Received mine last week and it proved its worth on the first try. I found an old AT minitower in the rubbish outside our flat two weeks ago. It didn't power on, but so many parts were dubious (really light crappy PSU, PC Chips M537 motherboard, weird front panel and power switch connections etc etc) that it wasn't clear what the problem was. So hooked up my AT2ATX and boom (or rather: no boom): short circuit detected. Then swapped in and out various parts until the culprit was found: the ISA bus. Any device in any ISA slot (even a POST-card) shorted the whole system. It worked fine without ISA cards. The southbridge must have been seriously damaged somehow.

Now, I'd have figured the motherboard had issues without the AT2ATX, but no way would I have been able to swap stuff around until I zeroed in on the cause like that. I'm one happy camper 😀

I don't think I ever received mine.. anybody else still waiting?

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-09-03, 16:06:

I don't think I ever received mine.. anybody else still waiting?

I got mine. You should contact the author and ask for a tracking number. In Covid times the parcels may be heavily delayed.

An ATX2ATX version of this would be something that I would happily pay for .

root42 wrote on 2020-09-03, 19:12:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-09-03, 16:06:

I don't think I ever received mine.. anybody else still waiting?

I got mine. You should contact the author and ask for a tracking number. In Covid times the parcels may be heavily delayed.

Yeah, I figured out what happened. I missed the email about the survey.

I just sent him an email after decoding his email address that is provided in binary on his web page. I had already sent him a message on the kickstarter page but never heard back.

darry wrote on 2020-09-21, 17:31:

An ATX2ATX version of this would be something that I would happily pay for .

That would be useful as well, yes.

I found out about this too late.. When would I be getting mine? If some kickstarter backers haven't got theirs yet, well, that doesn't give me high hopes...

I couldn't afford one at the time of the kickstarter, but am hoping more will be available soon. I will be buying some new AT PSUs soon though, so may not need it.

Nitroraptor53 wrote on 2020-10-02, 14:39:

I found out about this too late.. When would I be getting mine? If some kickstarter backers haven't got theirs yet, well, that doesn't give me high hopes...

If you were a backer, you probably missed your survey email. You can go on the kickstarter page.. then go to his web page, decode the contact email address (it is given in binary), then email him.

Mine are on the way and should arrive to me very soon.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-02, 18:10:

Nitroraptor53 wrote on 2020-10-02, 14:39:

I found out about this too late.. When would I be getting mine? If some kickstarter backers haven't got theirs yet, well, that doesn't give me high hopes...

If you were a backer, you probably missed your survey email. You can go on the kickstarter page.. then go to his web page, decode the contact email address (it is given in binary), then email him.

Mine are on the way and should arrive to me very soon.

I asked about an ATX2ATX version a few weeks ago but never got an answer . Or maybe my ISP's anti-spam ate it .

heh, just adding that I wrote to author both on here and on the email from the website and got simply ignored on both.

Boohyaka wrote on 2020-10-02, 20:59:

heh, just adding that I wrote to author both on here and on the email from the website and got simply ignored on both.

Did you actually send email or just use the contact form on the kickstarter page?

I messaged him earlier today in the CPU-World forums and got a reply reasonably quickly. He is more active there than here. If anyone needs to contact him, I recommend joining there, if you haven't already. He posts every few weeks there about his latest work, mostly the Universal Chip Analyser that he is constantly working to add new chip detection routines and adapters to.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-02, 21:55:

Boohyaka wrote on 2020-10-02, 20:59:

heh, just adding that I wrote to author both on here and on the email from the website and got simply ignored on both.

Did you actually send email or just use the contact form on the kickstarter page?

Email. Not trying to stir shit up, just saying that communication doesn't seem to be that easy for reasons I don't know.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-02, 18:10:

Nitroraptor53 wrote on 2020-10-02, 14:39:

I found out about this too late.. When would I be getting mine? If some kickstarter backers haven't got theirs yet, well, that doesn't give me high hopes...

If you were a backer, you probably missed your survey email. You can go on the kickstarter page.. then go to his web page, decode the contact email address (it is given in binary), then email him.

Mine are on the way and should arrive to me very soon.

No not a backer. 😒

He said he had a few left but wasn't going to sell them until all the backers had been sent theirs.

I did receive both of mine today. He responded really quickly to me when I sent him an email.

Since there hasn't been the announced firmware update to support AT style power switches I decided to take matters in my own hands. I've never done Arduino stuff before, but that turned out to be a fun exercise.

I decided to hardcode the AT power switch mode since it changes the logic quite much. Introducing it as a configurable option would have made things too complicate (at least for me). Unfortunately I have no means to professionally test if the overcurrent protection still works as intended. I did however do a rudimentary test by directly shorting 12V and 5V with paperclips and everything behaved as expected.

Here's what this firmware does:

• Displays "ATX2AT 1.13 AT Switch" as header instead of "ATX2AT CONVERTER 1.13"
• Turns the power ON and OFF according to the state of the switch (aka AT style)
• If the overcurrent protection triggers you have to turn off said switch to reset the protection
• Commands to trigger the power ON or OFF sent from the configuration tool will be ignored since it would make things super complicated

Fun facts I figured out while looking into this:

• The onboard POWER switch traces are combined with the EXTPWR header which means it now also works like an AT style switch. Good for a quick test but now useless beyond that. 🙁
• The configuration tool reads the firmware version from the EEPROM - which is not updated if you update the firmware. So don't believe that number.
• The extpwr variable has nothing to do with the EXTPWR header. That caused some confusion in the beginning.

You can deploy this firmware by:

• Installing Arduino IDE
• Installing Adafruit_GFX and Adafruit_SSD1306 libraries
• Set the board type to "Arduino Micro"
• Plugin an USB cable into the ATX2AT and your computer
• Uploading the sketch attached to this post

Be warned: I'm not an electronics engineer nor an embedded developer. Be aware of the risk.
If you want to have the old firmware back just get it from the original repository.

Some time later:

I've mounted the converter in my case which gave me some serious headache. I understand that Samuel designed this from a different perspective, with open bench testing in mind but that causes some trouble if you want to use this in an actual retro gaming rig (regardless if AT or ATX case). Every voltage the computer needs is exposed on the board, especially at the connectors. I don't want this thing dangling around in a metal case nor let is touch my components. This thing is not build to mount in an AT(X) case, the short P8/P9 leads also restrict your options. 3D printing a case also is very difficult because of the board layout. I ended up using super thick (like 2mm) double sided adhesive for mounting but I still feel a little uncomfortable with the exposed connectors.

Don't get me wrong though: I still love that thing and I will try to acquire a second one.

More later:

Oh dear. So far I've tested this with my 486 testing rig, now I built the converter into my 233 MMX AT rig. And well, it triggers immediately on 5V when powering on the computer. I've removed all drives and cards, I've tried the original firmware, increased the response time to the maximum (500ms), increased the limit to the maximum (8A on 5V) - no dice. My original AT power supply can deliver 30A on 5V according to its spec. Is this the wrong device for my rig or is there something wrong with my motherboard? It has 2 tantalum capacitors and the lowest resistance between ground and 5V on the AT plug are 0.6 kOhms.

600 Ohms to ground sounds like a short to me. I think there is something wrong? I mean it's not terrible, it will do 5V/600Ohm=8.3mA only, and that itself shouldn't trigger anything. However I would have assumed that i see some kOhms to ground on 5V. But maybe I am wrong. How did you exactly measure that?
Do you have another device to measure the amperage when switching on? Maybe there is a short somewhere else? Does the board work with the AT supply? Does anything get unusually hot?

I tested ATX2AT on several motherboards I own. At least half of them triggered overload protection immediately after power on. Despite the fact they run normally and they consume about 4-5A on 5V once started. They start just fine when powered using a simple passive adaptor.

I use default settings and 8A limit and stock settings.

I wanted to investigate the firmware if perhaps the protection can be make less aggressive. Need to investigate how to change settings as I am on a Mac so cannot use the configuration tool.

Maybe the inrush current on your variant is simply too high. How exactly is your rig wired up? You say you want to support AT style power switches -- i.e. switches that switch mains voltage, right? I would guess that ATX style PSUs limit the inrush current when switched on electronically. But you ARE using an ATX PSU, right? I had problems with some boards when NOT using the ATX2AT but switching an ATX on via the usual wire-hack. Might have been a similar problem that the PSU went into self protect due to inrush current too high...? Just guessing here. Would love to hear some real experts explain this.