11/30/88

Some of the early 800's had solder instead of gold on the board edge
connectors.  An attempt was made to slow the oxidation period by placing
Lubriplate grease in the connectors.  Starting and other intermittant
problems have been traced to oxidation on board contacts.

To alleviate the oxide problem, open up the computer and look at the
contacts to determine if they are solder coated.  That includes the CPU
board which is buried under the casting.  Whether solder or gold coated
contacts, scrub the contacts with a dry facial tissue and re-insert the
boards.

If the problem is not related to oxidized contacts, then try a couple of
things in an attempt to isolate the problem.  I will assume that 64K of
memory chips is installed.

Pull the two high memory boards and turn off the disk drive.  Turn on the
computer with BASIC installed and type in a simple program to set up a
"RUN" routine.  If everything goes well, install the next memory board and
repeat the test.  If the first test failed, switch the memory board with
another and repeat the test.  Should this test fail the problem lies in one
of the following areas: CPU board; 10K ROM; BASIC cartridge, or chips on
the main board.  Each would have to be checked by substitution with others.

Parts for 800 machines are available from sources listed in Analog and
Antic.

I hope this discussion leads you to a solution to the problem.

Hugh Wells

Wanted - 800 XL (with the Rev B keyboard. Has "tall" keys and a sort of
pebbled surface on the keycaps) and a clean, working 1050 drive.

This is for a friend, strictly for entertainment. No "extras" are needed/
wanted.

Will pay around $160 for both (the going rate in mid-michigan)

Additional features, again, while not wanted, will help make the sale at that
price. The "crummy keyboard" machines are going to need to have something
really wonderful to make up for the awful keyboard.

Speaking of good keyboards - Howard's XL he has for sale has one: I know, I
went through a bunch of BS to get it for him!
(Howard: Hpope you like the J.T. keys better! Personally, this Amiga 2000
 kicks. All it takes is money...)

Interested parties should leave a message on my Lansing BBS, The Club,
at (517) 372-3131. Uninterested parties should call the Club II in Detroit,
as I just received the usage reports and the 8 bit crew there is well managed
and hoppin' (313) 334-8877. The Club II still has the life history of memory
upgrade software online, including 1 huge ARC file that is the combination of
everything we've ever recieved.

With memory prices the way they are, will upgrades ever be the same?
Still, well worth it to stick Japan for it's insane trading policies.

Terry Conklin
uunet!frith!conklin
conk@egr.msu.edu

%Wanted - 800 XL (with the Rev B keyboard. Has "tall" keys and a sort of
%pebbled surface on the keycaps) and a clean, working 1050 drive.
%
%This is for a friend, strictly for entertainment. No "extras" are needed/
%wanted.
Geeze Terry, mebbe we could've wheeled and dealed and got the system
sold that way. Ah well...

By the way, I seem to have takers for the CPU & 1050 already, so I'm
no longer offering up the system here.

%Speaking of good keyboards - Howard's XL he has for sale has one: I know, I
%went through a bunch of BS to get it for him!
%(Howard: Hpope you like the J.T. keys better! Personally, this Amiga 2000
% kicks. All it takes is money...)
%
(Well y'know, my Mega-4 ain't too shabby neither...  }-)
--
  /
 /_ , ,_.                      Howard Chu
/ /(_/(__                University of Michigan
    /           Computing Center          College of LS&A
   '              Unix Project          Information Systems

Re: dead drive but power supply test ok.
The problem on my 810 was the 40pin socket between the powerboard and
the driver board was bad.  My question was and still is how can a
connector/socket go bad if you didn't take them apart?  But it fixed
the no power problem!   How this helps.    -roy y

From article <1@lakesys.UUCP>, by r@lakesys.UUCP (Roy Duvall):

If you've ever taken the connectors apart (and probably if you haven't),
you may have some corrosion on the pins.  This happened a number of times.
A combination of contact cleaner and a little sandpaper cured it.

-dg-

Internet: d@sun.soe.clarkson.edu  or:   d@clutx.clarkson.edu
BITNET:   d@CLUTX.Bitnet          uucp: {rpics, gould}!clutx!dave
Matrix:   Dave Goldblatt @ 1:260/360 ICBM: 75 02 00W 44 38 12N

In article <4@limbic.UUCP> g@limbic.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) writes:

  Okay, a related question: I'm trying to print out a large string through
the modem, while scanning for any keys that the reciever might send in during
the process (sort of like a "hot keys" feature on some BBS's). I use the
following code:

  10 READ A$:IF A$="***" THEN RETURN
  20 ? #3; A$
  30 STATUS #3,X:IF PEEK(747) THEN GET #3,X:RETURN
  40 GOTO 10

  Now, by your explainations (and all the documentation I've seen), this should
work fine -- When someone presses a key, the information will stop after the
last string, and X will contain the ATASCII value of the key pressed.

  Problem is, when the reciever presses a key, it gets "buffered". If you
whack a key when the first line is displayed, the character won't get
processed until several lines further down. Also, the slower the baud rate,
the worse the situation gets -- 300 baud is almost non-responsive, 1200 baud
requires a few seconds, and 2400 baud is acceptable.

  What am I doing wrong, and how do I fix it?

                                                --R.J.
                                                B-)

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Disclaimer: These are my views, and mine alone.
                                                             # ## #
  Mailing address: Beats me, just reply to this message      # ## #
                    (r@nunki.usc.edu?)                  ## ## ##
                                                         ####  ##  ####

The only new thing that I have seen from Atari lately is the 7800.  I saw
this at a Federated, selling for $150 or so.  It had a real joystick as
opposed to the touchpads that Nintendo has.  Federated also had a good supply
of cartridges for it.  Can't recall any names off hand but there was at
least ten different names.  What I liked about it is that the 7800 would
also take the cartridges for the 2600.  So now I can use all those old games
that have been sitting around.  I haven't bought it yet.  I'm not quite
sure if I want to or not.

I was wondering if anyone out there has already bought one and can tell
what it is like.  Any rumors?  Comparisions to Nintendo or Sega would be
good.  

Thanks,

Mike Kazmierczak
mkazmier%bonnie.ics.uci.@OIRON.CF.UCI.EDU

The newest game system Atari has out right now is the new XE game system.
It's called that because it's based on the XE computer.  In fact, what
it really is is a 65XE CPU with a detachable keyboard.  They rearranged
a few things outside, but it's the exact same internal stuff.  In fact,
if you open it up, you can see where the 4 function keys went because
the "ports" are still there.  It can use a drive and everything.  What they
did was to market their computer line but sell it as a game so the younger
crowd will buy it up more.  They have them at Toy's R Us and such and they're
not to bad.  It's a home computer in  a video games clothing...

Power

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in article <4@bsu-cs.UUCP>, cptpo@bsu-cs.UUCP (Mike Wildridge) says:

It's also got some pretty reasonable games, plus built-in BASIC etc.
And right now there's a $50 refund from Atari going on, so you can get
the whole she-bang for under $100 - includes light-gun, a couple or more
games etc etc. What really hurts is that I bought one at employee (ie dealer)
price for my littl'uns and now Price Club (a local discount store) and
Toys r Us have it for much less!

FYI, and to correct an earlier posting I saw, the other two game systems are
the 7800 which retails officially at around $79.95, and the 2600 at around
$49.95. Both can be discounted (and are!).

Note also that Atari cartridges tend to be much lower cost than some of
the "others", which means that you get more variation for a fixed amount
of 'pocket money'.

Roy Good/Atari

No video game that only supports one-button joysticks is worth $100.
You need at least two to play reasonably complex games.

-Steve