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Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 26 Jul 2020 23:36
by Gyrussfanx
Fair enough, I just want it to work. I waited a long time watching prices for only two machines be between 3K and 4K before jumping on one at 2.5K. They are very rate to see here. My apologies for misunderstanding what you meant.

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 26 Jul 2020 23:47
by troed
Gyrussfanx wrote: 26 Jul 2020 23:36 Fair enough, I just want it to work. I waited a long time watching prices for only two machines be between 3K and 4K before jumping on one at 2.5K. They are very rate to see here. My apologies for misunderstanding what you meant.
No worries. Steve's in the UK so there would be some postal charges involved if he were to look at it. I'm not sure who's the best local to you (California) taking a look at it. I'm less worried about floppy than video at the moment, but Falcons are more complicated than the ST range which most of us are much more comfortable fault finding.

I'd suggest gaining the ability to output both RGB and VGA to screens you know can handle the signals. After you get video (if it's still possible) the next step would be to write images to the CF card that you know will boot (someone else on the forum can test the same image on their setup. I have a Falcon with a CF-card myself for example). When all of that is done there's a known base to continue from. This is if you choose yourself to try finding out what issues it has of course.

edit: This is the best video adapter. Out of stock though, but maybe someone has an extra to sell: https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/#0146

A monitor that would take both the RGB and VGA signals is the NEC 1990FXp (others exist - but that one is quite common on eBay. Here's one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEC-MultiSync- ... Swm5NeTu3d - the mount is standard VESA so the lack of a stand is no big issue)

/Troed

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 00:10
by Gyrussfanx
Thanks exxos!

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 00:10
by arf
TOS 4.01 alone doesn’t qualify for "pre-production". My regular bought Falcon (admittedly an early one), from a local office supply dealer in a 300k city in the southwest of Germany … had TOS 4.01.

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 00:20
by Gyrussfanx
Thanks man, this was another users assessment. I feel like I’m in the middle of a lot of advice and opinion. Lol.

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 00:40
by exxos
Didn't pre-produnction machines have the grey colours swapped between case and keyboard ?

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 07:03
by mikro
I would also recommend to listen more to people here than your friends.

And yes I agree, paying $2500 for a Falcon in such condition is crazy. I just recently sold one for 800 EUR which had only some bodge wires and visual defects, otherwise working perfectly.

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 09:29
by Steve
Gyrussfanx wrote: 27 Jul 2020 00:20 Thanks man, this was another users assessment. I feel like I’m in the middle of a lot of advice and opinion. Lol.
edit/removed

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 10:01
by troed
Steve wrote: 27 Jul 2020 09:29 He also purposely just said 'broken floppy' without going into detail of how he swapped the WD chip, which indicates more serious issues within.
I agree with you on the fact that the seller knew that these issues weren't trivial, but as I quoted above he did write explicitly in the description that swapping out the WD chip etc made no difference.

/Troed

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Posted: 27 Jul 2020 12:51
by Steve
troed wrote: 27 Jul 2020 10:01
Steve wrote: 27 Jul 2020 09:29 He also purposely just said 'broken floppy' without going into detail of how he swapped the WD chip, which indicates more serious issues within.
I agree with you on the fact that the seller knew that these issues weren't trivial, but as I quoted above he did write explicitly in the description that swapping out the WD chip etc made no difference.

/Troed
Yeah my mistake.. looking over the ebay post again it seems he was quite transparent.