Thanks for the suggestions. I've sort of figured out a technique for the old sockets that mostly works. However the ram is not all working yet.
So, I've removed all simms and given the sockets contacts a clean, they didn't seem like they really needed it (but what do I know?), it might help.
I then tried using just 2 simms (instead of all 4) and before committing to snapping them in I booted and it seemed to work.
I then snapped them in place and rebooted again, and then it no longer worked, more black bars.
I then decided to try the old simms and those went in a whole lot easier and worked fine even when snapped in place.
I'm left wondering if the new simms are too tight of a fit and if that's making it hard for them to seat properly. Either that or they are defective? But what are the chances of that?
When my machine does boot I do have a couple of concerns. Firstly I don't know if the drive works because I don't have a disk with bootable content. Maybe someone could suggest a program I could put on a floppy and how to make it auto boot? You see I don't actually have a mouse, which is making it hard to tell if it's working or not. I also haven't used an ST since '89 and I barely understood it then. Do I just pop a .prg or .tos into an auto folder and that should run on boot?
When it does get to the GEM desktop there's some little flickering pixels around the A and B file cabinets and the Trash. Does that sound like some common sign of other problems? I also sometimes see a line of blue and green pixels right at the top of the screen in the overscan.
Yet, another question. There's a little slider button on the floppy drive, what does that do in its different positions?
Thanks again for any help, I'm really just a software guy and totally out of my depth with anything other than snapping some new ram in. But even that has been a challenge
