exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I think this is as close as I'm going to get to the original.

P.S. In lieu of silver paper, a grey background...

That'll do, Donkey. That'll do.

stephen_usher wrote: 19 Dec 2025 22:07 I think that the XL machines look the best in terms of the 8 bit machines.

They're more compact than the originals and have their own style, unlike the XE machines which look like cut down STs.

Anyway, A8PicoCart and FujiNet ordered now I have a known working machine. :-)

Nice, they are a great machine and the Pico/Fujinet combo will be good.

stephen_usher wrote: 21 Dec 2025 12:27 I think this is as close as I'm going to get to the original.


IMG_4838.jpeg

P.S. In lieu of silver paper, a grey background...

That'll do, Donkey. That'll do.


IMG_4839.jpeg

Looking good :)

The solver paper arrived so I made the new badge...


Doesn't look too bad at all. A little bit too shiny and not "brushed aluminium" but pretty close to the original. Close enough to look the part and if you weren't looking for the it no notice the difference.

The machine became unstable again, with corrupted screen and then just crashing on power-up so I took it apart... T'was the GTIA again with a poor connection.

I re-scraped the chip legs, bent them inwards and added some more Electrolube to the socket. Hopefully that will keep a decent contact now. While I had the machine apart I did the same to the other socketed chips.

All seems fine again now and I'm re-running the soak test.

And after about 10 minutes it failed again.

I've now taken it apart again and scraped the tarnish off the socket wipers with a jeweller's screwdriver.

I've not reassembled it again but I'm running the soak test.

Unfortunately I've only turned pin sockets of that size and old PCBs and turned pin sockets don't mix well.

Seems to be stable again now. I can prod, pull, rock etc. the GTIA chip and the machine keeps running. So I've put it back together. Whether it'll be reliable only time will tell.

stephen_usher wrote: 22 Dec 2025 18:59 Seems to be stable again now. I can prod, pull, rock etc. the GTIA chip and the machine keeps running. So I've put it back together. Whether it'll be reliable only time will tell.

Fingers crossed :)

I ran the machine for 8 hours straight with the self-test and it was fine. So, it's probably OK.

It's still working!