Frankie Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 I picked up an 800 on ebay and when I looked on the inside I saw this for the memory card - Why would someone go to all this trouble to add 32K? Why not just get boards for $10? How does it even work will all those bare wires? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 That's a crazy upgrade! If it was done back when the machine was new though, RAM would have cost a few hundred dollars, not $10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmetal88 Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 (edited) I doubt those are bare wires. Probably wire-wrap with thin insulation, or enamel. EDIT: And they might have done it for the same reason I did a 320k upgrade in a similar manner to my 130XE. I wanted more RAM, but did not want to purchase any extra parts. Therefore, I removed the extra RAM from an EGA card out of a broken laptop, used a few spare ICs I happened to have lying around, and constructed the entire upgrade by piggybacking chips. It was basically free. Edited August 3, 2012 by jmetal88 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 (edited) I've done a similair thing with both Rambo XL and AtariMax 256K memory upgrades, piggy-backing another 256K on top for 512K memory. The chips cost me about $10 and the rest of needed suppliesI had on hand. It was a lot cheaper than "upgrading" to any of the newer 320-1088K memory upgrades and I'm quite happy with 512K. Oh, and I've used similiar wiring, I have it in red and green and amber, it has a coating, probably enamel as mentioned (that's what gives it the color other than copper/tin). Edited August 3, 2012 by Gunstar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 1. Bare wire isn't red. 2. This was probably done as a cost-saving measure... like all those RAM hacks on the ST. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
candle Posted August 3, 2012 Share Posted August 3, 2012 it's enamel allright, look on this one - http://elm-chan.org/works/mp3/report_e.html if that would be a bare wire it wouldn't work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariGeezer Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 I picked up an 800 on ebay and when I looked on the inside I saw this for the memory card - Why would someone go to all this trouble to add 32K? Why not just get boards for $10? How does it even work will all those bare wires? I have done the exact same mod on one of my boards back in '84. It gave the 800 an additional 128k or 256k of banked memory... This allowed you to use a Ram Disk on Drives 7 & 8, it was very popular back then as you could run a BBS on just one real drive Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 That looks like prototyping wire, a fine wire that you used with a prototyping pen.. its is covered.. Great for fiddly jobs.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 I should've taken a photo of the Ram board in my 400 - it's got chips mounted mid-air on towers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oracle_jedi Posted August 4, 2012 Share Posted August 4, 2012 Maybe the original owner wanted to add a Bit 3 80 column card and didn't want to give up 16K of RAM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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