ITC 130xe 2023

This Atari 130xe has been in the ITC collection for nearly 20 years but it only over the last few that any upgrades were finally being done to it along with getting it back to full working order. It has had the following services done: - All electrolytic capacitors were replaced about 2 years ago - A new mylar keyboard membrane and connector installed about 2 years ago fix keyboard functionality issues - UAV was installed about a year and half ago to replace the original composite and s-video with improved video output - A VBXE was installed about 4 months ago to provide RGB video output and provide support for new games that take advantage of the VBXE abilities - Just installed was a Mytek TK-II stereo and PS2 adapter. This provides stereo audio output with the use of a second POKEY chip and allows the use of more standard PS2 keyboards however, only the new audio output is being used. One slight modification done on the TK-II stereo output was to add two more additional 470Ω resistors as the original audio was way too hot and distorted across both POKEY chips. This is a common fix done on the 130xe although usually 390Ω resistors would be used. But the 470s were the closest I had and they seemed to correct the issue without any real loss in overall output on my setup at least. Not much more planned for this 130xe as it is starting to get crowded inside it and pretty much now has everything I've mostly wanted over the past few years for it. There are still somethings that I believe are just inherent in the 130xe design that keep it from being excellent. There is still some vertical bars in both the UAV and RGB outputs although when the RF modulator was removed as part of the VBXE install it cleared up the jail bar issues quite a bit. The VBXE is designed for PAL Atari computers and so the RGB output has some skewed colors as a result. Last is that there is a lot of floor noise in the audio output. This was present from the original monitor port as well so again, I feel it must just be part of the 130xe experience.