Atari 1050 Disk Drive Repair

[@StatusFIX]

After a long day of fixing cars , and now I relax with my son sleeping on me , and I read a 6502 book to him to teach him of the old days I learn and so does he (I think), , and your playing in the back ground keeping the retro repairs alive. I thank you.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Loving all of the Atari love on your channel recently Jan! I knew you would see the light eventually 😁

[@JanBeta]

Don’t you worry, there’s going to be more Commodore eventually, too. ;)

[@neakmenter]

Hey Jan, well done! My heart gets crushed with yours when the ‘fixed’ drive stops working again… after that high of the repair… :( Your perseverance was great and you got there in the end! But man I can hear in your voice at the end that it was a tiring one…! Keep up the great work!

[@sirknumbskull3418]

Hoffe, du hattest frohe Weihnachten und eine entspannte Zeit.

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

Absolutely LOVE your dedication to repair vintage hardware ! Good Job ! Truly a labor of love...

[@CezarySiw]

I recently fixed mine. One of the small electrolytic capacitors was shorted. The result is pretty much the same as yours. I also decided to get rid of the voltage doubler circuit. Not sure if you are aware - The 9V AC gets doubled to 18V ish and then gets rectified and stabilized to 12VDC. I converted mine 1050 to be powered from 12DC. these days you can buy very decent 12VDC power suppliers for a couple of pounds / euros. In the UK old-stock routers from Vodafone (Huawei made) and other broadband suppliers are being sold for £4 which comes with a very good 12V 2A power brick. I also have changed the 7805 to a DC-DC buck converter which has the same footprint as 7805 and generates pretty much zero heat. Costs around $1 on Ali or £2 on Ebay. If you do that, you can also remove the big smoothing caps, the bridge rectifier, and of course the 7812. Of course it's not for you if you want keep your 1050 in the vanilla shape.

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

I had several Atari 1050 drives in my time, and they were very reliable and noticeably faster than the C64 drives my friends had. They were noisy, hovever, unless you lubricated the guide shaft for the head. From the factory they often were not lubricated and made a loud noise when seeking! Glad to see you got this one working, it's not going to be easy to find a replacement barrel jack that will fit into the PCB, so the drive you took it from might need to become a "parts" drive, although you might be able to adapt a newer jack to fit with a bit of creative soldering.

[@davidcady6315]

Indeed, you're right about the speed difference - the Commodore 1541 had a data transfer rate of 2400 Baud, which is 300 Bytes per second, while the Atari 1050 pulled off with 19200 Baud (2400 Bytes per second).

[@horusfalcon]

If that exact style of barrel jack is not available any more, soldering a short pigtail with an "inline" style jack would save a "donor" drive from becoming just a parts drive. Heresy, I know, because it's not original, but form must follow function.

[@winstonsmith478]

Atari 8-bi machine PCBs I've seen were always so beautifully laid out, even in their peripherals.

[@davidcady6315]

The same goes for their tech documentation and drawings.. Some 2 years ago, a friend of mine needed the schematics for the 800 XL computer, so I scanned and then printed it out, with a few simple white-surface-clean-ups and B/W contrast adjustemnts (all done by the printer's SW per its defaults). His reaction was hillarious - he asked "what app did you use to draw these?" 🙂

[@notsillyone]

Thanks Jan, this will be a great help. A work mate sadly past away last year and I've inherited all his old Atari gear. We talked about fixing the drive belt and using an SIO Drive to save all his disks to SD card not long before he passed away. Your video and the links to parts is just what I need to get started. Hopefully its just the drive belt, but I will order new caps just in case. Thanks Very much

[@JohnJones-oy3md]

So many people would have given up after the first or second hiccup. Good on you for seeing this floppy drive rescue through to the end!

[@perinoid]

Majority of titles require the computer to be booted without Basic - so hold the Option key pressed at boot time. I guess, that's why you were not able to run some programs.

[@phreapersoonlijk]

50 minutes of Beta Goodness ! This is a treat ! :)

[@Starchface]

The Atari 8-bit microcomputers are somehow very pleasing to me. It's hard to say anything bad about them. I like everything about them. Well done getting that drive working Jan. One observation: a shorted input jack would not cause the overheating heatsink that you observed the second time. I feel as if there may still be a problem. Intermittent faults. You gotta love them. Merry Christmas holiday season Jan! Looking forward to more content.

[@tony359]

I'm afraid I agree with pillsburied here. Excellent video though! :) I'm also puzzled that you had a shorted capacitor but you still measured 12V on the regulator?

[@pabllosee]

18:35 Jan, You oiled up pully, not the bearing on the motor. This small bearings shouldn't be oiled. They use low viscosity grease, much like silicone grease in tube. Without dismantling bearings and pressing in new grease there's now need to oil them up.

[@JanBeta]

Makes sense. I didn’t think of that. Thanks!

[@gamedoutgamer]

Good information. Please would you clarify what you said "Without dismantling bearings and pressing in new grease there's now need to oil them up." I have a few 1050's I need to lubricate properly. Thank you in advance for your help.

[@horusfalcon]

@@gamedoutgamer I believe what Pawel_Ch_AUG meant is that once you start oiling these bearings, the grease that is packed in them gets liquefied and washed out, so continued oiling would be the only way to keep them working short of dismantling and packing with new grease. Some info on the right grease type would be helpful (I imagine Lubriplate white lithium would work, though.)

[@gamedoutgamer]

@@horusfalcon Ahhh thank you I appreciate it. How difficult is it to dismantle them and repack with grease? I think one or two 1050's I did oil. Which parts should be greased and not oiled? The tiny motor spindle or the bigger wheel at the other end of the belt? Please advise. Sorry so many questions.

[@horusfalcon]

@@gamedoutgamer How difficult? I'm not sure. A lot depends on the bearing's construction - sealed bearings of this size might not be easily dismantled without destruction of seals and other components. Basically, sleeve bearings can be lightly oiled (don't flood motor internals with oil - that's a bad thing), but ball or roller/needle bearing will be packed with grease at the factory that should last their entire service lifetime. Whatever you do, don't use penetrating oil as a lubricant. A very small bit of light machine oil (use a dispensing needle on your oil bottle) may be helpful if grease has caked or has gotten stiff. The more I think about this, the more I realize that repacking bearings this small is something really above and beyond. Better to replace the entire bearing or the component (motor or spindle assembly) if possible. Disassembly of bearings this small requires specialized tools. You could just keep oiling the bearings already oiled, but see cautions already mentioned above.

[@cfriedel123]

When I was little, I took apart my 1050 so I could put the drive belt back on. For some reason, I removed the brown plugs that hook the drive to the board and, when I put everything back together, I put one (or more) of them on backwards. Ended up having to take it to a repair shop to get it fixed and they charged us something like $200 or so to fix it (in 1980s $$$). My dad may me pay for it with money I collected from Christmas/Birthday parties over the years and said, "If you're not going to be careful, you're going to be broke." Never made that mistake again =)

[@parrottm76262]

Wow, what a cascade failure sequence! Kudos for sticking with it.

[@gregcoons7308]

I love how enormous these floppy drives are. I use an 810 and it is simply huge.

[@JanBeta]

Yes, they are beasts. The 1050 is lighter and slightly smaller than the Commodore 1541s, those even have the transformer inside the case. 😅

[@dnwheeler]

Did you check the rectifier diodes in the opposite direction? One may be faulty and allowing the wrong polarity through - this would be very hard on electrolytic capacitors and voltage regulators.

[@kyokorn]

Thnaks for the service manual, I recendly buy an Atari 130XE for 17 usd, includes the 1050 unit, I fixed the atari, but the keyboard is not working :(, The 1050 unit just turn on the power led but not spin, I will follow this guide is a good start to make the troubleshooting, Thanks again from Mexico !

[@vextenoch]

There were autoboot menu disks where you could boot them and select the program from the menu. The main thing is to press OPTIONS when turning off the Basic and have more memmory. Some programs used the Basic portion of the RAM.

[@jeroensmaal]

Exactly, having OPTION pressed during poweron will also boot directly to DOS without going to BASIC first, if started from a DOS disk. There is a simple BIOS mod that will reverse the functionality of the OPTION key during boot (i.e. when using this mod, not pressing OPTION during boot will switch off the BASIC ROM and load and run a boot disk directly and keeping OPTION pressed will boot into BASIC). You do have to burn a new BIOS (EP)ROM for this however.

[@peddersoldchap]

28:13 How would C68 and C66 cause a short? These 2 capacitors are connected to the input of the voltage regulator, not the output, and the short is between the output and ground.

[@milk-it]

Gut gemacht! Im Jahr 2022 freue ich mich auf vielen mehr ähnlichen Videos!

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Excellent video, have a 1050 right now I’m trying to repair. I noticed the same thing on the heat, it gets really hot, pretty quickly. I replaced the 7812 and had the same symptoms as you, drive does nothing. Tested and I have a short somewhere in that same 12V rail, probably one of those caps. Ordered the cap kit from Console5, hopefully that’ll help, thanks for that link. And thanks Console5 for having these parts, ordered more while I was there.

[@JanBeta]

Yes, Console5 provide lots of excellent kits for restoration work like this! Ordered from them a couple of times already. :) I think failing caps are likely causing the short in your 1050. Another possibility (which would be more of a deal breaker) is the motor windings shorting out, the 12V is used to drive the motors in these drives. Hope you manage to fix it!

[@KolliRail]

Finally a proper troubleshooting video again! Love it!

[@gertsy2000]

Well done Jan Beta. Luv'ed the video. Dodgy switches and connectors are a common occurrence on these old units. Great troubleshooting.

[@michaelstoliker971]

Thanks for the tip on Console5 for the belts.

[@jeffreyphipps1507]

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. Nice show! We need to see the things that go wrong.

[@jimbailey3998]

What an excellent video. I have my original 2 Atari 810 Drives from 1983 and both are having boot errors. Hoping it is dirty heads and now I see where the heads are and I believe I can clean them. Thank you.

[@gamedoutgamer]

Your 810's could need to be realigned to track 0. They are more prone to this than 1050's. Also RPM needs to be checked. Those 810s are really nice.

[@smalltownMainer]

i just got a belt from same place for my commodore tape drive. old belt looked fine but seemed kinda loose.

[@davidcady6315]

Quoting myself on the topics of Atari 1050: "The Atari 1050 was a very good drive, much liked by all users. Yes, even more liked than the later XF551 model - though that one was a dual-head drive (truly double-sided diskette usage), supported a true double density (360 kB per diskette instead of 2x130 kB for the 1050) and was faster when using 3rd party DOS - the drawbacks were the Atari DOS 3.0 supplied with it (which was incompatible with pretty much anything else) and the fact that 'B-sides' of diskettes formatted in XF551 were not readable by other drives (as they have been formatted 'in reverse' compared to 1050 or the 810). Also, sometimes the higher drive speed (300 RPM) caused issues reading disks created on its predecessors (e.g. 1050's 288 RPM). On my part - when I had a choice of buying either a 1050 or the XF551, I chose the prior and never regretted that, as it served me well without any issues at all."

[@geirendre]

46:30 problematic to desolder items with large pins? Use your soldering iron to heat the pin from one side, and put the desoldergun on the other. That way you get enough heat into the pin (and pad) to melt the solder. You should also consider powering things from a bench powersupply, that way you can adjust (and watch) both voltage and current draw of the connected device. If the sticker on the device says it should have 12Volts and 5Amps, you can set the PSU to exactly that, and watch that it doesn't draw more current that it should. Keep up the good work, and have a happy new year, Jan.

[@Danik7006]

Good morning, thank you for your videos. Please, I have bought working Atari 1050 drive, now using but a probelm has appeared. Reading, booting, but not formatting diskettes. I have used diagnostic tool for 1050 (atr) with all tests passed. Could you advise me what to do? Thank you very much.

[@GadgetUK164]

Great job Jan =D Interesting to see inside one of those Atari drives!

[@jaycee1980]

47:44 bonus points for using the word "bugger" ;)

[@zero0ryn]

I wonder if that shorted cap and the associated extra current caused the barrel jack socket to fail? I see faults on laptop PC's where the rivet for the centre pin works loose creating a bad connection and high resistance, which usually will melt the PSU's barrel jack

[@SoanosBarcoded]

Conratulations on 146 years without a lost time incident. :)

[@tharkthax3960]

Yeah as I thought, near every non working 1050 I've had has had same problem. Great video, 👍 Thanks for the very helpful link for the drive belts.

[@sviru007]

capacitors? or power switch?

[@Artrenes]

Thank you very much for the very good and very explanatory video. Just yesterday I bought an Atari 1050 that the source is OK but no led lights up, and with your video I have more guidance than it can be. then I also have to fix an 800 XL with a brown screen? when booting and it does nothing else, commodore 64 black screen style so I have to have fun for a while again thanks for the video

[@jamesfatula5824]

About power supply fuse id suggest installing a user replaceable fuse jack that unscrew cap to replace on the back instead of having to open up the case

[@JanBeta]

The fuse is rarely ever going to break after the repairs so it is not really necessary to make it accessible from the outside in my opinion. Still a nice idea and relatively easy to do. :)

[@RobA500]

Another bit of retro goodness pulls through, great work Jan.

[@00Skyfox]

Very nice work on all the repairs! Hey Jan, in your opinion how important is it to recap Commodore boards when they're still working just fine? I have numerous C64s, 1541s, and a 1702 monitor that work perfectly fine, and many of the capacitors are Nichicon brand. Recapping everything would be a big job. Should I start doing it, or not worry unless there are problems?

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Bel drive.gran lavoro Jan.amico sei un grande

[@Retro_Ken53]

I was trying to repair a 1050 drive I bought from eBay and was trying to figure out why the 5 volt rail was low. The head would not seek. Then smoke came out and I shut it off quickly. I thought I had shorted something with my probes. I turned it on again and the head moved a little. Shut it off and inspected closely. One of the ceramic disc capacitors looked baked so I clipped one lead. The drive then worked so I replaced the capacitor and it has worked ever since.

[@Retro_Ken53]

Oh, and one of the big capacitors is actually part of a voltage doubling circuit. Not a filter cap.

[@horusfalcon]

Nicely done, Jan! It's so much fun finding a sometime-y problem.

[@jensschroder8214]

The 12 volts are generated by a voltage doubler. The 9 volts AC are converted to 17 volts DC and then limited to 12 volts.

[@michaelstoliker971]

I've had similar problems with the power connector on the Atari drive. If it is hard to push in the connector and it feels crusty or scratchy, you need a new connector.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Jan!

[@John-uc6gb]

This is a good video. I have two drives to inspect and clean. Thank you

[@Meinsofa]

Hallo Jan, einen sehr ähnlichen Fehler hatte ich mal in meinem Atari SF 314 Laufwerk. Da ist so viel Strom gelaufen das sogar bei einem Elko das Gehäuse weggeflogen ist.

[@VernesMisadventures]

Jan Beta for the win!!!

[@jeffm2787]

Always a risk when replacing caps, too low of ESR and you'll get too much inrush current.

[@jaycee1980]

whats actually more of a risk is low ESR capacitors on the output of some regulator IC's will make them oscillate

[@bobzop2127]

Have you ever tried to fix an indust Atari floppy. And where did you get the parts? Are they still available?

[@sweetlilmre]

Damn power sockets! Just had to repair one on an alarm clock 🤣 good catch!

[@davenone7312]

As soon as you said the short might be the motors I yelled at the screen ITS NOT THE MOTORS!!! That is so rare and you'd have known that if you worked enough electronics equipment.

[@MichaelEhling]

35:26 "...fresh ones." There is something oddly satisfying about recapping a board.

[@80sSumpy]

Very enjoyable and informative video, thank you.

[@Xoferif]

Interesting PCB: A lot of it looks like it was designed in a CAD program, but some of the finer traces look very hand-drawn. Perhaps it was really designed on a transparency using black sticky tape, or something?

[@tharkthax3960]

I fix these often, 9 out of ten times its bad caps. Especially the 47uf 16v ones. Not finished the video yet. Be interesting to see what's shorting.

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

that's good to know! I was thinking about recapping the drive or not but after your comment its up next after I am done with my amplifier(from '76!). Are you located in Europe or in the US?

[@tharkthax3960]

@@nickolasgaspar9660 Europe. I can give a guide on common failures , a restoration only takes a couple hours. I've fixed around 50 over last 2 or 3 years. I know a fellow atarian who buys atari stuff and sends it to me to get sorted. It's a hobby. I like fixing up amps too, but they can be harder work sometimes!

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

50 wow! I guess you can work on a 1050 with the lights off. Having someone to pay for the main "material" of your hobby is a sweet deal !!! I wish I had a similar arrangement! For me its the first 1050 I work on but I have repaired all kind of Atari- Amiga computers and peripherals, also a hobby of mine. You are correct about amps. The only nice thing about old amps is they don't have custom ICs! I would appreciate that guide on 1050's common failures but I am not sure that I want to pay ~50 euros for a belt when the drive costed me 90!.

[@tharkthax3960]

@@nickolasgaspar9660 I can easily put up a list of what I do in a restoration. With your experience in amps and computers it will be a breeze for you to do a 1050. No charge by the way! When I get sent a 1050 , I only take beer money plus postage. I enjoy fixing them!

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

@@tharkthax3960 -"When I get sent a 1050 , I only take beer money plus postage. I enjoy fixing them!" -I can easily believe that! That's also my "policy" lol. From what I understand by watching many repair videos, the most important thing is to clean and lube the drive mechanism so that the power supply doesn't overload. Recapping and cooling down those two n14001 diodes are both essential jobs in avoiding future break downs.

[@fragalot]

Also if you have SpartaDos X, a DOS on a cartridge, you don't need to boot from a disk, BUT you can have autoloaded settings, software, and a ramdisk from a SpartaDosX disk set up that way. Depending on what you're booting you often have to hold OPTION while you power it on, so the built-in BASIC won't load first, If it's just a DOS boot disk, it will go strait to DOS when you hold OPTION, no need to type DOS in basic. If you're on an 800 or 400, you just don't insert the BASIC cart when you boot a disk, and it goes right into DOS. Pro Tip: avoid Atari DOS 3.

[@jmchugh1]

I remember a stack of about 50 of these drives, all with a blown frequency to voltage converter.

[@mal2ksc]

If you continue to have power problems, it might be worth bypassing and disconnecting the power section on the board and directly injecting +5 and +12 from a modern power supply. Then at least you can isolate whether it's on the power side, or the "thinking" side.

[@raoullangner-macmillan7655]

Great Video, thanks.

[@lokz9632]

Not very optimistic face at the end of the video. 😁 But it was enjoyment to watch whole process. This is encouragement for all of us electronic amateurs who often find ourselves in similar situations after hard work on old hardware.

[@horaciodelre2210]

I didn't turn on my ATARI 1050 un about 20 years, Would it work?

[@petereggimann]

Zur Info: Meist wurde zur Sicherung der Trimpotentiometer Nagellack verwendet. Erfüllt den Zweck hervorragend 😊

[@OriginalSebie]

How.. how did you put on the belt without removing the axle??? Also:Raspberry Pi box spotted..

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

I was waiting for this. Where do you buy belts for these drives?

[@JanBeta]

Console 5 for example. Link in the video description.

[@tharkthax3960]

Same here! Brilliant

[@nickolasgaspar9660]

@@JanBeta Thanks! The documentation in your description list is complete! Unfortunately there isn't a shop in Europe to buy that belt and Console5 ships from the US. The customs' fees in Greece will make that belt cost half of the price I payed for that drive.

[@gokerbg]

Nice job. Thanks...

[@Adrian_Finn]

some of the weird intermittent stuff at the end might of also been the fact that those linear regulators have a thermal shutdown feature, which start working again once cooled down. In your case caused by the short.

[@yereverluvinuncleber]

I DO like the sound of a good disc drive booting in the morning...

[@RETROMachines]

My life is complete. I can die happy now.

[@dougjohnson4266]

Nice work sir.

[@retroandgaming]

Not a Commodore but very nice troubleshooting!

[@r.d.machinery3749]

33:37 I was yelling "caps!" at the screen. Haha.

[@awilliams1701]

hey google I don't mind watching a couple ads for videos, but I flat out REFUSE to watch a 4 or 5 minute ad. That's not ok!! seriously you need to have at most a 1 minute cap on all ads.

[@tharkthax3960]

During AD try pushing up to the i (in a circle) and click, click again when stop seeing this ad appears then click return to video. Hey presto, 5 mins of your life saved.

[@davidcady6315]

You may want to give a try to either Brave or Vivaldi browsers, instead of all these Chrome or IE or Edge or Safari or similar ones - both supress all those annoying ads completely by default.

[@awilliams1701]

@@davidcady6315 at home I have ad block. At work I'm at the mercy of the IT department.

[@davidcady6315]

​@@awilliams1701 Hmm, unless your company has some sort of ridiculous IT policy, try talking to these folks. Or try a portable browser with ad-block features, e.g. Opera, which runs just fine from a USB stick. Or just get back to work 😀

[@awilliams1701]

@@davidcady6315 it was my lunch break so I'll watch what I want. But even when it's not I listen to music off youtube. But it was a nightmare just getting them to get firefox 10 years ago. And getting chrome was even harder. Funny thing.....chrome is now the recommended browser around here. I figured it would be chromiedge, but no, it's chrome. As for running crap on a USB drive, not only would I get fired, I'd get jail time for violating US government DOD policy. USB drives are not permitted in any way shape or form. And running unapproved software as well. I really don't want to go to prison over bs.

[@Bedfford]

Thanks!

[@memorialparksundayleaguebr4013]

Testing the power with a multimeter, my tested 12 volts but the other tested 5volts but drops to 4.91 volts? Is that not normal?

[@JanBeta]

That should be perfectly okay. It’s normal that the voltage drops slightly under load. The ICs have tolerances of at least 5% regarding supply voltage so 4.91 is completely in spec.

[@memorialparksundayleaguebr4013]

@@JanBeta ok than power is 12 volt and 4.91 volts but my motor will not spin or read the disks! The head just moves up and down and that’s it? Doesn’t boot up error codes or make a fuss like it’s supposed too? Maybe the problem is the mechanical part of the drive?

[@memorialparksundayleaguebr4013]

By the way great videos and knowledge you give to the masses and thank you so very much!

[@JanBeta]

Maybe it’s the mechanical part (I.e broken spindle motor). It could also be the logic that drives the motor. I’d check the voltage to the motor during the power up (it should get 12V for a bit). If it gets juice and doesn’t spin up, there’s something else wrong. I don’t know which connections to check off the top of my head though, you’d have to figure that out yourself (it’s been a while since I worked on one of those drives!). :D

[@memorialparksundayleaguebr4013]

@@JanBeta hey any info helps, I am barely trying to learn electrical with these microelectronics so, I appreciate this info like it’s gold! Keep up the good work don’t change, and thanks again!

[@massmike11]

When you get that screen of flashing colors, it usually means you are running a PAL program in a an NTSC Atari or the other way around

[@aasemsawaf2813]

I have C64 Bread Bin with 1541 Floppy buy by Secound Hand Shop. This Floppy has only id 8 and the sd2iec has only id 8 too. Then I can`t use bouth.

[@sideburn]

my 1050 has seemingly random i/o fails... on power up after sitting and cold, the motor spins up like normal but when powering up the computer i get BOOT ERRORs... after it warm-up in sometimes starts working perfectly... then it will fail again... Does this sound like a RAM issue?

[@JanBeta]

If it sometimes works after warming up, I would suspect an issue with the filter capacitors or a contact issue in one of the IC sockets (both are often affected by temperature). RAM might be an issue, too, of course. Difficult to tell from here, obviously.

[@sideburn]

@@JanBeta right. Ok I’ll crack it open and check caps and deoxit / re-seat chips. I found the service manual too and ordered another RAM just incase. I’ll see how it goes. Thanks.

[@sideburn]

My 1050 is a drive from hell. Replaced all caps, replaced track zero sensor (because on power up some times the head didn’t move back to zero), swapped out all socketed chips from two other donor boards, swapped drive mech from donor (another non working 1050), checked signals on various chips with o’scope and they seem ok so far. Not sure how to test the head itself (when the drive is spinning i can see some signal jumping from the head leads but not sure how to confirm good ) but both drive mechs are failing the same. The drive starts up fine and shows expected boot error til a disk is inserted and then it just beeps slowly trying to read. It cannot write either or format so I assume that would rule out the track zero alignment. I’ve got two non working drives and one spare donor board and no working 1050! I’ll keep at it but running out of ideas! 😆 🤦‍♂️

[@sideburn]

Welp I fixed both drives now AND my original Happy 1050. For starters BOTH drives needed the newly replaced track zero sensors properly aligned. I figured this out by spinning the drive up with a disk read, then disconnecting the stepper motor cable and manually moving the had til it started to read. Then I knew the head was good. I then aligned it with the 1050 diagnostics disk. The second drive also had a bad PIA. The Happy board is still spotty at times so I think it needs a new RAM but reseating and some deoxit got it to work.

[@Shmbler]

Looks like the same drive mechanism that was used in those BlueChip 1541 clones.

[@DJBTerroR]

Good to see that your workshop has run without accident for about. 146 years. XD

[@LeftoverBeefcake]

For Commodore folks, those particular values have some significance... ;-)

[@byronwatkins2565]

I would glue a card to the top of those caps to prevent vibration from breaking the solder again.

[@SimonQuigley]

You should draw an arrow on the top of your IPA sprayer so that you can tell where it's pointing without having to check all the time :-)

[@jaycee1980]

Big caps like that should always have something else fixing them down, some glue or silastic... hot glue is perfect for this as it's easy and cheap, and non corrosive.. and easily removed when needed :)

[@JanBeta]

Yes, I planned to add some hot glue (the original ones were hot glued down, too) but forgot during the repair (finished rather late at night). I'm definitely going to go back in and add something. :)

[@jamesfatula5824]

As for power supply the Atari computer can be run from a 5 v USB port fine

[@JanBeta]

I know, I made the power supply I use in this video a while back because I didn’t have a supply for the 1050 and just integrated a 5V supply for the Atari to make things easier. Another bonus is that I can also use this power supply with my C64s. There’s two videos about the PSU build on the channel, too.

[@Mrshoujo]

The 1050 drive isn't what autoboots. It's the Atari 8-bit which boots the disk. Use OPTION while turning an XL or XE model on to boot with built-in BASIC disabled, otherwise leave it alone if you want BASIC. I find it a shortcoming of Commodore systems in not booting a disk, something the C128 attempts to remedy. It can autoboots and go into C64 mode if a disk in the drive somehow indicates such. Hopefully you can find a clone of the ICD U.S. Doubler upgrade for the 1050.

[@ChrisPatti]

Great fun. I always wanted a 1050 and could never afford one, then when I finally could I ended up buying an Indus GT (Those are now rarer than hen's teeth and more expensive too :)

[@fragalot]

Ataris will seek the drive for a boot disk, but not all disks are bootable.. and not all boot disks have DOS on them. There are a lot of quick loaders you can put on a disk, with out DOS.SYS, that can load up any exe file in a menu.

[@chuckherndon3251]

Sorry you can't get real Nichicon caps where you are. I feel spoiled that I have Mouser and Digikey that will deliver them in a couple days. :(

[@JanBeta]

Usually I can easily get them from the German suppliers but they all seem to be on back order at the moment (due to the pandemic?) for some capacitor values. You can order them in packs of 200 pieces though. But that's too many for my needs. :D

[@niino4329]

Ben Heck is imitating others all the time and you are imitating Ben Heck.

[@Calphool222]

Your diagnostic approach when looking at the schematic is incomplete. Basically what your short was telling you is that **SOME** component **SOMEWHERE** that sits between a 12V line and GND was shorted. It did *not* have to be anything close to the bridge rectifier or the linear regulator. That's why they call them "rails," they span a distance (voltage) like a railroad track, with various components "riding the rails." Every part sitting on a GND pin or a power rail is equivalently connected into a GND or power "net," so its location on the board is irrelevant.

[@JanBeta]

The 12V rail doesn’t span much further than the schematic shows in this case. It’s just used for the motors. I think I made it clear in the video that the actual fault could be anywhere on that rail (which it turned out to be, a capacitor outside the area shown in the schematic).

[@Calphool222]

@@JanBeta ?? I see *many* components connected to the +12V rail (U22, U23, U29, Q3, R31, C21, C19, C65, C70, C42, C43, Q6, R79, C44, C45, CR14, etc.)

[@davebirley2280]

Gave up watching this, too many bloody ads. Grrrr.

[@DKbananas]

oh boy. ebay caps...

[@John-jc3ty]

bruh i was about to watch it interested but saw its 50 minutes. bruh

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

DOOD!