Life, the universe & everything...Atari (well, mostly)

[exxos]

Ah yep you need a square. I did print a couple out before I took the printer to bits. They need to be printed accurately else they won't fit and hope the pins straight. So will try and remember to look for one next week.

Edit:
The booster will run without the ROM board, but I'm not sure what will happen as the later firmware was tweaked to speed things up. To which ROM may still be accessed faster than stock but not at full speeds. Not much testing has been done with it yet. So suck it and see I guess.

[JezC]

Ah yep you need a square. I did print a couple out before I took the printer to bits. They need to be printed accurately else they won't fit and hope the pins straight. So will try and remember to look for one next week.

Edit:
The booster will run without the ROM board, but I'm not sure what will happen as the later firmware was tweaked to speed things up. To which ROM may still be accessed faster than stock but not at full speeds. Not much testing has been done with it yet. So suck it and see I guess.

Ok, thanks, that would be great.
In the meantime I will try and prep the machine ready for fitting the booster (probably makes sense Dual TOS board first & then socket the SIL resistor packs I guess)...

Plenty of other upgrades & repairs to work on in the meantime!

[JezC]

Ok, had a go at tweaking the image on the SM124...so far I've not killed myself doing it either!

My first guess for the adjustment is pretty close, but still needs a tiny tweak more so I'm leaving the tube to discharge overnight & will try to finish it off tomorrow evening.

Then I need to work out how to diagnose & fix the two Epson floppy drives (SMD380 & SMD400) & one STE plus that latest addition, the 1040STFM, will be done.

I'll head off to re-read Exxos' guide on how to refurb the floppy drives & then see if I have the necessary tools & so on...

[JezC]

My first guess for the adjustment is pretty close, but still needs a tiny tweak more so I'm leaving the tube to discharge overnight & will try to finish it off tomorrow evening.

Had another tweak & it's better but still not quite right (still a slight issue with the leftmost edge of the screen image)...maybe I need to change the caps...?

Anyway, it's good enough for now, so off to read up on floppy servicing/repairs etc.

[rubber_jonnie]

My first guess for the adjustment is pretty close, but still needs a tiny tweak more so I'm leaving the tube to discharge overnight & will try to finish it off tomorrow evening.

Had another tweak & it's better but still not quite right (still a slight issue with the leftmost edge of the screen image)...maybe I need to change the caps...?

Anyway, it's good enough for now, so off to read up on floppy servicing/repairs etc.

Does your deflection yoke have magnets around it? If so double check you haven't moved one. I did on my Mac Classic and spent an age chasing a problem that didn't exist with the video board!!

Once I realised, I was able to tweak the magnet and restore the picture.

[JezC]

Hmm, not sure to be honest. I don't think anything was knocked when removing the back case of the monitor (and the display issue was there before I opened it up), so think it unlikely (but worth ruling out too!).

Thanks for the suggestion though!

[JezC]

Well, almost 6 months since my last post (within a day or so)...

Somehow, I seem to have done a @rubber_jonnie or maybe even a @PhilC and ended up with yet another computer...bought in the hope that most likely it could be fixed if possible or used as a donor if not.

It was advertised as an Atari 520 ST FM but it looks like an STE...so there goes the donor idea. :lol: :roll:

Anyway, it booted up initially and the floppy didn't work, never mind.

Now it won't boot properly, so next job is to disassemble it and remove the PSU for a check/recap (and then I can test it with a known good PSU anyway).
I always find ti a pig to get the PSU out of the STE's (compared to the STF/M versions)...

Anyway, I'll hopefully get chance to do something with this before another 6 months elapses...maybe!

Don't hold your breath... :D

[JezC]

Ok, still can't get the PSU out of the case... :( so I plugged in the one from another STE (and the Epson floppy drive too) & it now boots again & managed to run Sysinfo off floppy.

On;y 1 Meg of RAM (but that is an easy fix at some point ;)) but comes with TOS 1.62 in mask ROMs and appears to have an Atari FDC in place of the usual WDC1772 - forgot to check the number but I'm now wondering if it might be an AJAX in there?

If not, does anybody have any ideas about what else it might be?

Next task is to try it with a hard drive & see if it has any DMA issues...plus a bit of a soak test with GEMBench and/or YAART to check for stability issues!

Overall pretty happy with this purchase (the 4th STE in my collection) - I just need to decide what to upgrade it with (other than the RAM obviously) when I can free up some funds...

[exxos]

If you look on best electronics site, they have a huge list of all the part numbers and what they are.

[JezC]

If you look on best electronics site, they have a huge list of all the part numbers and what they are.

Thanks @exxos - I just need to get some decent light onto it to read the part number - then I can compare it to the one in my Falcon (and a couple I bought off someone else on this forum).

Just wondered if it was a common thing or just part of Atari using any available bits towards the end...