The start of an Atari 8-bit repair-a-thon!
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- Опубліковано 10 чер 2022
- It seems like UA-cam is filled with Commodore videos but little in the way of Atari 8-bit stuff. Let's change that by checking out the condition of these 6 machine so I can determine which will be featured on future repair episodes.
--- Video Links
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-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
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O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
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Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
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Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
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Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
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Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
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TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
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TS100 Soldering Iron:
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EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
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DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
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Magnetic Screw Holder:
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Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
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RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
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Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
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Heat Sinks:
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Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
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--- Links
My GitHub repository:
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--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
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@itsnathandivino - Наука та технологія
A little tid-bit -- I noticed on re-assembly the "plaster" 800XL has MT 4164 DRAM. If you know these chips, they are always bad..... and sure enough, I tested them and, if I recall, 4 or 5 were bad. A fresh set of 4164 DRAM and the machine works flawlessly. I'll touch on this "repair" when I work on the other machines with faults. Thanks to those who mentioned the XL machines will go into the diagnostics if there is a RAM fault. That's a pretty nice feature! Remember, if you see MT 4164 RAM (specifically the 64k x 1 bit chips) them pretty much assume that at least some have failed. At this point, It is a safe-bet! (Other sizes of MT RAM seem OK, it's just the 4164 type.)
Hopefully that plaster doesn't have asbestos in it.
Black screens on Ataris are often caused by bad RAM.(it depends on the slot) so it would be a good idea to start from there.
The "Start" and space bar keys on the 600xl should also be a pretty easy fix(if it is a mechanical keyboard). I usually take the keycap off and spray contact cleaner straight at the "openings" around the plungers. After pushing the plunger many times and waiting for the cleaner to evaporate the keys work like new.
Had just watched a series on the 800XL on RMC. The self test is shown in the first video ua-cam.com/video/aZE0ziQLVqU/v-deo.html
Hey Adrian the plaster Atari should appear some blocks on the ram section looks like something is wrong with the ram I was I remember from my Atari 65xe
UK viewer here. I got a 'proper' keyboard for my 400 back in '83 when I was a kid learning to type, but when I dug my 400 out of storage a decade ago I put the membrane keyboard back on it because it looks SO GOOD! That 70's colour scheme of browns and oranges. The 400 and 800 are such beautiful and nostalgic computers to behold. Thank you for all of your videos Adrian. Yours is the best vintage computing channel on UA-cam, and you really know your electronics... and have the tenacity to see your projects through. Best regards.
I too was one of the rare UK 400 owners, my mum wouldn't spraunce for a proper keyboard because the machine was just so expensive. I did get a couple small progs on one of the magazine carts published, wrote it using the Assembler cartridge and was quite fun underwater game with a sub.
I love the 400 keyboard it looks so retro but also sci-fi at the same time
@proper job
It definitely looks like it would be at home on the set of Star Trek ToS!
Was the membrane keyboard borderline unusable or just uncomfortable? I was thinking about buying a 400 but I don’t know
@@doomedtoobscurity3965 I like the Atari 400's keyboard. I never had any problems with it back in the day, other than you always have to look where your fingers are when typing, but the little ridge around the key really helps with knowing that your finger is in the right place. An example of a borderline unusable membrane keyboard would be the Sinclair ZX81, but even those have their charm.
Atari's 8-Bit line will always hold a special place in my heart. My very first computer was an 800 that barely worked when I got my hands on it, but we took the time to get it ship-shape, and that's probably what's started my love for computers in the first place. Ahhhhhh, the memories!
my Atari 800XL was my first love to... and I still have it, still works.. but it's in the closest. Now I wanna set it up again!!
For me too.
As a kid, i learnt how to tell that computer to do what i wanted. And i loved it. And I still do that, just to other computers :D
Sometimes i wonder, just how different everything would be if i never had access to one... 🤔
Was on the C64 team myself, but always wanted either a 400 or 800.
@@maxxdahl6062 ooh, i wanted a C64 too. My dad fixes anything electronic, so as a kid, for a couple of weeks, i had a C64. Even though the diskette access time was awful, i still loved the mission impossible version of the C64.
It was a misterious system at that time :)
@@IvnSoft Yep, every system has it's positives and drawbacks, floppy speed was definitely a drawback for c64. It had killer graphics and sound for 1982 though. I REALLY wish I would have bought at least a 400 about 10 or so years ago back when they were still selling for like $30 on ebay.
Finally... the superior machines get some love! Looking forward to the repair-a-thon vids!
@BumbleBee Most of the time it's RAM or re-seating the chips. Other than that.. rock solid.
Only superior to the sinclairs.
Funny how keyboards seemed so challenging in the 70s and 80s and now that we’ve commoditized them, we’ve switched to banging our fingers on flat glass all day!
And that's why we need sliding phones with keyboards 😭
“We have a fault!…Alright!” ~Adrian Black 2022
Hah! That cracked me up! Love seeing you happy to have something to troubleshoot and fix!
Imagine if all of them were fine and he's like "Well this video was undramatic!"
34:30: It wouldn't be an Adrain's Digital Basement home computer repair video without the traditional contemptuous disregard for RF shielding. ;-D
Well, at least he doesn't break out the Dremel just because he doesn't have the right screwdriver....
I learned BASIC on that Atari 400. I got it when I was 6 or 7 I believe. You wouldn't believe the huge box that little cartridge came in from Toys R Us.
I learned BASIC on the family Atari 400. Typing on it was so aggravating but I loved it
Hell yes, this is the kind of stuff I love right here. Repair-a-thons with completely unknown conditions. Retro or modern, it's always fun to repair and watch others make videos of it.
I had a working Atari 800 that was stolen from me when I moved. I liked that machine
Candy (The 400) was originally to be just a games-only version of the system, with the keyboard being an optional external component.
Star Raiders wound up being the reason the 400 ultimately shipped with a keyboard.
Cool, never knew that.
Im glad some Atari 8bit computers are getting some love for a change. Sadly they tend to be deep in the C64s shadow and tend to get forgotten even tho they are still quite good computers in their own right and deserve some time in the sun
I'd trade a c64 for an Atari any day
it was purely a matter of marketting that c64 beat out atari in the 8 bit world. technically, the atari 8 bit machines were superior. the man that made them so also made the amiga superior to the atari 16 bit machines, and for the same reason, he wasn't afraid of putting dedicated chips into them
@@robcat6377 Atari had pokey chips, quick off hand what is the name of a custom chip specific to Amiga?
@@petevenuti7355 atari had pokey and antic, amiga had a dozen or so custom chips, and even one that is commonly called a custom chip called kickstart, which was a rom iirc, but i admit, i don't know that much about amigas, i was an atari man until the very end (a mega 4 st with the external hdd was my last atari)
Off the top of my head, the Amiga had Paula, Denise, Agnus and later Fat Agnus. Atari had Antic, Pokey, CTIA and GTIA... I seem to remember.
Instead of "Have you played Atari today?" Adrian has "Have you fixed Atari today?" 🎶
34:40 With all the rocks in it, maybe that Atari was used for mining (get it, mining!? 🤣)
I love the 8-bit Atari's and every time I see the inside of one I cringe at the keyboard ribbon cables.. :)
Its like Atari took the worse idea from their Radio Shack competitor, use a non coated ribbon cable that is guaranteed to get brittle and break between the keyboard and the motherboard. At least Atari spent the ~12 cents to socket it. Cheap-*ssed Tandy had an assembler solder that crappy cable to both PCBs.
The Atari 400 had exactly the same processing power as the 800. The only meaningful differences were that the 800 had the RAM expansion slots, the real keyboard, the second cartridge slot and the video DIN output socket. The aftermarket quickly worked out that the 400 could be upgraded to 48K RAM with a bit of soldering.
did anything ever utilize that second cartridge slot?
My 400 was upgraded to 48k. I also made an external keyboard from a keyboard I bought on Computer Shopper. My brother helped with a composite output. it was mess of wires when I was finally done with it.
@@Rorschach1024 I've forgotten most details about them, but the utility and extension cart, Monkey Wrench used the right slot. I came along after the two-slot 800s, so used a Monkey Wrench II for later XL/XE one-slot machines. As I recall, the magazine ads for Monkey Wrench at least implied that theirs was the only product that made use of the right slot.
@@Rorschach1024 There were 13 carts that needed the right-hand slot, all of them utilities of some kind. The most well-known was the Monkey Wrench/Monkey Wrench II.
@@Rorschach1024 yes, but not much. A couple of companies sold real time clock carts, and there was an 80 column cartridge and a couple of others. I don’t think Atari ever released anything for it.
After my first computer an acorn atom the Atari 400 was my first "full colour " computer and was very expensive at £499 here in England.
I really missed the full stroke keyboard of the Atom so I did that mod with the keyboard.
I think it cost about £150.
Eventually I finished up with a 48k memory in it and only had it in that form for about 6 months before getting a 1200 xl and later a 130xe.
Oh the money I've spent on expensive Ataris...and every one of them played star raiders perfectly.
Ouch, another £150! The Atom keyboard is fantastic, don’t blame you one bit. I’d almost be inclined to see if I could’ve wired the Atom’s matrix into the 400 somehow! But that would of course take a lot of work to put it back into the Atom.
Great video - excellent nostalgia. As a colour blind Brit I never realised Pacman was not yellow :-) and the speed thing - no wonder I got such great scores! Really enjoy your content. Thanks.
The quality of the typing experience aside, the 800 XL’s keyboard has a really cool aesthetic.
Also: computer consoles with rocks in them? Get my boy Junkball Media on the case!
As someone who has a Commodore only history (in Aus) I find these videos interesting. Thanks
Another Brit here. The 400 keyboard was utter crap! But better than the ZX81, so we lived with it! Great video- brought back some memories!
I typed in many programmes on the Atari 400, some of them many pages long, on that keyboard. It was rubbish, but as a kid, I didn't care, it was amazing!
It’s what you had, so I would imagine you got used to it and probably were somewhat proficient at it!
@@adriansdigitalbasement yep, towards the end the power connector got increasingly unreliable, and in it's final days I remember trying to type in programmes, while the atari 400 sat at a rakish angle, with a book under the power connector so that the weight of all that aluminium pushed the connect up to make it work! Where there's a will!
Never had enough memory!
I learned that if I made my program print program lines followed by char$(13) [return key] it will enter those lines into memory while running!
I set up a program to read in a few hundred lines from a txt file, gosub to those lines, in a loop , return and repeat.
memory paging to cassette 🤪
I used split screen, one line of text on the bottom for the purpose, if you didn't have the monitor, you couldn't even see the bottom line ...
The 400's keyboard makes the original Spectrum's look like luxury!
I miss my 800xl so much. I spent hours and hours learning basic and playing Joust on that thing! ❤
For some reason, my bin-of-holding has an Atari 400 membrane keyboard in it... I think I scored it in a pile of old stuff that a workshop threw out ages ago. Since I never had any Atari myself, it took until UA-cam for me to find out what that actually was. I have it slated to act as an input for my hopefully eventually materializing Z80 computer build :D
don't do that to yourself! Find an old terminal with a real keyboard
Thank you for showing some Atari 8-bit love! You should reserve one 800XL for all the upgrades! Ultimate 1MB, Video Board XE for XL, Stereo POKEY, Rapidus speed upgrade, SDrive Max, maybe even Incognito, SIDE3 cartridge, SpartaDOS X, Fujinet, and more!
Atari solved the 1200XL compatibility problems with The Translator boot disk, though FixXL works better.
That last 800XL going right to Self Test shouldn't be doing that without a keyboard. Hopefully the PIA or POKEY aren't damaged. The RAM may have some bad chips or the support logic might have faults.
Rapidus is flakey, cant recommend that.
Yep Andrew Clegg hit the nail on the head ... The Rapidus is Flakey, but only when used with the U1MB board. seems the software can't get around the hardware clashes that 'Can' happen. Great when no U1MB, but U1MB is a great upgrade to useability :) So Is Rapidus when no U1MB in the same computer !!
The very first computer I ever owned, way back in 1987 or so was an Atari 400 with an upgraded keyboard exactly like the one you have. I still have one key from it. If I remember correctly it was dropped and broken, and back in the day I didn't know how to fix it. Later, I think what was left of it was lost in a move.
You can't have my key... sorry. You can 3d print one maybe.
Or maybe you can have it. It isn't the reset key though.
I have kept that key all these years... crazy. I got a 800xl not long after then an 800 and C64's etc., but always loved the design of the 400. I really liked the design of the Timex Sinclair 1000 too. I had a couple of those.
I purchased the Atari 400 when I was in high school, in 1981. I too purchased the replacement keyboard, the membrane keyboard was pretty horrible. I always wanted an 800 or 800XL. The older I get, the more I want one!
Yesss, i love the Atari 8 bit line and rapair-a-thon video's ❤👍👍
These Membrane Keyboards worked well.We didnt know it better these days and had fun at all.
wow, id love to have one of the 400's, my old scoutmaster had one and it is what we did our Computers Merit badge on.it was a wild merit badge, the original was more ike something for engineers rather than general use and programming
Adrian Great to see you finally getting round to some Atari 8 Bit machines .. More like the Amiga internally as even more specialist chips than a C64 with Pokey for sound, GITA for the 'TV interface' in PAL NTSC & SECAM versions' ANTIC a secondary CPU devoted to controlling the GTIA chip to get something on screen .. even the CPU has a mod to it as it has an additional line to support working with the ANTIC processor. (and later on FREDDIE to replace logic used for refresh used in later 800XL known as 800XLF and the XE line 65/130/GS these is also a memory management unit a PAL/GAL type chip to allow swapping out RAM for O.S ROM's so a replacement O.S could be loaded under the original ROM chip and swapped in to replace the ROM O.S. this was used in the XL line to provide compatibility with the original 400/800 series. the 130XE used an additional EMMU for bank switching the additional 64K.
If you get stuck with circuit diagrams etc. let me know as many online I've found are inconsistant / incorrect, and although I've not produced replacement for all models I have reproduced so for the XE range for my own use. (the 800XL being so very similar)
Black screen issue ..
"The old Black Screen of Death. Can be quite common amongst 8-bits - they are over 30yrs old tho' there's a couple of questions
to ask yourself BEFORE destroying/throwing out/ripping out of your antique:
1. easiest thing to try first - leave machine on for ten minutes....are any ram chips "overheating"? - swap these
2. if the board is socketed, rather than soldered you may have some "unseated" ICs.
and check to see if ram, OS Rom, Antic, MMU, PIA, CPU are fully in their sockets.
they can look "seated" but may not be. and oxidation/dirt/dust can cause faulty contacts. if your comfortable with doing so, you can remove them and reinsert. deoxit is your friend
3] if still a black screen try this (turn TV volume up):
power up using OPTION key, wait five seconds, press SELECT key once, press START
do you hear the musical notes? if so your computer is working
now press HELP, then SELECT, the START
press different keys randomly....do you hear the keyboard BEEPS?
these are good signs that atari is fundamentally ok.
4] power supply may be a problem - it may not be supplying 5v. try another PSU.
5] RF or monitor output? if RF, does machine have a channel switch next to the RF output socket? try repeatedly moving it back and forth - it can get dirt inside and cause bad contact.
try a monitor cable - these are fairly standard these days and usually come in the form of monitor to scart, monitor to S-video and monitor to RCA varieties.
6] try booting with a Star Raiders cartridge in the slot -
If Star Raiders works then ALL three should be good.
this should narrow your fault down to PIA, OS Rom, MMU or Ram
Jon Halliday [FJC] has also mentioned that the OS Rom should be good too if Star Raiders runs from cart.
"This signifies that the cart should be run before the OS is fully initialised. The OS ROM still has to operate well enough to jump through $BFFE, and if the CPU manages to get this far then it's working anyway."
thanks Jon - always good to add vital info. "
hope this is of some help.
Hi Adrian I tried using Telegram something I had to setup to contact you, but not entirely sure it was yourself I was messaging in the end although did have your picture, it all looked correct, and I won an Atari 800. if it was your goodself answering in the middle of the night great but didn't seem to be you from the way you answered, nor the paypal address given for shipment payment, if this was you my appologies
Graham, as I had posted about on my channel the other day, this is scammer. I keep blocking these channels but they just create new ones and posting hundreds of replies.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Hi Adrian I'd missed the bit about the scammer's but kind of worked that out myself, but it did take a few messages to realise it wasn't you.. Let me know if I can be of assistance, although you always do well, in whatever you are doing.. Keep it up and Thank You
Although there are some basic similarities between the Atari 8-bit and Amiga, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to call the ANTIC a secondary CPU. Rather, it's the front end of a two-chip graphics subsystem, performing DMA to load graphics data for the back end, which is the GTIA/CTIA chip, to generate the analog graphics signal with. The C64 similarly has a front end and a back end, but it's all on a single chip. One fairly unique thing about the ANTIC is that it has a display list, which is a list of modes to display on each row with a couple of flags to either generate a timely interrupt (DLI) or load an address, but a secondary CPU? Hardly. It can't even change color registers, which is a very common operation on the Atari, on its own--it has to get the actual CPU to do that. Coming from the VCS/2600 (also similar to the Atari 8-bit) perspective, the ANTIC does take the place of the CPU in "racing the beam" to generate the display, so it might seem like a secondary CPU in that respect, but the C64's CPU (and those of most other 8-bit computers, for that matter) doesn't have to generate the display, either, as the VIC-II chip does that on its own.
The custom 6502C "Sally" CPU used in the XL/XE series does have tri-state address lines and other features to enable ANTIC DMA, but the C64's custom 6510 CPU also has tri-state address lines to enable VIC-II DMA, in addition to a 6-bit (all the pins that could be spared) I/O port to supplement the I/O ports of the two 6526 CIA chips. The 6510's I/O port is used to control memory bank switching (via the PLA chip) and the tape drive. All 64K of RAM is available except for the 2 bytes used to implement the I/O port (addresses 0 and 1), while on the 800XL, for example, only 62K of the RAM is available, as the memory-mapped I/O address space cannot be swapped out for RAM. By the way, the Atari 400 and 800 do not have the 6502C (except perhaps for their last production runs), but rather a standard 6502 with additional circuitry on the board to support ANTIC DMA.
No, I'm not trying to turn this into a contest (I own both computers and other vintage 8-bit computers, and I like them all), I'm just saying there is more similarity than you're implying here, and that most other computers have graphics coprocessors that work autonomously, too. If having a list of display modes (that's why it's called a display list) means the ANTIC is a CPU to you, then OK, but it doesn't mean that in my view.
Anyway, great information and advice here, although instead of trying another Atari XL/XE PSU, I would strongly, specifically advise using a better modern one instead. At the very least, one has to know which PSU designs do not have a tendency to fry these vintage computers. I just don't use C64 (and most other Commodore) or Atari 8-bit PSUs at all, because they don't fail safe, they fail destructively. One must always be careful with old PSUs. Even my Apple II PSUs don't get used until I rebuild and test them, starting with replacing the RIFA filter capacitors, of course, and these do not currently have the reputation of damaging the computers when they fail (just stinking up your computer and house for days when those RIFAs blow, and eventually they all do). I for one am just not willing to tempt fate and take the chance for no good reason.
DUDE, I feel like a kid again looking at those!
With the basic cart installed, type ?FRE(0) to see the installed memory amount.
I love it! More Atari 8 Bit content! :D
Probably RAM issues with the black screen 400, and definitely the one that went into the self-test.
Just so's you knows, even on the XL series keyboards, the Console keys (Start, Option, & Select) are a little special and are read by a different chip from the main keyboard keys. Pokey reads the main keys, and the Console keys & Joysticks are read by the C/GTIA.
IMHO, Invest in a FujiNet first, you can use it with any of the 8-bit computers as an SD card-based floppy replacement, on top of the sweet online stuff you can do with it.
Clearly you have found Bender's ancestor. Instead of getting drunk, it gets plastered. 🤣
I think you should move the metal shield from the broken 400 to the one with the missing shield for the benefit of _both_ machines. After you repair the lid, you're not going to want a bunch of unnecessary weight on it, adding strain to the hinges.
Oh the hundreds of games I hand typed into my 400 as a kid. I was such a code hound as a child. There was even a basic program that'd let you put in assembler without the rare assembler cartridge. Which was kind of useless without a floppy drive. Back in the day, I only had the tape drive.
Wow! How fast did you get at typing on it?
the tape drive wasn't very reliable either, lost all I wrote, besides what little I could remember.
Oh gods, the first computer I ever bought was an Atari 800XL, that's when it first came out. I programmed the Atari out of it.
20:15 For the third 400, I had similar output on my 800 a few weeks ago, and had to replace the GTIA and the CPU on the back daughterboard. You can use a WDC 65C02 instead of finding an old 6502B if needed, but you’ll need to tie the bus enable pin high.
I'm a little astounded at the amount of different 8-bit machines Atari produced over the years. All largely compatible with each other, with only slight improvements between them. They made the 400, 800, 600XL, 800XL 1200XL, 65XE, 130XE, 800xe, XEGS.
Commodore at the same time went in so many different directions. The pet line, Vic-20, C64, Plus-4 line, B128, and finally a few compatible machines, the 128 and 128D and a styling refresh of the 64, the 64C.
In addition, Atari produced the Atari 5200, which is almost nearly identical to the 8-bit line, but made intentionally incompatible with the 8bit computers because the home computer and the console divisions oddly competed with one another.
It tells you something about the different approaches of the different companies. Atari went the route of Apple, and tried to make 8 bit machines compatible with one another. Commodore just kept pushing what worked, and reducing costs of the motherboard, but also going in a bunch of different weird directions.
And with all that, and all those computers, Atari got old-sold by Commodore.
Been looking forward to this one for a while!
Love how you got so excited when the third machine didn't work. Great! A project!
My first computer was the Atari 1200 XL. My brother and I received it for Christmas in the 80s. We played tons of games on it and one of my neighborhood friends and I toyed around with basic programming from time to time. Wish we would’ve kept it. I think we ended up selling it years later😢.
In the 1980ies, a guy started a Computer Store out of a trailer back of the tire store where he worked. He bought a BUNCH of Atari 800 systems (Computer, Tape Drive and Disk Drive) from a school system in Texas. He planned to sell them and I made a deal with him to go through each one cleaning, fixing and upgrading the memory. With NO support from Atari, parts, schematic, or diagnostics I got all the systems up and running and they sold as fast as I got them done. Those were the days!!! WHEN you could go to Radio Shack AND get the parts you needed to fix your computer!
My brother's 1st computer was an Atari and so he is and has always been an Atari nut. He knows almost everything about Atari's. By association, I love Atari's also and have several, but don't know nearly what he does about them.
I had a friend with an Atari 400 with the membrane keyboard. Those were a pain in the butt to use.
Can't wait for you to get into the repair phase of these. You made me get mine out of storage and they actually still work. Even my 810 drives with the Happy mod survived. I hope you can locate some working disk drives for future videos. I only have a few working software titles on disc as most went bad. Of course all the cartridges still boot.
Most of my disc from the 80s have survived (at least last I checked, maybe its time to test them out again.....)
The previous 800 repair video has two 810's sitting with these machines so he at least has those. =) Your Happy 810's are great!
I ran an eight bit Atari BBS for many years till I finally moved it to a PC. I had a 130 XE with a huge memory expansion and had a CSS "Black Box" that had a SCSI interface as well as a printer port and floppy drive adaptors for PC type drives. I used Sparta DOS to run a huge batch file to setup and boot the Oasis BBS, copying a bunch of stuff to RAMdrive so the BBS responded quickly. I started with a 400, got the Cherry keyboard like the one shown, expanded it's memory and installed a speech synth internally, ultimately had it working as an answering machine/ bridge to the BBS.
nice , would love to do that to mine..never heard of css black box before, I got to look for some of that software..
Schools would often mod the speakers with addition of a pot to control volume or headphone jacks when they either had a room of machines or just one machine in the corner of a class where other students would be working on other things. I would suspect that the hole is for something like that as it is a good place and about the right size.
Nice guess although the internal speaker in the 400/800 is only for the keyboard clicks and is a 1-bit output from the GTIA. The POKEY sound outputs to the TV/monitor.
@@PG-gs5vb True enough, although these clicks can be used for sound just like on the Apple II, and some software that was ported from the Apple II actually use this for sound instead of or in addition to the POKEY.
Oh noes, you're in my land now. Just getting my channel setup. Dennis's Digital Dump. Eli is so excited to make videos!
I think I've worked on every Atari except for the original 800. Always here for you!
Ah...Saturday evening and we are back in your basement again. Thank you for all your effort and please keep on going. I enjoy your videos a lot.
I always wanted to have those Ataris specially the 800 but it's hard to find and seeing you have a ton of them is just waaaaaa
I read at the time that in some corners, the 400's awful keyboard was valued due to its imperviousness to liquids
I absolutely love the cute little white Phillips CRT in this video. It's the sort of CRT I could actually imagine fitting into my tiny London flat!
Cool reparation! I got a NTSC 600XL and designed my own composition out adapter. Fun conputer! Looking forward towards your next video and thanks for sharing
Nice! So happy to see you working on som 8-bit Ataris. 🍻
I am HERE for this!
That's no dust bunny, that's a dust vulture! It ate the bunnies!
Looking for cartridges in old console games is akin to looking in the coin return of video arcade machines, slot machines, jukeboxes, and pinball machines to see if anyone left a few quarters behind! 😆😂
I never had an Atari computer but I have really enjoyed this video. troubleshooting technique is top notch
I had the 1200XL, data cassette and floppy disc, Okidata dot-matrix film ink printer b&w and color, and the modem. No memory what happened to them; thinking parents tossed them out. Lived on it for years and learned BASIC and BASIC+ on it. Helped so much during high school in mid-1980's.
27:57 That bus connector on the 600XL is slightly different than the one on the 800XL One of the products you could get for the 600XL was a RAM upgrade to give it 64k RAM and effectively turned it into an 800XL. The RAM upgrade needed 5 volts, which is supplied on the bus connector on the 600XL, but the 800XL does not have that pin powered with 5volts. Likely due to prevent damage from people trying to use that RAM upgrade intended for the 600XL to be used on the 800XL.
Other uses for that bus connector were SCSI controllers for use with hard drive and whatever else that worked on SCSI 1. A friend of mine ran a BBS on an Atari 65XE with a 20MB scsi hard drive connected to it. The BUS connector port on the XE machines is different (as it's shared with the cart slot) so there had to be an adapter to make it into an XL-style bus port so you could connect devices to it.
The Atari 800 looks so good when compared to the Vic 20 with its tiny memory also when compared to a zx81 or spectrum the keyboards look quite good
It was also vastly more expensive than all those machines, mind.
Vic 20 was basically a budget system. It did good for it's price range.
Wouldn't the Atari 400 be a fairer comparison?
@@SonicBoone56 Yeah, 800 had a ton more ram, and was more expandable. 400 would definitely a better comparison.
Wow, the first machine looks perfect! Definitely a museum worthy specimen that you could leave as a display or something. I'd say it's too perfect to modify or do anything with besides mixing it with other parts to make one perfect machine.
My best guess for that hole would be 1/4 inch headphone jack.... That would likely explain why they removed the speaker, it'd keep kids from being obnoxious with loud games in the school library, which is where this machine was likely used.
The 400 membrane keyboards were great for kids with hands smothered in PB&J.
Fantastic video, love your enthusiasm, I was trying to tell you as video playing what some of the faults were! But anyway these 8 bits have proven to be better than we ever thought and are worth saving. And the 800xl keyboards I always really liked, very reliable. The xe have the problems keyboard wise. The XL line are known for their decent keyboards.
I have several and they are 40 years old and they still work perfect. Got to love that kind of reliability!
Anyway superb video, and thanks for doing it!
Commodore is the lord's 8bit!
Had the Atari 400 - did change the keyboard, cause the ordinal one was terrible. Stock 400 RAM was 8K.
Bought the 800 a couple of years later. I loved it much more. Remember upgrading the memory 32K cost $320 back in 1982. A couple of years later bought the 512ST, with two disk drives, and used it for a few years.
You don't want to throw away the shielding because of the fire risk! You can fix a bad keyboard with a conductive paint pen. Thanks for uploading.
Happy Saturday!
Clearly the last one went to a bar one day and got "plastered!" ;-)
Typing on the Atari 400 Keyboard was miserable. My 400 that I have now, replaced my original 400, looks exactly like the "Mint" one you have. My original one I had had several upgrades to it. First, I painted it entirely black on the outside (forward looking me, now most computers are black). It also was upgraded to 48K RAM via a single board that you just plugged in as a replacement card for the 16K one It had in it (came w/16k). I had a 410 cassette recorder to load tape games that I did copy to disk (Sometimes with hacks sometimes not). It had a B-Key replacement keyboard, like the one you have, or maybe not, but I kept it lubed up with some sort of lubricant, WD40 or 3in1 Oil probably. They did make several of them. It also had one of the joystick ports routed to a side opening for a modem that I had for it that plugged into the joystick port (it was a simple split, the original port still worked). I had 3 disk drives for it, and 810, a 1050, and a Percom DSDD 360K drive. But before the B-Key keyboard, yes, the ends of my fingertips always hurt after a session on my first computer, that keyboard was murder. Ran mine on a 13" Sears TV on a small desk in my bedroom. I was the only student in school with a home computer in my class back in 1980, and two others in the school. One was a Synclair flat looking ZX thing and the other was a TRS-80 Model 1 with a Black & White screen, but it did have a modem, so we could connect via phone to each other. Yes, I had many disks that I "Flipped" over to get to the other 80K of storage that it had on it. I did have one of the "Square Hole" punches.
The Atari machines were built like tanks inside, they probably will work forever as long as you take care of them. The 400 I have does still work, and it has several carts for it including BASIC which I was very talented in it's use and did write at the very least two games for it. One was my high school physics projects. It was a game that used several things that allowed you to use your "cheats" (the knowledge of physics equations) to win the game that was about betting on races that you had inside info on about the vehicles power systems they used to propel the machines in the races. Then you could watch the race and see the outcomes of each of the 4 competitors, and of course you could wager your credits on the winner (and win if you did the math right). Not only did I get an A+ on that one, My teacher was convinced to buy an Atari 1200XL at the time (he later Upgraded to an ST as well, I think - before we all went to DOS then Windows machines). Yes, the old girl did me right. Now I'm an Engineer in a Data Center working with HAL... Who could have guessed that? 🤠👍
LOL that's a first. I've seen a lot of nasty stuff inside old machines, but a rock and plaster?!? I wish I knew what this machine went through in its previous life. 🤣🤣
Future Repairfest! 😃
24:24 - the very last moment the spacebar worked for 1 character! I don't know why but I like this computer looks.
27:00 - maybe the solder on the cartridge slot is broken, you know, high stress plugs and things like that can get this issue where the solder holding the component inside the PCB gets broken from all the movement. You might need to reflow it.
the XL and XE machines looked very nice!
Great show and prelim diagnostic!
Looking forward to the repair videos! Hopefully you can also do some memory upgrades!
Hi Adrian, I grew up on the 600 XL and had a memory expansion that used the expansion port on the back. It was an atari 1064 memory expansion module and took it up to 64K total. Also had an Atari 1010 tape drive (wow was that thing bulky).
I remember the connection on the memory expansion module was very touchy and just tapping it while the computer was on would often cause crashes.
I also remember the cable that went from computer to tape drive was a really thick, stiff cable and started breaking from the strain relief on the ends.
I had both the 400 and later the 800XL. I still have my 800XL with 5.25 Floppy and Tape drive. I had one purchased game on tape called SCRAM it was a nuclear power simulator. I spent hours on the membrane keyboard typing in basic games from magazines. I did replace my own ram chips at one time, when I was 18? I'm about to be 52. It's been years since I pulled them out and played with them. They should be in good shape, kept in a dry environment and boxed up from dust. I used my 800XL with a 1200 baud modem at college to dial into the VAX/VMS Fortran mainframe to do my programing for engineering.
Are you able to start a museum like RMC? You have so many beautiful computers with nobody to play with them except you. If it's possible, maybe consider it? Keeping Portland "weird" and all that.
I was just talking to a friend about trying to do something like that in NY.. I wonder if a crowd fund would be worth it...
Man this brings back memories. My first computer was an 800 with the 815 dual disk drive, 410 tape drive, the 830 modem and a small printer I dont remember the number of.
I remember in Dec of 1982, I was looking at getting an Atari. I was humming and hawing over which to get. I wanted the 800, as it had the 48K, while the 400 was 16K. A few people who had bought the 400, had upgraded the Memory, and had installed a Keyboard. Once I factor the costs of those upgrades, the price difference wasn't all that great. So I bought the 800 and used it until 1990, when it was stolen when the House was broken into. I did add an 810 Disk Drive, and a couple years later Pooched it by adjusting its Speed in an Attempt to get it to get around some Anti Copying thing on the disks. I replaced it with an 1050 with the Happy Enhancement.
Looking forward to meeting you at VCF Midwest in September :)
That final (plaster) 800XL looks like it was having trouble locating the RAM using the diagnostics. The ROM test seemed to work fine, but no RAM was then detected and tested. Looked like all of the 4164 DRAM's were socketed, so it could be worth raiding your recent donation of RAM chips to see if they can be used to resurrect the machine.
The 400 could be massively upgraded, something I didn't know until it was relegated to the "garage".
most likely plaster got into that machine because it was in a building that caught on fire - firehoses spraying into a hole in a roof will cause ceilings to collapse and cover everything inside with wet plaster. ive been thru it a time or 2 and some of the stuff I salvaged looked exactly like that.
The 400 was the first computer I had. Once I figured out how to add two numbers in BASIC, I was hooked. I replaced the membrane keyboard with an after market keyboard. Later I got an 800XL which I used as a freshman in college. Amazing what was possible with a 6502 and 64MB RAM.
After repairing my 600XL (Bad RAM, dead CPU), I upgraded to 64KB, a very easy upgrade, and added VBXL and Ultimate 1MB and use it with my SIDE3 cart. Ir is a superb machine that takes up very little space on your desk, they are fabulous. I'd also suggest you get a Star Raiders cartridge as they do act as a diag cart to a degree.
Looking forward to these repair videos! I've got a 800xl that slowly went from sort of works to no video output and maybe I'll get some ideas on how to fix it
"Get a piece of the rock." 🤣
I wonder how many near perfect 8bit computer went into the trash simply because of a not fully working keyboard. I'm guilty of this as well. At the end of the 90's when I was a teenager I threw away a Commodore C116 with Datasette and joystick, because two of its horrible gummy keys were not working anymore. Otherwise it was working perfectly. Today that machine on ebay is worth something between 300-600€ here in Europe, depending on its condition. With my knowledge of today I'm pretty sure I could've fixed it. It was by no means a great nor even a good machine. But it was my first computer and I'm sorry that I threw it away, just because it had a *fixable* keyboard issue.
Those 800XLs with the mechanical keyboards feel great when they're clean. I vastly prefer them over the 8-bit Commodore keyboards.
Me to especially with the Alps key switches.
I prefer the 130XE's keyboard, those type really well.
It depends on which type of keyboard you get. The "type 1" with the Alps key switches are pretty nice, but the most common (at least from what I've seen) "type 4" keyboards are nasty to type on. Unfortunately, my 800XL has a type 4, and I prefer my C64's keyboard over it (and I prefer my 800's keyboard over both).
Actually, the 1200XL was the first of the XL models to come out. The 600XL and 800XL came out later replacing the 1200XL.
Good luck with the keyboards. But all looks promising. Hopefully see a few of these running soon. :)
little piece of atari 8 bit trivia. if you had the basic cartridge inserted, and a tape drive (the 410 unit) connected, you could play music from a music cassette with it. the atari controlled its tape drive through a single memory location, location 54018. if you poke 54018,54 in basic with the tape drive connected, it would turn on the motor (which had a play button, but also needed to be activated in the memory to get power to the unit turned on) and turn the speaker on as well. ironically, you could use this same method to load a program from tape without a specific load command. this even worked to test bugs. at one point, i had my atari 400 connected to a reel to reel and stored programs on quarter inch tape. they were very much fun, those machines.
The 400 keyboard was also meant for kids, so to be kinda spill resistant.
Not long after I upgraded my Atari 400 with The B Key 400 keyboard I purchased a 130XE, go figure.
That last 800XL has what one can euphemistically called flood damage.