[sdiy] 19" rack mounted & modified Atari Mega STe

[m.bareille at free.fr]

Hi Hallvard,


wow long mail :)
Answers in the text...


> That's awesome! You've done a great job.
> I took a look at the rest of your site and you do indeed have some great
> projects there.

Thanks for your visit :)

> Glad to see others having rack-mounted their Ataris as well ;-)

It is a very old story ;) Started with the first Steinberg software release,
when musicians ( studios etc..)  wanted to compact the thing ...


> Ouch! I first thought about doing the same thing, but quickly found out
> that I would have to cut away a little bit of the circuit board in
> addition to removing all the rear connectors. Too risky with a PCB
> consisting of several layers, and a lot of work of course.
> It took me forever to come up with the simple idea of just flipping the
> PCB 90 degrees round!

No it is not so hard, neither risky, if you are able to solder unsolder
cleanly...


>
> Up until recently I still thought removing the connectors was the way to
> go, then move them to the rear panl with IDC flat-cables etc. But why
> make it so complicated? So I've decided that the simplest thing will be
> to leave just about all the connectors as they are on the Atari PCB,
> then make small extension-boards that go to the back-panel of the rack
> enclosure and connected to their original connectors via flat-cabling.
> In addition to not having to desolder the existing connectors this
> method also makes it easy to swap the mainboard in case the computer is
> damaged somehow.

Exact !
Both methods have advantanges and drawbacks...I cannot choose for you ;)
I have tested both with success. The commercial Atari compatible rack could
probably still be found on Ebay , second hand market... This could be a cool and
clean solution for you if you find one. But i think  it is a quite rare item, it
was pricey and not very popular too...

 Furthermore I've heard that racked
> computer equipment (servers etc.) came come as deep as 100cm!
> So 50 or 60cm should probably be fine. But where do i find empty rack
> enclosures that deep?
>

Industrial recycled devices ...Search for a good place nearby your locatin if
there are some ...Ebay too...


> DXF; that's autoCAD?

Yes , or an equivalent  file format... to drive the CNC ...


> I don't have too much experience when it comes to metal-workshop. I've
> made some mistakes when cutting metal before and it's very frustrating
> to experience that you have one go at it. If you make a mistake you have
> to live with it. With such a big project as this I really want it to
> look nice :-)
> Yes, I admit it -I am a perfectionist ;-)

Simple , perfect , pricey = Schaeffer ... It is digital milling style...

>
>> I have mounted some old pictures i had of this unit on my site at
>> http://m.bareille.free.fr/falcon030/mb_falcon.html
>
> That really is great piece of work! You should be proud of that.

It was mostly a patience game : drill a hole ... be zen ... drill another hole
... be zen ... etc etc etc  After days i get a finished panel... I have learned
like this the virtue of an infinite patience ;)
The rear panel is made of steel ...



Very frustrating when copy-protected software
> freezes because the dongle has wiggled a little bit or one of its pins
> are dirty.

Well , use version without dongles...nobody will complain now...


> I haven't heard of Mecanorma -are they "rub-on" letters like Letraset?
> I used those in the 80s when I started out with electronics. Hard to get
> the letters aligned properly, but looking good when it worked!


It is the same thing :) Patience game again to get a clean alignement ... never
perfect indeed !


>
> I know that Schaeffer (http://www.schaeffer-ag.de) does front-panels,
> both cutting and printing, but from what I could see they're not exactly
> cheap. And on top of that I'll have to pay a hefty fee for postage
> (seems they only use UPS and not standard mail) and import duties/taxes
> when the panels arrive here

Ask them for the shipping ...

>
>
>> Well i hope my pictures will inspire you :) Good luck !
>
> Thanks, they sure do.
> I'm still trying to learn how to master "Eagle"
> (http://www.cadsoftusa.com/) which seems to be a great program, but
> complicated if you've never done this sort of thing before. But once I
> finish all those PCB designs (I also need to complete some PCBs for a
> vocoder I'm working on, which is another big project) I will get them
> etched somewhere (I've tried it several times myself without much
> success, which is why I want to try to leave it to others, providing the
> cost isn't too high). By the way, from your page it seems you also etch
> PCBs?

Yes i do.

 Is that just PCBs for projects you've designed, or can you make
> PCBs for anything?

I can make anything from any paper document or grafik files ... Send me the
document and you will get an estimation of the price, including shipping. I can
make series but over a certain number of boards it is more interesting for you
to use another process... The price is calculated on the type of pcb ( single
side /double side) ,size and number of holes if you want it pre-drilled. Hot
solder staming.No metal holes. PCB material used is FR4 fiber-glass quality .It
is the 'ancient' way of making pcbs, +/- the same system you use at home but
with professional tools on all the production chain ...


I just need a few small and simple single-sided PCBs
> which I'll be designing with Eagle, and some small PCBs taken from
> magazine articles (photo-copies, but touched-up by me to remove copy
> errors etc.).

My favorite to design quickly  pcbs is Proteus DOS version , but this engage
only me ! :)

Cheers,

Marc B.