exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hello, my name is Guus.
It seems like a long time ago, I worked for Atari.
I've repaired many 2600 units and was there when the 600XL was introduced. And the 800XL, 1010, 1050 and a couple of printers and the plotter.
And I've repaired many of those as well.
Then the ST series was introduced, the office moved from Breda to Utrecht. (Two cities in Netherlands)
And I was sacked.
Still I kept active, for the SAG (Stichting Atari Gebruikers) that once had 7000 members and many magazines per annum.

Now I have build some extensions for the 8-bit, as a team member of course.
So the Freezer 2004 and the MegaSpeedy had my PCB design and assembly.
Also, I own quite a bit of ST's, TT, Falcon and some HD's and SCSI devices.

Currently I'm trying to get a Mega ST to run on 16 Mhz with very few parts.
I found a description in German language and I'm trying that out.

BR/
Guus

Guus.

What did you do at Atari then?

Hello Exxos,

Repair the 2600 units.
And later the 600XL and all other computers.
I'm the one that found the "Mexico" CPU's that have a timing issue when they get warm.

Later, when I was involved in SAG, I was one of the "hardware freaks".
Most hardware designs were from me, where other team members wrote the software.
And I've been the chairman of the club for a while as well.

From Atari, I moved to repairing bigger computers.
Data-General Nova and Eclypse.

BR-
Guus

guus.assmann wrote: ↑Sun Sep 24, 2017 8:20 pm Data-General Nova and Eclypse.

Was that any less painful than described in The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder?

Hello Number_Nine,

Sorry for the late reply, I've missed your comment.

I'm not familiar with that writing.

However, there was one very big advantage on these machines.
They could handle core memory.
So I could load a testprogram into a memory card, on a working machine.
And get to the "sick" computer with the test loaded.
We also had all schematic diagrams and the layout.
And one more thing I found very good. These computers needed Airco. And I like that low temperature.

BR/
Guus