> At the last TRW swapmeet in So. Cal, I picked up a couple of Atari
> XE130's for $5 each. The seller said he had pulled them out of a
> school computer lab. No power supplies, but a quick trip to Ebay fixed
> that...
Haha, I bet you ended up paying twice that for the PSU's. ^_^
> So I connect one of them to my TV, and flip on the power switch. The
> console LED turned on, and the TV screen went black. That's it.
> Uh-oh...
Houston.....
> Well, we have another one to try. So I connect it, and it boots into
> Atari Basic. Much better. I did a quick hello-world type basic
> program. Welcome to the world of Atari.
> So, is the other one fixable?
http://www.tomheroes.com/atari_repair.htm
No, really, the first thing you ought to do is open it up and make
sure there aren't any burnt up or leaking caps, or other visible signs
of damage to the board. Then, swap any socketed chips you find with
the 'good' ones from the other machine. Be sure to swap them back
individually after testing, nothing worse than complicating an already
complicated problem. I don't know if the Atari kit has any trouble
chips like the PLA in the C64. I have two 130XE's myself that I've
never had any problems with. If there aren't any socketed chips,
an easy chip test is to power the machine up, wait about 30 seconds,
and put your finger on the top of each of the "big" chips. If any one
of them is already hot, it's probably shorted and a good candidate for
socketing and swapping. Test the RAM chips in the same way, with your
finger or other heat-sensitive probe.
Good luck, let us know what you come up with.
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Received on Wed Sep 05 2001 - 09:17:43 BST