3 Feb
2002
3 Feb
'02
12:51 p.m.
I've spoken with some people out in Tawain and they did find one set of mold
die's for some Atari 520ST cases, I have the photo's they mailed to me, the
molds were rusted and ruined.... I can't imagine that the blocks up machined
aluminum from 1981 would still be around or be in any type of usable
shape.... I've spoke with some of Atari's former Industrial Designers and
even on a side as a favor, to make new CNC'd dies for a short run would be
into the tens of thousands, there's gotta be someone who's sympathetic to
the classic gaming/vintage computing cause willing to do some CNC work on
the side for a smaller fee and then you could take those to any place with a
multi-ton press and run off a few dozen to a few hundred pieces of plastic.
I have wanted to do this for a long time, some of the projects of newer
hardware I've been messing with have been using what I called "recycled
Atari" cases as I use existing products, machine them with needed opens, get
color matching lexan to make cover labels and such and do neo-Atari products
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tothwolf" <tothwolf(a)concentric.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2002 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: Classic Game Console Search
Well, a really good scan of each side of the boards would do as a starting
point for most of the true hardware hackers. Most of the time would be
spent on sections of the board other than the main processor anyway. I
imagine there are some nonworking or unfinished boards floating around out
there somewhere too.
What might really be nice, is to get permission from whoever still owns
the design for the units to reproduce them. With today's manufacturing
techniques, the boards would be the least expensive part to reproduce. The
most expensive parts of a reproduction that involve a molded plastic case
are having the molds duplicated. I wonder if Atari stored the molds for
this thing away somewhere... Heck, even back then Atari decided it was
worthless, maybe they'd be willing to put the design in the public domain
;)
-Toth
On Sun, 3 Feb 2002, Curt Vendel wrote:
> From: "Tothwolf" <tothwolf(a)concentric.net>
> > On Sun, 3 Feb 2002, Curt Vendel wrote:
> >
> > > There are only two fully assembled and functional units, Al Alcorn
> > > doesn't even have one and he was the head of the Atari Cosmos
project,
> > > but he does own a set of the plastic
shells. I have one of the
> > > functional units and a CES mockup, the other is owned by a former
> > > Atari engineer from Atari's special projects unit. Here is a link
to
> > > images and history of the Cosmos at my
site:
> > >
> > > http://www.atari-history.com/cosmos/cosmos.html
> >
> > Why doesn't someone reproduce the boards used in the system and
install
them in the empty shells? That is, if someone wants
one badly enough.
Of the two known boards sets, neither one of us is really interested
in having someone tinker with them and take chance to damaging them or
their components. Someone would also need to find suitable
replacement for the COPS411 MCU and read off the current code and port
it to a newer MCU say from Microchip or others. There are only 3
empty shells out there, so I doubt the demand would justify the
work... IMHO, or maybe not :-)