I just picked up an Atari 130XE from a find on Facebook Marketplace. I know some people have modded this computer and I was curious what mods people would recommend. Suggestions and links would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Thanks everyone! You rock!

Hello, I'm kinda new to 8 bit computers in general and I've been trying to fix an 800xl. I got the machine a bit over a year ago without any cables or accesories, and the machine currently will do one of the following turning on

• Black screen

• Color screen (most of the times blue), can be controlled with the color pot

-Black screen with a continuous beep

I socketed and replaced the ram chips already and nothing changed. I do have an oscilloscope but it's a kinda trashed analog kenwood one. Still, I was able to check address and data lines

-Address lines 0 to 15 have normal activity

-Data lines 0, 2 and 6 have activity, but significantly less peak to peak voltage than the rest of the data lines, they apparently do not have enough voltage to reach high levels.

-Clock signals and delay line are working fine

I'm guessing Sally is fine since the data lines do have activity. It would seem like something else in the board is pulling down D0, D2 and D6. The beep sound makes me think Pokey is fine too. So this would leave Antic, Gtia or the rom chips. Some extra information:

• I do not have any cartridges to test, machines like this and accessories are straight up impossible to find in my country

-I also don't have an original power supply. I'm using an ATX computer power supply and connecting 5 volts with tiny aligator clips. When the machine turns on the voltage drops to around 4V. I've tried a couple other power supplies that should be more than enough and the voltage keeps droping. I have used also a buck converter with a 12V source to feed the machine around 6V, so when it turns on the voltage drops to 5V. This does not have any effect whatsoever with the issue and I only did it for testing.

What would you recommend to test/do/try next in order to narrow down the issue? Should I just desolder and socket all custom chips and check data lines lifting the pins that have the problematic signals? Is there a well known cause for a problem like this?

A while back I purchased an Atari 1200XL pretty cheap ($100) because there is no market in my area that wanted to buy it. I was recently able to trade it for an 800XL with a floppy drive, 256kB of RAM and USB power modification. Which is fantastic because the 1200 is more collectible and not really suited to me for their first experiences with Atari computers.

I did spend some time playing with the 1200, but what are some games or applications or tools I can use on this one that will demonstrate the expanded memory capabilities? It’s my understanding that anything for an XE would possibly be enhanced now? I know there is a recent homebrew shooter that looks good and would benefit from the extra ram or possibly even requires it.

I have this book about Atari basic but I don't have an Atari 400 / 800 computer so is there an emulator for them? If so how do I get it running?

I have an 800XL i believe to be stock, i'm not trouble shooting anything specific just learning more about the machine so have been trying PEEK(xxxxx) commands and non of them work they just return ERROR.

I've tried random numbers and also ones which are meant to return stuff such as 'On an XL/XE PEEK(65527) returns the OS version' Taken from the forum link below.

No matter what number i put in i get ERROR, other features like PRINT FRE(0) work.

Basic things like SETCOLOR work fine. Self test all passes correctly.

I want to know what version of basic is on my machine and also if the version that came on the 800XL ROM was complete, or did people upgrade or overwrite it back in the day?

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/236734-800xl-custom-rom-questions/

Thanks

This isn’t my work, but you should all see the amazing progress that a8converterman over on YouTube has made on porting Elite to the Atari 8bit. His latest video shows almost a fully playable game.

https://youtu.be/XRK2Z6N6MxM

Did you have access to a BBS?

I've set the time zone from the settings page, why won't the time read correctly on the weather app? It won't change from GMT.

I'm sorry, I don't know much about FujiNet. I have an Atari BASIC program that I wrote in 1984 in a text file on my PC in notepad. Is there a way to save it to a microSD card from my PC so that the Atari can read it as a BASIC program?

I interested if there book talk about history of 8bit computer. has people stories of the experience and games and apps that wherw popular and talk about the current mods and support.

Did this WAAAAAAY to many times in the early 80s. Loaded a commercial game from tape only to get to the end of the tape and see the "READY" prompt on the screen, because I forgot top pull the Basic cart out of the 800.

I got my 400 back in 80, so I go way back.... Did not have it long as I sold it to a neighbor and bout an 800. Could not adapt to the keyboard. Eventually got a 1050 disk drive. Did a type in program from either ANtic, Analog or Compute, forget which one. Forgot to boot a Dos disk when I turned the computer on. Thank GOD, I could save my work to cassette instead of having to boot with Dos and type it in all over again.