follow-up re:Atari 5200, and THANK YOU to many.

[Stephen Jacobs]

Several weeks ago I popped in to this ng to try and get some help
repairing an old Atari 5200. Many of you gave me considerable help and
exhibited extraordinary patience with my ignorance in this sort of
thing.

FIRST, the good news:
As of about 11:15PM tonight, the old beast has come back to life!!
Yessirree Bob, after replacing a couple of MJE-210s and one 4013IC, the
system works again! All of your help was invaluable, and I am grateful
to all you. Now I just need to fix the controllers (I've done that many
times - piece of cake), and either fix or rig something for the power
button (missing piece of plastic) and things will be perfect.

At first I was closely monitoring the group, and as I was given
suggestions I would quickly report back with my progress. Soon, though,
real life interrupted me and my opportunities to use Usenet became
infrequent. It has probably been at least 3 weeks since I last read or
posted here.

Since then, my ISP has implemented a new news-server and the marked
thread I had is no longer present. SO, if I missed anybody that helped
me, I apologize. BUT, from what I was able to see of the old thread, I
received help from:

Jeroni Paul
Heath Young
John Musielew
Shaun Davey
Ralph Wade Phillips
Dbowey
(listed in no particular order)

I didn't want you guys to think I took the help and bailed. The
console's working great again, and I am very excited about it. The last
trouble I had was replacing the IC. The chip was surface-mount, not
socketed, and I had a lot of trouble removing it. At first, I simply
couldn't budge it. It was in so solidly that I couldn't desolder it
enough to move the thing. A coworker told me about solder
wick/desoldering braid, which helped a lot. With the desoldering braid,
I managed to get it desoldered, almost entirely. Unfortunately, I pulled
a little too aggressively while trying to remove the chip, and 3 or 4
legs remained soldered in the holes when I ripped the chip out. I had a
very hard time getting the filled-in holes emptied out. Tonight I
finally managed, using my soldering iron, a small paper clip, and a
round wooden toothpick. It was then surprisingly easy to place the new
IC in the holes and solder it to the PCB.

So thanks again. Oh, and in case any of you are so inclined, my DSL is
down again, and has been going down frequently for the last 3 or 4
weeks; maybe you could give Covad a call and help them figure out their
problems too? :-)

Have a great weekend,
Steve

[Edward Croteau]

Didn't I tell ya this was a good group !

Just one of the [old] timers

Ed Oldguyteck

"Stephen Jacobs" <st...@JacobsHome.org> wrote in message
news:MPG.181175725...@nyc.news.speakeasy.net...

[Uns Lider]

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002 00:56:29 -0400, Stephen Jacobs <st...@JacobsHome.org> wrote:
>Yessirree Bob, after replacing a couple of MJE-210s and one 4013IC, the
>system works again!

Congratulations, and enjoy your Atari :-)

>The last trouble I had was replacing the IC. The chip was surface-mount, not
>socketed, and I had a lot of trouble removing it.

I think it would be more correctly described as "directly mounted".
"Surface-mount" would mean that the leads are laying on top of pads instead of
going through a hole in the board.

>At first, I simply couldn't budge it. ... With the desoldering braid,

>I managed to get it desoldered, almost entirely.

Next time, you might want to try a different desoldering technique. When the
old chip is bad, it's OK to destroy it while desoldering. So you can cut the
leads off of the IC close to the body, then desolder the leads one at a time
by pulling on each one with pliers from the component side while heating it
from the solder side.

-- uns

[James Sweet]

Cheap Radio Shack desoldering iron works really well with a fresh tip.

"Uns Lider" <unslide...@miranda.org> wrote in message
news:slrnaqhcm7.b65....@miranda.org...

[Stephen Jacobs]

In article <slrnaqhcm7.b65....@miranda.org>, unslider-
use...@miranda.org says...

Thanks for the advice. As for the terminology, I was pretty sure
surface-mount wasn't right, but I knew it wasn't socketed and wasn't
aware of any other term.

I took this project on for the challenge, figuring if it was successful
I'd probably learn something from it. Here we are, the project is over,
and I'm still picking up little tidbits. Who'd have thunk it?

Thanks again,
Steve

[Stephen Jacobs]

In article <MPG.1812ba49...@nyc.news.speakeasy.net>,
st...@JacobsHome.org says...

I'm a little confused as to how the parent post of this just showed up;
I posted it sometime in early October. Well, sorry about any possible
double-post.