8 ms·

Atari 800XL PCB Remake

89 points by mariuz 6y ago

mrweasel 6y ago
Is it actually possible to get all the required components brand new, or do you need to get them of old broken machines? There where a similar project for the Amiga 500, but actually building a machine required getting chips of old boards, or buying them on eBay.
- bluGill 6y ago
  There were several custom chips, so I doubt all parts exist.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    From my understanding -- POKEY chips are easy to get because they were in so many things other than the home computers (arcade games, some cartridges, etc.). SALLY is easy to build a replacement board for using off the shelf logic and a stock 6502, so less of a complicated situation than the 6510 in the C64. So that leaves the two graphics chips (ANTIC and GTIA).
- pronoiac 6y ago
  There was a separate blog post about acquiring the parts: https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontent... It looks like they pulled a few components from other systems, like a Atari 2600 Junior.
intricatedetail 6y ago
I understand it's not possible to copyright a schematic in terms of connections between components, so this is a fair game to copy, but the PCB layout is protected as an artwork. I don't know how this one is similar to original, but I could imagine you would like to move things around. Or is it too old to be bothered by that?
- intrepidhero 6y ago
  Can't see the site because it's down but it's highly unlikely this remake uses all the same components in all the same packages as the original. The Atari 800XL would used entirely through hole components and its unlikely all the chips are still available in DIP. So there will at least be a little change to accommodate modern packages. ( I suspect)
  - rjsw 6y ago
    Probably needs an FPGA to replace the Atari custom graphics chips too.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Yeah my 800XL's memory chips blew a few years ago and it was really hard to get new ones. Though ebay helped me out. But I think the custom ones will be even harder as they were completely custom design. Like POKEY and ANTIC.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    I follow the vintage Mac community, and there are people there remaking classic Mac PCBs as drop-in replacements with the same chips since so many boards get eaten up by leaking PRAM batteries or old capacitors corroding the traces on the board. Most of the chips on the corroded board are still good (or at least the ones that are custom or no longer made) so you can desolder them from the dead donor board in the machine you bought and pop them in the new one
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Site seems to be down. Seems an interesting idea though so will try later. 800XL was my first computer.
orzi 6y ago
Mirror here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-pcb-remake https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontent...
bullen 6y ago
The C64 SID really was an improvement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o321fq7O7-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o321fq7O7-Q (Jump to 10:30 for Atari) I wonder why 8-bit Atari failed against Commodore, must have been pricing? The VIC-20 was released after the 400/800 but at half the price of the 400! Then the failed launch of the 1200XL at the same time as the C64 at 1/4 of that price... Jack Tramiel was a wizard of numbers! And getting people to work very hard!
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  Not for long. Tramiel developed a very bad reputation for screwing over retailers, and his management style led to longer term problems once his family took over Atari Corp. And the terms "platforms" and "compatibility" meant nothing to Commodore in that era. Each machine they built was incompatible with the next, and the C64 was the only truly successful one. The Pokey had/has its own charm. The SID is nice, but that's hardly what was selling C64s. Anyways, you're right, pricing. My cousin had an 800XL and I had a VIC-20 and my neighbour a C64. Given a choice, I would have taken the 800XL; its specs were so much better in so many ways and damn that case design was nice. But that product line was always more expensive. If the original 400/800 had been cheaper, Atari would have owned the industry and something like the C64 never would have succeeded. From many points of view it is a superior platform (apart, from as you say, the SID). According to Wikipedia: "After losing $563 million in the first nine months of the year, Atari that month announced that prices would rise in January, stating that it "has no intention of participating in these suicidal price wars".[48] The 600XL and 800XL's prices in early 1984 were $50 higher than for the Commodore VIC-20 and 64,[49] and a rumor stated that the company planned to discontinue hardware and only sell software." Warner Bros axed things and Tramiel picked up the corpse after he was pushed out of Commodore. I own them all now :-)
  - bullen 6y ago
    I just bought a first version C64 Reloaded: http://move.rupy.se/file/reloaded_sink.jpg http://move.rupy.se/file/reloaded_sink.jpg Also in that picture RR-Net for instant loading of .prg and multiplayer. The Nunchuk64; an adapter for the new (S)NES Classic/Mini controllers: It's some kind of revenge to play Super Mario Bros on the C64 with an original new NES controller from Nintendo! I got the new transparent case too, waiting for the MechBoard64 keyboard and new Keycaps! The VIC-2 chip also has it's upsides, even if the palette and 2-pixel-wide 4-color mode is weird; the community today is the most active and it's growing: http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk Edit: Atari: "by November 1983 one toy store chain sold the 800XL for $149.97" C64: "In June 1983 the company lowered the price to $300, and some stores sold the computer for $199." So it wasn't price, I guess software then!?
pronoiac 6y ago
The site's struggling for some; here's the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-pcb-remake https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontent... Edit: and the mentioned service manual: https://archive.org/details/Atari800XLServiceManual https://archive.org/details/Atari800XLServiceManual
reaperducer 6y ago
I've noticed that among retro computer enthusiasts that the 800XL is the most loved of Atari's eight bit offerings. Can anyone explain? To me, the original 800 was the best, but I don't know enough about Atari's eight bit offerings to understand the major differences.
- tyingq 6y ago
  64k vs 48k of memory seems like the biggest advantage for the 800XL.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    The 800 was a pretty easy 64k upgrade and had 4 joystick ports for a proper game of MULE.
- bsharitt 6y ago
  The 800XL sold the most units, so it's probably likely that more people had them, and thus more people have more nostalgia for them.
  - gbourne 6y ago
    It is all about the nostalgia. I was introduced to this thing called "BASIC" on the 800XL and remember the joy of making the computer beep the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
  - crims0n 6y ago
    This is true for me, my grandfather had one and it was the first computer I used with any regularity.
- 23d 6y ago
  For me it was an aesthetic thing. The black modern look with metallic buttons it had was a departure from the beige that dominated computers of the time. Atari had a great design sensibility. The Atari 5200 was another great example of slick design for the time.
mariuz 6y ago
Also Atari 800XL bill-of-materials (BOM) https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom Mirror here : https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontent...
Jerry2 6y ago
Excellent work! Now Atari 800XL joins a bunch of other retro PCB recreation projects: Amiga 2000 PCB remake: https://github.com/Floppie209/Amiga2000-remake https://github.com/Floppie209/Amiga2000-remake Amiga 1200 remake: https://wordpress.hertell.nu/?p=587 https://wordpress.hertell.nu/?p=587 Amiga 500+ remake: https://github.com/SukkoPera/Raemixx500 https://github.com/SukkoPera/Raemixx500 Amiga 3000 AGA *(AA3000+) remake: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97670 https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97670 Commodore 64C remake: https://github.com/KicadRetroArchive/Commodore64C https://github.com/KicadRetroArchive/Commodore64C Commodore 128CE (work in progress): https://github.com/jolsson68/C128CE https://github.com/jolsson68/C128CE I'm sure I'm missing a bunch so please leave links to other retro computer PCB projects.
- bullen 6y ago
  C64 https://www.tindie.com/products/bobsbits/sixtyclone-commodore-64-replica-pcbs/ https://www.tindie.com/products/bobsbits/sixtyclone-commodor... Got some photos of finished boards here: http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=8711454161308077109 http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=8711454161308077109
- yarosv 6y ago
  Also OpenTendo https://github.com/Redherring32/OpenTendo https://github.com/Redherring32/OpenTendo
- scruffyherder 6y ago
  There is a bunch of chip replacements as well like the armsid and the 68k stuff like pistorm and buffee
- ezcontents 6y ago
  Gerber files to the Atari 800XL PCB can be found here: https://github.com/marekl123/atari800xl https://github.com/marekl123/atari800xl
arnonejoe 6y ago
A little off topic but wondering if anyone remembers keying in and debugging the "game of the month" featured in Antic magazine (Atari 800)? You you have to hand type and debug pages of line number basic and the games were largely simple sprite games.
- andybak 6y ago
  I hand typed apps on other 80s home computers. Credit to anyone who managed it on an Atari 400 which probably had the worst keyboard this side of a ZX81.
  - TacticalCoder 6y ago
    There was one worse: the one that came with the BASIC on the Atari 2600. And this was actually my first "computer" on which I wrote BASIC programs: an ATARI 2600 console. The BASIC cartridge was coming with some kind of keyboard controller that you'd plug in the 2600's joystick ports. It was horrible but it allowed to do simple programs and even draw colored lines etc. IIRC.
- luckman212 6y ago
  Oh yeah! been there done that. Somehow typing those damn things in was usually more fun than the actual game. At least, that's how I remember it.
- progmetaldev 6y ago
  My dad had an Atari 800XL, and typing in the games is what got me interested in development as I got older. Even in my early forties, typing in code from a book gives me more understanding than just reading code already handed to me.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I typed in pages of code for years, though mostly from Analog. At one point, they had pages of hex (or base36?) data lines and created a checksum process that would spit out the checksum after each line entry and you could check it against the magazine listing. Basically, you were typing in ascii representation of machine code for pages on end for these assembly games.
jhallenworld 6y ago
The thing that breaks on 800XLs is the flexPCB used for the keyboard. But you can buy a replacement: https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/retronics-atari-600xl-800xl-keyboard-mylar-replacement/ https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/retronics-atari-600xl-8... If you find an 800XL with the phenolic PCB keyboard you are better off- even if you step on it, you can fix it with soldering iron and wires.

89 points by mariuz 6y ago

Is it actually possible to get all the required components brand new, or do you need to get them of old broken machines? There where a similar project for the Amiga 500, but actually building a machine required getting chips of old boards, or buying them on eBay.

bluGill 6y ago
There were several custom chips, so I doubt all parts exist.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  From my understanding -- POKEY chips are easy to get because they were in so many things other than the home computers (arcade games, some cartridges, etc.). SALLY is easy to build a replacement board for using off the shelf logic and a stock 6502, so less of a complicated situation than the 6510 in the C64. So that leaves the two graphics chips (ANTIC and GTIA).
pronoiac 6y ago
There was a separate blog post about acquiring the parts: https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontent... It looks like they pulled a few components from other systems, like a Atari 2600 Junior.

intricatedetail 6y ago

I understand it's not possible to copyright a schematic in terms of connections between components, so this is a fair game to copy, but the PCB layout is protected as an artwork. I don't know how this one is similar to original, but I could imagine you would like to move things around. Or is it too old to be bothered by that?

intrepidhero 6y ago
Can't see the site because it's down but it's highly unlikely this remake uses all the same components in all the same packages as the original. The Atari 800XL would used entirely through hole components and its unlikely all the chips are still available in DIP. So there will at least be a little change to accommodate modern packages. ( I suspect)
- rjsw 6y ago
  Probably needs an FPGA to replace the Atari custom graphics chips too.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah my 800XL's memory chips blew a few years ago and it was really hard to get new ones. Though ebay helped me out. But I think the custom ones will be even harder as they were completely custom design. Like POKEY and ANTIC.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  I follow the vintage Mac community, and there are people there remaking classic Mac PCBs as drop-in replacements with the same chips since so many boards get eaten up by leaking PRAM batteries or old capacitors corroding the traces on the board. Most of the chips on the corroded board are still good (or at least the ones that are custom or no longer made) so you can desolder them from the dead donor board in the machine you bought and pop them in the new one

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Site seems to be down. Seems an interesting idea though so will try later. 800XL was my first computer.

orzi 6y ago

Mirror here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-pcb-remake https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontent...

bullen 6y ago

The C64 SID really was an improvement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o321fq7O7-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o321fq7O7-Q (Jump to 10:30 for Atari) I wonder why 8-bit Atari failed against Commodore, must have been pricing? The VIC-20 was released after the 400/800 but at half the price of the 400! Then the failed launch of the 1200XL at the same time as the C64 at 1/4 of that price... Jack Tramiel was a wizard of numbers! And getting people to work very hard!

cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Not for long. Tramiel developed a very bad reputation for screwing over retailers, and his management style led to longer term problems once his family took over Atari Corp. And the terms "platforms" and "compatibility" meant nothing to Commodore in that era. Each machine they built was incompatible with the next, and the C64 was the only truly successful one. The Pokey had/has its own charm. The SID is nice, but that's hardly what was selling C64s. Anyways, you're right, pricing. My cousin had an 800XL and I had a VIC-20 and my neighbour a C64. Given a choice, I would have taken the 800XL; its specs were so much better in so many ways and damn that case design was nice. But that product line was always more expensive. If the original 400/800 had been cheaper, Atari would have owned the industry and something like the C64 never would have succeeded. From many points of view it is a superior platform (apart, from as you say, the SID). According to Wikipedia: "After losing $563 million in the first nine months of the year, Atari that month announced that prices would rise in January, stating that it "has no intention of participating in these suicidal price wars".[48] The 600XL and 800XL's prices in early 1984 were $50 higher than for the Commodore VIC-20 and 64,[49] and a rumor stated that the company planned to discontinue hardware and only sell software." Warner Bros axed things and Tramiel picked up the corpse after he was pushed out of Commodore. I own them all now :-)
- bullen 6y ago
  I just bought a first version C64 Reloaded: http://move.rupy.se/file/reloaded_sink.jpg http://move.rupy.se/file/reloaded_sink.jpg Also in that picture RR-Net for instant loading of .prg and multiplayer. The Nunchuk64; an adapter for the new (S)NES Classic/Mini controllers: It's some kind of revenge to play Super Mario Bros on the C64 with an original new NES controller from Nintendo! I got the new transparent case too, waiting for the MechBoard64 keyboard and new Keycaps! The VIC-2 chip also has it's upsides, even if the palette and 2-pixel-wide 4-color mode is weird; the community today is the most active and it's growing: http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk Edit: Atari: "by November 1983 one toy store chain sold the 800XL for $149.97" C64: "In June 1983 the company lowered the price to $300, and some stores sold the computer for $199." So it wasn't price, I guess software then!?

pronoiac 6y ago

The site's struggling for some; here's the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-pcb-remake https://web.archive.org/web/20210314163530/https://ezcontent... Edit: and the mentioned service manual: https://archive.org/details/Atari800XLServiceManual https://archive.org/details/Atari800XLServiceManual

reaperducer 6y ago

I've noticed that among retro computer enthusiasts that the 800XL is the most loved of Atari's eight bit offerings. Can anyone explain? To me, the original 800 was the best, but I don't know enough about Atari's eight bit offerings to understand the major differences.

tyingq 6y ago
64k vs 48k of memory seems like the biggest advantage for the 800XL.
- protomyth 6y ago
  The 800 was a pretty easy 64k upgrade and had 4 joystick ports for a proper game of MULE.
bsharitt 6y ago
The 800XL sold the most units, so it's probably likely that more people had them, and thus more people have more nostalgia for them.
- gbourne 6y ago
  It is all about the nostalgia. I was introduced to this thing called "BASIC" on the 800XL and remember the joy of making the computer beep the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
- crims0n 6y ago
  This is true for me, my grandfather had one and it was the first computer I used with any regularity.
23d 6y ago
For me it was an aesthetic thing. The black modern look with metallic buttons it had was a departure from the beige that dominated computers of the time. Atari had a great design sensibility. The Atari 5200 was another great example of slick design for the time.

mariuz 6y ago

Also Atari 800XL bill-of-materials (BOM) https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom Mirror here : https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontents.org/atari-800xl-bill-materials-bom https://web.archive.org/web/20201122190319/https://ezcontent...

Jerry2 6y ago

Excellent work! Now Atari 800XL joins a bunch of other retro PCB recreation projects: Amiga 2000 PCB remake: https://github.com/Floppie209/Amiga2000-remake https://github.com/Floppie209/Amiga2000-remake Amiga 1200 remake: https://wordpress.hertell.nu/?p=587 https://wordpress.hertell.nu/?p=587 Amiga 500+ remake: https://github.com/SukkoPera/Raemixx500 https://github.com/SukkoPera/Raemixx500 Amiga 3000 AGA *(AA3000+) remake: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97670 https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=97670 Commodore 64C remake: https://github.com/KicadRetroArchive/Commodore64C https://github.com/KicadRetroArchive/Commodore64C Commodore 128CE (work in progress): https://github.com/jolsson68/C128CE https://github.com/jolsson68/C128CE I'm sure I'm missing a bunch so please leave links to other retro computer PCB projects.

bullen 6y ago
C64 https://www.tindie.com/products/bobsbits/sixtyclone-commodore-64-replica-pcbs/ https://www.tindie.com/products/bobsbits/sixtyclone-commodor... Got some photos of finished boards here: http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=8711454161308077109 http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=8711454161308077109
yarosv 6y ago
Also OpenTendo https://github.com/Redherring32/OpenTendo https://github.com/Redherring32/OpenTendo
scruffyherder 6y ago
There is a bunch of chip replacements as well like the armsid and the 68k stuff like pistorm and buffee
ezcontents 6y ago
Gerber files to the Atari 800XL PCB can be found here: https://github.com/marekl123/atari800xl https://github.com/marekl123/atari800xl

arnonejoe 6y ago

A little off topic but wondering if anyone remembers keying in and debugging the "game of the month" featured in Antic magazine (Atari 800)? You you have to hand type and debug pages of line number basic and the games were largely simple sprite games.

andybak 6y ago
I hand typed apps on other 80s home computers. Credit to anyone who managed it on an Atari 400 which probably had the worst keyboard this side of a ZX81.
- TacticalCoder 6y ago
  There was one worse: the one that came with the BASIC on the Atari 2600. And this was actually my first "computer" on which I wrote BASIC programs: an ATARI 2600 console. The BASIC cartridge was coming with some kind of keyboard controller that you'd plug in the 2600's joystick ports. It was horrible but it allowed to do simple programs and even draw colored lines etc. IIRC.
luckman212 6y ago
Oh yeah! been there done that. Somehow typing those damn things in was usually more fun than the actual game. At least, that's how I remember it.
progmetaldev 6y ago
My dad had an Atari 800XL, and typing in the games is what got me interested in development as I got older. Even in my early forties, typing in code from a book gives me more understanding than just reading code already handed to me.
sokoloff 6y ago
I typed in pages of code for years, though mostly from Analog. At one point, they had pages of hex (or base36?) data lines and created a checksum process that would spit out the checksum after each line entry and you could check it against the magazine listing. Basically, you were typing in ascii representation of machine code for pages on end for these assembly games.

jhallenworld 6y ago

The thing that breaks on 800XLs is the flexPCB used for the keyboard. But you can buy a replacement: https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/retronics-atari-600xl-800xl-keyboard-mylar-replacement/ https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/retronics-atari-600xl-8... If you find an 800XL with the phenolic PCB keyboard you are better off- even if you step on it, you can fix it with soldering iron and wires.