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Atarileaf

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Posts posted by Atarileaf

  1. 10 of my favorite AMIGA games....

    in Amiga

    Posted

    That is a great story Atarileaf. I love the Amiga and wish I could get my hands on an A500 with a monitor for $10  :nintendo_mario_1up:

     

    Unfortunately I traded it to another collector about a year after this since I couldn't find any software or games for it and I think this might have been before I was using ebay to find games. I don't think I started using ebay until 1999 or 2000 and this was a couple of years before that. It's too bad because I wish I still had it now

  2. 10 of my favorite AMIGA games....

    in Amiga

    Posted

    The Amiga just screams "cool". I owned one very briefly in the late 90's, the A500 I believe. I found it in a thrift store but not the way you'd think. It was sitting in a shopping cart by the office door with the monitor. I asked if it was for sale and the woman said it was there to get it out of the way because the Amiga was their thrift stores office computer but they had just replaced it with a Windows PC so although they hadn't intended on selling it she actually said that sure, she'd sell it and I was floored when she said I could have it for $10.  :beer:

  8. Atari Heavy Sixer Ribbon Problem

    in Hardware Hacking

    Posted

    Thanks for the advice guys. I do have a Hakko soldering station with digital controls. What is the temperature in Celcius I should set it at? And you're right I probably did have the iron on too long on some of those spots. A solder sucker wasn't working so I tried desoldering braid after applying some liquid flux to the board. I was still having trouble for some reason. My station was set to 600C I believe. The tip was tinned and working but I still had a hard time removing some of those solder points. Some came quick, others didn't. You can probably tell the ones I struggled with :)

  12. Is it normal to feel this way?

    in Classic Gaming General

    Posted

    First of all, It's Great To See You Posting Here!

    This is one of the friendliest forum sites around.

     

    I'm not nervous about most of my older system, except for my Game Gears (which seem to go bad) and my disc based games, due to the potential of disc rot.

     

    But overall, I've been pretty lucky.

     

    Big fan of your channel BTW. 

     

    I'm mostly concerned about Atari's as they're my primary love. It seems I'm having bad luck the last year of so with chips or parts dying like IC's getting fried, ram or other chips on 800XL's going, buttons on 7800 consoles or XEGS's, etc.

     

    I'm wondering if it's me who's causing the problem, especially now. My gameroom is carpet, I shuffle around in socks and it's winter with cold dry air. I wonder if I should being wearing an antistatic wrist strap or something when I touch consoles. Maybe that's what happened yesterday when I apparently killed a chip or chips in a six switch I was working on. Maybe I killed it with static electricity. 

     

    On a side note, the Keystone Kapers I was using to test the RF picture with is also dead from what happened. A previously working copy absolutely will not work on any other 2600 I've tried it on no matter how much I clean it. I've never heard of a game frying from a console dying but I have no other explanation.

  16. Is it normal to feel this way?

    in Classic Gaming General

    Posted · Edited by Atarileaf

    Strange title I know but I'm having a bit of a crisis of conscience, so to speak, with the collection. Lately I've been more and more trying to repair systems with various degrees of luck. Some success but a lot of failure. Just this morning I'm trying to diagnose a light sixer 2600 that had poor RF and I must have done something to blow a chip because I'm just getting the dreaded black screen now. Nothing works, probably one of the 3 main IC's.

     

    I often get stressed at the idea of making a video for youtube because I fear when I turn any of my machines on I'm going to find a problem or it doesn't work at all, which has happened more recently. Hence the reason I've been trying to get into repairing more. It's getting more difficult to convince myself to sit down and actually play because of this hardware failure dread that I'm always experiencing.

     

    This dread is one of the big reasons I sold off my Tandy Coco collection and TG-16 collection, among others.

     

    The whole thing has caused me quite a degree of stress where I'm not enjoying the hobby anymore and like I did in 2005, it's causing me to consider selling everything off and being done with it. The whole point of this great hobby is to enjoy it but I'm not finding that enjoyment anymore due to hardware failure, which lets be honest is going to be more and more prevalent as time goes on.

     

    Is what I'm feeling normal and have others experienced these feelings? I actually start getting depressed when things break down, which I suppose is a sign I'm in too deep with this hobby perhaps. Feedback and suggestions are all quite welcome. Thanks.

  17. FloImg1, Steem and Single Sided Drives

    in Atari ST / TT / Falcon Computers

    Posted · Edited by Atarileaf

    I've looked at the floppy emulators. My only issue is my drive is in the monitor and seems to be a bit of a different beast than a normal internal or external drive. I'm not sure if those floppy emulators even fit. It's a rare monitor/drive combination that seems to deviate from the norm.

     

    A normal external drive might work if I can find a decently priced one

  18. Atari Heavy Sixer Ribbon Problem

    in Hardware Hacking

    Posted · Edited by Atarileaf

    Cross posted from Atariage for any hardware experts here

     

    So I'm worried I destroyed this board. I have to desolder the sockets for all 3 of the main IC's since the sockets broke off trying to remove the chips with a chip puller. I use my iron and desoldering braid but I may have damaged the board in the process. I still can't get some of the legs out even though the solder is gone from each hole. I hope I didn't but fear I did. Break it to me gently.

     

    My concern with the third pic is I stupidly used a screwdriver to pry up the chip when I originally couldn't find my chip puller and scratched some traces

     

     

    post-92-0-67021500-1518299828_thumb.jpg

    post-92-0-44470900-1518299840_thumb.jpg

    post-92-0-45568800-1518300663_thumb.jpg

  19. Atari Heavy Sixer Ribbon Problem

    in Hardware Hacking

    Posted

    I actually answered this just now in the Hardware forum at AA. But the top ones are called machine pin type sockets are are best used with IC or devices that have round peg like legs on them. While could use standard thin IC legs in the round sockets, they only make contact with just the thin edge of the legs of the IC doing so. Much better to go with the bottom ones you listed. Those are called dual wipe sockets and are designed for the standard thin legs that most ICs use. They have much better surface contact on both sides of the legs inside and out.

     

    Thanks very much. That makes sense I believe the ones in a 2600 are also the ones in the second link. I'll look for those thanks :)

  20. Atari Heavy Sixer Ribbon Problem

    in Hardware Hacking

    Posted · Edited by Atarileaf

    I have a question about sockets. In looking online to purchase some, there seems to be different widths. I'm pretty sure I need the wider ones but some list things about having round pins as opposed to not. The only thing I know for sure is that I need 40 pin and 24 pin sockets for the 2600. Other than that I need a little guidance. For instance this listing on amazon canada

     

    https://www.amazon.ca/uxcell%C2%AE-2-54mm-Double-Socket-Adapter/dp/B00O9YQSUO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1517830747&sr=8-2&keywords=40+pin+ic+sockets

     

    shows round pins but this listing for 24 pin sockets doesn't

     

    https://www.amazon.ca/Pieces-2-54mm-24-Pin-Socket-Adapter/dp/B00OK5YOGC/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1517830813&sr=1-2&keywords=24+pin+ic+sockets

     

    A close up of both shows small round bases on each pin underneath the 40 pin listing and the top where you insert the chip is round but the 24 pin listing shows the pin without this little base and a different top where you insert the chip. The second one looks more like the ones I've seen in atari's before. Is one better than the other or does it even matter?

     

    Thanks

  24. Atari Heavy Sixer Ribbon Problem

    in Hardware Hacking

    Posted

    I did actually. I went on a bit of a shopping spree - got a 2600 refresh kit, a 7800 refresh kit, 10 7805 voltage regulators, a couple of ferrite chokes, a couple tubes of thermal paste, and some 7800 console buttons. I like the idea of keeping a lot of the common parts around for various projects. I'm thinking of placing an order with Best as well for a couple each of the TIA, Riot and 6507. I wonder if he sells the appropriate sockets as well. I may need to replace the actual sockets on this machine too.

  25. FloImg1, Steem and Single Sided Drives

    in Atari ST / TT / Falcon Computers

    Posted

    So I'm fairly new to the Atari ST. I have a plain jane 520ST and a PS3000 monitor with built in drive. This is a single sided only drive. I have a few 720k disks and am using floimg1 to make real disks however almost all the images I've tried have been double sided which means I can't use them in my drive.

     

    I think I read on the facebook group for the ST that you can compile your own virtual disks with Steem and make disks that are consistently single sided? Does this sound doable and if so can anyone walk me through the process as I've never used Steem before, or point me to a good beginners guide to Steem that will show me?

     

    Thanks :)

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