Recapping my 800xl. Cap list?

[Justin Payne]

Hey all,

 

I'm in the process of gathering up my BOM's for recapping my 800xl. I haven't pulled all of the caps to get the lead spacing and the service manual doesn't give that kind of detail. Did anyone ever gather such info? If not, when I do I can make it public. I just didn't want to reinvent the wheel.

[+DrVenkman]

There's nothing non-standard about any of the internal caps in most Atari stuff. Modern replacements will work just fine for all of it. But is it really necessary to recap stuff on a working system? I own 15 A8 computers and two 5200's. I've only ever had to replace one tiny cap in the video circuit of one of three 800XL's. I bought a dozen or so replacements for the 40 cent part just to make it worth the order, but the replacement just dropped into place.

[1050]

I'll also echo the non-need to do this. Only issue

with caps is in the 1050 drive and that's because of

the monster legs on those can work the solder and

fatigue it into mechanical failure. Rare is the bad

cap that has bulged from good old days when they

used the good soup inside them. Millennial cap

makers went cheap and used the weak sauce which

started the bulged cap fad in the first place.

Since then it's blamed for everything including

how the battery in my car just died.

 

If it were made at the turn of the century, you

might want to look up forums for that device and

read a bit more on it to see if those were stinkers

or not. I've got a couple of PC video boards with

100% ooze and bulge, but nothing like that from

the 80s or 90s.

 

Won't try to stop you and no, not to my knowledge

has anybody made such a list before this. Never

was a need...

[+kheller2]

I haven't seen an 800XL yet that needed a recap. The large ones in the 1050 and even 1200XL can go, I have a 1200XL with a slight bulge, but it still works fine.

 

However, BSR/ADC Equalizers from the late 80's and early 90's and Technic's receivers from early 80 -- yeah.. recapping makes a difference.

[Level42]

Totally agree.

 

I own quitte a few A8's and non ever needed a new cap.

 

I routinely measure all caps on about every device I work on with a good ESR meter and absolutely none ever showed bad values,

Atari apparently used a good brand, even though they didn't use Nichicon which the arcade division did....

 

Even the XE's ,....no problems at all.

 

In my arcade collecting days I replaced a number of caps, usually these were subject to heat. And there's not much heat in an A8....they're no Commodores.....

Edited February 4, 2018 by Level42