Atari XEGS tips?

Any 8bit repairs, images, cool things, upgrades etc.
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project23
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed May 15, 2019 8:54 pm

Atari XEGS tips?

Post by project23 »

Hey guys,

So when I was a kid I briefly had an XEGS before getting hold of an Amiga. I went up into my mums loft today and not only did I find it, but it still works! Passes the memory tests and everything.

So, i'm pretty new to atari let alone 8-bit... Looking for some pointers.

I was going to order an sio2pc from somewhere... this a good idea or are the sd card readers better?

Looking forward to playing pacman... i have absolutely no idea when it comes to other titles though, lol. I sorta skipped over the 8-bit era pretty quickly.

Was thinking of retrobriting it? The keyboard is pretty yellow, but the xegs system itself isn't too bad actually. I take it people retrobrite these XE models just like the Amiga/ST?

Cheers all,

John
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rubber_jonnie
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Re: Atari XEGS tips?

Post by rubber_jonnie »

It's weird, I've had a 65XE from new, same era, and the plastic hasn't yellowed at all. Personally I don't do retrobrite, but I can perhaps help with the other things.

I have an APE and an SIO2PC from AtariMax. It's great if you want to emulate all Atari peripherals on a PC, but it does tie you to having a PC/Laptop close by, which is a pain.

There is a very positive side though, in that you can connect a 1050 directly to your PC and actually create ATRs (Disk images) from originals. Lotharek does a similar SIO2PC adapter, which is USB and cheaper than Atarimax, but I don't think the software allows much more than emulating a disk drive/cassette deck. I may be wrong, I don't have one, but definitely worth a look too.

If you just want disk drive emulation, I'd go for an SIO 2 SD, it's much more convenient.

Also from Lotharek, is the Ultimate 1MB, which I upgraded my 800XL with, you can see here: https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =44&t=1923

My advice, have a look here: https://lotharek.pl/ and here: https://www.atarimax.com/
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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