Finding this was lucky - Atari 800

[mrbombermillzy]

Great memories guys! :)

Down south (Eastcote, outer West London) there was a shop (funnily enough) called 'Spectrum'.

They had a good selection of machines. However, after seeing a demo machine C64 running Raid over Moscow, I was hooked and pestered my nan until she bought one for me (bless her).

The first game I ever bought for it? Jet Set Willy, as Raid Over Moscow was out of stock.

Its not like nowadays; when you went to the game shops (Boots, WH Smith, even 7-11 did games) back then you bought the game on the spot, unless you were lucky enough to have a magazine that reviewed it beforehand.

The number of games I purchased on account of the cassette cover art would probably be a very high number.

I must say though, in all my early years seeing friends with or in the shops, I never came across an Apple machine (not untill around the late 90s anyway).

[rubber_jonnie]

I must say though, in all my early years seeing friends with or in the shops, I never came across an Apple machine (not untill around the late 90s anyway).

No, I never saw a single Apple in any shop round my way, but we did have one in our school.

[mrbombermillzy]

No, I never saw a single Apple in any shop round my way, but we did have one in our school.

In my junior school we had BBC A/Bs and later when I went to Comprehensive/secondary school, it was Archies.

I think @jwd can tell us if they changed computers later in the junior school, as IIRC he went to the same junior school as me. :)

[rubber_jonnie]

No, I never saw a single Apple in any shop round my way, but we did have one in our school.

In my junior school we had BBC A/Bs and later when I went to Comprehensive/secondary school, it was Archies.

I think @jwd can tell us if they changed computers later in the junior school, as IIRC he went to the same junior school as me. :)

We moved from Apple II to BBC B's and then we got more and the were networked eventually. I left school not long after.

[rubber_jonnie]

More good Atari news, I have an Incognito lined up, though it's on preorder, so I have a wait for it for a while.

[rubber_jonnie]

Managed to get a bit of time this afternoon and gave the 1050 that came with the 800 a bit of a tidy.

Before:

IMG20250330192234.jpg

After:

IMG20250330201338.jpg

And it has a US Doubler upgrade too.

It powers up OK and makes the right noises, just need to hook it up to a real Atari and see what happens.

[HigashiJun]

Looks really better now.

Hope its also works.

[rubber_jonnie]

Looks really better now.

Hope its also works.

Me too.

It does seem to initialize normally, so that's a good part of it, but I had to tweak the eject mechanism to make it work properly, other than that and a good service it seems ok.

[alexh]

I found that strong oil/stain remover such as TAED (vanish white) can sometimes remove the staining of glue left behind from old masking / cellotape.

Sometimes (especially masking tape, electrical tape, parcel tape) the colour change is due to UV protection it offered and there is nothing you can do except try to mask the other areas and expose the areas previously under the tape to UV light using a bulb or sunlight.

[rubber_jonnie]

I found that strong oil/stain remover such as TAED (vanish white) can sometimes remove the staining of glue left behind from old masking / cellotape.

Sometimes (especially masking tape, electrical tape, parcel tape) the colour change is due to UV protection it offered and there is nothing you can do except try to mask the other areas and expose the areas previously under the tape to UV light using a bulb or sunlight.

Actually for some sticky stuff like this I find Electrolube or WD40 are surprisingly good at getting it off, and it worked great. I will look up TAED though as I've never heard of it.

As you mentioned, the tape has acted as UV protection, but I can live with it, what was worst was the ingrained dirt and dirty black marks, but it cleaned up ok with some elbow grease and for the black marks Magic Eraser worked well on those.

Unfortunately, whilst the drive is recognised by the 800, there is no boot, all I get is a repeated BOOT ERROR message, as though no disk is present. I'll pull out one of my working 1050's and cross check the plugs because somebody was in here to do the US doubler upgrade and given it was missing all it's screws I'm not confident the plugs were all the correct way.

If it still doesn't work then I'll troubleshoot as I did with my last one which now works.