Fixing my Milan 040 (or not) blog

[peters]

This might give you some case alternatives.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=29143

It looks like some cases were AT and ATX compatible so something like this might work.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/297423798282

[alexh]

If you decide to get a sound card for it I just stumbled across this archived page listing all the compatible ISA sound cards for Milan Blaster drivers.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140510065 ... aster.html

There is a PCI sound driver but only for one type of PCI sound card with ES1371 PCI sound chip.

https://assemsoft.atari.org/gsxb/index.html

I also came across this resource, it's in German but you can use Chrome to translate.

https://www.der-ingo.de/de/milanhelp/index.html

[mikro]

Chris, I hope you'll manage to get it running at least with the keyboard and some kind of mass storage. You are the first person with Milan who has a running S3 video on it. I've been dying to find someone with such setup to confirm whether Running II really works on Milan: http://topp.gokmase.com/old_version/running2.htm.

[peters]

I still have the S3 Trio card but haven't used it since I upgraded to the Rage.

It would be good to get the Radeon working but all my efforts failed.

[mikro]

@peters that's precisely the reason I'm so happy to see Chris' setup. S3 in the attic doesn't really help me.

[exxos]

Thanks for peoples suggestions. I'm just going to wait until I replace the chip before anything else.

@mikro yeah I'll do some testing when able.

Didn't know the 040 had 4kb cache. Fair jump from the 256bytes of the 030.

My broker gave up with the 040 prices. The V version was high, around £150. They said the others were £400+. Similar problems when I uses to sell the 060 cpus. High prices or buy cheap 040 and hope they genuinely.. Not good either way.

[exxos]

Told my girlfriend about the death by screwdriver and the chip getting reprogramed..

Her take was the opposite way around... That the guy was screwing with the ROM first then dropped the screwdriver blowing it up. As why was he screwing around inside the case in the first place..

My take was he dropped the screwdriver then tried to reflash to fix it.. But that's probably not possible unless he had a programmer.. As once that chip died, he wouldn't be able to boot.

But flashing is normally done via ST software. So he would have had to screw it up badly.. I don't know if the ST software has error checking for flashing the wrong things.. I would hope so... But then how did the flash get burned incorrectly in the first place.. Doesn't seem possible either way. He would have had to have his own programmer.. But I don't think he was that tech savvy...

I guess it's a mystery. Screwdriver likely landed on a PCI card which resulted in killing the IO chip.. But how the flash got burned wrong.. No idea.. My girlfriends idea maybe more plausible of he was screwing with the ROM in the first place, hence why the case was open and hence dropping a screwdriver on it..

Oddly I never saw the case from what I remember. I do know the guy had someone big case he didn't want to part with but was a flat style case IIRC not the Milan tower. Possible he could have got another motherboard but it could have been a PC.. I bought a job lot from the guy including my Veloce STE...

Also Useless trivia.. He asked a question in the very last issue of STformat. I remember it thinking what an idiot.. But he said STformat only seemed to reply to the most stupid questions.. So he got his question in the very last issue.. Something along the lines of can a ST be upgraded with a intel CPU or some other related madness..

[PhilC]

How things get damaged to that extent attires is beyond me. It's certain that something got broken, likely software, tried to fix that, that didn't work, got the screwdriver out and then things went bang. 10 out of 10 for effort in my book :lol:

[JezC]

Also Useless trivia.. He asked a question in the very last issue of STformat. I remember it thinking what an idiot.. But he said STformat only seemed to reply to the most stupid questions.. So he got his question in the very last issue.. Something along the lines of can a ST be upgraded with a intel CPU or some other related madness..

Just thinking PC-Speed & AT-Speed when I read that...and there was talk of a 386SX upgrade as well IIRC...

[exxos]

Just thinking PC-Speed & AT-Speed when I read that...and there was talk of a 386SX upgrade as well IIRC...

Yeah me too. Though think it was more for a straight swap kind thing.