Last weekend we had some retro fun again. I had brought my Atari 800 XL for testing, and a Sega Megadrive for repairs. I couldn't really test the Atari since I found out there was no video cable with it (sadface). We did however open it up to check for leaking caps and clean up the inside. And when we opened it up, there was a little surprise inside ! It looks like it has already received a generous memory upgrade at some point. The 800 XL normally comes with 64KB and there are upgrades possible to 256KB. There is very llitle software available that makes use of this memory, I think it's only a few demos that were released in the 90's. Of course, if you need to copy any disks it will allow you to do so with less disk swapping.
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We also had a look at the Sega Megadrive, which has problems powering on. You need to push the power cord in with some extra force in order for it to turn on. Unfortunately it was not an easy fix since we didn't have any soldering equipment ready. Apparently this is a common issue and we need to re-solder some of the points on the bit that the cable connects into. I forgot to take pictures of the damn thing, even though it kept us busy for quite a while (right, Steve?).
Later in the evening we setup an Atari ST to test a copy of Monkey Island that we managed to get a hold of. Unfortunately 2 of the monitors we tested didn't work (or I was not patient enough .. the Atari ST is a slow booter !) so we settled for a monochrome setup. At least it worked so now we know the disks are good, the Atari is working (drive, mouse, etc) etc.
We ended the night with a few hours of Tetris which was a TON of fun!