223 replies to this topic

[LoTonah]

Here's mine: 835 DA 003523...didn't realize how dusty is was until I went to fetch the serial number!

[kheller2]

Larry, on Thu May 24, 2007 5:26 PM, said:

Hi Karl-

Yes, I just double-checked "033"

Do I win a prize?

-Larry

Well, you woul have the earliest manufactured unit, but with a serial from late March.

83 S DA 019879 033 Larry USA 019879 1983 03 01/17/83 - 01/23/83

Compared to:
83 S DA 017938 133 tjb USA 017938 1983 13 03/28/83 - 04/03/83

But, I've seen some other strange orders as well.

Mgustafson has the lowest serial number... 000423.

Would you mind opening up your 1200XL and seeing if there are any white stickers near the keyboard connector and bottom side near the RF unit? The stickers have a date on them, but not all units have them. If you have a sticker from April say, but your serial is 033 then things get even more confusing.

[1050]

Taiwan

72 R DA 25996 263

[kheller2]

LoTonah, on Thu May 24, 2007 5:31 PM, said:

Here's mine: 835 DA 003523...didn't realize how dusty is was until I went to fetch the serial number!

Got the last three inked digits for us?

[Gunstar]

Mine is 83S DA 78422 133
Made in the good ol' U.S. of A!

Edited by Gunstar, Sat May 26, 2007 5:10 PM.

[Larry]

kheller2, on Thu May 24, 2007 8:50 PM, said:

Larry, on Thu May 24, 2007 5:26 PM, said:

Hi Karl-

Yes, I just double-checked "033"

Do I win a prize?

-Larry

Well, you woul have the earliest manufactured unit, but with a serial from late March.

83 S DA 019879 033 Larry USA 019879 1983 03 01/17/83 - 01/23/83

Compared to:
83 S DA 017938 133 tjb USA 017938 1983 13 03/28/83 - 04/03/83

But, I've seen some other strange orders as well.

Mgustafson has the lowest serial number... 000423.

Would you mind opening up your 1200XL and seeing if there are any white stickers near the keyboard connector and bottom side near the RF unit? The stickers have a date on them, but not all units have them. If you have a sticker from April say, but your serial is 033 then things get even more confusing.

OK -- I opened up the unit and there are no stickers of any type visible. When I do some mods on this unit, I'll report on anything inside/beneath the shielding. And as Karl surmised, this unit has a 28-pin OS socket, but a 24-pin rom in it (that I could see by looking through the shielding holes with a flashlight). That means it probably has two such sockets, but I can't see the other.
-Larry

[davidcalgary29]

Mine: Taiwan, 72R DA 14944 213. The sticker on the motherboard has a date of May 25, 1983.

[jdh]

Taiwan
72R DA 18942 223

[kheller2]

davidcalgary29, on Sun May 27, 2007 11:33 PM, said:

Mine: Taiwan, 72R DA 14944 213. The sticker on the motherboard has a date of May 25, 1983.

Sweet!

72 R DA 14944 213 davidcalgary29 Taiwan 14944 1983 21 05/23/83 - 05/29/83

Since there is no official designation as to when a week number starts and end, I started counting the first full week of the year in 1983. 213 is the 21st week of 1983, which just happens to contain the date of your sticker.

Edited by kheller2, Mon May 28, 2007 8:40 AM.

[cas]

SN# 83S DA 005248-123 USA MADE

Edited by cas, Mon May 28, 2007 10:44 AM.

[kheller2]

Totals so far:

I have 38 records from everone, including a few sellers on ebay.

From early April to late June Taiwan produced about 26000 units in perfect sequential order.
From Mid March to late May USA production was about 78500 units in not so sequential order. It almost looks like there were two to three production lines: a 6 digit line, and then a 5 digit line, and a line where people kept messing up what roll of serial number stickers to use. If I throw out 25% of the USA records, things are sequential. Its possible things just got out of order and they happen to use whatever roll of serials happen to be around when the lines started up again.

[Big_Mo]

I just dug my 1200XL out of the garage.

It's a FCC ID: BPA72R1200 (Taiwan)
Serial number: 72 R DA 04882 173

[Gunstar]

O.K., Kheller2 PM'd me for verification of my serial number (83S DA 78422 133 ), which I verified, which is apparently manufactured in the 13 week of 83, which would be the first week of April 1983. I said I wan't going to open up my 1200XL to see about stickers on the inside, but curiosity got the better of me and I looked. Unfortunately there weren't any stickers in there, don't know if there were and they were removed at some point, but when I got my 1200XL it *seemed* like it had never been opened before, becuase you can usually tell by the tightness of screws that were inserted once and never removed that you have to "break" the "lock" on the screws (you here a slight "snap") when first unscrewing them, which I heard, and the inner shielding "push rivots" for lack of the proper term, also were very tight and seemed to never have been pushed out. So, there were no stickers anywhere on the MOBO (I know I didn;t remove any while upgrading) but there is a Mitsumi sticker on the bottom of the Mitsumi keyboard that has the number 830222 which my educated guess is the keyboard was manufactured on Febuary 22nd 1983.

Edited by Gunstar, Tue May 29, 2007 2:39 PM.

[kheller2]

Did you have 24 or 28 pin ROM sockets?
With a manufacturer date 28-Mar-83 - 03-Apr-83 and your keyboard date of 830222 that lines up. Bet the motherboard has an 0383 or 0283 etch near the fuji.

Although I haven't been tracking it, my guess is that stickers only showed up in mid to late April and then only for USA boards I think...

Karl

Edited by kheller2, Tue May 29, 2007 6:52 PM.

[Gunstar]

kheller2, on Wed May 30, 2007 12:33 AM, said:

Did you have 24 or 28 pin ROM sockets?
With a manufacturer date 28-Mar-83 - 03-Apr-83 and your keyboard date of 830222 that lines up. Bet the motherboard has an 0383 or 0283 etch near the fuji.

Although I haven't been tracking it, my guess is that stickers only showed up in mid to late April and then only for USA boards I think...

Karl

The board itself has the number 5082 near the Fuji, and the serial number CO60585 and REV 13A ©1982.
And yes, that is 5082, NOT 0582; I suppose it could have been an error on the etching and was *supposed* to be 0582. Clearly though, my MOBO was produced in 1982, not 1983. Oh, and it does have 28-pin ROM sockets.

Edited by Gunstar, Tue May 29, 2007 10:30 PM.

[Urchlay]

5082 could mean "week 50, 1982" maybe?

[kheller2]

Urchlay, on Wed May 30, 2007 11:09 AM, said:

5082 could mean "week 50, 1982" maybe?

Yeah... I've seen 0283, 0383 and I think 1083. But I assumed, wrongly, that 4 digit dates would be months. This mean gunstar has one of the earliest motherboards, with an early assembly with one of the highest serial numbers.

[Gunstar]

kheller2, on Thu May 31, 2007 12:28 AM, said:

Urchlay, on Wed May 30, 2007 11:09 AM, said:

5082 could mean "week 50, 1982" maybe?

Yeah... I've seen 0283, 0383 and I think 1083. But I assumed, wrongly, that 4 digit dates would be months. This mean gunstar has one of the earliest motherboards, with an early assembly with one of the highest serial numbers.

That does seem perfectly feasable that Urchlay is right, after a rough estimate that would mean the board was printed in or close to December '82, with quick, rough math and realizing that some 31 day months have what might be considered 5 business weeks in them.

But I'm still a bit confused between what was said in this thread regarding my 1200XL and what Kheller2 mentioned in a PM; "Are you sure you serial is 83S DA 78422 133 and no 193? It seems you have the oldest but with an early build date."- I assumed oldest meant earliest, but did you mean LATEST instead of oldest? The "but" in that comment seems you meant my board was printed and assembled in '82, but the injection molded case was one of the LAST U.S. cases assembled fully with one of the earliest MOBO's? From my past experience in a manufacturing environment, I know it's quite possible that the assembled mother board was held up by Quality Control&testing due to an assembly defect, and was sent back to component assembly for correction/rework, which may make it lower priority than new assemblies and so ended up being one ot the earilier boards made, but last with a final case assembly. This would be a common manufacturing logistic.

Edited by Gunstar, Thu May 31, 2007 3:08 AM.

[kheller2]

By oldest, I should have said "highest" serial number. Everything you have shown points to a very early assembly of your 1200XL, it just was stamped with a very high serial number. As if they used the first set of stickers they got their hands on.

[Larry]

Here's another one for you -- 83S DA 016370 143. (And she's a beauty!)
-Larry

[Gunstar]

kheller2, on Fri Jun 1, 2007 1:46 AM, said:

By oldest, I should have said "highest" serial number. Everything you have shown points to a very early assembly of your 1200XL, it just was stamped with a very high serial number. As if they used the first set of stickers they got their hands on.

That's plausable, I know things like that happen, but my theory of the assemble board being stopped by quality control and sent back for rework, and ending up being one of the last to finally be completed is just as likely, I've seen both scenarios with products when I worked at an injection molding company that made the cases and assembled inserted the PCB's for smoke detectors. Though Quality control always caught the wrong sequence of serial numbers and sent them for reworking (putting proper sequence of serial numbers on them. But that's just one company, I also know Quality control is not always up to par at many companies. So I tend to lean more toward my scenario which is more plausable logistics wise.

Though I do like the fact that I have a very early build, and that it's American made. So I guess I have a very early 1200XL with all the very latest upgrades in it!

[kheller2]

I just figured out the possible 3rd manufacturing location: Hong Kong. The 1200XL Field Service Guide lists an Atari part number for the FCC label. I've never seen an HK 1200XL, I doubt they ever fired up for a run.

[geezer]

Here's mine:

USA Made
83S DA 53689 163

-Kevin

[mimo]

Tiwan
72R DA 03941 173

Board DA163 REV A

dead keyboard, no mods

[kheller2]

mimo, on Mon Jun 11, 2007 10:49 AM, said:

Tiwan
72R DA 03941 173

Board DA163 REV A

dead keyboard, no mods

Try this for the keyboard:

Remove it from the system, and unscrew every tiny screw. There is one just under the sticky part of the ribbon cable, top right corner with sticky pad closest to you. Remove board.

Now, you can either peel back the white membrane all the way to the space bar and wipe down the contacts, or you can forget that if the membrane starts to rip as it will with very tightly screwed ones.

Plug just the board into the 1200xl and power it up. Go to the keyboard test if you can and verify each key works. Typically what happens is the mating between the membrane and the circuit board starts to corrode and fail. You can see pics of all this in the restoration sticky thread. I've repaired three dead 1200 keyboard by just doing this and pressing down on the mating joint with my finger, and screwing that section together tight.

Otherwise, its the chips on the keyboard that have gone.