Santosp Atari XE Remake Motherboard Build Part 1

[@adamv242]

Bathroom looks lovely, much nicer than mine. Enjoy the build! I assembled one three years ago, and now have my perfect daily Atari.

[@flashjazzcat]

Thanks!

[@JimWood28]

Image quality is noticeably improved Jonathan, nice work (as always). Cheers mate.

[@flashjazzcat]

Great - thanks for the feedback.

[@Mind-your-own-beeswax]

Good to see you getting on with the backlog Jon. Mick

[@flashjazzcat]

Yes Mick - I was about to drop you an email saying it's probable I'll look at the Amigas next week. :)

[@byteoncomputerservices8054]

Awesome PC Jon! I'm envious.

[@flashjazzcat]

Thanks. The intel CPU troubles are a bit of a worry, but hopefully with the microcode update applied and a five year warranty on the processor, I should be OK. :)

[@user-Atamigaputer]

Stay with the 4k encoding Flash, I watch all your content on my 4k computer screen and the vid clarity is fantastic

[@PG-gs5vb]

I'm quite surprised that you bought a prebuilt instead building your own machine. I'd never miss an opportunity to do a PC build.

[@flashjazzcat]

I've been buying ex-office Dells and Lenovos for years but this is the first time I've bought one new. The retail price of the i7-14700 alone was £400 when I bought this PC, and the RTX 4060 £250-300, so quite how I could have built a machine with the same specs for less than I paid for this pre-build (£880), I'm not sure.

[@shpongled]

Thanks for the u1mb/Sophia and fix on the 800XL

[@flashjazzcat]

Thank you!

[@DarrenCoull]

Interesting project. Good to see some reproduction boards appearing, but it really is a labour of love - economically perhaps not very good 🙂 The bathroom looks very nice BTW. My 800XL is still working nice, found a pair of identical (Acer K222HQL) monitors that love 15Khz at the charity shop, so I have the STE and the 800XL next to each other and a shared audio connection to a cheapo soundbar through a switch - just need to find a way to EQ the volume as the STE output is way louder than the 800XL's. 4K looks great - I was reading the VBXE writing on the board while you were bringing in the magnifying glass. 😀

[@flashjazzcat]

Given the hours worked and the parts cost, this isn't going to be cheap for the client, but I suppose if the original machine works anyway, this is a bit of a vanity project. Thanks re: bathroom. Working on the kitchen now. :) Pleased 4K is going down well. Sounds like you have a pretty sweet setup now.

[@przemekkobel4874]

Thanks for the video. Therapeutic as always. Some say that all 13th & 14th gen CPUs fail eventually. Apart from oxidation, supposedly something was wrong with voltage settings for some parts of the silicone. Don't know if they've made a microcode fix already.

[@flashjazzcat]

That's exactly what the microcode updates are supposed to address. The motherboards were overshooting VID requests, commonly sending well over 1.5v to the CPU. Actually Hardware Overclocking has made several interesting videos where he's measured the voltage supplied to the CPU before and after applying microcode patches on various motherboards. One problem is that the firmware attempts predictive power management which also resulted in voltage spikes to the CPU. Anyway: I'm gambling on most of the manufacturing issues which can't actually be fixed by microcode changes having been ironed out by the time my 14th gen CPU was produced, but who knows.

[@richardkelsch3640]

Stick with the 4K. It looks better on my 4K monitors. For a channel with PCB traces and parts labels, the 4K helps to see what you see. With all of those extra features on that board, I hope he has corrected Atari's clock signal issues. I can understand some people liking through-hole parts, but now days you can get PCBs pre-populated if using SMD. Why not have everything SMD, with the exception of the Atari specific parts? I guess it's taste.

[@flashjazzcat]

Yeah: I would have been happy with all SMD on the UAV at the very least, but quite a few people who'll be building these things will - like me - have deteriorating eyesight, so it may not be to everyone's liking as you say. Glad the 4K is showing some measurable improvement.

[@waltciii3]

Based on Candle's PCBWay project page, the Incognito Lite for the 400 is still a possibility. Hopefully before I become a pensioner! (Cross fingers)

[@flashjazzcat]

This is no exaggeration given the speed at which time moves these days.

[@gryzman]

oooh, nice

[@mmm43kir]

4K !!!!

[@TonyRudzki]

Nice reproduction, but it looks like there are modern parts...if so, they should have used surface mount resistors and caps to make the build easier.

[@Evilslayer73]

This is a very cool project !! how much for that?

[@flashjazzcat]

I don't know how much the board cost, but the parts are ~£150 and labour is going to be at least double that.

[@dashorken]

I have a santoshp bare pcb that I've been meaning to build. Could you post your Mouser BOM so sourcing the needed parts might be a bit easier?

[@flashjazzcat]

I was sent this one the other day and although I haven't had time to check it yet, it's probably a better starting point than my fragmented and imperfect orders: www.mouser.co.uk/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=a3118e30ce

[@lopez8140]

When you finish the assembly, can you check the colors on a standard GTIA instead of Spohia2 by running the Numen demo? I wrote on AA forum but no response. We assembled these boards together with a colleague , but unfortunately the colors display on GTIA are wrong, on spohia2 everything is fine.

[@flashjazzcat]

Interesting. I'll try to remember to do just that for part 2.

[@gryzman]

whenever I order parts from mouser, such as resistors etc - I always order at least 5 of each, if not more. It's kinda annoying that they are wasting so many stupid little plastic bags on these things. Very wasteful!

[@flashjazzcat]

Yes - as I said in the video, I wished I had simply added three to the quantities for every part (notwithstanding the fact a couple of values were completely missing from the BOM). The packaging is incredibly wasteful, but I chose to rely on the individual packaging for my own organisational purposes (which hopefully means everything's in the right place, LOL).

[@suitandtieguy]

What you just want them to throw all of the components into a box and put a label on it like an asshole?

[@user-Atamigaputer]

Nice gear upgrades Flash. Substantial project you have started. Must admit I was surprised with your parts order, particularly resistors. There are cheap resistor kits available that have multiple of every resistor value you would ever need. Same goes for caps in various types

[@flashjazzcat]

I just followed the example on the bill of materials, which specified nice Vishay metal film resistors, etc. Certainly I could have populated the board for half the price using cheap resistors and caps already in stock and simply topped up on a few other values, but I figure if we're going to the trouble of making a new motherboard for no other reason than 'because we can', we might as well use relatively deluxe parts.

[@user-Atamigaputer]

@@flashjazzcat Understand your thinking but Atari circuits were never near rolls royce quality, high grade components were not needed or used

[@flashjazzcat]

@@user-Atamigaputer I wonder if the new board plus better parts will do anything for the old video vertical banding issue.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

That is a crapload of parts.