It’s been offline for a few months due to lack of space in my office, but I finally have my Atari 130XE set up again for use. The 130XE (repaired by 8bitAndMore) is working great and I’m eager to start using it again. For now, I have it hooked up to an LCD display via S-Video. Here you can see it running the Miner 2049er cartridge.
Curious to see how many disks in the stash are still readable! I've got a load I need to go through as well, current plan is to image everything that survived, though I haven't decided which hardware path to take yet. I've got an old SIO2PC but the project would be a good excuse to buy one of the newer offerings available.
Hearing the I/O sounds of the SIO interface always brings back fond memories for me. However, I am fairly confident that they are not generated by the Pokey chip, but rather they are generated by I/O device that is connected to the Atari. The Atari SIO interface has an audio input line and the 1050 floppy drive, as well as other devices such as an Atari modem, would pass their audio over this. There was a simple modification that some people would do to their SIO cable to silence the tones coming from their floppy drives. You would still hear all the sounds generated by the Pokey, but disk I/O was perfectly silent. Likewise you could even tap into it to pass other audio sources over it and have it go through the Atari and come out the TV/speakers.
Atari 130XE Setup and Modern Add-Ons
Curious to see how many disks in the stash are still readable! I've got a load I need to go through as well, current plan is to image everything that survived, though I haven't decided which hardware path to take yet. I've got an old SIO2PC but the project would be a good excuse to buy one of the newer offerings available.
Hearing the I/O sounds of the SIO interface always brings back fond memories for me. However, I am fairly confident that they are not generated by the Pokey chip, but rather they are generated by I/O device that is connected to the Atari. The Atari SIO interface has an audio input line and the 1050 floppy drive, as well as other devices such as an Atari modem, would pass their audio over this. There was a simple modification that some people would do to their SIO cable to silence the tones coming from their floppy drives. You would still hear all the sounds generated by the Pokey, but disk I/O was perfectly silent. Likewise you could even tap into it to pass other audio sources over it and have it go through the Atari and come out the TV/speakers.