Hi! New to the forum.

[RayBarker]

Hi there, I'm in Lincolnshire in the UK.

I'm not a general retro collector but a while back I picked up job-lot with a 520STFM , a 1040STF, and a SM125 monitor. Back when the hardware was current the closest I ever came to an ST was messing around with one in a shop and being slightly baffled by the stylish-but-slightly-unstable function keys - nobody I knew had one, and I jumped straight from 8 bit machines to a PC in the early nineties as it had become increasingly apparent that both Atari and Commodore had lost that race. I did know several Amiga owners who were rabidly in denial into the 2000s about that... I guess I got them to experience something I missed out on, although if this is a mid-life crisis, it's a pretty tame one.

I've repaired both STs - cleaned them up inside and out, re-soldered the joystick ports and made a few other minor fixes. After a soak test, all the capacitors were still leak-free and un-deformed, the voltage rails are in-spec and both machines seem stable, so I'm not currently planning an unnecessary recapping adventure. The mice button switches were heavily worn, so I replaced their microswitches.

The 1040STF seems to be unmodified, and both machines are the exact same board revision but the 520STFM had it's case case crudely "edited" to upgrade the drive, so I've made that my general modding & messing about machine. I upgraded its' RAM to 1 megabyte and added a gotek. I also built an ACSI2STM although neither ST is that happy with it - it's unreliability might be a fault with my manufacture or a DMA issue, but I'm blaming TOS v1.00. I also bought a faulty Sega master system controller on eBay and repaired it, as I remember and do not want to re-experience 80s digital joysticks and eventually I got a KMTech mouse adapter because I also don't fancy revisiting the world of regular ball-mouse cleaning.

As to what I use them for - mucking about! Mostly trying old games, and I've mainly ended up playing platform/puzzle things, but I've also been trying out old application and development packages for programming languages I barely remember... My partner has some MIDI-capable Yamaha synths, so at some point I might play around with that functionality too (with her permission!)

Not sure I'll post much here unless I hit some sort of hardware brick wall, although I might pester exxos with a couple of silly questions regarding how I can make a rod for my own back, as I'm considering upgrading further...

[DoG]

:welcomewave:

[stephen_usher]

:welcomewave:

[viking272]

Welcome and nice background info ... lots of good updates you've done there ;)

[JezC]

:swave:

Welcome to the forum!

Once you get your partner's permission to muck about with those synths you might discover a whole new world of opportunities!

[Tomswork]

Hello

:welcomewave:

Tom

[rubber_jonnie]

:welcomewave:

[sporniket]

Hello :)