Some say he's the cat's meow. Others say he fixes stuff. Legend has it that his hair mutated into its own identity and is working in Stoke-on-Trent as a taxi driver. Women want him, men want to be him. We call him simply Mark.
I'd check if that thick pad under the crystal is ground and solder the thing to the board. Free floating crystals is a big no-no because they usually end up exactly like the one you replaced. At least put a double-sided pad between it and the board :)
Funny you should say that, because I have put a double sided sticky pad on the shopping list for when I finally get around to cleaning it up. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. It’s really helpful!
That's a nicee and easy fix, wish they all were like that. I got an 800XL that had the wrong colours, had to rebuild that section piece by piece until I found the culprit - a resistor that was reading as open. It wasn't burned or damaged in any way, so I assume the previous owner believed their games were supposed to look like a pink and purple mess 😅
Reminds me of when I worked with @rmcretro on the CD32 FMV module, and some of the passives had died leaving ONLY the video with a pink tinge. That was fun to scope out!
You could basically just leave the board as is without removing. Removing the crystal is easy, than remove the old solder, next just cut the legs of the new one at the same length, bend them and just solder it in. The solder will go through the entire via. Saves a lot of time and hassle. I have been doing this technique for over a decade, works just fine.
@@MarkFixesStuff no. You add solder to the pads/vias of the old crystal. Pull the crystal in the meantime out. Remove the solder with a solder sucker or wig. Put in new crystal and solder the legs from that same side. The via will flow the solder all the way trough. This technique only doesn't work with single layer PCB's, since they don't use vias. The main reason why I prefer this method is not just only saving time. By not having to remove the whole PCB incl often many other things, there is less risk of breaking things. Especially when they are from plastic that can be brittle. I do the same with other components as well btw. (resistors, ceramics etc)
Awesome video! Nice fix. I have a 800xl that has screen going dull then ok again randomly. Maybe similar fault. Psu is outputting 5v and caps are changed and checked for bad solder joints. So this is very helpful! Thanks! Subscribed
A few people started asking me what the music was on my videos. I started listing them all but it was a pain in the harris, then I discovered I could make a public playlist on my Epidemic subscription.
9:39 Mark, is your power supply all original/stock? I would recommend replacing the caps in it, so your console gets nice and clean power. I would also put a date somewhere inside, so you will know (and one day your kids :) ) when you replaced them.
@@MarkFixesStuff Yeah my cousin - RIP - had one. He had an 800XL too. Good memories all round. This is the beauty of youtube and channel's like yours mate. Thank you.
You almost got off to a good start... and then at 50 seconds I have to take a break and breathe when I see you manhandling Phillips (or is it JISIS?) screws with a goddamn Pozidriv! 🙂 It's a good idea to glue or otherwise attach those crystals to the board, they don't like vibrations.
Yeah. I know. I wondered who would be triggered first haha!!! I’m revisiting the machine to clean up the board and tidy the install when I upgrade the RAM so don’t worry. I’ll use a tri-wing next time to get you to comment and give me that precious engagement that RU-vid loves. 😉
@@MarkFixesStuff It's definitely for color (sic) delay adjustment. If you look carefully you'll notice that there's a hole in the bottom of the case (next to the label) that continues through the shielding and the PCB to the underside of the pot. It's supposed to be used in conjunction with the Production Test Cartridge which, unlike the self-test, includes a video calibration test. If you're interested, grab the ROM from AtariAge and run it from the Uno.
Really loved the shape of the later Atari machines, they did well to unify the range. My first experienced of it was with the 520STFM, loved that machine, apart from the under keyboard mouse and joystick ports (!...?). AMSTRAD rewired the ZX Spectrum 128K+2 joystick ports so no Atari type joystick would work (£££?). The plot didn't work, rewired joystick extension cables for a few £s solved it. Extender cables then went on to avoid wear and tear on the ST (& Amiga) ports. How do the joystick ports on these XE65 models usually look? Also screws, this 65XE had a fair few of them. Metal screws in plastic, eventually don't key if opened too many times. The ST and Amiga suffered these maladies.
You could have left the board in and soldered it in and out from the top. It's a two sided board. Would have saved you a minute unless the legs were bent down on the bottom.
Hi Geezer. This was a nice easy fix because the troubleshooting process I followed actually started with the Xtal. In the past I've had issues with Spectrums that have had missing or drifting colour and it's been down to the crystal being duff. Because they are actually quite fragile I check them first as a matter of course. The 4.433618 Mhz Xtal is the part of the circuit that encodes the colour into the composite signal and I was in the process of trying to check the frequency when I had the burst of colour just by touching the leads of the component. That was pretty much an indicator that the crystal was not in a good way and I have a bag of them for the PAL machines I repair. If the Xtal was OK I would have moved backwards through the colour part of the schematic until I found what wasn't working, but sometimes it's a quick fix and a short video like this one.
I was about to comment that, I searched first if someone else had commented. It's not only OCD though, if it's aligned on the white square, you know it's not going to touch the pads on the left side.
The desoldering station isn't made by Weller but either a Zhongdi ZD-8915 or a clone of it. Basically, you buy the variant that looks similar or identical and has a 90 watt handpiece. I have a slightly older one (ZD-8925) which has a nice LED temperature readout instead of an LCD but the same handpiece.
I have not seen it yet not seen the schematic but seeing the luma is there o assume the colour mixer, usually a single transistor is broken. Play the show!!! Edit: wow a crystal!!! I’ve never had one fail on me before. Nice find!
@@MarkFixesStuffI just saw Mark! A crystal I would’ve never guessed that. I never had one fail on me. Nice find! And I love the pussies in your video 😂
@@MarkFixesStuff good to know! It would be one of the last things I’d measure otherwise 😁And for a single quid I will just swap it out if I’d ever have a black and white image before looking at the mixer 😆
Personally I think Terry and dave are getting a bit big for there boots, reckon it's about time they were took down a peg or two. Never owned or played on any atari, looks like an interesting computer. Nice fix .
My 65XE shows Colour on my 1084S monitor through composite but my 800XL only shows in B&W. I know some 800XL's need a mod for the Chroma. Do you have a video for that?
Great video Mark I've got a speccy 48k that often has green, or purple tint , sometimes it's white . Is the crystal likely to be the fault on that too, its had the simple av mod done rf was a green tint too
It was getting thinner than a politician’s excuses so I decided to go short again. I explained it in one of my VLOG videos but keep forgetting that they are patron exclusive.
@@MarkFixesStuff I'm sorry to hear that. I grew my hair out during lock down to try to regain my looks from the early 90s. It didn't look so good 30 years later
