any hope for my dead 800xl, or where to get a new one?

[Reaperman]

I had some trouble with my 800xl (spoilerized below), and I'm wondering first if there's any hope for it, and second if there's a person/place I can get a pre-modded replacement, or get it looked at.

 

Current one is nothing special. Just an 800xl with a 128k atarimax ram upgrade and the worst keyboard version.

 

The issue:

 

 

Power supply seems to have died and took my system with it. First it wouldn't do anything but flip on the power light 95% of the time, but the other 5% were partial/hung blue screen boots, boots into memtest vs disk, or when I would very occasionally get it to load a game, everything was 'weird'. I bought it a new power supply, now it starts up and boots into games--where it still acts 'weird' 100% of the time.

'Weird being'

• certain game actions wouldn't happen (for example it forgetting to check collisions at all)
• certain game actions would happen at the wrong speed/frequency
• Frequent hanging

I miss my A8

Edited August 8, 2014 by Reaperman

[Rybags]

Overvolted, sounds like the GTIA is malfunctioning and possible Antic as well. Probably fried some RAM.

 

The thing is, once you have to replace a few chips the cost becomes more than just finding a replacement machine.

So best idea might be to just get another machine, then part out what's left/good of this one.

[Reaperman]

So I'm probably looking for a new ram upgrade then. I really don't think I want to bother fiddling with that old one anyway.

 

Searching around, ultimate 1mb seems to be the current cool new toy for that, correct? (and it seems they do installs)

Are there other ram upgrades I should consider? The 1mb seems to do a LOT more than I need it to.

Edited August 8, 2014 by Reaperman

[+DrVenkman]

I have a 1200XL that was exhibiting similar systems; it also wouldn't boot from floppy. In fact, even an SIO2PC interface on the SIO bus just caused it to make angry squawks. I gutted a spare (and cosmetically-battered) 600XL I had in storage to get it working again - I ended up having to salvage the ANTIC, POKEY and PIA (6520) chips out of that 600XL to get the 1200XL fully-functional again, but fortunately the RAM was still good.

 

Had it been anything other than my "beautiful beast" 1200XL, I'd have probably just gotten another machine.

[JCCyC]

Would you sell me that 800XL's keyboard? I have a perfectly good 800XL with a keyboard that doesn't recognize H and J. Everything else works.

 

I had some trouble with my 800xl (spoilerized below), and I'm wondering first if there's any hope for it, and second if there's a person/place I can get a pre-modded replacement, or get it looked at.

 

Current one is nothing special. Just an 800xl with a 128k atarimax ram upgrade and the worst keyboard version.

 

The issue:

 

 

Power supply seems to have died and took my system with it. First it wouldn't do anything but flip on the power light 95% of the time, but the other 5% were partial/hung blue screen boots, boots into memtest vs disk, or when I would very occasionally get it to load a game, everything was 'weird'. I bought it a new power supply, now it starts up and boots into games--where it still acts 'weird' 100% of the time.

'Weird being'

• certain game actions wouldn't happen (for example it forgetting to check collisions at all)
• certain game actions would happen at the wrong speed/frequency
• Frequent hanging

I miss my A8

[bbking67]

If you buy another non-working Atari you might be able to cannibalize for parts. That would probably be the cheapest fix, assuming it's just a chip-swap. Lots of untested 800XL's on fleabay,

[+sm3]

Best Electronics has a special on the 800xl PCB for under $40. Just ask for the 30th anniversary price.

 

Then get one of these from eBay (B&C) and you have an almost new 800xl: www.ebay.com/itm/140957761006

[Muzz73]

Brad @ Best told me (a couple of months ago) that he's running a bit low of 800XL boards and may remove them from the sale list soon, so jump on it soon if you can. I grabbed a couple at that price!