I remember your Trak drive. I thought it was the coolest thing, especially with all those lights and sector/track counter. And it had a 4k printer buffer too. But I think it did come with a special version of Atari DOS 2.0s that had support for double-density (DDINIT?)
And the emulator also mimics the keypress clicks and the drive I/O beeps (even normal, Happy and ultra speeds). What's even funnier is I have a C64 emulator and they have a sound emulator of the drive so you can hear the disk spinning and the head servo noises - and it's slow as hell (unless you turn on emulator warp mode, but that disables the sound)...
That emulator is the closest thing to hardware. I've played with it a few times and am amazed at how much of the original feel and experience went into it. If I could get a real 800XL keyboard and connect that to USB, that would just take it another step toward immersion.
And yeah, that Trak drive was a recommendation from Brian. We were buying the 800XL from 20th Century and talked to him about also getting a printer and disk drive. Since I was going to be writing papers on it for school, the printer was going to be that Panasonic 24 pin. And to avoid spending on both a floppy and an 850, the Trak included the parallel port and printer buffer. That dude was cool, I wonder what ever happened to him.
Yeah, Brian was pretty cool. I have no idea what happened to him - that was eons ago. I just remember the suspenders and he was certainly knowledgeable of his stuff. That's where I got my first floppy drive and eventually hard drive from him.
That fujinet thing looks impressive. I'm debating if I should add another project onto the list...
Yeah, Brian was up front, and he always had those suspenders. He was cool. There was another guy in the back that did the repair work that was really knowledgeable. Maybe Clayton? I sat in the back of the repair shop on a few occasions and just hung out with him chatting about all kinds of stuff, but mostly Atari stuff.
I did a quick search to see if I could find Brian's last name, did you know that 20th Century eventually moved to a house in Hartford? (Or at least appears that way)...
I tried searching for Brian as well and saw a shop in Hartford. I wasn't sure if that was the same. I even looked for the registered business archives in East Hartford as well but came up with nothing. The closest I got was 176 Burnside Ave and seeing a picture of the old store front with no signage. It was a little depressing...
When I saw the same thing and looked at the business owners, I had assumed that the business was sold and the new owners moved it to their home in Hartford. And I saw the same pic street view of the Burnside location that was empty, it was depressing more than just a little. I wanted to walk around to the back to see what that entrance looked like...
I have a box of misc. stuff that I should go through and I think the case is in there, but the modem might not be around anymore. I have 4 800XL's, a handful of 1050 drives along with an Indus GT drive still...
Awesome! Is one of those your original 800XL? (Or mine)? I am really waxing nostalgic right now...
Oh yeah, my original 800XL with the Rambo 256kb ram upgrade is one of them. I think one of the 1050's might be yours. I did refurbish one of the 800XLs, a 256KB MIO and hard drive and sold it to a friend who is building an 8-bit museum. I still have the 1MB MIO though.
And this is the model I used to do my drain - except the flooring, I put down a dimpled membrane (Delta-FL) and 3/4" plywood on top of that...
Oh that's awesome!! What does he have in his museum? And does he have a web page? The CTO at Elixir has/had an old computer museum but it wasn't limited to just 8-bit, his pieces went all the way back to the beginning. This was the same CTO "dude" then I first met at an all company meeting and he was on his way back from Burning Man. So he rolls into the office all hippified with ribbons braided in his hair and smelling like he just spent two weeks in the desert with no showers.
When we put in the French drain it looked a lot like what you have. But it would be constantly pumping water out of the pipe all spring every year...
Right now it's just a personal collection that he's building up before actually creating a museum. No web page or anything, last I knew it's just a spare bedroom he's using...
Oooooohhhhhh, imagine all of those led's when everything is powered on....
There's still something about a dark room with just the little blinking lights of LEDs that makes it so cool...
Your bedroom will always be burned in my mind as most excellent when you had that sound meter with a shit ton of little square LEDs. Along with the 800XL, floppy drives, peripherals, stereo and all of the components...
I've got a strand of colorful Christmas LED lights that I use all year round. I don't call them Christmas lights, I call them my happy lights...