EkriirkE Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Picked up a Portfolio lot, and one of them just showed a "black" screen and no beep on initial resetSo, following the rumours of the FFC cable breaking I began disassembly to get to the ribbon:Nothing apparent yet, let's get that tape off next...Aha! a hairline crack on the left, 6 traces broken. Rather than try and get the screen open to remove/replace the cable for now (the clear window hides some screws and I don't want to damage it) I decide to scrape some of the polyimide off to expose the copper of the ribbon wiresAnd solder little jumpers across the gapsPartial reassembly to test...Yes, it works!And it beeps and clicks as well. This is only temporary, but it makes me happy for now 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 As long as it works, it's o.k. Tried something similar with an XE keyboard and it turned out exactly as expected. Totally ruined... The melting point of the used plastic was just way too low. Looks like the guys at "DIP" did a better job then Atari did with their keyboards. No, you won't see much Portfolio stuff here. It's an 8088 based system, where "our" 8-bits are 6502 based so they have nothing in common. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EkriirkE Posted June 9, 2018 Author Share Posted June 9, 2018 (edited) Yes I know but didn't see anywhere else fitting. This ribbon is polyimide - kapton. It's heat resistant. The stuff used in membrane keyboards is usually low temp stuff, yeah, with painted traces instead of etched copper, so silver/conductive epoxy is probably the best route there Edited June 9, 2018 by EkriirkE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 Aha! a hairline crack on the left, 6 traces broken. Rather than try and get the screen open to remove/replace the cable for now (the clear window hides some screws and I don't want to damage it) I decide to scrape some of the polyimide off to expose the copper of the ribbon wires That's a classic failure. If you like to improve durability, abstain from reassembling the two halves of the plastic barrel where the ribbon goes through. The flex ribbon is able to withstand many bends, but the barrel guide leads to force on a very little section of it, leading to the crack... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted June 9, 2018 Share Posted June 9, 2018 I'm fond of my portfolio, surprising actually AA doesn't have a forum for it! I liked being able write simple BASIC programs on it on my train commute in my early years of work. It was also fun to use to dial phone numbers since it could emit DTMF tones from the address book, and use IRC and play MUD's via modem and the terminal emulator late at night in bed hehe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted June 22, 2018 Share Posted June 22, 2018 It needs an 800 emulator written for it ducks and runs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brentarian Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 It needs an 800 emulator written for it ducks and runs Actually, if it would be cool if RespeQt could be compiled to run on the Portfolio. Has anybody ever tried Nick Kennedy's original SIO2PC DOS program on it? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 4 years ago I connected my Portfolio to a modern Windows 7 64-bit PC. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/166154-transfering-files-to-atari-portfolio/?p=3095464 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted June 23, 2018 Share Posted June 23, 2018 Actually, if it would be cool if RespeQt could be compiled to run on the Portfolio. Has anybody ever tried Nick Kennedy's original SIO2PC DOS program on it? I like this idea - incentive to set it up to see if a dos based sio2pc will run at all, maybe APE? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted June 25, 2018 Share Posted June 25, 2018 That's what I wanted to do with mine. Use it with SIO2PC. Many years ago I asked Nick about an update to make it run on old MDA/Hercules graphics systems since it wouldn't display anything on those. We also brought up the Portfolio and however SIO2PC was fixed to run on non-color screens, it still requires a full-height screen to run. Don't think that has changed. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted June 25, 2018 Share Posted June 25, 2018 Well, full height programs will still run on portfolio if I recall, you just have to page around which would be annoying.. But maybe not so much if controlled remotely with APE OS. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted June 26, 2018 Share Posted June 26, 2018 Well, full height programs will still run on portfolio if I recall, you just have to page around which would be annoying.. But maybe not so much if controlled remotely with APE OS. Remote will do. That's how I used it in the very beginning. First had to make some different MS-DOS batch files on an 80286 system to start SIO2PC with various settings on the color-less 8088 system and use remote commands on Atari from there. Not the easiest way but it did the job back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.