Sleeper systems

[mikem]

Hello,
One of the neater projects I saw at the open house was the Atari sleeper build that was really a mini pc inside the case w/ the board to control the keyboard. That got me wondering if anyone else in the club has done that, or if there are any systems that are particularly interesting. I'll probably need to look for some non-fixable systems or cases to do such a build. Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[DaveG]

That was my project. The PC is a lilttle Bmax B1 Pro. It's available on Amazon for about $100. That one was the older model with only 4gb of ram an 64gb of ecc memory. The new one (same price) comes with 8gb and 128gb respectively. I'll post some pics of the insides of the system. I still want to figure out a way to add in the 5 silver buttons on the side of the 800XL. I have shortcuts to make them work using the main keyboard but there weren't enough pins on the Arduino board to add them in. Also I just copied the Arduino sketch to make the keyboard work with the PC. I don't have any real Arduino coding skills.

I'm also working on doing the same thing with a STfm. Just need to get it finished and working. If anyone is interested in doing this an older original ST would work better since it has the joystick/mouse ports on the side.

 

[mikem]

@DaveG I really liked the project. I’m now looking for a similar type of project to do. It would be a good use of one of the Wyse 5070 clients I’ve got and might give some life to a broken old machine.

 

[DaveG]

I looked at the size of the Wyse vs the little one that I used. It definately wouldn't work in an Atari 800XL case. Might fit in an older 800 case.
The Wyse is 7.2" square by 1.4" high. The Bmax is 4.2" square and 1" high. I do like the idea of recycling an older PC.