Atari SMM804 Printer?

[Darklord]

I should dig it out and run it up. It would look great with a pimped out 130XE or MegaST hooked to my modded SC1435

Indeed...! (and we want pictures - we love pictures!)

[atari030]

Yeah, me too mate.

[Darklord]

I actually took it apart a couple of days ago, just to check things out.
It's relatively clean inside and things look good on the surface.

But...(there's always a but with me, right?)

I was looking for the "74xxx" series chip and I did find it. It's not socketed
though so I'd have to completely remove the main PCB to be able to get
enough access to it to de-solder and replace it.

There is a daughter-board that sits on top of the main PCB. There's a green
wire that runs to it that's pretty short. In fact, once you pull that board loose
from the main board, there's not enough room to even turn the daughter-board
over and look at it. One harness releases easily but this green wire was a new
one for me in Atari hardware. It's not a clip or plastic end that plugs into the
board but rather a sliding black piece that lets the wire pull completely out,
leaving it bare. Anyone seen that kind of connection before on Atari stuff?

I'll try to post some pictures later.

Anyway, you pull the daughter-straight up to remove it. After I got it to the
point where I could flip it over and examine it, I noticed right off that one
pin was bent out, almost 90 degrees. Now, I'm clumsy and I make a lot
of mistakes but I don't know how I could have done that just pulling the
daughter-board off - especially since this bent out pin was in the middle of
the row, not on the ends.

There was one socketed chip on the main board so I pulled it, cleaned it
and reinserted it.

I reassembled everything but now it's behaving differently than before. Now,
the On/Off line button does not blink continuously, but turns completely off
or on, no blinking. I thought, "ah-ha!" and proceeded to hook it back up to
the Mega ST but now the printer won't even turn on if the printer cable is
connected to the Mega ST. Weird, huh?

So I ordered a brand new printer cable from Amazon that's supposed to be
here today. I'll try that and see what happens. If it still doesn't work, I'll
go back to the plan of removing that "74xxx" series chip and replacing it.

Just another day at the ranch here...

[Darklord]

Okay, I got the brand new, never been used printer cable from Amazon in.

No go. It displays the same behavior as the cable from Best Electronics.

When it's connected to the Mega ST4, the printer will not turn on.

With it unconnected, it won't even do the self-test anymore - it just prints
out any paper that's in it then stops.

Back to square 1, I guess...