New Power Supply for 800XL, Is this any good?

[Mazzspeed]

Au USB cable has four wires plus a shield. If you want a shield, you use the two USB power wires soldered to pins 1 & 3 on the DIN connector, as often I've found the data lines to be of a finer gauge wire. Regarding the shield, you solder that to the strain relief post.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[JKK]

Sure you don't have to convince me that shielding is important. Do you think that Atari minus and Atari shield can be connected together to usb minus pin? Or should it be solved in a different way?

[Mazzspeed]

On 8/19/2021 at 11:18 PM, JKK said:

Sure you don't have to convince me that shielding is important. Do you think that Atari minus and Atari shield can be connected together to usb minus pin? Or should it be solved in a different way?

Personally, I didn't use a shield on the PSU lead and encountered no issues whatsoever connected to a 2.0A USB wall wart. I also don't have any RF shielding on my machine.

 

If you're worried about video interference, make a lead with separately shielded chroma and luma. The difference is noticeable. I ran my 600XL like this for a few months and had outstanding picture quality, only recently have I installed a Sophia 2 and TBH I didn't really need to - It was simply more convenient having a DVI connection. The resulting image via Sophia 2 is naturally better, but that's not to say the image I got from svideo out using separately shielded cables wasn't impressive.

 

I have never encountered any stability issues by not using a shielded PSU lead.

[JKK]

Thanks for this info. However if I would like to use this shield line, how should I connect it using usb charger?

 

Btw, not every 800Xl has luminance and chrominance in montitor socket...

[DerekJ]

On 8/30/2021 at 1:09 PM, JKK said:

Thanks for this info. However if I would like to use this shield line, how should I connect it using usb charger?

 

Btw, not every 800Xl has luminance and chrominance in montitor socket...

I noticed in the graphic posted earlier that pins 5 & 6 are not being connected to anything. Should they be put to their respective Ground and 5v signals coming from the USB plug?

[ok1rp]

On 1/17/2019 at 2:09 PM, Irgendwer said:

 

 

This could break your machine as it delivers 9V AC while your 800XL needs 5V DC.

 

If you have the ability to solder you could create a cable like this one I did:

 

and attach this to any USB power source delivering at least 1.5 A.

I arranged the same cable. It does not work with my 800XL unfortunately cause voltage drop is too high with so tiny wires at 1.5m lenght. Used USB adapter gives 5.0V loaded with 0.6A at the adapter output socket but at the cable end is probably to low voltage (did not measured yet)…:)

[R.Cade]

I would never use a phone charger or a USB cable on my Atari... They are known to be noisy cheap garbage. I had someone buy a 130XE from me and use one of these and the video output was scrambled.

Get a decent 5V Delta DC power supply off eBay. They are maybe $5-10 for a 4A unit which is more than enough. Solder it to a DIN plug or splice your existing cable and you will have an actual good quality power supply.

I use these for MiST/MiSTer and various other TV boxes and projects and they solve a lot of stability problems over modern crap power supplies.

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by R.Cade

[+orpheuswaking]

1 hour ago, ok1rp said:

I arranged the same cable. It does not work with my 800XL unfortunately cause voltage drop is too high with so tiny wires at 1.5m lenght. Used USB adapter gives 5.0V loaded with 0.6A at the adapter output socket but at the cable end is probably to low voltage (did not measured yet)…:)

you need at least 1.0A preferably 2.0A if you have mods

[Beeblebrox]

3 hours ago, R.Cade said:

I would never use a phone charger or a USB cable on my Atari... They are known to be noisy cheap garbage. I had someone buy a 130XE from me and use one of these and the video output was scrambled.

Get a decent 5V Delta DC power supply off eBay. They are maybe $5-10 for a 4A unit which is more than enough. Solder it to a DIN plug or splice your existing cable and you will have an actual good quality power supply.

I use these for MiST/MiSTer and various other TV boxes and projects and they solve a lot of stability problems over modern crap power supplies.

 

Interestingly I only use USB 5v power cables on all my A8s in the UK and have never had any issue far as I am aware. 

[ok1rp]

3 hours ago, orpheuswaking said:

you need at least 1.0A preferably 2.0A if you have mods

It is not the problem of power (amps) as the USB adapter is rated 5V/2.4A… the problem I guess is tiny wires inside USB cable which makes high voltage decrease/loss at the cable end. 

[BillC]

6 hours ago, ok1rp said:

I arranged the same cable. It does not work with my 800XL unfortunately cause voltage drop is too high with so tiny wires at 1.5m lenght. Used USB adapter gives 5.0V loaded with 0.6A at the adapter output socket but at the cable end is probably to low voltage (did not measured yet)…:)

The issue is probably that the USB power adapter you are using only delivers 500 to 600mA without using handshaking protocols, this is per USB specificatons. Modern devices requiring higher current use these protocols to increase the current delivered. In the past my brother tried to give me chargers that didn't work with my Android phone, they only had the Apple protocols.

 

There are USB power adapters that don't use these USB protocols, which is what people are able to use for this purpose. 

[ok1rp]

On 12/23/2021 at 10:07 PM, BillC said:

The issue is probably that the USB power adapter you are using only delivers 500 to 600mA without using handshaking protocols, this is per USB specificatons. Modern devices requiring higher current use these protocols to increase the current delivered. In the past my brother tried to give me chargers that didn't work with my Android phone, they only had the Apple protocols.

 

There are USB power adapters that don't use these USB protocols, which is what people are able to use for this purpose. 

It is not the problem of power (amps) I believe as the USB adapter is rated 5V/2.4A… the problem I guess is tiny wires inside USB cable which makes high voltage decrease/loss at the cable end. 

[flashjazzcat]

On 12/23/2021 at 2:14 PM, R.Cade said:

I would never use a phone charger or a USB cable on my Atari... They are known to be noisy cheap garbage. I had someone buy a 130XE from me and use one of these and the video output was scrambled.

I dealt with a customer a while ago in the UK who complained that the repaired and upgraded machine I returned to him completely failed to power up at his house. Having been bitten by customer PSUs in the past, I asked him what he was using to power the machine and he said it was a power supply based on some generic 5V phone charger sold by 'Atari Giant'. I checked out the listing for the product and although it was full of self-congratulatory superlatives, it completely failed to specify the current rating, and the owner could find no current ratings written on the charger itself. I told him to replace it with Lotharek's Meanwell A8 PSU, and the machine promptly worked.

 

Experiences with USB chargers are similar; it's not necessarily that USB can't deliver the current, but users have a habit of plugging them into laptops and old netbooks which just can't deliver enough grunt.

[bfollowell]

3 hours ago, ok1rp said:

It is not the problem of power (amps) I believe as the USB adapter is rated 5V/2.4A… the problem I guess is tiny wires inside USB cable which makes high voltage decrease/loss at the cable end. 

 

Actually, amps is a measure of current flow. Power is measured in watts.

 

For a typical Atari 8-bit user, they would want a minimum 1.5A PSU. I can't imagine a machine that would require over 2.5A or 3A, but I guess it would depend on the number of upgrades installed. I use CanaKit 5V/2.5A Raspberry Pi PSUs purchases from Amazon for my machines and have never had any issues whatsoever. I cut the end off and solder them onto DIN connectors myself. If purchasing a charger block type, the key is making sure you purchase a quality PSU from a reputable dealer. You want a quality 2-2.5A block meant for a tablet, not a phone. Anker makes great chargers and I'm really fond of them, but there are other good brands. You don't want something picked up at the checkout stand at your local gas station or quickie-mart and eBay should probably be avoided.

 

[ok1rp]

On 1/3/2022 at 3:25 PM, bfollowell said:

 

Actually, amps is a measure of current flow. Power is measured in watts.

 

For a typical Atari 8-bit user, they would want a minimum 1.5A PSU. I can't imagine a machine that would require over 2.5A or 3A, but I guess it would depend on the number of upgrades installed. I use CanaKit 5V/2.5A Raspberry Pi PSUs purchases from Amazon for my machines and have never had any issues whatsoever. I cut the end off and solder them onto DIN connectors myself. If purchasing a charger block type, the key is making sure you purchase a quality PSU from a reputable dealer. You want a quality 2-2.5A block meant for a tablet, not a phone. Anker makes great chargers and I'm really fond of them, but there are other good brands. You don't want something picked up at the checkout stand at your local gas station or quickie-mart and eBay should probably be avoided.

 

“Actually, amps is a measure of current flow. Power is measured in watts” …and Power is product of voltage and current so that is the reason why I used “amps” in brackets when I talked about Power… its clear. (I neglect to calculate efficiency of system)

The problem of the most of cheapest adapters is too tiny chinese wires and corresponding voltage drop at the end of cable that’s what I mentioned in order to inform other people about that issue.

 
You are right that the high quality adapters are needed from reputable suppliers. 

As I do not want to waste time to make investigation on the market I ordered it from Lotharek, PL. Highly recommended.