Hello Computer Cooks and welcome to the Retro Recipes Kitchen!
Now, in a recent video, I showed you an incredible, extreme Commodore 64C refurb by my friend Pete
Well Pete's back!
And so am I!
Wait till you see the condition that this Atari 800 XL was in before he got to work on it
Now, that Commodore 64 had a lot of issues inside, I mean a lot!
And by issues, I mean mud
Well, this one has issues inside and out, with that case
Pete's on the case
And so am I!
So, please, sit back and enjoy this musical, pictorial journey of restoring
another one of our beloved Retro Machines back to its former glory!
Welcome to Retro Recipes!
Now, although the Commodore 64 was my first love
And the Apple IIe was the first computer my parents ever brought home
Those of you who subscribe, will know that the Atari 400 was the first computer I ever owned
Little did I know, back then, that it actually had a big sister
The Atari 800XL
Actually, a cost-reduced Atari 800 with worse compatibility
And a fuzzier, dirtier picture
And speaking of dirty pictures..
Here's one for you!
But on the bright side, the protective film is still on the badge!
So, the story behind this is that a user called TBC posted in the forum that he had this Atari 800 XL, that was quote
"Unrefurbishable"
Great word!
So, Pete responded, "Nothing is unrefurbishable!"
And so, this Atari 800 was soon after gifted to Pete
And the challenge was accepted!
Let's start with the case
How's it goin' Atari? Hangin' a bit to the left?
Oh dear!
Well, let's take a hot gun to.. (laughs).. that sounds painful
Actually, quite a simple remedy, just heat up the plastic until it becomes pliable
And then exert some pressure (pressure exertion noise) using that pin
And presto! Nice and straight.
But what about the cracks in the case?
Well, the soldiering iron is what you use
No solder!
Just run the soldering iron over the plastic to mold it back onto the other half
But we have bigger frish.. frish? FISH to fry
So, it's time to give this a nice soapy bath!
It's looking better, but the bath hasn't quite cured at all of the broken slats
Dozens of them!
What you're gonna need are some metal pins
Dozens of them!
Then you take a bunsen burner
Heat up the pin and drop it onto the plastic
And after a few seconds, and a few more pins,
they will melt down, sink into the plastic, forming part of it, and strengthening it, ready for the next step
So, here's how the back of the case should look compared here, with an Atari 130XL
That would have been a lot harder to repair
Really the best way to do this is to rebuild a cage
Representing each of those slats. And
So, that's what's happened here
It looks incredible, but it doesn't look like much.. yet
What we're gonna need is some polyester resin and a mold
So here's the mold, it's just an Aluminium corner piece from some furniture
And we get our professional polyester resin mix to go in here
Pour that into the mold
And then we're going to need a good Atari 800XL case, as a spare
Luckily, that was lying around!
You dip that in the resin and when it comes out, 24 hours later, peel away the backing, leaving only the front
And there you have it!
Your Jell-O mold ready for the cage to slot in to
See how nicely that fits in there
So we taped that on to the top piece
Place it back into the mold
Get our polyester resin, again
And pour that in
So we created a negative mold and then a positive again
24 hours later, pull it out
And.. It's not perfect
There's a few too many air bubbles
But that's going to be able to be sanded down and maybe use some putty as well to smooth out the finish
What about the bottom piece?
Here's how it should look on our spare case
So what we'll do is close off those holes at the back of the spare case
Make a different shaped to mold, suitable for the bottom piece
Place it into the mold
And this time just to see if we can get some less air bubbles, we're gonna use a silicone mold
And 24 hours later, here's what comes out a complete negative Atari 800XL
A sort of, an Atari - (minus) 800
And then you guessed it..
It's cage time again!
Look how nicely that fits into the mold around all the pieces
Really amazing job!
And then it's just a question of using the polyester resin again
Kinda looks like candy! Don't you want to eat that?!
Ah, I do like retro computers
Tempting!
Well, we do need to finish off those finishes
So we get some Universal putty here, spread it on nicely
It's like cake batter over candy!
And then once it's sanded down, here's what you're left with
Good enough to eat!
But there's one problem.. the original has this texturized to finish
So, what we do is pour some of that polyester resin, in a nice blob, on top of that texture
You can also use a Atari Disk Drive or anything with that texture doesn't matter about the color
When you peel it off, you get a texturized mold
Place that over where you want to texturize
Pour in some more polyester resin
This should take the shape of that texture
Sand it down a bit more, it wasn't quite what we wanted there
We'll come back to that for a big reveal, soon!
What about this motherboard?
Looks okay on the surface, but when you look closer, we've got corrosion here on the CPU
These socketed RAM chips, well, they need to have it socked to them, really they need resocketing
We've got missing parts..
..dust
Snapped resistors and capacitors
Even cracks in the board itself
And because the board is actually bent what we're going to do is put this clamp on it
And leave it at about 40 degrees centigrade, for a few days, to straighten out
We'll take out all the chips and put them in the Retro Recipes Deep Fat Fryer
Oh, wait! Sorry, it's an ultrasonic cleaner
But, of course, some of the chips are just gonna need to be replaced
Here we go, after a nice clean up things are looking a bit better
Got our new resistors, new capacitor
And our new chips combined with some of our paved ones
Once we got them all into place and soldered everything in..
Well, this is looking like the machine it once used to be
Let's plug it in
Turn it on!
It works!
Still a few things we could to fix up, though
There's this bent piece of the board here, which just needs solidifying a bit, it's become very weak
So, we'll get a really tiny drill bit, make a hole in the actual silicone of the board
And into that hole, we can pipe some filler to solidify this job
What about the keyboard surround?
You know this glass, or perspex plate, has really seen better days and
Nothing a good polishing won't restore!
Yeah, most of that will buff right out!
And when the job's done, it's not perfect, but that is more than good enough
Wow!
But those scratches really needs something else
So, the matching spray paint is used
Really does match the original color there
Once it dries, you can't really tell the difference between the two halves.. Look at that!
So, I finished the job and glued back on those metal plates
That's how it was
And this is how it is now
What a beautiful job!
Now in the Atari 800XL, unlike the Commodore 64, the shielding is actually quite important
It wasn't just an FCC compliance
So, let's take a mallet or.. a hammer and panel beat the heck out of it!
And finish off with a nice, new, Zinc spray coating
Screw it all back in
And move on to the most daunting task here..
This keyboard!
Man...
You know, we're gonna need some new keys
And luckily we do have a spare keyboard
That's how it was
And that's how it's starting to look now, cleaned up
Let's put on those spare keys
Okay, they're a bit yellow (laughs), but
Hey, look, look what an improvement this is!
Brilliant!
Well, let's come back to that case
Everything's had a chance to dry and...
We've given it a coat of paint!
Can you believe that was the same case as the beginning of this video?
But to get that texturized finish all over, we're going to spray some more paint
And while it's wet, place our texturized mold on top of it, push down firmly, peel it off
That's what you're left with!
You can repeat that process all around
Only one thing left...
Let's get screwing!
Motherboard goes into it's new, old, home
And there's our top case with the keyboard in place
One final thing.. the cartridge slot
And finally the big reveal!
Let's take a tour, along with some of those glamour shots!
Amazing to think that this is mostly molded and didn't exist
Which means, we've got a message for the original owner of this quote "Unrefurbishable" Atari 800
I'll drink to that!
So as we wrap things up here, I do have one question left
Who wants to peel off this protective film?!
Comment below and Cheerio!