exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

OK, so a few more things going on.

I looked into fitting Tracos, however as it stands it's a no go. They are much thicker than the 7805's that are currently there and have their pins close to the front of the package meaning that the legs won't go into the hole with the original heatsink in place.

It is easily removable, however you'd be left with a big hole in the back of the case. It has occurred to me that you might be able to fit an RGB2HDMI in there, but I need to give it some thought as I don't have a spare Pi2W that I can use to size it up right now. I'll get one on order whilst I think on things.

Next up, is RAM. I socketed the CPU and swapped to my spare CMOS IC and the RAM still fails, so I need to order a new RAM IC too.

Last but by no means least I ordered a keyboard membrane on Tuesday and it arrived today:


The Phantom badge is from my dim and distant past and only used to obscure the addresses on the label.

Pretty fast delivery I have to say.

More testing today:


And the FDD card works a treat :)


Plus the keyboard membrane tests great too.

So later today I'll be having a look at the RGB2HDMI hookup and I've had an idea of how to make the Tracos work.

More later :)

Will the Tracos provide enough power?

PhilC wrote: 23 Oct 2026 13:51 Will the Tracos provide enough power?

You know I'm not sure. The 2450's I have are supposedlyt rated at 1A and the 7850 can do 1.5A according to the datasheet with 'adequate heatsinking.

I think I've come full circle again and I'm not going to do it.

Time to wire up for RGB2HDMI and see how that goes.

Also I found these on the Enterprise forum:


They are the function key strips for BASIC and the Word Processor. Looks nicer with something in the F Key strip :)

PhilC wrote: 23 Oct 2026 13:51 Will the Tracos provide enough power?

Easily. The two original regulators run the two 5V rails, with balancing diodes. Each are pulling about 0.6A at full load. Peripherals all create their own 5V from the 9V rail.

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Oct 2026 15:12

PhilC wrote: 23 Oct 2026 13:51 Will the Tracos provide enough power?

Easily. The two original regulators run the two 5V rails, with balancing diodes. Each are pulling about 0.6A at full load. Peripherals all create their own 5V from the 9V rail.

Thanks, I have some equivalents that do 1 amp each. Will probably leave mine as is though.

stephen_usher wrote: 23 Oct 2026 15:12

PhilC wrote: 23 Oct 2026 13:51 Will the Tracos provide enough power?

Easily. The two original regulators run the two 5V rails, with balancing diodes. Each are pulling about 0.6A at full load. Peripherals all create their own 5V from the 9V rail.

Thanks, that's useful to know.

OK, so still mulling the Tracos but no rush right now, so I followed up with the RGB2HDMI tryout.

Wiring is fun...


But only requires connections to U32 and U33. I used a plug at the RGB2HDMI end which means I have options with regards leaving this hooked up and finding a way to expose the plug to the outside world so I can hook up to the RGB2HDMI at any time.

Anyway the image looks great:


Though at this point I'm only using the default RGB2HDMI Enterprise settings so I might be able to do more with the image.

Oh, and the RPi is powered by the Enterprise, so the current consumption has gone up a bit, so I managed to get a Pi Zero v1.3 from the Pi Hut and I'm hoping it has enough grunt.

Currently they are allowing only one per customer, but they are only £13.40 including shipping. If it's not good enough I'll find a Zero 2 or 2W, Amazon still has them but they are more than twice the price of a Zero v1.3, so I think it's worth a try.

Unfortunately the Pi 4B I'm testing with (It's all I have spare ATM) is quite power hungry and my bench PSU is saying nearly 1.6A and that's just the Enterprise and RGB2HDMI so I suspect that with an FDD card or SD card reader as well it'll be even more, so the chonky RPi has to go in favour of a smaller one that isn't so power hungry.

As a small bonus it's also allowed me to test the stock of RGB2HDMI adapters that I built, and they all work great :)

I have a Zero 1.3 doing RGBTOHDMI in my CDTV