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Atari 800XL

PostPosted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:25 pm
by Reliant73
Hi Guys,


I picked up a bargain recently on a $5 800XL at a garage sale. It needed a bit of work as it was really dirty and the RF plating had rust all over it! (The guy said it had been in an outdoor shed for 20 years!) I manage to remove the plating and get all the rust off and it now looks great. I was a bit worried about the state it might actually be in but when I powered it on and ran through the tests it flew by the RAM and audio tests and I was able to play a few of my games on it no trouble. It does have a few dead keys and I suspected this was due to some bad IC chips near the keyboard connector (CD4051BE chips I think). However I discovered when I put the keyboard from my mint 800XL on it everything worked fine so it looks like it's just the keyboard :) I have located one from oversea so I think I will go and get hold of that. I don't fancy having to replace the ICs as they are not socket-ed and I am not that great with a soldering iron so hopefully I won't have to do that. Has anyone in the group had any experience with this?

Cheers

Rel

Re: Atari 800XL

PostPosted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:59 pm
by RonTurner
Try tapping on the keys a few times before you replace it, keyboard repair 101

My advice if you are not great at soldering would be don't do it , you want to be good at anything your going to do, get someone who is great at it to do it, and you do the things you are good at :-)

Unless you don't mind breaking it, at $5 it could be good practice

Those Atari keyboards have little rubber buttons under the keys don't they? And don't these fail?

Re: Atari 800XL

PostPosted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 5:54 pm
by Reliant73
Thanks for the quick response :) Yep have tried the keys multiple times,I have also cleaned the keyboard etc. There are multiple types of 800XL keyboards. Some have Mylar which is prone to degrading and some have switches. Mine is a switch one so it's probably the solder joints or may the ribbon that goes in to the motherboard. If I need to solder due to the ICs my father in law is good at it so I will get him to and make them socket ones at the same time :)

Cheers

Rel