Upgraded Atari 800XL comes back butchered

[@blackterminal]

Why hide who did the craptastic mods?

[@flashjazzcat]

To avoid embarrassing him, although the culprit voluntarily and publicly laid claim to the work immediately on publication of the video (apparently seeing nothing wrong with it and offering a puerile excuse for every issue found). His name happens to appear in the video thumbnail.

[@overanged]

Fantastic Video as always, I am SO surprised at the job that was performed by the Other Fixer And at 39:32 - possibly the greatest instant unedited choice of words 🤣

[@flashjazzcat]

Thanks. I find that to be the funniest bit of the video by some margin. :)

[@richardkelsch3640]

A quote from the movie "The Rookie" -- "Anyone that defaces a work of art like that, ought to have their a** removed". As always, great work correcting the butchery Jon.

[@rhayadercomputers6468]

Was it Ray or Steve thats been in that machine ? Don't think I'll be using Charles&Wonder repairs 😅

[@Ori-Retro-Gamer]

Your thorough determination to make sure everything works, means i would 100% trust my Atari's with you if i ever need any work done , superb and great guitar noodling 👍👍

[@bitdigital8052]

Awesome save on the fumble and thanks for the heads up on the use of hot air on these boards. 😎

[@flashjazzcat]

Thanks. It's certainly possible to use a hot-air rework station on these boards, but judiciously and with the benefit of experience. Definitely don't bake someone else's motherboard so that it ends up resembling a banana, though. :)

[@pfcrow]

In your assembly, you used $24 to skip a byte. I had assumed this was a two-byte undocumented NOP instruction, which would break with Rapidus or 6502C upgrades, but I looked it up, and it's a BIT zero-page instruction. That clobbers several status flags, but not carry, which is all you care about. Clever.

[@flashjazzcat]

Yes - greater minds than mine came up with that idea. :)

[@MoparStephen]

Well hey, at least they recapped the machine! That always fixes everything according to the internet experts.

[@flashjazzcat]

Clearly since the magical voodoo McGuffin didn't immediately fix the board, everything else was thrown at it. Unfortunately, nothing stuck. :)

[@charlesdorval394]

LMAO "It's cool but it's not much use" I totally agree with both those statements

[@waltciii3]

Oh this was great! Some of the best content is when things go wrong and you get to complain. That's when the hilarity ensues. I did learn a bit about the various Pokeymax cores though.

[@flashjazzcat]

Thanks! And I'm glad the video contained info that was useful to you.

[@nasty_niff]

The moral of the story is....always get someone you trust and has great knowledge to fix your stuff....

[@BooktownBoy]

"It's kinda cool", said in unison with ya 😄 Listening to an address line is a new one for me 😎

[@flashjazzcat]

Yes. As music goes, a bit avant garde for my tastes. :)

[@BooktownBoy]

@@flashjazzcat Yes indeedy :)

[@PicaDelphon]

It makes me want to let you tinker with my old Atari 800, and Atari 130XE w/4MB RAM Disk .. And that was Done back in the 80's...When it was Fun to Upgrade back then because Atari Lack and Brains, and Trusted Greed over the Customers Want's and Needs...

[@flashjazzcat]

Greed and ignorance of the customer's needs are still alive and well today, I fear.

[@user-mz9ui9fe4q]

Nice Video and not like when bad things happened and get part from Best Electronics and friends fixes my computer real good.

[@milow-cl9kt]

I feel like I have a contender waiting in the wings, between not mounting my U1mb properly (instead just putting it in a plastic bag and sandwiching it between the chassis and RF Modulator to hold it in place), my horrible solder job tapping into Sally on 4 pins, using a laughably high gauge wire to patch my chroma, using wire cutters to 'Lorena Bobbitt' the resistor array by the SIO port, and finally three 'oops' where I snipped the wrong connections (and now have completely lost composite sync) In spite of my hack job, the thing works great with S-Video and Fujinet and just purrs along with SIO. Just prepare yourself with anti-emetics if I do end up sending it over.

[@flashjazzcat]

No problem at all. I'm not in the habit of ridiculing amateurs who attempt honest work on their own machines (it's self-aggrandising 'professionals' who end up having no idea what they're doing when working on other people's computers who get my goat). I'd be delighted to help you out with your Atari.

[@RadimPolasek]

so clean 😲

[@steveowens398]

Good watching you work again Jon. Are you into that new house yet?

[@flashjazzcat]

Sure am - hence the dazzling new work area which is twice the size of the previous desk (but nevertheless already filled corner to corner with stuff). :)

[@dropcheck6562]

You mention PokeyMax 3. Not finding any current source for this board. Old Atariage pre-order that kinda died out on info six months back is all I'm finding

[@flashjazzcat]

Try foft on AA and Duddie at Retronics. Got one in a 600XL here and it's a lovely device, but I think parts shortages scuppered further production runs.

[@rsnhostmaster]

Because the board is so warped, If you end up getting the system back again it may not be a bad idea to replace the PCB with one of the Recreations posted on PCBWay+ (Atari 800XL PCB remake v1.1). Not sure how good the PCB remake is, (I haven't tried to build one up.) but if the PCB matches the schematic, it couldn't be much worse than the warped and delaminated board in the machine. What a hassle. One of these days I may want to try and build one up as a curiosity to see if those PCBs are any good. Unless it would be a better idea to build up one of the MyTek's 576NUC+ systems.

[@rsnhostmaster]

On second thought unless the board was completely destroyed, that may be more work than it's worth. The PCB would have to be completely destroyed before resorting to do that much work. At least thinking from a repair POV, and trying to get someone's computer back promptly.

[@flashjazzcat]

@@rsnhostmaster Interesting thoughts - thanks. I don't think the board is severely damaged despite the warping, and I must admit that some bend along the board's length isn't uncommon for 800XL PCBs (although I stand by my observation that this one is more severely warped than most and that it wasn't when I initially sent it back to the client, before he sent it to the third party to be worked on again). At this point, the overriding concern is to get the machine back to its owner in a working state, and since I switched the U1MB Phi2 source to the buffered O2 output (downstream from the 74F08 I fitted in place of the 'O2 Fixer'), I think the owner will be reasonably happy with the outcome. :)

[@adameberbach]

Nice video but I'm just as impressed by the guitar playing...

[@gryzman]

Oh Candle ;p

[@Fujitastic]

Pokeymax is missing 2 caps?

[@Fujitastic]

Bloody cats! They stole all your sd cards!

[@flashjazzcat]

I don't see any unpopulated pads on the PokeyMAX (although defects on hand-assembled boards are certainly not unheard of; I just fixed one last week). Sonny the cat is driving me round the twist, meanwhile. :)

[@CezarySiw]

@@flashjazzcat I think he meant that the official documentation of Pokeymax shows there should be 10uF caps from L and R outputs of the pokeymax

[@flashjazzcat]

@@CezarySiw Oh, I see what you mean. I can hear no discernible difference when connected to a TV, but they're certainly worth adding when the device is connected directly to speakers.

[@fragalot]

is there a mod where i can add a ethernet port on my Atari? It doesn't need to access the internet, I want it to have access to files on my NAS via SpartaDos and load/save stuff from there.

[@flashjazzcat]

FujiNet should do that for you, or something close to it.

[@perinoid]

Good work! I wonder, who this "third party" was...

[@flashjazzcat]

So confoundingly obfuscated, I'm sure nobody will ever be able to figure it out. :)

[@TheWoj76]

I did figure it out, the story was actually in a thread that I started 😂

[@flashjazzcat]

@@TheWoj76 He's laid claim to the machine on my atari8 Facebook page where I linked to this video. I have absolutely no comment on that.

[@shoutyshouty]

The clue is in the thumbnail.

[@flashjazzcat]

Piotr D. Kaczorowski has since publicly and voluntarily identified himself as the 'third party' who worked on the board, proving beyond doubt that there is indeed no such thing as bad publicity.

[@ParakeetPotato]

How many Atari 800XL videos go viral in general? lol

[@flashjazzcat]

I would imagine few if any, but I was speaking to KZbin creators in general (not necessarily in the retro computing realm, let alone that of 8-bit Ataris), none of whom would probably object to publishing a video which 'went viral'.