MisterOz

I own a Creality CR-10, two Ender 3's, three Prusa MK3's (one real and two scratch built Bears) and a Railcore. Like others have said, pros for the Ender are they're dirt cheap, but quality can be very hit or miss and typically will require a bit more fiddling, adjusting, etc. If you're a tinkerer like me and just love to learn this hobby inside and out, it's not really an issue. For a complete newbie, the Prusa is usually considered lowest risk, especially from a quality and product support aspect - both top notch. While no 3D printer will ever truly be an 'appliance', the Prusa machines probably come closest. Of course, you pay a lot more for that. My Prusa's are so dialed in, I usually never even babysit the job after I start it like I do with my creality based machines. Having said all that, you can achieve beautiful prints with any of them with enough tuning and tweaking. Especially once you learn how to calibrate and tune all the various areas of this hobby. Lot of great youtube resources for learning too.

Just read the first page again, missed that - oops.. You've inspired me to try and create my own A8 mini. This one is going to be called the micro. It'll only be for my own use at this point. I've got the layout completed and have started connecting traces. As I'm only proficient in expresspcb/schematic, manually placing these traces and vias is becoming quite the exercise in patience. I've already re-ordered board components about 8 times as I stumble upon different components that I want to try out. I'm probably a bit optimistic in how tight I have everything spaced, as I'm sure you've encountered. Thanks again for your other designs - and of course to all the collaborators. They've been very fun and rewarding to build so far.

Awesome. I really want to build one of these next!

Good call. I did replace the 7812 with a modern one, but not the 7805. They're cheap, I'll order one when I place the order for the new 40p dip sockets.

Thanks for everyone's replies. It turned out to be a dodgy 40pin pokey socket that I was using to gain extra height.. One of the very few parts that I hadn't ordered new and just grabbed from one of my electronics bins. I should have known better, they were very old cheap sockets and I knew that. Ordering some new ones now. So for now, I have full menu control and will press on with testing and learning all of these modern A8 accessories. I haven't touched an A8 since the mid 80's and only learned about all this from stumbling upon Jon's YT videos recently. I've already picked up a pristine condition 800xl (just installed a Sophia DVI yesterday), a non-working 1050 drive (fixed with a recap and retrobrite - looks brand new!), Sdrive-max and built an Ultimate Cart from scratch just for the fun of it. That FPGA was no fun to solder, but it works first try. I just need to print some cases now.

Thanks, good suggestion! I did think about this earlier, just wasn't sure about the compatibility part. I'll try this next after I finish checking all other board components.

Thank you both. Both keyboards that I've tried act similarly and they're both true PS2, no adapters. One is pretty old, other is brand new. No keys work on either other than F11 and F12, which just seem to reset the entire board. Perhaps there a way to init the U1M board out of system? I'm downloading the documentation for it now.

Well, I spoke too soon. I saw the U1M screen during my last posting and assumed it was all good. Then shut it down until today. When I power up, it immediately goes to this U1M menu. I don't see any splash screen, but not sure how long that should appear and perhaps I'm missing it during DVI sync. The Keyboard arrows don't do anything. The three keyboard lights do flash once at power up, so assuming that's good. I may be doing something stupid here as this is all new to me.. What I've tried so far: - Tested all Atari related chips in my 800XL. All check good. - Tested the 64K ram in my minipro - tests good. Also tested with a second chip (had ordered two originally). - Removed tk-ii U7 and read/verified v2.4 hex load with MPLAB IPE. Also removed/reprogrammed the mousetari chip as a tk-ii chip for troubleshooting. No change. - Verified all RN resistor packs, checked all chip 5v/GND and currently going through each remaining discrete component. - Tried two different PS2 keyboards, one is brand new. No change with either. - Verified all solder connections again. I was micro/min solder certified in the military and am pretty anal about having perfect solder joints. Only thing I can think of so far is that maybe the U1M board got damaged when it was installed one pin over during the initial power up. I'm not hearing any audio during power up other than a slight turn-on pop when power is applied - not sure if I should be hearing the atari fart or not. The only key that seems to do anything is F11, if held down it appears to reset everything and comes back up with "profile 3 reset!".

Same here. Would have had her as a teacher the following year. All the camera crews were at our school that day. It was awful..

Boy, I wish I had seen this post before spending an hour trying to troubleshoot my 'initial power up' black screen issue yesterday. Quickly traced my D2 and D3 data bus shorts to the U1M board and STILL proceeded to reinsert the board the exact same way. I then stared at the U1M portion of the schematic long enough and the light bulb finally went off in my head... Doh! Up and running at least.

As someone who places multiple Mouser orders a year, I don't think I've ever received one quite this large before. Yikes, this will keep me busy for a while. I need to recheck everything against the BOM, but fairly sure I have everything except for the svid stacked jack. If anyone in the US has one for sale, please let me know. PCB and more parts should be on the way soon. Thanks to everyone who has put in the hard work on this project. I haven't touched an Atari 8bit since the late 80's and can't wait to build this very soon. Currently 3D printing a case right now to try out, thanks to Lavalamp for his model. Pics to come.