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Should I pass up this old 800?

NathanAllan

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2003
Messages
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Location
Bellevue, Colorado
I went to my favorite junk store today and found an Atari 800 in their to-be-checked area. It looked like it had been in a garage for a while, as it was full of dirt, a few of the keys were sticking and just looked like it had been in the garage for a long time. It was complete with the power supply and a broken cartridge. I can't remember which cart. The chip inside it had come loose and the screw was in place. It coulda meant that the actual board had broken. I can still go get it for $10 until Friday. I can probably clean it up okay, but would weathering like that *kill* one of these things?

Should I go back???
 
Unless that garage was under water, you should be okay. The 800 is pretty rugged. Dirt probably won't bother it that much. And I've unstuck keys before on an 800XL. I imagine the keyboard on an 800 should be similar. If that cart is one of the little brown jobs, they're pretty simple too. I only have one bad cart and I think that's because the ROM chip got zapped somehow. Anyway, for ten bucks you should probably go for it. Just remember that to do anything useful, you'll want a floppy disk drive, like an Atari 810 or 1050. A floppy drive will need it's own power cube and an SIO cable.

HTH,
Andy
 
I decided to pass on the 800-- my friend Joe gave me his 520ST! It is missing three keys but no big deal, really. I can get them from somewhere. It has the power supply and SF354 floppy drive (no ps for it, I'll figger it out). Monitor, too, as it needs its proprietary monitor. All tested and works! ONe of these days I'll build my desk back up to have my little workstation area and hook it up, heh heh. No room right now. YAY! :D
 
I guess the price was right. :)
Oddly enough, I'm waiting for a 520ST to arrive here, same as you have, but no monitor.
(Looking at the pinouts, I think I can rig up a composite video cable).

Did you get any software with it?
 
It came with the ST language disk, terminal program, art, writer, math, convert.prg for graphics, dterm, and a bunch of oteher floppies that have writing on them but I can't make out or nothing written, 10 of them.

I knew one of these days he was gonna get rid of it, I just wanted to be there when he did. He's the original owner, and he told me that he paid about $600 for it from Jenkins' computer store, now closed that was here in town. I guess it was on sale.

I still need the power supply or a pinout for the floppy drive. He probably has it and I'll look for it but till then I'll make one from a pc ps that I have here.

This is so COOL!!! new toy!

Also, I just finished watching the movie Apollo 13, and to think that this Atari is more advanced than anything onboard a thing that went to the moon...
 
Atari ST power suppy pinout/adapter (at the bottom of page):
http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/miodrag/Atari_ST/Atari_ST.htm

Dunno if the disk drive PSU is featured anywhere, though.

Atari ST floppy pinout:
http://pinouts.ru/data/AtariFloppyPort_pinout.shtml
http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/miodrag/Atari_ST/Atari ST Internals.htm#FLOPPYPORT

Atari ST monitor/video pinout:
http://pinouts.ru/data/AtariStMonitor_pinout.shtml
http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/miodrag/Atari_ST/Atari ST Internals.htm#MONITORPORT

Good luck finding 7-pin, 13-pin and 14-pin DINs. Unlike the SIO connector, they should at least be available but a bit uncommon to find. I would find it a b*tch to solder a cable on a such DIN. Did Atari this on purpose, instead of using some DSUBs? Ok, the 23-pin DSUBs on the Amiga are not common either, but a bit easier to locate than crowded DIN connectors.
 
The SF354 PSU seems to use a 5-pin DIN, probably the most common one! If I understand some old Usenet messages correctly, some drives seem to internally take +5V on the same pin that other drives would take +12V and vice versa.
 
I made a mistake, the floppy drive has the power adapter and the computer does not. I didn't really look that closely. So I don't need the 5-pin, which I have, but the 7-pin, which I will have to find.

Thanks for those pages, the one with the power pinout I had been to but it was so frekkin big with pictures that I didn't look that hard. Thanks!

I think Atari did that on purpose. Why? Who knows. There's one electronics store in town that may have the plug I need. I doubt radio schmack will have it, but I'm gonna check anyway.
 
Based on what I saw there and another page linked to it, I think that the serial and printer ports are pretty standard. I think I'll try to use my old dot matrix epson and a normal rs-232 port modem on the machine:

http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/miodrag/Atari_ST/Atari ST Internals.htm#MODEMPORT

Near the bottom;

http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_Parallel_PC_Port.html

Only 10 and 12-17 are different. Would that cause the printer not to work? It's an old dos based printer (?) that will work on a cash register if needed. So I figure it'll work on the Atari.

The serial port is the same.
 
Am I missing something here? I'm looking at a 520ST, and it doesn't seem to need an external power source, just your plain-vanilla 3-prong plug. It does have a DIN-type connector for "monitor" but there is also an RCA jack marked "television" and right next to it is a channel selector switch, so it apparently has RF mod built-in too. How many different ways did they build these things? (As I've mentioned before, I'm not an Atari person).

--T

EDIT: Just looked a little closer, and mine is a 520STfm. That must be the difference...

--T
 
I have seen so many different configurations I have lost count. Some had floppy drives built in, some had din monitor connectors, I've seen them with vga connectors (though I think that was a hack) and all kinds of other stuff. I wish it had onboard power, as I don't have the ps and the connector is special order for me here in El Nowhere. I stil have to go to Ideal, but even they only cater to the factories these days it seems.

But I'll get it and things will be good. I am thinking about getting an ethernet cart for it from one of the online stores.

Once I get a digital camera that my computer likes I'l post some pictures.
 
8bit Vs 16bit

8bit Vs 16bit

I've made it my duty to have a personal grudge against STs, however I'm
not so sure about that 800. Personally I someone offered me the 800 or
the ST I'd go with the 800 (maybe not the 400 though - I like proper
keyboards personally), but hypotically perhaps a 400 from the shed
would be tougher to beat that the 800 with the dirt. STs are out - I'd
rather have an XE, but hey - that's just me! ;-)

Perhaps I would have tried to get $5 for the 800 - if it doesn't work - well
it's no great loss, $10 sounds a bit steep (never though I'd be saying that -
but it's a dirty machine - certainally a nice system with lots of software,
disk drive should get $100 don't 'cha think?)

CP/M User.
 
Yes, the M in STFM stands for (RF) Modulator, that's why you find a such output. F stands for Floppy - the original 520ST (and 1040ST ?) would use an external floppy like Nathan has.

No idea about the power, maybe there were units with built-in transformator so you plug in 110/220V directly like most PCs and other computers.

In Sweden, 3 to 8 pin DINs are quite possible to find for little money. 14 pin DIN costs about $35 each (!), and 13 pin DIN may be close to extinct. On the other hand, the 23 pin DSUBs appear to be out of catalog by now, only the cover remains..

Maybe the back side of an Atari ST is so crowded that they couldn't fit anything but DINs or HD15?
 
Ideal Electronics has clsed and are gone. I now have to special order everything. That's okay though. If anybody knows of a place that I can go to for special stuff that's not digi-key or mouser, I'd be grateful. I did find this:

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/

which is great! They have everything I could ever want Atari!
 
JDR didn't have the parts, they look like they sell complete items. Jameco kicked me out with some kind of firewall or server error. I'll try again later. Thanks for the links, I hadn't even thought about them.
 
On the JDR site look at the left hand Navigation bar, go to the bottom where is saya electronics, they have IC's burners' and some prototyping stuff, Jameco has everything you could possibly imagine though.....

Jameco worked fine for me, It griped about me not having flash (forgot to install that on the server) but it worked.

http://www.jameco.com/ Incase I typed it wrong or something.
 
Terry Yager said:
Am I missing something here? I'm looking at a 520ST, and it doesn't seem to need an external power source, just your plain-vanilla 3-prong plug. It does have a DIN-type connector for "monitor" but there is also an RCA jack marked "television" and right next to it is a channel selector switch, so it apparently has RF mod built-in too. How many different ways did they build these things? (As I've mentioned before, I'm not an Atari person).

--T

EDIT: Just looked a little closer, and mine is a 520STfm. That must be the difference...

--T


The first Atari ST's had an external power supply and FDD. ST"M". All the floppies were 3.5 but the early ones were single density. None of the ST FDDs were high density. The commonest ST model was the "F" series which was followed by the "FM". which had IIRC stereo capabilities. The HD connector was a proprietory SCSI called ATASCI (or something like that). To connect a SCSI HD or other SCSI device you need an adapter like the ICD "The LINK". The Printer must be "Epson-compatible". Not all IBM-compatible ones will work. Finding an Atari external PSU is almost impossible since so few were made. If you could find an ST Junker perhaps you could use that.

Lawrence
 
I found all the parts I could ever want, provided I pay near top-dollar for them.

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/Default.htm

They stock all kinds of parts, most are new and all are pretty expensive. I want the jaguar adaptd controller once I get the power supply. My friend Joe that gave it to me is still looking for it, though it could take a while, and one from Best is only $40. Not bad considering what I have seen them for. I've seen commodore 64 ps's go for MUCH more than that, and same for most of them.

Either way I'll get this thing working and then I'll start gaming and tweaking. Since I've been looking, there are lots of different things you can get for them, more if you want to build them yourself. CD-RW's, hdd's of all flavors and sizes, fdd's without limit and I've hear done person brag about his 48mhz ST. That's pretty cool, heh heh. I'll do something cool.
 
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