I have found my old Atari 65XE in my attic. I got it when i was 12 and now im 35. Was talking with two of my friends about reanimating it. Do you have any do and donts while starting this process? What should i watch about?
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Make sure the PSU is only outputting 5V DC, some PSUs are known to destroy machines, this is the most important thing to verify. If the PSU sucks, you can chop off the cable, and since the XL/XEs run exclusively on 5V, you can wire up a USB plug to the chopped off PSU cable and use a phone charger. If it powers up and the self test passes, you can get a Fujinet if you want to be done and ready to roll forever, or there's 10 million other SIO to SD/USB/Etc interfaces. XEs are really quite reliable, I've owned a ton and never had any XEs with issues. If the keyboard is fricked you can buy a new membrane and repair it very easily. Bad RAM will be the most likely "worst" scenario, since nothing is socketed on the XEs.
the RAM in these was usually Micron MT4264s aka Satan's RAM chips
All the Atari 8-bits are pretty reliable aside from the XLs which have crappy PSUs and the CPU sometimes dies from overheating due to its location next to a voltage regulator, stuff usually only dies when some tard was messing around in there and touched something with static electricity or did a poorly thought out hardware mod (which does happen, it's the curse of retro computers).
>stuff usually only dies when some tard was messing around in there and touched something with static electricity or
And that was before ICs had clamp diodes so ESD damage was easy to do.
shows us the internals? any rust/dust build up? blown transistors?
>got it when i was 12 and now im 35.
either you live on a third world country that still kept selling those until after 2000 or you are lying about your age and you are 55 years.
the only reason i knew about this was because i was cleaning the storage of a chruch and found several of those ,otherwise i wouldn't have known that stuff existed.
They were sold at retail until 1993, give another 2 years to clear dead stock +5 more of it sitting around before being sold at a garage sale or whatever, it could happen. I'm 35 and grew up with a 2600 because that's what we had in my house. The 2600 was also sold until 1993.
You win some you lose some, I've been lucky for whatever reason. All 3 of my XEs are 100% (I have replaced keyboard membranes, etc, as needed). On the other hand, 2 out of 4 600XLs that have come across my desk had bad RAM.
some XLs have shitty PSUs especially the ingot power supply that overvolt and nuke the RAM
>All 3 of my XEs are 100% (I have replaced keyboard membranes, etc, as needed)
Trying to repair an Atari 800 keyboard is a b***h though especially the ones that have a lot of tiny plastic stems you will have to 3D print a replacement for if need be (one 800 variant did have a membrane keyboard)
I had an 800 with shitty, cracking stems; it sucked, I got rid of it.
the ones with the yellow stems (found in the last run of 800s they did) are super flimsy and break a lot. you can 3D print new stems but it's annoying.
that's a lie you can't say "i am 35 and got mine when i was 12" and expect people to believe it (we aren't in 2010 FFS!!) just be honest you are over 50 years (that console died with the atari shock of 1983) so in 1985 was hard to get one (specially on retail since atari was moving to other stuff),in the 90s was rare to see one unless third world country,by the mid 2000s it was deemed a myth since no one knew or had one.
Most of the owners of atari are a bunch of old gays over 50 no matter how young they try to pretend to be (is not a nintendo or famiclone since those are even available in this date,bought one yesterday for my mom).
Remember those atari vcs are almost 50 year old consoles
Ill be 35 in may. I got it at my fiest communion (12 yo)
lol. You're putting way too much effort into trying to rationalize a larp. Anon is a zoomer who overpays for old toys on ebay and larps about getting them new as a child because he's embarrassed about it.
Its true, im from Poland not USA
I was born in 1988, I have half-siblings 15 years older than me, there was an Atari in the house when I was a child, it was the first video game I ever played. It's really not hard to understand. Also the 2600 had plenty of releases (software and even hardware) after 83.
This is exactly correct
I'm 39 and I bought a whole bunch of 800XLs about five years ago. I've also got a 600XL and a 1200XL. Kinda wish I had a 800, and I never fancied the XE series. They just don't look good. I did invest in a 1040STE from the UK before they became completely unreasonable since I already had a matching color monitor for it.
I think Atariage Forum would be a better place to ask than here.
Please, I'm begging you forget about that ancient hunk of shit. There are no good games on that thing and it's just a historical curiosity.
What a pleb
what a gay
Why would you care?
Miecze Waldgira 2 were pretty cool
The LucasFilm Games games are fantastic too, and they were developed for Atari first.
the unfortunate thing is that the NTSC library only goes up to 1985 and it doesn't support anything but the 400/800 while PAL stuff is usually forgettable Eurojank and low quality C64 ports.
despite anon angrily disputing it, this story is completely plausible for rural US. Stuff is around forever in the sticks in America. Family of mine in rural Indiana was playing Atari VCS almost into the 2000s. I also know somebody who grew up in America in the 90s playing intellivision.
Shamus but it has to be patched to run on XE
the XEs are reliable if you never ever open them up and touch anything in there because the PCBs are cheap and fragile as frick due to Tramiel penny pinching
They're really not all that flimsy. They were obviously built cheaply, but I've disassembled 5 or 6 completely, down to the individual key caps, removed RF shields, replaced keyboard membranes, and I've never damaged a board in the process (nor have I ever had one that needed repair).
There was one variant the 800XE which should definitely be avoided as it was a dumping ground for junk parts and components that were out of spec/failed factory Q/C.
brewing academy has replacement ac plug that uses usb instead of 120volt
I use one for my xegs
recommended
also get a disk emulator, complete retail library