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I think I fried my 800XL...


Kylev

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I believe I have become a victim of an Ingot PS failure. I know, should not have been using one, but it was the only PS I had to hand. All was well until the last time I turned on the 800XL. Now I get a scrambled screen output and sporadic sounds.

I am guessing that I have a fried ANTIC, at minimum. I don't have any diagnostic equipment, so I can't isolate anything down.

I can order another PS, but is there any hope for this machine?

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There's always hope but you need to have some patience, some willingness to dig into something like SAM'S ComputerFacts or the Atari Field Service Manual, and some tools like a multimeter at the bare minimum, or a logic probe/oscillioscope if the failure is subtle.


If you were a victim of the Ingot, you need a new PSU first of all lest you do more damage. Then you need to open the machine and see if the chips are socketed. If you're lucky, everything will be including the DRAM chips, which are the most common victims of an over-voltage on an Atari machine. Once you have a new power supply, you can try powering on the machine and seeing if any one chip gets very hot, especially if it's one DRAM chip of the 8. SALLY and GTIA tend to get warm in normal use but not hot. ANTIC also, but less warm than SALLY.

 

If it's not something obvious like a scorching hot chip, you can try chip swapping one at a time from the bad machine into the good one until you find a bad one. With luck, it will only be one bad chip. If not, it might take some time to track them all down. 

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DrVenkman,

Thanks. I will follow this advice as far as I can. I will order a new non-Ingot PS and then test the machine with the cover and shield removed.

Won't be for a while, though, so I won't be reporting back here very soon. Probably a few weeks.

I appreciate the help!

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2 hours ago, Kylev said:

DrVenkman,

Thanks. I will follow this advice as far as I can. I will order a new non-Ingot PS and then test the machine with the cover and shield removed.

Won't be for a while, though, so I won't be reporting back here very soon. Probably a few weeks.

I appreciate the help!

I just used a modern 2A 5VDC power supply I had laying around and chopped the connector off the ingot and wired it to new power supply.  Old power supplies scare me in general and 5V power supplies are everywhere these days.

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  • 2 months later...

All,

I went ahead and bought a modern power supply. Surprise! My 800xl booted up great. No issues.

Looks like I dodged a bullet on this one. The ingot is already gone out with the trash.

Thanks for all the suggestions and direction.

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