DavidMil

Ok the third 800 is now working. I found a very small piece of wire (evidently a piece I had snipped off) that had fallen into the middle RAM socket, and when a card was pressed into the socket it created a short. But the RAM chips still have me confused. All of the 16 chips have C014331-09 stamped on them. David

An interesting note about the third 800 I'm building. I have discovered that any RAM card installed in the middle RAM socket will cause the machine to NOT boot and gives a dark green screen when you power up the computer. I'm going to have to pull this 800 all the way down so I can look at the bottom of the motherboard. Why is nothing ever easy? DavidMil

Ahhh. Maybe I'm getting Ultima and AR mixed up. That's easy to do these days. Thanks Gunstar. David

I have several 800's and both are working machines (one has an Omnimon board in it). Here's my problem: I was putting together a third 800 so I could use my RAMROD card. I have two spare RAM cards with Mostek 4116N-3GP and another card full of National Semiconductor MM5290's. When I put one of the 4116 cards in RAM slot one, all I get is a black screen. I thought I had a bad RAM chip, so I replaced it with the other 4116 card and I got the same thing. I replaced that card with the 5290-4 chip card and the machine came up fine. So I put one of the 'bad' cards in slot two and ran SALT memory test. No errors! I pulled that 'bad' card out of the machine and put the other 'bad' card in. Again no errors. I put the first bad card in the last RAM slot (so I had both 'bad' cards in the machine) and booted the 800 without any problems and it passed SALT again with no problems. So I played several games without any problems just to verify that they worked. Out of curiosity I looked at both of my other 800's and I had one card with the same Mostek chips in it. So I switched it to the first RAM slot and now that machine wouldn't boot till I switched it back. Lastly I tried plugging the two spare Mostek cards into RAM slot one and neither of them would allow the 800 to boot. Does anyone know if there is a known problem with these Mostek 4116N-3GP chips and the 800 PC's? Thanks, DavidMil PS. I tried switching the Mostek chips out of one of the 'bad' cards with the National Semiconductor chips and the problem followed the Mostek chips. So I know it's not the cards. DM

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember using three drives with one of the Ultima games. Am I loosing it or was this true? Also where there any other games that could use more than two floppy drives? DavidMil

C41 is a 0.1uF axial cap as Rybags said. I have tons of those. If you'd like me to mail you some PM me. DavidMil

To show every body what a genius I am; when I saw this string yesterday I thought that it was strange that some one else needed a number three key cap just like I did last year. I didn't even figure it out till I say my name in the first post! For years I've wondered who that strange old fat guy in the mirror is. I just couldn't image that time and my wife's wonderful cooking could do this to me... Getting old sucks! (But at least it let's me play with my Atari more.) David

I agree that it is kinda off subject, but it does pertain to this forum. Ha! I just got one more post! DavidMil

Specifically I was curious about the 'Personality Module Socket'. David

Can somebody tell what I'm seeing (other than an EPROM Burner)? DavidMil

Thanks for the info Nezgar. Believe it or not I actually printed this out and stuck it on my pegboard. David

Can some knowledgeable person tell me what are all the levels (Dragonstomper etc.) here on AA and how many posts it takes to advance to each higher level? Thank you, DavidMil

I was on Amazon a little while ago and I found this deal on a 400. No one seems to know if it's working or not... Also there are all kinds of crazy prices for software too! DavidMil

As Nezgar recently said: Success! I bought a non working HI-TEK keyboard on ebay and pulled the contacts out of one of the spaces (where the Break key was to be specific) and pushed them into the hole for the space bar. And the keyboard is working again! Of course I had to re-solder every set of connections to the circuit board, but that's cool to get a good working keyboard for my other 800. Brad at Best sent me a half dozen good plastic plungers so I replaced the worst cracked plungers and put a drop of super glue on the others, and the keyboard now works great! DavidMil

That was my fault for not looking closely. Yes, you could see the hole in the top, but to be honest it looked like a speck of dirt. The vender wanted his drive back too. I remember we had to make a cryptic call in DOS to do a low level format before we could use those old drives, and it took about a hour to complete. Those were the days! David

I bought a 20 meg half height Seagate RLL hard drive from a seller on ebay a long time ago. The add said, "tested, some bad sectors but working." When the drive showed up it had a hole drilled through the top and out the bottom. This was a way that some companies made sure their data was safe. I did get a refund, but I had to go through ebay to get it, because the seller accused ME of drilling the hole! From the way his correspondence read, I think that English was a second language for the seller. David

If the drive were mine Nezgar, I'd replace every electrolytic cap just to be sure. Flakey caps can cause all kinds of tiny voltage spikes that will damage other components over time. But then I've always been know for overkill David

One thing I forgot to ask... If/when you desolder the cap, did the voltage regulator stop getting hot? If not, you've got another problem. David

I have several 2.2uF radial caps. Let me know if you can't find them locally and I'll send you one (or two if you need 'em). You should be able to get one at any major Electronics supply house. I use Mouser because they are close. David

Believe it or not the old 800 keyboard is the hardest of all to fix. A sticking key on an 800 is caused mainly by a cracked or dirty yellow or white plunger under the spacebar. Carefully pry the spacebar up and then examine the plunger that the space bar was pressed into. If there are no cracks in this plunger try to work it up and down. If it moves freely you probably have a bad spring under the plunger. If it sticks you can buy some cleaner in a aerosol can to clean the space around the plunger, then but a little graphite around the plunger and see if that frees it up. DavidMil

Like bob1200xl said, when you remove the copper from a fiberglass board green is generally the color of the surface under the copper. David

How good is you multimeter? I had a dead short in a 1050 once and I used the continuity tester to find the short. The lower the ohms reading to ground along the 12V trace, the closer you are to the short. Turns out it was an internal short in a small electrolytic cap. Electrolytic caps a cheap and easy to get. I'd start with them. DavidMil

I wanted to say something about lifted pads. As I do a lot of desoldering, every once in a while I will lift a pad. To solve this I bought 100 eyelets, a proper sized drill bit and a finishing tool from a company called International Eyelets. Now if I lift a pad, I just drill out the hole, insert a eyelet in the hole and use the finishing tool to make a new plated through hole pad. This works really great! DavidMil

A bit of other info about HI-TEK and Stackpole: HI-TEK filed a law suit against Stackpole for copyright infringement but lost. Even though the finished product was the exact same, the manufacturing process was totally different. So HI-TEK changed the design of their keyboards and abandoned the design that made such wonderful Atari 800 keyboards. The new design was very popular with IBM's, HP's and VAX terminals, but alas Atari went with a cheaper design. * DavidMil * Info from HI-TEK Corporation History site.

No, the pads are good, the pins are gone. I've attached a picture to show you. David