Dual TOS. She canne take any more captain!

[BeigeFM]

Hey all.

I want to buy dual TOS with the 28 pin board.

So is it possible to keep the 32pin config set on the board and wire the dual TOS board to work on it without touching those pads again?

Ive gotten my STE to work with 32 pin tos ROMs I don't think she can take anymore abuse.

I struggled with the pin selection pads as two out of four quite damaged. Someone had been there before!


During my switch from 28 to 32 pin upgrade to tos 2.06 I've looked online before when I saw she may not work and I had difficulty booting her up. I couldn't find any way to bypass those pads.

Thanks to some thirty years of soldering experience, a new soldering iron, a toothbrush and some of my wifes solvent like perfume I nicely dodged those pads up with only one link wire!

Smells fruity too!

Damn I just wish I'd gone dual TOS to start with.

I really don't want to touch those pads again.

I was hoping to buy a simple tos switcher board on here with four sockets for two old and two new TOS chips.

I must have dreamt such a product exists...

[rubber_jonnie]

I'm not 100% sure what you're wanting to do here.

I'm assuming you are referring to one of the STE Dual TOS boards found here: Store - ROMs section

If you are asking if you can add the Dual TOS Switcher as well as your existing TOS ROMs then I think the answer would be no since they would probably clash.

The Dual ROM board is meant to plug into the STE ROM sockets, and unless you had a board specifically intended to have more than 2 ROMs, the ROMs would likely clash in the memory map.

What pads are you referring to? is it these? TOS Upgrade

Specifically the 3 jumpers, W102, W103 & W104, or are you referring to something else, in which case photos would help us understand what you mean.

[BeigeFM]

Hey and thanks for the reply RubberJ. I have to give you credit here for pointing me in the right direction with Parity Ram problems! Thank you so much!

I've just had so much trouble with my Atari as you may see in my last post that I thought tos 2.06 was just so much worse than 1.6.

Truth is. I'd been working on this Atari on and off for a year.

Today I decided what the heck and removed chip 9 from my parity ram. This was based on some limited posts by someone called Simbo on another Atari forum and a little bit of web searching.

This has absolutely solved my stability issues and the desktop is faster to boot, quicker to open windows etc.

At the moment I'm recovering with some relief as I had to repair two sticks because I had desoldered the capacitor under the chip. I had to put it back! Now all the games work on my SD4ST which I could only get 1 out of every four games working. I'm currently very pleased.

I'd still consider the dual TOS switcher which I guess would need to replace my existing tos chips.

The problem is the number of pins on the chip. I would need to change the 28 to 32 pin jumper as you mentioned.

The trouble is that I don't think the board will take it. The previous owner has broken these pads and it took some patience getting this STE to work on 32 pin Eproms.

The dual TOS switcher is 28 pin. So if I was to buy this can I get it to work without jumping the existing damaged pads? Can I run a wire link somewhere to go back to 28 pin.

Thanks for your support.

[exxos]

I've only just seen this thread. Indeed you have to change the jumpers between 28 and 32 pins ROM. The dualtos board assumes a stock machine with 28pin ROMs for a "simple" swap to the dualtos board. I think if you try running TOS206 with 28pin setup, TOS almost boots, but the logo is a black square and then it crashes not long after.

Today I decided what the heck and removed chip 9 from my parity ram. This was based on some limited posts by someone called Simbo on another Atari forum and a little bit of web searching.This has absolutely solved my stability issues ..

I haven't read the whole thread but indeed parity simms are a problem as documented as number two in the mandatory fixes viewtopic.php?t=1585

Simbo was the old "tech guru" on AF who made less and less sense as time went on. It resulted in a lot of arguments. When I was moderator over on AF I actually tidied up two years worth of such threads and arguments. I'm honestly surprised you found any good information on that dumpster fire of a forum. I went looking for that thread as I didn't know Simbo had mentioned parity simms. Even reading back the sarcasm from Joska from 2011 reminds me why myself and others quit that forum. I honestly don't know how people on there never got banned 20 years ago... but anyways.. Glad you found a solution to your problem anyway.

[BeigeFM]

Thanks Exxos for your reply. Yes I could see the heated debate there back then in 2011.
I googled like mad but found little to no references to removing the 9th chip (which one was 9? Do I cut any traces? Do I need to solder resistors? Etc etc) which is surprising as removing the chip does work and perhaps I thought that many Atarians would have come across this problem.

Back to the dual TOS setup. The reason I ask is it was mentioned in my other thread that I should be able to save money on the total amount needed to do the 32mhz upgrade if I didn't need to buy non-parity ram and convert my own. Suggested by another forum member (thanks).

I suppose my question is (eventually) can I link any chip pins to any other chip pins or points on the board to bypass the TOS chips jumpers. I've had a look and traces are difficult to err... Trace!

[BeigeFM]

Simbo was the old "tech guru" on AF who made less and less sense as time went on.

I have visions of a man driven mad by the sheer power of his Nuclear Powered Atari Time Machine... only to travel to another world where pyramids are designed and built by quirky people with rooms of Mega ST's.

Investigation of his disappearance led to piles of Sinclair user magazines fashioned into a prototype paper-mache safety helmets.

[rubber_jonnie]

I suppose my question is (eventually) can I link any chip pins to any other chip pins or points on the board to bypass the TOS chips jumpers. I've had a look and traces are difficult to err... Trace!

The thing you need to do is get photos and post them here. We need to see what the actual damage is you're referring to otherwise it's very difficult to answer your question based on your description.

As they say, a picture paints a thousand words

Ideally we need to see high quality well lit images that are well focused, that show the damaged areas without any obstructions and on both sides of the PCB. Without being able to see what you're referring to, it's impossible to make a call.

If you look at this thread of mine: STE repair thread you can see that even a lot of damage can be repaired. I used the brilliant STE schematics that @sporniket created and was able to trace everything to where it needed to be and make the appropriate connections. Very time consuming, but all repairs were made on the bottom of the board with the top remaining clear.

[BeigeFM]

I've just come back to the forum today to post another question regarding MIDI and rechecked any of my old threads while I was here. RubberJohny I didn't reply to your post to thank you.

RJ - Thanks for the link to your post repairing Atari and Schematics. That is much appreciated and a link I will no doubt refer back to in the coming years.

The STE has been rock solid stable on pretty much everything I've wanted to play on the TOS 2 since I fixed the parity/ non parity RAM problems so I'm actually pretty much happy with it.

If I find I need more power in the form of a CPU upgrade for CUBASE then dual TOS will have to happen, and that means some soldering ! Will see how I get on.