1050 Duplicator

The Duplicator was a disk drive upgrade similar to the happy just not as capable. The designer of the duplicator drive gave me one board he made and the artwork to make more. The duplicator is a true double density drive capable of running at high speed with the right driver. Of all the drive modifications I have I like the duplicator the most just because of the information I have to program it. I used the duplicator to create the copy protection That I wrote for several companies because it was the only 1050 drive mod that could write special sectors in enhanced density which drove the happy nuts trying to copy it. No other drive modifications can work in enhanced density. I still guard my copy protection not sharing it with anyone.

 

CSS Fuzzy Sector Maker

This is a drive modification that not to many people know about. It was developed by Robert Puff before he designed the 1050 Archiver. This device could write fuzzy sectors in any density and was easy to use. You just flipped the switch an a simple $E459 call can write the bad sector. 

History

Happy Computers was formed in 1982 by Richard Adams under the name Happy Computing. At that time, the 810 Happy was hand wired on the internal side board The name was changed to Happy Computers or HCI in 1983 when the company went from a sole proprietorship to a corporation. HCI stopped shipping these products in 1990, and since then many other Atari Enthusiasts have reverse engineered and replicated the products because they were so popular and fun. Richard Adams was crazy about wanting to stomp out the competition the Duplicator was given him. so he created a cheer up upgrade that placed a happy rom onto a duplicator board and a few wiring changes turned a duplicator into a happy. I added a four position switch that would allow me to use this one drive in two different mods. In my RealDos support files I have a program that allows many of the happy function to be used with out having to boot the happy software. Also within the "HAPPY.COM" is a program to turn your happy drive into a ICD Doubler and capable of doing ultra-speed sector skew.

1050 Enhancement
After the 810, Atari released the more reliable, enhanced density (130 KB) 1050 drive. In addition to the extra storage, the serial I/O could be cranked up a notch even faster than the 810 Happy product by the faster speed of the 1050s 6502 processor. The 1050 Enhancement was also a plug-in board, and could be installed without soldering or permanent modification. In addition to the buffered reading and writing with zero latency and faster serial i/o, it supported true double density (180 KB). Additionally, it made backups of floppies. It is to be noted that Atari 1050 drives stopped production more than 20 years ago, and Happy Computers stopped selling products about 18 years ago. In spite of this, the popularity of Happy Computer's products continues and is still being reviewed in 2008. Developers are still writing new software to support Happy Drives. For example, linux drivers. 

1050 Controller
The 1050 Controller was a small board that was installed inside the 1050 Happy drive that had 2 switches and an led that allowed enabling or disabling disk write-protect to override the notch in the disk. It also allowed switch selection of a slower mode to provide compatibility with some picky programs. Some commercial software only ran in the original slow speed mode. The controller required a mechanical modification to the drive's enclosure and hence its installation was harder that the happy board.

Warp Speed Software
The software that came with the Happy boards had many options.

Warp Speed Dos
Diagnostics for the Enhancement and the drive such as high speed xfer, RPM and read/write testing Fast, slow and unHappy mode drive options for compatibility Tracer mode for evaluating wasted space on floppies Happy Compactor which allows organizing and combining multiple floppies into one. Happy Backup for backing up floppies
Multi Drive, which allows high speed simultaneous writing with up to 4 Happy enhanced drives. Sector copier IBMXFR Program This program was included with the Warp Speed Software. It allowed transferring files back and forth between an Atari and an IBM disk using a Happy enhanced 1050 drive. Because the 1050 was a single sided drive with only one head, the disk had to be formatted as SS (180K). The IBM disk could even be formatted on the 1050 drive.

 

To INTERFACE the Happy Cheer-Upgrade to the DTI PC BOARD
and run both software's is easy and the best of both world's.

Part's needed:
1 four pole double throw switch.
four or five feet of number 22 gauge wire.

back of switch for connection's
o o o o
1 4 7 10
o o o o
2 5 8 11
o o o o
3 6 9 12

STEP'S
        1)The first thing that you must do is lift out pin's 24, 21, 20 of the HAPPY rom.
        2)Then remove the DTI E-prom lifting pin's 1, 28. And reinsert in socket.
        3)Know desolder the 16 pin chip and lift pin 14, and solder a 16 pin socket and reinsert chip.
        4)Arange the HAPPY rom so that pin one of the HAPPY rom is pigbacked over pin 3 of the 28 pin chip,( NOT

THE E-PROM, THE ONLY OTHER 28 PIN IC CHIP.

JUMPER'S

        5)pin 18 of Happy rom to pin 23 of IC chip "2"
        6)pin 28 Happy rom to pin 9 of switch
        7)pin 14 of chip "3" to pin 7 of switch
        8)pin 11 of chip "3" to pin 8 of switch
        9)pin 28 of chip "2" to pin 5 of switch
        10)pin's 1,28 of DTI E-PROM to pin 4 of switch
        11)pin 24 of HAPPY rom to pin 6 of switch
        12)Cut one of the wire's going to the slow mode sub-board and strip them and solder one end to switch pin 1

           and the other to pin number 2.
        13) Remember to remove C61 from the mother board of the 1050. This will fix all the problem's with running

         SPARTA DOS with the DUPLICATOR DRIVE.

I have been running this DRIVE MODIFICATION for 22 Years with no problem's. Hope you enjoy the drive
modification.


THE 1050 DUPLICATOR is
copyright of

DUPLICATING TECHNOLOGIES, INC
99 JERICHO TPKE., SUITE 302A
JERICHO N.Y. 11753



HAPPY 1050 ENHANCEMENT
copyright of

HAPPY COMPUTERS Inc.
P.O. Box 1268
MORGAN HILL, CA. 95037
(408) 779-3830



SPARTA DOS
copyright of

I.C.D. Inc.
1220 ROCK STREET, SUITE 310
ROCKFORD, IL. 61101-1437