Modified ST hassles

[Nikolas]

Man... you're like 200m from your work place. Your boss will definitely like you because you are always minutes away from the workplace

hahaha

[ralcool]

Hey folks, still alive and well.

Busy doing other things (family and projects), and occasionally playing with the ST.

Thought I'd drop in and say hello.

I don't see Darklords or ZacksWorld HD kit install yet... they must be busy elsewhere then?

I hope to show some interesting news soon- but I am still limited by time and money slowing things down (as usual).
Suffice to say I have been occupied. And my Atari is still running strong. (But my old ATX PSU seems to be failing.. )

When ever I feel that I need to see enthusiasts doing their thing.. I come and have a look here.

Much love,

ST.

[DarkLord]

Hey Ralcool! Always good to hear from you.

Nope, not had the time yet, got the kit in though, looks great.

I'm hoping to scrounge up enough time to work on this soon.
Klutzy as I am, I want to give myself plenty of time with no
rush/pressure on.

Thanks!

[Shredder11]

There is always something of interest going on here, no matter how small! Nice to hear from you Ral

....d'ya see what I did there with the name thing huh!? Ahh well....

[zackworld]

I've been kind of drifting about myself.

I did install ralcool's HD board/ROM's though and as expected all works perfectly.
Or at least it did untill a floppy shed its coating all over the drive heads.

I've since obtained a 4Meg RAM board, HXC and Ultrasatan.
All working together, but I've not really found the time yet to tidy it all up.

Good luck with your other project ralcool

[ralcool]

Good stuff.

I've clagged the heads a few times on my drives... luckily I have an old 'floppy cleaning' disk which I squirt some disc cleaning type solution on, and run it for a few seconds while the Atari tries to read the mystery disk!

Usually it fixes things right away, or a second attempt or three sorts it out. (But give the heads time to dry before using a real disk again! )

Should be able to find one on ebay or something for pennies.

Sean.

PS, Finally able to visit again after my ISPs DNS server was refusing me access.... Thanks to Mr Google's free DNS server.

[ralcool]

I still have two modded 1.44Mb Sony drives here and HD boards to drive them..... Amazed nobody wants' em.

I do check in here occasionally..... and am still happy to build on demand.

Even though I'm finished for now on my Atari... was a winter mod project afterall, but NEVER forgotten (never was... had her for 26yrs) - I am still here.
Give me a good excuse to make something new- I'm there!

Haven't removed my cpu yet... to try a 32mhz overclock on a 16mhz HC rated chip... but will soon.

All my mods are still working... the pcbs haven't failed! hurrah! Intend to burn pperas magic6.2 to ROM when I find time, just to try it.

My ATX 'lab modded' psu has failed me though... served me well.... but time to replace it. Overloaded her once too often apparently. Bugger.
Can't run the ST without it!!!!


Keep in touch ok!!!!!

Sean.

[Shredder11]

My attention is slightly towards my two Falcon 030 at the moment, but I did upgrade one of my STE with a dual TOS (1.62+2.06) in September. I have a vortex ATonce AT 286 PC Emulator kit for one of my STE, so I plan on fitting that at some point. I need to figure out how to fix it into the STE CPU socket, along with the 68000 CPU; maybe some 64-pin thing to drop in the CPU socket; mount the interface and then the CPU on top of that?


Not forgetting the interface you are assembling for me with the 16MHz CPU and Floppy HD integrated. I figure that my three main STE machines, the Holy Trinity if you will , shall consist of:

• a super fast, huge floppy storage workstation
• a dual TOS gaming machine
• a dual personality TOS/DOS/Windows 3.1 machine

So plenty to be going at right now but new exciting and fun ideas are ALWAYS welcome! Which means we all need to have a little collective group think, to show the original Atari developers what they could have done!

Lovely to hear from you Sean, and yes let us all keep in touch!

[wongck]

Even though I'm finished for now on my Atari... was a winter mod project afterall, but NEVER forgotten (never was... had her for 26yrs) - I am still here.

Whoa 26 years. Respect.
I had my STFM for only 22 years. Just beginning of the month booted it and it was still working together with all the upgrades & the HDD. Now I removed the Tos 2.06, 4MB upgrade and the SCSI (well that's on the external) and trying to sell the upgrades. I do not see myself using the STFM any more as I'm on the Falc & TT.
May even convert it to a PC running Aranym & STEEM.

[ralcool]

I might have been slightly out... I've had my Atari since the release of the STFM...1986... 24yrs... but i still love her. I love powering it up and seeing it boot from the 'new' internal IDE HDD and opening pictures and documents. i have old 'quotes and files' my dad made using this system using LDW power and Wordplus.....I kept backups of everything.

We didn't like the Mac (Dad and me), the PCs were 286/386 DOS crap, and the Atari had a colour screen. The beautiful SC1224.

(Mind you i still use DOS now and then, as you do)

I still have the invoice for the $1000+ 30Mb 'Megafile 30' HDD.

I seriously love building circuits... Mr Shredder, I had a friend years ago who bought a AT-once 8mhz mod for her STE.... to run some early IBM family history software. And she still does. The practice i had building pcbs and stuff for my Atari has been useful, didn't do it for a number of years, but knew how. Practice makes perfect..... hehe.


At-Once made a 386SX-16 board at one stage..... i'd love to have one now.... Could maybe run Win 3.1/95/98 on it!... My AT-Speed is 'only' a 286 like yours. But still good!

I'll send you the prototype board I made for the 'combo' high density/16mhz' um , kit... hopefully you can figure out the wiring to install it. It tests perfectly, but I don't think i'll ever make a production unit. I still don't have an STE to make a reasonable/easy diagram... but in theory it should be fine- no reason why it shouldn't work for you......It takes several hours to etch and build and test, and noone will pay the price for that.....niche market etc. Heck i have HD FDD boards noone wants! Weird.

Just use your multimeter, and trace some pins. i will help you.... no problem. It will work. I have your address to send. i made a promise to you.

Sorry to be so absent lately.... I have been very busy, and spending lots on my latest project, and my children....might get a result soon. Has cost me a small fortune. I am not permitted to talk much about it- but I will reveal much more if/when i get it working. (No its not Atari related, but I have had to relearn PIC & EEPROM programming, construction, and talking to many experts in their field. Seriously big poo. When I get serious about a project... I am all guns. You might have noticed... I can't even spare the time for my Atari.. But it might be considered WAY off topic. PM if your interested. But I do play with the old ST when I lose 'focus'.

I love you all, and wish you the very best of luck in your own projects. I come here to be impressed! Nerds we are!!!! We're getting old!!!! hehehehe

Mr wongck, Don't sell your parts.. You'll regret it later. Put them in your cupboard and wait for another day. We are dealing with rare and hard to find components.

I am always here. You are my only friends in the UK... and maybe some in the US, or elsewhere. I love our talks. I can't believe this thread has hit over 5500 views! WOW.

Cheers guys. You are all amazing. Just keeping in touch.

Thankyou.

Sean.

[wongck]

Just the beginning of this month, I found my invoice to the STFM along together with the Syquest shoebox hard disk plus ASCI adapter.
Man I never know I kept those things so well.
I don't see much ppl wanting my old parts but I will keep the on sales, it sitting there not doing anything anyway. May be someone may have some use for it.

[1024MAK]

I still have two modded 1.44Mb Sony drives here and HD boards to drive them..... Amazed nobody wants' em.
Sean.

This may be stating the obvious, but have you posted in the wanted/for sale section? (viewforum.php?f=33)

[ralcool]

Awesome, the forum is back online..., Well done Dal.

Been a long while... I thought initially my ISP had refused me access...again. lol, was a much bigger issue.

Not much to report from me... I rebuilt my ATX PSU... it had died. But no Atari development to speak of for now.

Built my 4yr old a P3 based computer system to run educational stuff.... she is way happy. Good use for old hardware.
A nice pink keyboard and mouse, and a modern LCD display. These old boxes only need a bit of ram to perform well.

Just looking after the kids and fixing numerous faults with the cars and house. Trying to stay dry. Floods etc.

ps, I made a post in the for sale/wanted section, for my remaining 2 HD kits.

Cheers!

ST.

[Shredder11]

A teacher from one of my old schools back in the early to mid 1980s was called Mr Flood.......I kid you not! I used to see him jogging quickly along our road in a morning, and his small 3 or 4 year old children could not keep up....so he dragged them along poor things He used to get the piss taken out of him royally each day! Anyway yes, the situation on Oz looks pretty bad although for some reason not affecting absolutely everywhere in each disaster zone.

I was hoping to finally get the 16MHz + FDD upgrade kit from you, but since I had my car crash last month all my money is going towards the new car fund (well new old car again). I've already sold a few things on Ebay and about to cash in my road tax disc + breakdown recovery policy, so the fund is now at £700. I had a Peugeot 306 2.0 XSi hot hatch and would like another, although they are becoming old now and so I may look at a Volkswagen Golf instead; the 2.0 GTi is a lower insurance group for some reason.

Pentium III computers are still useful and I have an old ASUS TUSL2C + PIII 1.4GHz server CPU + 512MB Infineon SDRAM and more besides. I think once the PIII came out, that was the tipping point between the older machines that were never enough and the newer PIII which could run most things comfortably. I can easily overclock my 1.4S to 1.7GHz and keep it stable under load, and all with normal components except the copper Zalman flower cooler fan.

[ralcool]

Hi Ian,

Sorry to hear about the car crash, I must have missed the news with the forum being down. I do hope you're ok, and haven't lost any bits or mobility.

We are lucky to have missed the floods (mind you my workshop sits behind a retaining wall and gets plenty wet after decent rain)- the rest of the east coast copped a drenching.
I can only thank living atop a nice hill/ridge to avoid the flowing torrents destroying many local cities and towns. (Massive drought, and now more water then we can believe)
What climate change.....?!

Its all a big mess... But us aussies stick together and help out in anyway we can. (Cash, Help, Hands, a big Mop..etc)

The damn combo mod is ready in its finshed glory, but untested as far as an STe goes, and despite looking around- have not found a suitable donor to give it a good flogging.
I'll give you the dusty prototype board for nothing to help you out, and stay in the experimental Atari game. Just wish I could give you a bloody diagram for installation. (And its the only one built so far)

I have parts enough for an easy couple more- but an unvalidated design is just that. Plus you'll have to mod your HD Sony drive as I have previously shown. (I can at least give diagrams for that!)

I agree the P3 and AMD Athlon series processors were the turning point in (PC) computers becoming actually usable... for Internet connectivity, DVDs, decent graphics- just that most retailers were still underselling them with the amount of memory they needed to stretch their legs. XP for example needs 512Mb to come alive. My Daughters' P3-866 machine has 512Mb (and even my own P3-800 backup system with a mere 320Mb), are absolutely quick and stable- they run utube, MP3s, and loads of old kids games and crap perfectly- running XP Pro SP3, IE8, and all the trimmings. Sellings these things with 64/128 or even 256Mb was just sinister. (More proof when I had a P2 with equally impressive amounts of ram- did things it never dreamt of- and holding back then from buying a P4 which I have always hated- stupid chip- Core 2/iX series owe their heritage to the old P6 architecture. AMD got out of the gate early with their on chip memory controller- and did damn well for a long time. (My car computer has one as my sig shows, and its a damn fine processor- coupled to 2gig of spare memory once found lying in the drawer gives it plenty of grunt for intensive media centre duties.) hehehe. (Look up 'PicoPSU' for 12v to ATX connectivity for running a PC motherboard from a car battery on ebay.... way cool- works excellent!)

Fired up the ST tonight after a few months of inactivity- and not suprisingly, booted up perfectly. New 'lab' ATX PSU is working nicely, and I'm looking at what hardware I can make to play with next.

ST.

[Shredder11]

Thanks Sean I appreciate your kindness. I'm still fumbling around with sorting the relevant legal documents to send to the DVLA (UK central vehicle government organisation) and also my insurance company. I was all set to go and check out a couple of cars yesterday but they had already sold... It would have been a couple of hours each way travelling for one of them, and for the other I could maybe have hitched a lift with our fish delivery man in his van! Once I do get a cheap car it will go on a credit card unfortunately.

Yep regards the Ozzies I was really impressed with how they are helping each other. It would happen a little in the UK but nowhere near as much as I have seen online. You should all be very proud of yourselves!

The mod kit should be a good project for me this year, and maybe I can rope in some help from the good folks here. Once I am back on the road I will be able to go and visit some people and a bit of fun etc.

Before my PIII machine I had a Socket 7 based VIA MPV3 chipset PC + AMD K6-2 AMD-K6-2/500AFX + 256MB SDRAM + Win98SE; this is the motherboard http://www.pcpartner.com/support/man/via/895400.pdf . My current best PC is a (now) old ABIT AS8 mobo + P4 670 3.8GHz + 2GB matched pair Corsair + 1TB approx storage + Leadtek FX5900XT AGP + EMU 0404 + Yamaha SW1000XG and a poo load more inside a nice Akasa Eclipse-62 tower. Still comfortably does everything I want and more, although I suspect things like Google Streetview and YouTube are inefficiently coded, because they send my PC fans crazy as they try to cool my CPU down and everything feels like it has run out of RAM despite it not doing.

[ralcool]

Hi Folks,

Another post from my bored but curious mind.

I have previously posted the patch locations to enable 6ms step rate for HD mods.. in ROM. First it was TOS1.4 gleaned from Pperas' own forum. (Location $2BD, 03 to 00)

Some guys here have recieved a modified TOS 1.4 Lo-0 ROM in their HD kits and it works nicely.

Later I figured out where to find the bin address for TOS 1.2. My own testing has shown it too works fine. (Location ($2D9, 03 to 00)

For no good reason, I decided tonight to seek where to modify the newer STe's , in its TOS 1.6x. And have believe to have found it. (Not tested as yet, since no STe juuust yet to test on- but I'm 99.99999% sure of it) Location #2B3. Change (again) from 03 to 00. Reading the hex, it looks VERY likely.

TOS 2.05/06 need not apply. But there is a hack to force it to display the HD format menu in the older STF/M/FM without the 'magic config jumper' of the STe/Mega STE, modify ($460 '66 14' to '4E 71')
Thanks to Ppera for this little hack tho. (Only had to ask nicely, and give him some software to look at that did the job)

SO, If you decide to install a HD drive in your STe, and still want to run TOS 1.6x- now, we can (should) boot directly off HD disks again without resorting to a 6ms step driver. Only a reburnt rom required.
Or if you decided to go with a nice dual TOS 1.6/2.06 setup, it would be silly not to have autoboot for the old 1.6 version if you planning on a HD drive mod too.

Cheers

ST.

[1024MAK]

Some very interesting and useful info there! Thanks

[DarkLord]

Hey Ralcool - I know you said you check here from time to time. I hope so.

Finally got around to doing some stuff with my STacy. I've got your kit, and before
I start to install it, I need to ask about a possible conflict. Your instructions state
to make a 16mhz connection to pin 39 of the video shifter chip, C025914-38A.

I'm also trying to install a Fast Technology's T25 accelerator too. (I'm working
on getting socket risers setup to get the internal power supply board up high
enough to clear the accelerator board). There are two versions, and one is
a lower profile version just for the STacy (Revision B). There is a blue lead
that comes off the board. I bought the board from B&C Computervisions,
used, and while it came with software, there wasn't any instructions (none
on the disk either). However, I do have another Mega ST that has a T16
board made by the same outfit. It also has the blue lead, and guess where
it connects? Yep, same place as your instructions. So would this be a conflict
or can they co-exist there, hooked up together. I'm including a pic showing
where the T16's blue lead goes.

Thanks!

T16_d.jpg

[ralcool]

Hey hows doing.

Been away for the last month enjoying some sunshine much further north than here.

Though by now you have probably tried connecting up the accelerator. I can't see any reason for conflict.

They are both just sourcing a clock line.

At worst some current limiting might with a nominal resister value (say 150ohm) to either board if there is instability.

Cheers,

ST.

[DarkLord]

Hey! Nice to hear from you. Glad you're enjoying yourself a bit. Everyone needs the
"away" thing every now and then.

Well, as it turns, out, the only difference I can find between the 2 versions of the
T25 boards I have is a small riser. One is revision B and one is revision C. The C
rev. doesn't have the blue lead. As far as I can tell, the blue lead allows the rev. B
board to "downshift" to 16mhz speed on the fly. There is a small ACC included with
the software that does this, it offers 8mhz, 16mhz and 25mhz speeds. The rev. C
board doesn't seem to need this lead. I've tried both in the STacy already and they
do work.

So it looks like I can just use the rev C and not have to worry about that blue lead
This is assuming I can manage to stuff everything together. I've had a heck of a
time just trying to find single inline sockets to raise the internal power supply board
just enough to clear the T25, and not push it up into the RF shield.

Anyway, I'm hoping to install your marvelous kit in the next couple of days, since
I'm off work. I've just assembled the header and wires, so I'm ready to tackle the
motherboard connections.

Wish me luck, a hot iron and a steady hand!

[DarkLord]

Okay, first run/test and not working... Since Zakk's worked, I'm assuming that its
me. (totally safe bet there!).

I hooked everything up according to the instructions, I believe, went back and double
checked them, can't find anything obvious.

Here is what its doing - maybe that will help diagnose the problem.

With either a 1.44 floppy or 720k floppy in the drive, I turn it on. Light comes on,
on the drive, makes a sound like the drive mech opening the shutter on the floppy.

Light stays on (never goes off), never hear any access sounds, doesn't sound like its
reading the floppy disk at all, then after a short time, it times out to the desktop,
with the Floppy drive A and B icons there. Clicking the A icon says that drive is not
responding.

Just for the fun of it, I removed the T25 board and put a stock 68000 CPU back in, no
difference.

I also swapped the stock 720k floppy drive back in, again - just for the fun of it. With
it installed, it times out to the desktop with no drive icons.

Anyway, any thoughts or suggestions? I'm sure its probably something I've done or not
done...

Thanks!

[spiny]

Hey hows doing.

Been away for the last month enjoying some sunshine much further north than here.

Though by now you have probably tried connecting up the accelerator. I can't see any reason for conflict.

They are both just sourcing a clock line.

At worst some current limiting might with a nominal resister value (say 150ohm) to either board if there is instability.

Cheers,

ST.

good to see you back

[Shredder11]

Indeed!

[ralcool]

Hi guys, yes I do drop in.

Sounds like the HD detect line is playing up. I would first quickly restore the 8mhz signal back to the fdd controller and check it runs a normal drive first.

Or using a MM that measures frequency, see what is delivered to the clock input to the WD1772 with the HD drive fitted. DD vs HD disks.

Some pics of the install might help see any errors.

Unless something silly was cut or something- nothing too bad will have gone wrong.

ST.