Very nice! They are great machines. Yours here has the Stackpole keyboard, FYI. There are five different keyboards variants for the 800XL's. Lucky that yours has BASIC rev C.
Thank you for the article. I am also just getting back into Atari computing. I still have my Atari 800XL bought from Dixons with a 1050 disk drive back in the early 90's. I have bought a Meanwell 5V 15W substitute PSU for the 800XL as the original is about 30 years old.
Incidentally, the 6502C processor is Atari specific and designated Sally. It has a HALT line which a normal 6502 CPU does not so they are not interchangeble.
Yeah, 320KB expansion is pretty much the go-to option as 99 % of productions won't need more and those that do are not worth it. Also, there are some external memory expansions for the PBI (or ECI, if you have an XE machine that has this interface) available, which do not require any soldering.
My old 800XL is toasted from an electric power surge. I believe the OS chip is toasted. With your mapping, I am confident to start my journey to repair it. What other things should I consider looking at? It doesn't turn on at all (not even the led).
I'm not a hardware guy, so my experience is minimal. I'd say you'd have to start tracing the signal from the power port and through the board to see where it is failing. Eventually you'll reach a point where the single stops, probably due to a dead chip, and you can start by replacing it.
You'll have to know your way around a multimeter, plus you'll have to be able to desolder chips and solder in new ones. These are all learnable skills, but I have little practice with them. I also recommend a strong magnifying glass to be able to inspect traces closely.
I don't have anything specific to recommend, but if you do a YouTube search for "Atari 800XL repair" you should get quite a few videos that would be a good start.
Very nice! They are great machines. Yours here has the Stackpole keyboard, FYI. There are five different keyboards variants for the 800XL's. Lucky that yours has BASIC rev C.
Thank you for the article. I am also just getting back into Atari computing. I still have my Atari 800XL bought from Dixons with a 1050 disk drive back in the early 90's. I have bought a Meanwell 5V 15W substitute PSU for the 800XL as the original is about 30 years old.
Incidentally, the 6502C processor is Atari specific and designated Sally. It has a HALT line which a normal 6502 CPU does not so they are not interchangeble.
Atari Age has an article on the S-Video modification for the 800XL at https://atariage.com/forums/topic/41580-quick-easy-video-upgrade-for-800xl/#comments.
I have not tried this yet as I have been upgrading memory on my Atari 65XE as lots of programs require 320KB, especially if you look for them!
Yeah, 320KB expansion is pretty much the go-to option as 99 % of productions won't need more and those that do are not worth it. Also, there are some external memory expansions for the PBI (or ECI, if you have an XE machine that has this interface) available, which do not require any soldering.
Thanks for the info!
My old 800XL is toasted from an electric power surge. I believe the OS chip is toasted. With your mapping, I am confident to start my journey to repair it. What other things should I consider looking at? It doesn't turn on at all (not even the led).
I'm not a hardware guy, so my experience is minimal. I'd say you'd have to start tracing the signal from the power port and through the board to see where it is failing. Eventually you'll reach a point where the single stops, probably due to a dead chip, and you can start by replacing it.
You'll have to know your way around a multimeter, plus you'll have to be able to desolder chips and solder in new ones. These are all learnable skills, but I have little practice with them. I also recommend a strong magnifying glass to be able to inspect traces closely.
Thank you for your help, Paul.
Yes, I got a multimeter, soldering skills to desolder, all the necessary equipment.
I only need to know "how to follow" the power-up schematic. I have no skills on that.
Maybe a short 1 minute video on how to test each power-input point in the motherboard would be really helpful.
Thanks!
I don't have anything specific to recommend, but if you do a YouTube search for "Atari 800XL repair" you should get quite a few videos that would be a good start.