Colleton

It's already gone, I said so in the original post. I have a 5vdc 5 amp PSU coming from amazon this week. I'll cut off the barrel jack, solder on the DIN connector and have another safe XL PSU.

It was the CPU. Sally was dead as a door nail. I haven't tried the keyboard yet, hopefully it's working. We'll see, lots of work still to do. At least it boots now.

Just picked up another 800XL. Sadly, it's broken, but I bought it knowing that it wasn't working. It displays a green screen on boot, and it came with an ingot PSU (lol). Voltage out of the PSU was 5.16vdc. I think that's okay? At any rate, I've already cut the DIN jack cable off and thrown the PSU away. I'm using one of the new PSUs from 8bitclassics. On the plus side, every single chip on the motherboard is socketed, and while the machine has seen some hard days, the motherboard itself looks untouched. I'm going to start with some deoxit and reseating chips. I have plenty of Samsung KM4164B-12 64K DRAM chips, and spares for all of the Atari specific chips except the ROMs so it should be an easy fix. /fingers crossed

Received the 1MB Toshiba chips today and got them installed this evening. Worked the 1st time, booted right up to 4MB pf memory. Ah, so satisfying.

I picked this card up on eBay this past week simply because it looked interesting. You can set it up as either a 2MB or a 4MB card. It didn't come with installation instructions, but I found a copy on archive.org. Did anyone here ever use this card or have any experience with it back in the day? I doubt I'll use it, I think a marpat upgrade would be an easier install. Newell Industries MEG ST RAM card manual.pdf

I've been working on upgrading the memory in my Mega ST2 from 2MB to 4MB. I've desoldered the pads on the motherboard for the sockets, capacitors and resistors and have installed them. I've checked continuity for all of the signals going to and from each socket (address lines, RAS, CAS, WE, Din/Dout, VDD and VSS) and everything looks good. I'm just waiting on the 1MB DRAM chips to arrive at this point. I ordered some NEC D421000C-60 chips from utsource, but they are taking forever, so I bought some Toshiba TC511001AP-70 chips on eBay. I think they are right for this, but would appreciate some feedback on this if anyone knows. Thanks! Here's a pic of the installed components along with the Mean Well RD-50A PSU I have installed in this machine. I'll post more after I get the machine working with the new memory.

I bought an OSSC from an Amazon seller and it was indeed too good to be true. I was sent an old, clearly used unit that the seller was trying to get rid of. It got returned. Most people buy them from videogameperfection, but by the time you add in the costs of the PSU, remote, overlay, etc... it's cheaper just to buy one from eBay. This is the seller I bought mine from. It's the exact same unit that VGP sells, but everything is included at one price. FWIW, the 15KHz video signal from the ST is a big problem these days, being too slow for most LCD monitors and TVs to recognize. The OSSC does a very good job of converting the video signal into something modern displays can handle. I think a retrotink would work as well, but I really like the 5X line doubling capacity of the OSSC. Your only real options are to either buy an old Atari SC 1224 monitor or find an upscaler (OSSC, retrotink, etc...) that works with the 15KHz video signal.

I tried jamm's method last month and it worked very well for me. Just setting the case parts out in strong sunlight on hot days works very well too. Good luck!

I bought an OSSC and an RGB SCART cable from Cool-Novelties. Works like a champ for me. GL!

I'm good, thanks for the offer.

After disassembly, cleaning and reassembly of the drive, today was the day to do a smoke test. Connected the PSU to the drive and flipped the switch. Nothing. Measured the output of the PSU. Nothing. No +5vdc, no +12vdc. Okay, that's fine, better a dead PSU than a dead drive. Called Best to order the PSU. He wouldn't sell it to me because I'd just ordered the data cable yesterday. The 1st order has to clear first. Now I begin to understand why there were so many responses to this thread.

https://blog.troed.se/projects/dallas-rtc-sync-tos-y2k-fix/ I found this and downloaded it last night but haven't tried it yet. Is it specific to the Dallas RTC mentioned in the blog post or will it work with the US?

I've used a couple of Orei upscalers and they've both worked well for me in connecting an A8 to a modern TV. This one is in stock: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004UNYX9M/ This one isn't, but I like it better: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A7B0YZI/ This Monoprice unit works well if you only have a DVI input, but you'll need external speakers: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009GUNEAI/

If myatari had had it listed on ebay I would have bought it from him as I buy from him pretty often. This time I bought from Best and picked up a pack of 720K disks as well to hit the $20 minimum. My thanks to jblenkle for reminding me about Best.

Thanks, I'll call tomorrow!

Does anyone know where I might find an SF314 data cable, or am I going to have to make my own?

I bought a nice Mister last summer via the FB group. Very nice device, the arcade emulation is excellent and the 8-bit Atari emulation is absolutely perfect. The only downside that I've seen is that the ST emulation doesn't work for me.

Good info, thank you. I was worried about bricking it. FWIW, mine is an ili9341.

How do you know which folder is the correct folder?

Buy this cable and use it to connect your 800XL to an S-Video TV or monitor. If the image is black and white, the chroma line is not connected. You'll need a cable like this anyway once you've modded your machine for S-Video, so you aren't losing anything by buying it. https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/atari-xlxe-5-pin-din-to-s-video-composite-av-cable/ Honestly, just open the computer, take the RF shielding off and look at the underside of the motherboard under the video connector. You'll see right there that the chroma line is not connected.

Here you go: https://amigaonthelake.com/ultimate-1mb-upgrade/ Noticed after posting this that they are out of stock. Sorry.

I bought into the hype (and got bored sitting at home for several weeks) and recapped all of my 800s, a couple of 400s and all of my ST PSUs. I haven't really noticed any difference, but it was enjoyable work. Ordered everything through digikey.

This is the best I can do for drive towers.

We may never know. I decided that 3 working S-Video 48K 400s was enough, so I removed the resistors and wiring, reassembled the 400 and put it away for another day. It works fine with the RF Modulator, so I'm happy.

Okay, I have another cable I can try tomorrow. I did try building a new cable using "dupont wires" (as FJC did in his video) but had the same result. I really don't think it's the cable, and I tried a 120 ohm resister in place of the 75 at the luma pick-up point with no change either. We'll see.