squonk

I had something similar with my 800XL, with my '.' key. On the underside of the keyboard assembly there's an array of tiny screws holding the mylar in place. I backed the screw that was near the . key out just a little bit, maybe half a turn, and it relieved the pressure that was forcing the contacts together. My keyboard has worked perfectly since. Give it a try.

That's a nice set of books, and a number of them are ones I am missing. I sent you a PM - let me know if you are interested in selling this piecemeal. Thanks for making this available! -mike

Thanks for the responses! I'll check again, the software that I got seems to be in preregistration mode, and the only way I could see to register involved a payment. But it's possible I misunderstood something.

So I finally took a moment to set up my SIO2USB from Atarimax. It works great, but I didn't realize that the required software was an additional cost, and in a few weeks my trial version will run out. Whoops! I guess I should have researched a bit more. From what I've been reading, it sounds like all the SIO2PC software alternatives don't support the USB version? Is this actually the case? I was hoping to use Respeqt as I am interested in contributing a few features, but adding USB support sounds a bit daunting... thanks, -mike

Looking at the case from the back, it looks like they just took an 810 case bottom, flipped it over and put it on top of another 810 case bottom, and then created a new front bezel for it. And, of course, probably some minor electronics changes. I suspect that in this day of 3D printers it wouldn't be too hard to create an externally identical replica out of a pair of 810s. It might not even have to be a destructive mod - you could probably just set the spare parts aside and rebuild the 810s to their original glory if you ever wanted to. I might need to play with this idea, should I come up with another 810 sometime.

I would shoot for things like network access, a voice synthesizer, all the MIO & black box functionality, and home automation (sensor access and motor & actuator control) would be good candidates for cards to put into an expansion chassis. I've been paying attention to the thread discussing the actual development with some interest in working on projects like this. An interesting idea (to me) would be a card that can mount a Raspberry PI or Arduino, which would allow fairly direct access to the entire ecosystems of those platforms for Atari users. For any such device to actually be successful, three things need to all come together - the box itself, a wide enough collection of cards to choose from, and software on the Atari side for users to access the devices. I've also been thinking that a strategy to this might be something akin to the SIO2PC route. The PBI, while faster than the SIO bus, is still relatively slow compared to modern machines. It should be possible to create a device that connects to the PBI and USB3 to a PC running software similar to SIO2PC software that bitbangs the translation between parallel and fast serial. That would allow virtual devices to be developed on the PC side, which could be easier to create than fabricating individual boards for each piece of functionality. Or maybe this is just silly.

I would be interested in one or two boards, depending on cost.

I would also be interested in two of these.