Zennmaster

Just joined the club! Atari 1200XL Made in USA 83S DA 017979 133

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This is really, amazingly, incredibly helpful to my late night wild hair project! THANK YOU!!! I'm trying to work up some Universal Game Case inserts, so I'm trying to track down fonts for the box art if possible. I think this will be most of it! Example:

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This is what I ended up doing. The diameter of the shaft turned out to be pretty tricky. I managed to stretch out one size of brass tube enough to fit over the stub, but then discovered that the shaft was actually bent, so it didn't really matter, the shaft was going to have to be replaced. I was able to find a pair of the Tandy sticks on Ebay for cheap. The stick mechanisms appear to be identical, with the exception that the Tandy uses a longer shaft (on the handle side. internally, it appears to be the same), and doesn't have springs in the pots. Luckily, the original Vectrex pots are still in good shape. It really would have bothered me if the new stick didn't self-center, so that was a bit of good luck. I simply disassembled the stick mechanism and swapped out the shafts, and I'm done! And yes, you were right, the controller no longer fits in the face of the console, but that's ok. This one is the primary controller for my secondary Vectrex, and a second/backup for my main Vectrex, so I'm ok sacrificing the ability to stow it neatly in favor of making it usable! THANKS for the suggestion! (And yes, I know, it's still in need of a good (better) cleaning, and I'll probably put a new label on it as well. I think it's seen some pretty heavy abuse, but it's safe now.

If there are any left, I'd like to get one as well. Oregon, USA Thanks!

There ya go! Just make sure you've correctly identified all the wires, bundle 'em together, and you're off to the races. Those look like nice connectors, and thats a nice length of cable!

Anything that just needs 5Vdc. Of course, one would have to build cables with the appropriate connectors.

I am so excited to have this working, and I got to thinking: My current setup, which I consider to be temporary while I am waiting for parts, might not actually be all that bad of a solution if someone is looking to build a bench power supply, or needs to power a number of XLs in close proximity. The arcade power supply I am using is a Suzo-Happ, rated at 15 amps on the 5v rail. They are available from the various arcade suppliers for around $25.00us. The big advantages I see of setting one of these up on a bench: 1) It's got enough power to run several XLs using a single power cord occupying one power socket in the wall. This would, of course require either stacking wires under the terminals or else building a "bus" with barrel connectors. 2) The voltage is adjustable, so you can easily keep it in the healthy range. 3) This supply is designed with all its weak spots arranged so that when it dies, it will generally just quit, and not spike. Disadvantages: 1) It's a bit bulky to use the same way you'd use a brick. 2) There is some set up involved: You'll need to provide a mains cord and do some wiring. 3) The mains terminals are exposed, so you'd need to address the shock hazard, probably with some sort of enclosure. 4) This one just has 5Vdc, so it won't work for any of the machines that want 9Vac. Something to think about, though...

UPDATE: I had a spare arcade switching power supply laying around, which I know gives a stable 5 volts. It's too bulky and cumbersome to use as a permanent replacement, but I figured I could use it to see what the 800XL did when it had good power. I snipped the connector cable from the ingot, and after verifying that the lead with the white stripe is indeed the 5v lead, hooked it up to the 5Vdc terminal on my arcade switcher, and the other lead to the ground terminal. With this power supply solution in place, the 800XL fired up immediately! Just to make sure everything was ok, I entered test mode and let it run. No errors were reported on the first pass. I am now considering this to be a success. Once the Mean Well power supply arrives, probably this week, and the female barrel connectors arrive (tomorrow), I'll build up an adapter cable, and I think this issue will be solved. Thanks to everyone who chimed in, your help is greatly appreciated!

I hope so too, thanks. It appears that the most destructive failure mode on the ingot is when the voltage regulation fails, and it goes above it's rated value. This one has gone low, so hopefully it hasn't fried anything.

Thank you! It actually looks like the US version comes with a male plug, but it was easy enough to find a female connector, which should work just fine. If anyone else wants to build one of these in the future, the connector is a 2.1mm x 5.5mm barrel plug, which is common in CCTV applications. Thanks again, and I'll follow up here with my results once all the parts are in.

Great tip, thank you! I've just ordered the GS18U05, which is the US version of the one discussed in that thread. Next question, which I'm sure will be obvious once I start cutting: It looks like there are just two leads in the ingot's connector cord: One for all three +5Vdc pins, and one for all three ground pins, so after I snip the connectors off of the ingot and the Mean Well, there are only two wires to connect? Or is there something I'm not seeing? Obviously, polarity is crucial. Thanks again!

Hi all - You've heard this part of the story before: I got a new CRT, and went to fire up my NTSC 800XL that I've had for a couple of years. It had been working great, running through an upscaler onto my flat screen, but I hadn't used it much recently since my older 800 was doing great. Anyway, I plugged the XL in, and got this through the monitor port, along with the dreaded buzz. I got the same results through the RF port, and when I tried the upscaler again, no image (not surprising), but still got the buzz. I checked my power supply, which is one of the bad epoxy-encased megabricks, and actually got around 4vdc on the 5vdc pins when measuring with no load (of course). Could LOW voltage cause this kind of issue? Or does the load bring the voltage back up? Obviously, I'll be looking for a new power supply. Even if this one works right, it seems it's just a matter of time before something really gnarly happens. Is Best still the best source for the serviceable bricks? Or are most folks going the 5 volt router/switch mode? Thanks for your help! -Michael

Got mine today, thanks so much, Richard!