First weekend in June

"First weekend in June", is the same thing as me saying "I went to the Illinois Game Con". I had other alternatives this weekend I entertained. One, I could have gone to Chicago for a TI-99/4A user group meeting. Or two, I could have gone to Marion Kentucky for their big annual rock and mineral show. But my Son and my oldest daughter wanted me to join them at the Illinois Game Con, so I spent time with them there like I do almost every year since it first started. As previous years, I had a goal, and I achieved it. My goal was to see if I could again find an old computer system that I did not own. Particularly I was looking for an old Atari computer like the 400, 800, 600XL, 800XL, or the 130XE. And I was looking for it to be a $100 or less. I checked that box also. I found a box laying on the floor under a table. In it was an Atari 800XL with a 1080 disk drive, 3 Atari 8bit cartridges, 4 joysticks, 4 paddles, and a bunch of manuals. I asked how much and they said $100. I asked if it worked and they replied they had no idea. I asked if they would go to $90 and they said $95... Felt it was way worth the risk. Did not need the paddles or joysticks. I have SOOOO many as it is. But the manuals themselves intrigued me.

I also found a table selling almost nothing but dice, so I ended up making a purchase there too - of special DM dice set.

Drive and 800XL

The RF modulator does not work, but the cool thing about the Atari 800XL is that the computer comes with both an RF modulation video output and an S-video output.  I just happen to also have a S-video setup for my TI-99/4As so I hooked that up and the display worked!  Not a loss there for me as I 100% prefer S-Video and wished I had that option for my Tandy CoCo.  For the CoCo, I had to purchase the RF to HDMI modules that is in this photo above.  But to my surprise, my working video is welcomed by an unpleasant RAM failure.

I reached out to Facebook.  If the memory is socketed, this could be an easy fix. So I opened the 800xl up to see if the memory was socketed.  They are not.

A couple of people suggested to me that a bad power supply could cause this issue.  So I'm going to try purchasing a USB to Atari computer power supply first and see if that fixes the issue.  Crossing my fingers.  If the new power supply works, I got a heck of a great deal this weekend.  If it does not, not such a good deal. 

Oh, by the way, the dice I picked up.