ST536 STE EDITION

[ijor]

You know, whenever I'm in a situation of having to do this kind of job I often wonder if there is a kind of 'electricians glue' you can just dab on the underneath of the chip, just to be able to put it down and it have enough strength to hold the chip in place (perhaps not a glue, but a tack of sorts)

When I shared my YT video on building the ST536 (non-e version) I commented at length on the difficulty on positioning this chip specifically.

One commenter mentioned placing a coin on top of the chip to give it a little more "weight" to keep it from slipping as easily. I haven't tried it to prove if it works, but it sounds like a good idea.

You are all amateurs! I don't see that Northridgefix has any problems aligning any chip ...

.. look who's talking, somebody that can't solder a wire, so this was just ironic, I admire your skills! :)

[coonsgm]

Here's a little (50 minutes, so actually a bit long, sorry) video installing, testing, playing around with the STE536.

Love this accelerator! I figure most of the issues are of my own making and I was able to resolve most already. Seriously, I think this has the most potential for a large audience because you don't need to desolder your CPU and add a socket before you can even get started.

[exxos]

:bravo:

CF issues I see with my lexar card.. but it's odd.. as the card is not always seen but SanDisk ones are. I think part of the problem was the IDE on the 536 is just a "dumb" version and likely isn't great. I know when a lot of us tested TRUDIE we found all sorts of issues.

Indeed you need to run MAPROM and BLTFIX in the right order as odd things happen. I have requested @agranlund do a patched version of both which i can "drop in" to TOS206 at some point to make things easier.

@Steve just mentioned EMUTOS seems happier. You can select that with the jumper on the board next to the ROM. So might be worth giving that a go as my 206 build hasn't had much testing by anyone yet. I've not seen any bugs as yet but I haven't tried running mint or even know how compatible it is with the 536.. 206 will also lockup with no floppy connected.. its a known bug but nobody has invested time into fixing it sadly.

Your desktop lockup could be if you are pressing alt and catch the help key.. as that's print screen and will lockup for about 30 seconds... That catches me out now and then :p.

Anyway, enjoy your new toy :) no doubt there will be tweaks to come in the near future as i work though the odd issues :)

[exxos]

Another thought is that those earlier external blitter boards might need some Atari fixes doing. Like P100 needs to be 1.2k and Atari even changed to 4.7k pull-ups on the bus on later boards. Currently I don't know how the 030 behaves on every machine.

On my STE booster I included 4.7k pull-ups as it was needed due to the ROM running at 32mhz. On the 536, while the ROM does run faster, I don't think it's running at "full speed" so in theroy it should be more stable with standard pull-ups. The problem is further compounded by stock machines wasnt stable with the 68k anyway, hence pullip changes. But again, I don't know yet how the 030 will behave with the original 10k.

However, my test board does have the standard pull-ups, likely 10k and 4.7k , so that might be fine for the 536. However, just because it works on my machine doesn't mean it's true for all other machines.

I need to try a external blitter boards next. Though all my STE motherboards are "broken". I need to change a lot of simm sockets and reset switches.. Not a simple task currently..

I still need to look at the diagnostic cartridge oddity. I don't even remember if the STE diagnostic cartridge even works with a 030 ? I assume so... Though currently it seems to crash just before getting to the menu for some reason..

[coonsgm]

I'm up for changing the pull-ups. I've done it before on other machines, but I try to not change out stuff unless I'm seeing a problem that I can't attribute to anything else.
So far though with the software changes (boot order etc) and a new CF card, I spent a few hours last night copying over software and setting it up.

A few more things I need to try
-Set up a fresh MiNT install and see how that goes.
-Run through YAART
-Play around with EmuTOS

and then see how these affect running.

[exxos]

...and then see how these affect running.

I think it would help to see how TOS206 compares to EMUTOS. If EMUTOS works better then it suggests 206 still needs some tweaks. My 206 build is still very much experimental at this point.

You don't need MAPROM or BLTFIX for EMUTOS. I'd assume EMUTOS would copy itself into TTram itself, otherwise MAPROM might still be needed.

The pull-ups are tricky as mentioned above. But they need to be at least what Atari had them as. BUT if they are a factor, then I'd likely add them to the 536 itself. The problem is, all my tests were done with the 68000. So the 030 might behave differently. Currently the stock pull-ups seem fine. But that doesn't mean much with my one test machine.. I'll try and find some time soon to fix my other STEs..

Or if anyone has a stock external blitter board I can buy , then it would help speed things up.

[exxos]

I've not used MiNT for 3 decades since it was on the Falcon floppy disk.

I downloaded freemint-latest-030.zip from here https://tho-otto.de/snapshots/freemint/cpu/

Is this supposed to just do this ? Seems to scroll a million errors and die from what I can tell.

IMG_2604.JPG

If it's going to a ordeal to get it working, then i'll pass on testing it all.

[coonsgm]

Mine is working delightfully under TOS 2.06

I downloaded from below (I got this from Commodore is not the only Fruit)

https://freemint.github.io/

Screenshot 2024-08-11 161145.png

IMG_1376.jpg

IMG_1380.jpg

[exxos]

Mine is working delightfully under TOS 2.06

I downloaded from below (I got this from Commodore is not the only Fruit)

So I need to use the bootable ones then ?

https://tho-otto.de/snapshots/freemint/bootable/

No clue which one, there's millions of the buggers! Assume the top one ?!

EDIT:

freemint-latest-02060-tt_falcon_clones.zip did the same. But it's a STE with a 030 and doesn't seem to be a zip for that anyway ?! :shrug:

[coonsgm]

Also by the way, anyone else having issues with hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot? Mine is freezing when I try that.