Curt Vendel

After 35 Years... The Schematics for the Atari 1450XLD "TONG" have finally been discovered and made available to the community. The Atari 1450XLD page on Atari Musuem has been updated: http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/1450xld/1450xld.html The larger set of the 1983 1450XL schematics will also be scanned and posted hopefully by the weekend. 1400XL schematics (nice clean scans, not the very dark hard to read ones that Best used to sell) will be going up soon as well. Also on the 1450XLD page are the schematics to the Atari Parallel Disk drive controller... More 1090XL stuff coming soon as well...

I have finished the SMD conversion of the board, I will be spending the next 2 weeks thoroughly going through everything to make sure all of the changes are correct and traces are all set. I will then get a set of test boards made and test them out to make sure the design transitioned properly. If all goes good, I can start looking into some PC board companies to do the boards and smd placements at the best cost. Anyone who has any good recommendations on boards of this size for manufacture and SMD placement, please PM me, always looking for best places with excellent pricing. Thanks.

This is AWESOME Scott!!! I will share this up onto the Atari Museum group on FB...

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/xlperipherals/1090/1090xl-demo1.mp4

No one seems to ask this: Atari has made ZERO mention of putting together the needed backend infrastructure to support these supposed consoles for the streaming services and game delivery. Sure, they can rent out some Amazon AWS servers and put something up, but they need to put together the backend code to actually make this whole supposed online service actually work. Even with the new delay, there is still ZERO reason why the controller only purchases shouldn't still ship right now, the controllers should've been done a year ago. They are supposedly bluetooth, so ship them and let people play with them on their PC's, Macs and Linux systems

With all of the testing and debugging now done. The finalized board design with all of the cuts and strap changes is finished and the test board will be ordered next week. So in hopes there are no issues with the board, I've started work on converting the components to SMD to prepare that board for a test and we move closer to having the PCB factory run the production boards and place most of the parts on them... Meanwhile... I need to finalize the updated box art and update the manual and check in with Mark about starting work on the changing the BIOS screen from all of the HW tests to the consumer menu.

I just posted up the Document for the Atari Omni which was a chipset called Penny, Vivian and Heather. It was in Breadboarding stage by March 84 and chip design work had started. This chipset rivals and outperforms even the much touted Amiga chipset... http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/aed/guide_to_omni-13jan84.pdf

Things just don't add up regarding AMY and the whole "It didn't work yet so it couldn't be ready for the STs" line Ive heard for over 30 years... things just don't sound right, so I'm going to be spending some side time so do some deep research (like how I uncovered the whole truth on the Atari Inc Amiga deal) and try to get to the bottom of all of this so we have some straight answers.

Latest round of new documents uploaded: Atari 1090XL Device Registers and General Purpose Interface Notes: http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/xlperipherals/1090xl.html Serial/Parallel Card - Technicals/Schematics, Firmware Allocation and Specifications and ROM package Parallel Disk Drive Controller Schematic I/O Notes (Disk Controller Related) 1090 XL Prototyping Card http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8bits/xl/xl_protos/cards.html

Im turning my sleuthing efforts onto turbocharged... if its out there and still exists someplace, Im determined to make sure it sees the light of day once again.

Enthusiasm is my caffeine;-)

Atari was on the brink of releasing a slew of new computer products, advanced chipsets and computers that couldve truly made significant changes in its place in the market... Warners cold feet and its urgent sale to the Tramiels destroyed all of that.

I have to send them down to John Hardie at the VGHM... the chip plots are 40-44" and the scanners at kinkos are 36" max, so he will need to use their mondo mega sized scanner down in Texas to scan them in for me and send me the high res scans. Just need to buy some shipping tubes and send them down to him. The updates are mostly posted here so far: http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/xlperipherals/1090xl.html http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8bits/xl/xl_protos/cards.html http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/1450xld/1450xld.html Much much more to be following on those particular pages each night... I have quite a stack of folders to scan in and post and lots of hardware that has come in... so it'll all be going up every night.

Project Eskimo, aka .... project Dogsled... aka.... project Atari Explorer did in fact exist past the technical specification document that was written up from January through May 1984. I just received the LCD screen in an XL styled mockup case. I have placed it ontop of a 600XL to give everyone a suggested possible appearance of what it may have looked like. I only have the screen, the keyboard/cpu portion is not to be found... so far.

Just receiving this along with dozens of folders of technical documents and schematics on every expansion card design for the 1090XL, several 1060 CP/M modules and another 1090XL with an unknown board within it... Remarkably - AMY was slated as an Expansion Card for the 1090XL in April of 1984... Here is the schematic, sorry its scanned from a very dark blueprint drawing, I cleaned up the image as best as possible. 1090_AMY_Card17APR84.zip

Time to really blow everyone's minds... In April 1984 Atari had designed an AMY Expansion card for the 1090 XL Expansion box...See attached ZIP file of the actual Schematic. This and other evidence I'm examining... I am not believing the old storyline that Atari Corp couldn't get it to work. Somethings just don't add up and from the Atari Inc standpoint, it seems like this chip was nearly ready to go, something else happened during the Atari Corp days. I'm leaning more towards - they needed money to fund the ST design, so they decided to sell off the chip design or license it out, or something along those lines, IMHO. 1090_AMY_Card17APR84.zip

You sir, would be 100% correct..... all three are NOW working is definitely what I meant :-)

Please make sure you've gone to 7800XM.com and gotten that submitted into the system so I will have your order info ready when these are good to go. Please be certain to include current shipping info please, thanks.

Since the work is still ongoing.... that would be a no.

OKay - final revision.... I combined both Yamaha 3012 outputs together and fed them into the AMP circuit, the variable resistor is set at 6k (original design with 22K) and added the 2nd POKEY from an external cartridge into the design with a 100K resistor onto the summation line and all 3 audio devices are not all working together, no distortion or audio issues, the combined 3012 outputs actually improved the volume on the Yahama 2151. So for your listening pleasure... Michael St. Pierre... a HUGE shout out and THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your design was the basis for my final circuit, just tweaked it and changed a few things, but essentially used your basic premise and it worked like a charm, THANK YOU!!! xm_audio_final_design.MOV

Basically: 1. Completion of full audio circuit. 2. Test of PIA installation, just for electrically connections and to ensure it is routed correctly. 3. 7800 versions final pass compatibility tests. Once to this stage, then: 4. complete final board layout with all cut & strap changes. 5. Run final through hole board, populate and check all modifications and changes are correct. At this stage: 6. Replace most components (with exception of legacy Atari IC's, and BIOS socket/IC with SMD/SMT parts. 7. Run final board layout check with new parts, hand solder components. If all checks: 8. Send BOM and Gerbers to PCB factory for board runs. In house, the only things that'll need soldering at the SIO ports, DB15, BIOS socket and a few odds and ends keeping assembly to minimum. The PLD will be surface mounted to reduce assembly and errors, just needs to be JTAG'd and verified which is a 3 min process at most. 9. Start assembling into cases and packed them up. 10. Ship.

Audio Circuit Test #2 - Onboard POKEY and Yamaha tests IMG_8103.MOV

Hi Shawn, You're right... So here is audio test #1 of 2 (possibly 3) for today... This is just the Yamaha 2151 connected up and running through a separate audio amp daughterboard circuit (huge thanks to Michael St Pierre for this suggested circuit.) I just changed out his 22K and 100k resistors and replaced them with variable resistors so I fine adjust the resistance and get things to the best result possible without having to constantly swap out resistors. Will update on final spec's once finished. So this is video #1, this is ONLY the Yamaha circuit running through this daughterboard amp and then through the JP3 test point on the XM which feeds in to the Ext Audio line on the cartridge connector and brings the audio into the 7800 system. IMG_8098.MOV

Chris -- Glad to see you posted the zip of all of the diskettes I recovered for you back in 2013... sorry I didn't post them up years ago, kinda got side tracked battling my heart from trying to fall apart every other month, lucky I got the best of it and I'm back to full health and very happy to see all those disk images finally being tried out by everyone here on AA :-)

Actually it should be possible to do an RS422 Drop Network through the 2nd joystick port. Server could be set as ID 1 and others as 2...255 IDs for the slaves.