philburnite

Nice work metal guy on your sio2pc build and installation , I was going to do the same with my interface and mount the board inside the atari and fit the 9 way to the back of the machine but i desided to build a cable instead so that 1, i didnt have to cut the plastic on my beloved atari ( cos im chicken) and 2, I can use the sio2pc on any machine by just disconecting from the serial port and and re attaching it to another atari if needed oh and in any case i havnt got the correct cutting tools to make a d shaped hole in my xe and the thought of useing a hot nife or soldering iron wasnt nice lol . I'll post some pics of my data lead soon if anybody wants to see it ?

The function buttons are definetly on the main motherboard of the xeg there black micro switch thingys , its been jumped on at some point if all of them are broken has anybody got a XEG keyboard that hasn't gone yellow ? Im sure they were made using a different type of plastic to the rest of the xe series as my xe's are lovely and white but the G is manky I want to throw it away hehe , Ive never opened the keyboard but does anybody know if I could replace it with a 65xe keyboard ? forget that last question I could easily just changed the keys derrrrrrrr .

Yes if one of the 8 existing rams in the bank shown on your photo are faulty the machine will not boot or anything , the wires on an 65xe are last minute mods made during production at atari somebody in development cocked up lol but there in a different place to your purple one anyway .. yes Id try checking the ram one at a time if your working xe hasnt got socketed ram then socket one and use that as your test socket for the 130xe ram and you may as well put sockets in the 130 xe seeing as your going to be removeing the ram chips .

It does sound like a ram problem although it dosnt explain why it stopped working by just putting it in the closet ?? is it damp in there ? and is there any sign of corosion on the back of the board or anywere ? you need to first check all the custom chips just incase on a working machine seeing as all yours are socketed and if there all still ok youll have to individually test the ram on a working xe (1 chip at a time) use a game cartrige when your testing , whats the purple wire for ? the one thats close to the modulator is that something you have done or is that standard the reason im asking is I have never been inside a 130XE .

Hi I have both of them chips on an old board and Ive just took them off U10 is a mcm6810 (motorola) and U8 is a Tandon 188063 there are other numbers on there but im sure thats the main chip number , I would happily swap them both for a 6502 xe xl cpu Im in the uk though pm me if your interested .

Yes definetly faulty Ram , sometimes you can touch each memory chip while the machinre is switched on and feel which ones are getting abnormally hot this works sometimes but what I would do is remove the whole lot and find a working machine and socket one ram chip but leave the chip out so you have 7 rams and one socket then test each 130xe chip individualy youll know which ones are bad when you either get lots of garbage on the screen or a black screen it would help if you did this test procidure with a cartrige game plugged into the working machine .

Ive been to that web site and its not bad , I actually built myself 3 sio2pc interfaces today and ones running on my 800xl right now Im playing arkonoid lol

Hi everybody Im new to this and any forum but Ive been interested in old computer especially Ataris since I was 5 when I got my first comodore plus 4 (great machine) since then Ive been hooked on computers and worked on and repaired nearly every 8 and 16 bit machine as I used to work at a computer repair centre. Anyway back to the reason for posting this , Ive just fixed myself two 800xl's which had ram and processor faults aswell as plenty of damaged tracks on the pcb they both work fine but I had to sacrifice a 65xe for part of its memory for both machines plus its cpu becouse I didnt hve any spares what so ever besides a bare 800xl pcb and 65xe console which has different ram and no cpu anyway . I was wondering if there is anybody out there who would be willing to do some swaps with me for parts they may need in exchange for a couple of 6502 cpu's and 4864 ram I need 8 of these , the parts ive got for swap are - a 800xl keyboard , unpopulated 800xl motherboard with turned pin sockets, 1050 disk drive mainboard populated but not working due to capacitor problems and some xl/xe custom chips if you require a perticular chip ask me and I can look for it thanks for any help you can offer me I also enjoy chatting about old games and machines so drop me a line anytime .