Wanted - Atari 400 - warning upsetting pictures included ;-)

[Mamemeister]

I bought one along with some other stuff this week and here's how it arrived.

 

Hopefully the carrier will pay out for this but I'm more upset the fact it was in great condition (until it got smashed) and isn't readily available in the UK to buy.

 

It does still work ironically so am wondering if there is any way of trying to patch it up so I can use it, open to any suggestions please?

 

In the meantime if anyone has a spare they're looking to shift please let me know. I'd obvious;y have to wait on getting the money back before buying right enough.

 

It's particularly annoying to see what was a 35 year old bit of tech in perfect working order then smashed in seconds due to some careless twat. Fortunately the Atari 800XL and 1050 disk drive arrive in one piece.

 

[+save2600]

Breaks my heart to see stuff like this. So, guess it's not just carriers in the U.S. that are going out of their way to destroy the contents of packages.

[roberto]

I understand how you feel. I got similar experiences with a C64 and a Vectrex

[mimo]

I got an 800 in similar (worse) condition.

Managed to use superglue to hold it together. A year on and its still holding together.

Take your time, do a piece at a time and make sure that it has set in place before adding another piece.

I also used electrical tape to hold some pieces in place to set.

[mkiker2089]

You should make a custom case for it out of wood or something. Either that or superglue and them paint it. The case is no longer cherry so it's up to you to figure out how to save it.

[RodLightning]

I would try a hard setting epoxy. There are a few that work well with plastic. The best kind take 24 hours to cure, but will yield a very strong repair. The tricky part is fitting the pieces together undisturbed while the glue hardens.

[Mamemeister]

Thanks for the tips lads. Unfortunately until this is settled with the courier I can't make any attempt to salvage this. I had to laugh, as due to the fact that it was my my mate Tony (he of Missile Command World Record Holder fame - I'm serious!) who kindly collected this from a guy down south and arranged to have it delivered to me here in Scotland, it's been down to him to lodge a claim for the damage. We had to provide photos of not only the damaged computer but also the packaging it was sent in. They wrote back to him asking how much he sold the stuff to me for. He replied saying any cost or price was completely irrelevant, they were paid to deliver something in one piece and failed to do so so they should cough up the cost to replace like for like which in this case is very difficult due to the fact there aren't actually any Atari 400's for sale in the UK right now, only a couple on Ebay in the US. Let's see what happens.....

Edited October 3, 2013 by Mamemeister

[Mamemeister]

The courier company have now settled this so I was free to start a repair job. I discovered that it's only the bottom part of the case that was damaged, the top half is completely fine. With some clever use of tape, glue and bits of plastic I've managed to piece a lot of it together and it's now quite strurdy.

 

Also discovered it came with 32k so runs a lot of games too. :-)