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Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 04 Mar 2020 13:23
by JezC
Ok, at the risk of spamming the forum, my part-assembled H4 is now with me (plus a few bits to complete that and start on the bare board build too).

Photos will appear on my H4 build thread in due course.

Just realised that I still have to locate a suitable SIMM and/or Falcon RAM board before I can finish either of them :roll:

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 04 Mar 2020 14:04
by exxos
JezC wrote: 04 Mar 2020 13:23 Ok, at the risk of spamming the forum, my part-assembled H4 is now with me (plus a few bits to complete that and start on the bare board build too).
I spam the forum all the time, I think people mostly just skip over it all.
JezC wrote: 04 Mar 2020 13:23 Photos will appear on my H4 build thread in due course.
Yes, get on with it :chairsmack: :chairsmack:
JezC wrote: 04 Mar 2020 13:23 Just realised that I still have to locate a suitable SIMM and/or Falcon RAM board before I can finish either of them :roll:
simms in exxos store ;) Though I only have 16MB ones, its what I used in my H4's. I think I do have some 4MB ones *somewhere* though.. if I find the badgers will send you one.

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 04 Mar 2020 14:17
by JezC
exxos wrote: 04 Mar 2020 14:04 I spam the forum all the time, I think people mostly just skip over it all.
Nope, I look at them all at some point...even when much of it goes over my head! There's a chance (albeit a slim one) that I might actually remember that I've seen something useful in there at some point in the future when I hit a similar issue!
exxos wrote: 04 Mar 2020 14:04
JezC wrote: 04 Mar 2020 13:23 Photos will appear on my H4 build thread in due course.
Yes, get on with it :chairsmack: :chairsmack:

:lolbig: Will do, but won't get a chance to take any proper photos until after work. :roll:
exxos wrote: 04 Mar 2020 14:04
JezC wrote: 04 Mar 2020 13:23 Just realised that I still have to locate a suitable SIMM and/or Falcon RAM board before I can finish either of them :roll:
simms in exxos store ;) Though I only have 16MB ones, its what I used in my H4's. I think I do have some 4MB ones *somewhere* though.. if I find the badgers will send you one.
Yes, saw those and was sorely tempted to order one as well...but this month & next month has something like a dozen birthdays in the immediate & close family group so funds are even more scarce for such "luxuries" (as all my hobbies are referred to by the rest of the family) than usual. Sniff

If you do, I'd be most grateful but I know how short of time you are too!
:D

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 09 Mar 2020 23:04
by JezC
Too much life getting in the way of hobbies at the moment...but I did make some progress going through some of my suspect STF/STFM pile in an attempt to select a suitable donor.

Annoyingly (from the search for a donor perspective), two that I hadn't got to boot to the desktop before are now booting OK
:shock: :o :roll:

So, other than knowing that one of them (a 103175 Rev 1) has 2x ROM TOS1.04 (and a WDC1772 in a socket) & the other (a 70789-001 Rev D) has a duff PSU, needs the reset circuit mod and has dodgy wiring for the Marpet memory upgrade (sadly only 512k), I'm actually no nearer to locating the donor system. :cry:

I think there are one or two more in the stash which appeared to have a memory fault, so I will have to dig them out next & continue the testing...probably tomorrow now though.

Of course, I'd normally be delighted to have diagnosed the faults on a couple of systems :dualthumbup: :yay2: but that certainly wasn't my main goal for tonight.

Ho hum...

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 09 Mar 2020 23:18
by exxos
:lol: I choose your marpet machine as a doner ;)

BTW something in the post today for you :)

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 10 Mar 2020 08:11
by JezC
It's on the short-list... :twisted: ...but there are a couple of others (also C070789 boards of different revisions) which appear to have true & persistent RAM faults, so I'm inclined to use one (or both) of them at the moment.

I'll just need to swap the various bits out of that & into a known working board to check they've survived the extraction process :o :shock: :roll:

:thanksblue:
Cool - I will keen an eye open for anything arriving over the next few days & let you know when I receive anything.

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 10 Mar 2020 15:24
by JezC
exxos wrote: 09 Mar 2020 23:18 BTW something in the post today for you :)
:thanksyellow:

Post arrived - many thanks for that. One less item to worry about (still leaves infinity -1 to sort...but that's just one of my many problems)
:roll: :lol: :lolbig:

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 10 Mar 2020 21:15
by Tomswork
Just a random day of news I can still order lead paste and rosins here in Canada as long as they come from the us go figure

Tom

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 12 Mar 2020 13:02
by JezC
Limited time over the last day or two (partly due to consecutive days of family birthdays)...but I have found a likely donor system!

It's not booting in hi res mode (will try it in colour this evening if I can) - so unless it 'just works' when I try to boot it with a colour display it will
become victim #1 :twisted:

I still have a couple more machines to try out...but this is at least giving me some hope of finishing off the first H4. :D

The weekend might well give me the opportunity to try out the new desolder gun (even more so as the eldest is back home from London, so I might manage to 'disappear' at some point while she talks my wife's ear off)...

:lol:

Re: Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

Posted: 12 Mar 2020 13:25
by rubber_jonnie
exxos wrote: 04 Mar 2020 14:04
I spam the forum all the time, I think people mostly just skip over it all.
@exxos If it's your own forum, are you really spamming it?