800XE - U1MB hookup points and AKI USB keyboard hookup points mapped

[Beeblebrox]

Been at it again.?

 

I decided my original 65XE with U1MB (Ultimate 1 MB) and AKI USB keyboard interface upgrades/mods which I'd installed a few months ago was too unstable. (There is something still not right with that particular 65XE's board despite lots of investigation and tinkering. TBH I had stability issues with it even before installing any upgrades. That's another old post anyway so I won't repeat all that here?).

 

I just recently had the fortune of acquiring an initially non functioning 800XE very cheaply for my collection which had various issues all of which I am happy to report I fixed yesterday. Until last week I'd never heard of the 800XE model.

 

So after fixing said 800XE (turned out it was a bad MMU),  I made the decision to transfer over the U1MB and AKI USB keyboard mods over to it from the 65XE. (I'll leave the old 65XE stock for now and may get around to getting to the bottom of it's core issue(s)).

 

Transfering took about 1.5hrs as I'd already socketed the MMU and OS chips among others as part of my diagnosing what was wrong with the 800XE. As part of the process I mapped new hook up points for both mods to the 800XE's pcb and again as before thought I'd share it with the forum. It has worked really well.

 

NOTE: Incidentally I posted the hookup points for U1MB for the 800XLF board the other week here ?

 

So firstly the U1MB

 

U1MB has 4 x wires that connect to 4 x of the 6502 CPU's pins/legs as follows:

 

(Source here from Retrolemon in the UK)

 

I first made up a set of wires from an old IDE cable and some spare single header connectors. This is because the original install using the header cable that comes with U1MB had been directly soldered to the pins/legs of the CPU and I didn't want to risk damaging the old CPU removing them. (Besides if I ever wanted to tinker with the 65XE again an an U1MB install the wires are left in place)

 

Here is the overall view showing the location of these points on my 800XE board:

 

 

PHi2 connects to CPU pin/leg 39 and can be picked up on this resistor's leg here just above the left of the CPU:

 

R/W connects to CPU pin/leg 36 and can be picked up here on the board 5mm above the CPU on this solder point (very handy):

 

 

RST connects to CPU pin/leg 40 which can be picked up here on the board:

 

 

Finally HLT connects to CPU pin/leg 35 and can be picked up off the ECI port leg here:

 

 

Here's my board with the U1MB mounted above the old RF unit with a small sheet of plastic underneath to stop any shorting (mounted on a pre-existing pcb hole on one of the single risers which comes with the U1MB mod):

 

 

Here you can see it running:

 

 

AKI USB keyboard interface mod

 

This excellent mod gives you a USB keyboard (I use a wireless keyboard with a dongle).

 

The mod requires you hook up 4 x wires for the Atari's Reset, Start, Select and Option function keys:

 

Source here Retrolemon in the UK

 

In my original and first ever attempt at installing this mod (see post here) which I am transferring over, I made the rookie mistake of soldering directly onto the solder points of the plastic keyboard connector. At the time itwas very tricky and involved some degree of the lovely aroma of melting plastic. ? It worked and has been fine but this time around I wanted to take these off solder points near the plastic keyboard connector instead.

 

Will some guidance from the AA community in the aforementioned post as well as referencing of other posts on AA where other's had advised where I could hook these up, and armed with my trusty multimeter, I ended up mapping them as follows because of the location and length of the current wiring. (I realise there are other points I could have taken them from also).

 

Here is the overview of the board to show where these are:

 

 

Here is my 800XE board with it all in place next to the U1MB install:

 

 

Here are both mods running with my wireless keyboard:

 

 

In the end I just swapped out the 800XE's base casing with the original 65XE's given the hole/USB port was already installed in it. (The 800XE is basically a 130XE based board with 64K - so effectively an 65XE. Again I'd never heard of an 800XE until last week. They were mainly released in central Europe towards the end of the Atari production line (early-ish 1990s?) and I understand 50% of them had a bad GTIA chip. (Please correct me if I am wrong about the 800XE line). 

 

So now my working 800XE has U1MB and USB keyboard mods and works well. Certainly it appears the instability issues I was having with at least the U1MB installed in the 65XE I transfered these mods from is no longer present.

 

So now I have 3 x models of XE (65XE, 130XE  and 800XE) and two of XL (800XL and 800XLF). I'll update my AA signature a lil later to reflect my collection. (Mannn I am obsessed)

?

 

 

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Beeblebrox
typos

[Beeblebrox]

Hi

 

Just to add with regards to the AKI USB keyboard mod, as Mytek rightly pointed out in his reply to my other post here there is this here on his page which maps the pick up points for the function keys for other common A8 pcb boards. I see for the 130XE it is the same as the 800XE which makes sense given the 800XE is modelled on the 130XE board, (albeit with half the RAM). So I can't take the credit for mapping them. ?

 

So by the same token I see no reason also why the U1MB hook up points I've used won't be the same for 130XE boards as it is for the 800XE. If in doubt use your multimeter to check. 

 

Thanks @mytek

 

 

 

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Beeblebrox

[Dinadan67]

Did you find out how to get keys mapped to 'break', '<' and '>'? If not, maybe @candle can tell.

[Beeblebrox]

3 minutes ago, Dinadan67 said:

Did you find out how to get keys mapped to 'break', '<' and '>'? If not, maybe @candle can tell.

@Dinadan67

Unfortunately not. Be interested to see if possible. ?

[candle]

it basically usess altirra layout

i made some provisions for so called tenkeyless and 65% keys keyboards too

 

[Dinadan67]

On 8/21/2021 at 9:36 AM, candle said:

it basically usess altirra layout

i made some provisions for so called tenkeyless and 65% keys keyboards too

 

I finally connected my keyboard to a Windows PC with Altirra. There are a few differences. In Altirra all keys are mapped like the markings on the keys, i get '<', '>', '@' and " on the normal positions. Connected to the Atari i get " with shift-'2', @ with shift-'8', '[' with shift-',' and ']' with shift-'.' In Altirra the 'break'-key ist mapped to F7, on the Atari with USB-Adapter it is not. There are no mapped keys for '<', '>' and 'break' at all.

 

@candle if you want to investigate the problem further, i could send you my keyboard for testing.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Dinadan67