JGRAHAM2

B-Key was one of the things I really wanted in the early 80s. I never really got serious about programming until I got my 800XL. I bought this with the keyboard for nostalgic reasons. I actually bought my original machine because I thought the keyboard was futuristic looking and cool.

It requires some cutting traces, removing capacitors, soldering 6 points, replacing RAM, plugging in a board in place of an ic and connecting to the motherboard with a press on connector. I did it and it partially works. I get a black screen. On reset I get BASIC, but PRINT FRE(0) gives the wrong free memory 39,000+ instead of 37,000+ and it freezes. List produces zeros. Star Raiders works, but other carts do not. I think I have some bad RAM. I’ll try other chips and recheck my wiring tomorrow.

Yes, I’ll upload here sometime this week.

I’m talking about the Mosaic 48k upgrade. I think someone bought it back in the day and after reading the instructions, they decided not to try it.

I’ve got 3 others with the old keyboard and a set of extra boards, so I’m good there.

What do you think? Install in my B-Key 400 or keep as it is?

Got it, thanks!

Are the exact pickup points for the U1MB documented somewhere?

This is an old post, but who has tried this upgrade?

I have 2 of these I’m working on. They are dirty, but for the most part are in working order. The issue with both was the little micro switches under the Start, Option, Select, etc. I tried contact cleaner. Don’t do that. It quite effectively stopped all from working. Taking them apart, they are about as cheap of a device they could source. A rubber cup with a conductive coating shorting 2 tiny pads. I was able to resurrect them using CaiKote 44, but lesson learned. Try one first. I tried using a pencil to restore the conductive layer, but no deal. I had the CaiKote to fix a C128 keyboard. Anyway, on to my question. See the picture. Have you seen a XEGS case top warp like this? Any suggestions on straightening it? I have another and it is not like this. Also, I think the composite video out of this computer is pretty good, so I use my UAV for another one.

Too late for that unfortunately. I will reinforce it and then use a tap perhaps. Thanks.

This is what I’ve done so far, plus glued the ones holding one side of the keyboard. More will have to be done to reinforce it. I’ll use some of the suggestions above.

It happened when they shipped it to me. I’ve had a couple vintage computers damaged in shipment, most of the time due to poor packaging and sometimes due to poor handling.

I actually have 2 800s. Since I am installing an Incognito in this one, I will probably switch cases and defer fixing this one until later. I have about 6 projects going right now, most waiting on parts to come in.

I just took apart an 800 that I bought some time ago. I noticed a little chip out of the case back then, but when I took it apart, I found it is much worse. Any ideas on what to do about this? These cases must be like porcelain. Other than that, I found that it has an Axlon 128K RAMDISK, which is kind of cool.

This was the DMA chip. I replaced it with one from an old 520ST and it is functional again. Thanks everyone.

I did burn this to an EPROM, but I haven’t tried to do anything useful with it. It seemed to work just like the original for what I did do. The lot I purchased had two highly used computers, a 800XL with 256K and a 130XE with 512K. It also came with 2 modified 1050s. He must have found something it was good for. Unfortunately, I don’t have any of his disks and his son really didn’t know much about it.

Thanks, I do have a desoldering station and am practicing on an old board. I’ll probably do this soon. I’ve tried a couple working drives with no luck.

I just got a 1040STe in great condition, but it will not access the floppy or boot from an Ultrasatan (or my MegaFile30 for that matter.) It sounds like it is reading the disk when it boots up, but comes up with the error in the attached picture when it is accessed. (“Your output device is not receiving data.”) I’ve heard a bad DMA can cause this and there are other remedies for general issues in some of the forums I’ve read. I brought this up on Facebook as well. Has anyone seen this exact behavior or have any ideas? I have a couple DMA chips from old 520ST boards that are socketed, so I could just try that, but as you know, removing one from an STe can be risky.

I found a 130XE from the same lot with this OS and 512GB of RAM, switchable down to 128.

Could be. I got the computer in a lot from someone who inherited it from his father. It included a Happy modified 1050.

Just a note that you hold select when you boot up to get to the menu. It doesn’t load from disk unless you go through this menu. To load from a disk drive instead of the RAM disks, just hit return and answer with the drive number you want to load from. It will then load normally.

Here is the OS ROM for “The EXPANDERS RAM-DRIVE PROGRAM “. ExpanderOS.ROM

I finally got everything to fit! 64k upgrade, UAV, and U1M