+ shipping. I have all the technical docs, and test equipment. This price however does exclude physically BROKEN mechanical parts in the drive mech, itself, but I Can usually come up with a very cost effective solution. I mean, if its been tossed down a flight of stairs, its probably not worth repairing. I've seen all the common failures and 90% are due to cheap designs, age, heat, and prolonged use, and can usually be fixed really cheap.

Edited by MEtalGuy66, Wed Mar 8, 2006 5:39 PM.

[ijor]

MEtalGuy66, on Wed Mar 8, 2006 6:39 PM, said:

I can fix any ATARI 5.25" drive including the XF 551 drive for a flat fee of $20.00+ shipping. I have all the technical docs, and test equipment.

Can you align head(s) ? Or when you excluded mechanical broken parts, you also exclude some other type of mechanical adjustments as well?

Edited by ijor, Wed Mar 8, 2006 5:54 PM.