Thanks! It was quite a shock to see Miner Willy represented like that! I’ll check out the homebrew version! :) :)

Thanks very much! Lots more to come :) :)

Thanks very much! :) :)

What a great find! I'm insanely jealous of you :) :)

@@TheRetroShack You like this old stuff, may have to talk with you about selling it to you. I was glad the drive worked and it powered up fine. I also found a complete XE gaming system and dredged up some game carts for it, sometimes even play some asteroids, missile command or pole position still!

@@Oldbmwr100rs Drop me an email :)

Thank you very much!

Thanks for info - very useful!

Get the new year off to a good start :) :)

@@TheRetroShack it's so good to see the love for the old 8 bits and the willingness to keep it going! Your videos are really well filmed and narrated and are very enjoyable to watch. All the best for the holidays 😊

@@tharkthax3960 Thanks! All the best to you too :)

That’s an interesting unit :) Power supply is blown so I’m going to be getting creative with that one :) :)

Thanks very much and happy holidays to you too :)

Thanks - should get to this very early in the new year :)

Yay!

Thanks! I was surprised at how well it worked and it’s holding up really well too :)

I bought a switch when they first came out and only played Zelda on it :) So don’t worry - Sometimes a killer app is worth buying the machine it runs on :) :)

Thanks very much! It’s gone really quickly!

@@TheRetroShack keep up the good work 👍

Hoping it won’t cause me too much trouble :) :)

That would be great, thank you!

Interesting! Most of my research has the 1541 at 300 bytes per second ( eg. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1541 ) but either way the 1050 demolishes in terms of out of the box speed :) I’ll have a look at The Final Cartridge III :)

The Atari's stock SIO baudrate is 19,200 but the 1050 does not read/write at this speed due to disk RPM, sector skew and the single sector 128byte SRAM of the drive. As far as I know it reads at about 7400bps, depending on the format of the disk. DOS 2.5 'enhanced density' disks read a little slower than a single density disk formatted from DOS 2.0s due to a different sector skew. You can hear the slight difference when loading single vs enhanced density. Enhanced sounds sloppier while single density sounds more like rapid fire. A stock 810 will read single density a little (%5 or %10) faster than a stock 1050, but a US Doubler enhanced drive will again read single density disk the same as a revision C 810 which are the most common. There are many subtleties with Atari drives. Tandon 1050's are common but about one out of every six drives uses a World Storage drive mech which are said to be better but I find the Tandon drives to be excellent and very reliable. When they are well lubricated and functioning they have a great and satisfying operating sound. atarimania com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-is-the-atari-1050-disk-drive_28.html

@@gamedoutgamer Awesome info! Thanks :) :)

Weird, Wikipedia says June '85 but other sites say April '85 for the Atari 520ST...

I noticed that too. Right where the metal tab was being lifted up.

I think I'll be opting for one of the more modern solutions - just a matter of choosing one :) :)

@@TheRetroShack The thrill of using the doubler was amazing. A few slow beeps then woooaaaahhhh !!!!!! SpartaDOS kicked bottom lol

@@TheRetroShack tf_hh in Germany makes great upgrades including for the 1050. He's on AtariAge.

@@gamedoutgamer Thanks! I’ll take a look :)

@@TheRetroShack Looks like he's out of 1050 upgrades which is unusual. It might relate to the supply issues. Suggest you contact him. He may be able to make something if it's not showing in stock but maybe not. No idea. I do not at this time recommend removing the passive components from a 1050 to increase it's SIO speed as per tf_hh's suggestion for some 1050 upgrades. I did this once and the 1050 sent a surge on power-on to my computer and now the 800XL needs repairing. Not sure why this happened. Might not related to the removal of the passive resistors but unsure yet.

It’s almost cyberpunk when you consider things like 49ms access time in the same sentence as mechanical gears, pulleys and levers :)

Me too! You're very welcome :) :)

Drop me an email at shackofretro@gmail.com :)

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

@@IcyTorment Good point - in fact, I read that same info in Michael Current's 'Atari 8-bit computer FAQ' a few years ago; I (can only) presume there was a difference between the US and EU packaging.. Here in (back then) Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the 1050 was packaged with DOS 2.5 and the XF551 with DOS 3. To put it into time context, I'm talking about 1986 and 1988, respectively; even possibly a +1 year to both of these. To add - I realize I may have made the XF551 sound like a bad drive, which was not my intention; in fact I fully recognize the fact that it was technically better and thus the superior drive of the two. It's just that considering the price of each vs perceivable performance difference vs all the compatibility stuff, the 1050 was _possibly_ a better choice. BTW when I used XF551 on a few occasions, I had some very pleasant experience with MyDOS (as directories and sub-directories - a feature there that I recall having used - were a 'wow' stuff / big thing for all of us Atari 8-bit users); but frankly I do not recall if it took / was capable of taking some extra advantage of the XF551 drive. LbnL thank you, as your comment brought some sweet memories once again 🙂

Good to know - I think I'll be opting for one of the more modern solutions :)

The Happy upgrade itself probably failed. They weren't too reliable. You could have returned it to stock and it should have worked. The pad that presses the disk to the head may have needed changing, especially if you used a cleaning disk which are known to ruin the pad.

My 65XE and 1050 drive are long gone. Back then it never even occurred to me to remove the Happy Mod.

Sometimes comments get held for review and I periodically have to go in and approve so they may get delayed in appearing.

YT seems to sometimes block comments from browsers using certain extensions and such. I was only able to comment from a clean browser for some time and it cleared up recently, no rhyme or reason.

@@TheRetroShack Thanks.

Oh wow you must be Soo proud 😆