JezC H4 Build - in slow time

[JezC]

Well, after finally despairing about the non-arrival of the assembled H4 boards, I finally gave in and asked exxos to ship me my bare H4 board (with some ST cases) so that I could start the slow process of building that one up...mostly in the vain hope that this might actually result in the assembled H4 making an appearance

Expectation is to finish it before Christmas (but as a s/w engineer by profession I'm not going to commit to which one that might be... )

Now that the competition for the user builds is over (and I can't win the booby prize!) I feel safe to make a start with the build's (lack of) progress

Having realised that the cost of buying all the necessary components is beyond my budget unless I happen to win the €110,000,000 lottery (especially after already feeding Harry a few times in the past few weeks ), my first step will have to be to nominate a donor board & salvage as many parts from it as I can.

I have 3 or 4 likely candidates (a couple which don't boot to the desktop but do show the white screen plus a couple of others which don't even get that far) but I think step 1 is to get a decent de-soldering tool ordered so that I stand a reasonable chance of not destroying all the chips and the PCB.

@rubber_jonnie which model Duratool have you gone for? I've seen the 80w model (D00672) at CPC for under £90 which might be an option...

Anyway, I will try and make updates when I actually get any worthwhile progress with this epic journey.

[exxos]

Expectation is to finish it before Christmas (but as a s/w engineer by profession I'm not going to commit to which one that might be... )

[rubber_jonnie]

@JezC Yes, mine is a D00672. Around £90 is good, mine was £99.99 plus postage, but it was Christmas, so prices were probably up.

[JezC]

@rubber_jonnie


ok, thanks for confirming. I'll get that ordered this weekend (and see if they stock anything else I will need to go on the same order if possible).

I think I'm going to have to fault find my potential donor boards before I nominate the victim(s) to try and maximize the chances of using working chips in the H4.

First job is to build up the new desk and chair for my daughter...then she will be in her room and not the study so space and time for the retro gear might be more available than it has been.

[JezC]

Part-assembled H4 has now arrived...and the 27C4096 EPROMs & adaptors are here as well as the desolder gun.

I'm now running out of excuses for not getting things done...other than the bane of all retro computer folk...lack of spare time!

I will try & get photos done of the various stages of the build(s) as I go...

[exxos]

Quit work and do Atari stuff all day like me, and live overworked and underpaid, also like me

[JezC]

Quit work and do Atari stuff all day like me, and live overworked and underpaid, also like me

I'd be OK with that...but I think my wife, the kids & various pets would be holding a somewhat different view of things

[PaulJ]

I assume your spending more time at home so possibly have a little more time to work on the H4. When you make some progress it would be interesting if you could post some pictures.

[JezC]

I assume your spending more time at home so possibly have a little more time to work on the H4. When you make some progress it would be interesting if you could post some pictures.

Nope, so far we're still having to go into work every day (and even our US office is at work as they are involved in the power generation industry), so sadly still very little time for the retro hobbies.

Some tiny bit of progress last night - I did manage to get a null modem cable tested with Ghostlink between my original 1040 STF and my PC, so I'm one step closer to diagnosing the faults on the potential donor boards...

I'd have tried it last night but I was working through the rest of my 'hoard' and found another non-booting system (but this has SMT glue & MMU etc. - in fact only the 2x ROMs are socketed on that board ) so that's now on one side for later investigation.

One step forward, three steps sideways & then another step in some random direction it seems

I will try and get some photos and updates posted at some point soon, though I've still got to wait for some funds so I can order the remaining missing pieces for the two H4s

[rubber_jonnie]

@JezC Keep at it and stay safe.

If I can get there, so can you