I love Atari XE Game System machine. It’s a rare computer, being mostly redesigned version of 65XE, however some of the parts are not available today. This makes some of the faults hard to fix. One of the problems which gave me a headache were broken function buttons (Reset, Option, Select, Start). Switches used on the main board are not available, so I was thinking how to replace them. Fortunately I had a tact switches with long leads which seemed perfect for the job.

You cas use a different type of tack switch as long as it has 2 pins only and the pin distance is 6mm.

Original switches are 11.5mm tall, so the only thing was to place the microswitch is a way that it can be properly pressed. It can’t be hanging in the air, as pressing it without the support at the bottom woulgd quickly break the solder joints, or cause the copper tracks to break off the pcb.

I designd a small platic support on which the tack switch can rest. The design is placed on Thingiverse. I also published it on Github GitHub.

This is how it looks after replacing original buttons with tact switch and the post.

For my tact switch the height of the post is 6.4mm. You can easilly adjust the height for your tact switch. This can be done by changing $stand_height variable in XEGS Stand.scad file.