Colleton

I'm using Salon Care 40 Volume from Sally Beauty. It should be safe, at least nothing has caught fire yet.

I'd like a Mega ST4 and a Mega STE. A working Mega File in good condition would be nice as well.

NTSC 83A AV031425 213 It has a B-Key keyboard and is a fairly late production date. Looks to be in great shape. Can't wait for it to arrive, I've wanted one with this keyboard for a while now.

I think I'll check at the 2 hour point and then go from there. If it weren't for the patch on the cart door I'd probably call it good right now. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I watched the 8-Bit Guy retrobright a C-64 a week or so back using some wild looking UV lights with great results. I ordered a pair of them this evening after realizing that I would probably never get the case back to the original shade without some help. Hopefully, they will make a difference. I'll either melt it down or get it back to the original color. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FSZGP1Q

The bottom case back needs more work, but it is much better. I need to turn the back towards the window for a few days. What do you think?

Good for you. I bought an UltraSatan from Lotharek a few weeks back and am very pleased with it. Works just like my HD did back in the day. One thing you need to do though is to purchase a full HD driver from either http://atari.8bitchip.info/pphdr.php (AA user: ParanoidLittleMan) or https://www.hddriver.net/en/ If you have an SD card reader, open the SD card from Lotharek (it will open on your PC as multiple drives) and copy everything on the drives to your PC. It's good to have a backup. Later, after you have bought a HD driver, you can copy the files you want onto the SD card you partitioned on your ST. Yes, your demo version came with the US I ordered from Lotharek a few weeks ago. I had already bought the full HDDRIVER package though, didn't realize that you were PP until afterward.

Well, I've been trying jamm's idea of painting the case parts with peroxide creme and leaving them to sit in a room with indirect sunlight for the past 2 days. ~9-10 hours each day. I wash them off in the evening and re-coat them in the mornings. I'd say it's working very well so far. The real darkness is gone, but the case is still slightly darker than the area that was (I'm assuming) covered by a sticker at one point. I'm including a pic, and you can also see it in the 1st pic in the OP. I think it will be very difficult to lighten the case to that point, but needs must. No rest for the wicked...

Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry for the confusion. That is what I meant. No problem, it's all good.

Sunlight works very well, with no ill effects that I can see. It just takes a long time to work. I know peroxide will speed the process up. I used it on an ST case with a good result a few weeks ago. Maybe I'll try jamm's suggestion listed above.

Played Oids and Lemmings. Upgraded a 1040 STFM and a Mega ST2 from TOS 1.02 to 1.04 Replaced the 240v PSU that came with the UK 520 STE I bought recently with an EXXOS 110v PSU. Works well, but it was expensive. Upgraded my 4K 520 STE (TOS 1.6) with the EXXOS STE Dual TOS board (1.62 and 2.06). Works as advertised, I'm very pleased with it. Using 1.62 for now. Kind of wishing I'd gone with a switch instead of a jumper though. Maybe I'll change that in the future. All in all, I'm finally happy with my ST situation. Using the 4K STE as my main ST with a UltraSatan HD. It's beginning to feel like my 2K 520 STFM with an external SCSI drive did back in the day. Now I need to find a nice desktop, any recommendations?

FWIW, I replaced all of the electrolytic caps this afternoon. Both the side board and the main board. Working like a champ. The keyboard cleaned up really nicely. The case is a work in progress, lol.

Good to know, thanks. I've already posted the info to the thread.

Never heard of this. Interesting.

Here are pics of the boards. Hope they show what you want to see.

Yeah, I have no idea why the label says 400. I'm sure the RAM module cases were removed by a previous owner, but who really knows? I'll see if I can take some pics.

Oh, the two plastic poles that hold the cartridge door spring in place are broken off and long gone. I don't know what to do about that, it doesn't look like an easy fix.

Bought an NTSC 800 with a production date code of 949 this past week and received it on Thursday. Surprisingly, at least to me, it works very well. It has a CTIA chip and a 6502B CPU. I haven't checked to see if it has OS A or OS B yet, but I will once I have it re-assembled. It has 48K of RAM, with a 16K board and a 32K Axlon RAMCRAM board. I wonder if this one originally came with an 8K or a 16K board? Right now it's completely disassembled. So far I've only seen minor differences between this machine and late production machines. The biggest difference I can see and easily recognize is the keyboard cable and the associated connector on the motherboard. The cable is just a stiff wired ribbon cable with bare wires at the end and the motherboard connector is just a row of holes for the wires to poke into. The case is out in the back yard right now in a vain attempt to "light brighten" the darkened plastic. It will take weeks in the sun, and probably much warmer temps to work, so I'm not expecting much from this weekend. The keyboard keys are soaking in hot water right now, and I've blown out the keyboard assy itself. The side board was absolutely filthy and the large 4700uf caps are bulging. I've cleaned the board with alcohol and then deoxit and have ordered replacement caps for the side board and main board. Same cleaning for the main board. I swear I'm going to catch some deathly disease from cleaning the crud out of these old computers. If anyone has any questions, just ask.

Very cool. I imagine that the SuperSalt units are fairly unobtainable?

This is a very good s-video and composite cable. I have a couple of them: https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/atari-xlxe-5-pin-din-to-s-video-composite-av-cable/

Well, it has the brown levers for the expansion cover and cased expansion cards, so I would think it was a 16K 1982 or earlier model, but the bottom case sticker has a 123 date code. Looking at the differences in color of the upper case and the expansion cover door, the expansion cards and the date code I guess it could be a put together? I dunno, just guessing. I think it's worth $100-$125. A week or two of the case sitting out in hot summer sunshine and any case discoloration will be gone.

If it has an AW serial number it isn't a 1979 production machine, right? GL to the seller, too rich for me.

949 3138 NTSC, 49th week of 1979. CTIA.

It sounds like he sent you a hard disk partition to write to your SD card? If so, you can connect an SD card to your PC then use a program like Win32DiskImager or balenaEtcher (both are free) to write the partition image to the SD card. If you need one, USB SD card readers are cheap on Amazon.

A final entry: Received the replacement GigaFile today. It correctly detects the size of the SD card and I am able to successfully partition the SD card and write HDDRIVER to the ? drive. Everything works perfectly. It even boots the SD card I partitioned on the UltraSatan, which is to be expected I guess. Hat tip to Wolfgang and Inventronik for the fantastic customer service!