Atari find

From: charles hobbs <chobbs_at_socal.rr.com>
Date: Wed Sep 5 21:32:03 2001

division by zero wrote:

> > 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. ^_^

No, the PSU (one only) cost $5, plus $5 shipping = 10 (The actual shipping
cost was
about $1-2 more, so he actually ate some of the shipping cost. Burp...)

>
>
> > 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...
>
> [...]

>
> 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.

I might play around with it, but since I have a working one already, it's
not
a big deal. Maybe someone around here could use it for parts...
Received on Wed Sep 05 2001 - 21:32:03 BST