Possible hardware problems with 65XE.

[gs80065xe]

Ive noticed some issues with my 65XE. While coding with the onboard BASIC, I accidentally pressed caps lock. The case changed to lower. But pressing it again did not return it to uppercase. Only pressing reset worked. I heard the key click sound on the monitor each time I pressed it. And the Mylar was replaced last year. Any ideas?

 

On another note, I noticed the basic back ground has some vertical lines running across the screen. Im using Best-Electronics composite video cable. It does the same thing on another LCD TV. PAC Man looks fine. Only the basic blue screen editor has these slightly off blue stripes. So I tried this : https://youtu.be/0rrc2zptsbU. But the words were fuzzy at both 720 and 1080p. Could I have received a dud?

[phaeron]

Double-check with the self-test keyboard mode -- it sounds like your keyboard is working properly and something's funky with the OS. OS-B requires you to press Shift+Caps to switch back to caps mode; only the 1200XL and newer OSes toggle caps on an unmodified press. You shouldn't have the older behavior on a 65XE unless the system is running with a modded OS, though.

 

The thin vertical lines might be system clock signals bleeding through into the output, especially if they're aligned on a exact 1:1 ratio to the pixels. The XE machines have sharper video output and in my experience show this a bit more than earlier models. Wiggle the connector ends to make sure you've got a solid connection, though, as sometimes you can get extra noise when the ground connection is marginal. Also check the sharpening settings on your display since some of them default to having edge sharpening turned up too high and this exacerbates the artifacts. The signs of this are the ringing artifacts, which show up as the raised edge on the outside border and the dark halos around the letters.

 

Cheap analog-to-digital converters will often give you a lousy image, especially with the Atari's display timing. The computer's output is only 240p, so asking the converter to give you a 720p or 1080p display won't help as you're just asking the converter to upscale the image and it'll likely do a worse job than your display.

[gs80065xe]

My XE was modded to include David Young's OmniView 256(80col + 256K ram) mod. I'll have to check what version of OS it is reporting. I know ? PEEK(65527) is returning 2. But this has occurred with it toggled on and off. I'll double check the connection and TV settings. The converter was a cheap one from Amazon. I got what I paid for.

 

Thanks for your help.

[_The Doctor__]

please confirm shift plus caps lock at the same time... as the original OS followed the type writer convention of us the combination to lock certain modes like capital letters, underlining and strike through....

 

Atari had is correct but changed it later for convenience, control + lock keeps you in graphics character mode etc... just smacking the lock key with no others pressed is a convenience added later I still am not so certain should toggle like it doesn... I would have prefered to be able to use it such that successive locks would occur like so

 

shift + whatever locks the new mode in with whatever was already selected.. For example control all ready locked inverse either pressed per key(like shift normally is) or pressing lock to keep it as inverse locked... that is not how it rounded out... pressing inverse became a toggled lock.. It was felt to be less confusing to people being able to just press the key and have it lock or unlock.... but I feel it is not as efficient or useful to edit ATASCII art using the xe os way of doing it.

 

I still wish shift control and inverse worked in the classic convention with lock key doing just that locking the new key character attribute with the old... but that's just me... though

[gs80065xe]

The issue only occurred when the toggle switch was up. This was running a different ROM. Pressing shift caps brought it back to uppercase. When the toggle switch is off, it's using the 65XE's standard ROM. And I could press it to toggle between in upper and lower case.

 

I think the Omniview may have been using the OSB for the 800.

[gs80065xe]

Ive been researching the vertical line issue. It sounds fairly common when connected to LCD displays via S-Video. But Im using straight composite video with a cable from Best-Electronics. And my 65XE has the issue to. My research turned up this article. http://www.oldcomputers.it/parts/atari/130xe/docs/sv130-1.html. But it sounds like FlashJazzCats 1-2-2010 post to this thread http://atariage.com/forums/topic/155245-vertical-lines-on-many-xe-computers/page-2?hl=%20lcd%20%20xe%20%20vertical%20%20line Says the articles resistor values make it worse on LCDs. Of course he is probably working with PAL unit. While mine is NTSC. And the article says the XE lines RF modulator is required for composite videos (pin 4) signal. Im at a loss of what to try next.

[_The Doctor__]

check caps are good and of good value, make sure to try more than one video cable, some of mine produce lines others don't, does not matter if new or not, it comes down to resistance and shielding of the wires... lastly make sure the xe shielding is on... it helps and keeps the pcb structurally supported, makes and XE much stronger and firm in you hands.

 

that's the easy part, doing the various video tweaks is often a mixed bag....