New Falcon a lemon?

[sety]

It's been changed and now I guess I need to reset the video to deal with NTSC?

It's not quite that simple. You would need to remove or disable the PAL clock circuit and fit an NTSC oscillator at U65.

The CF doesn't seem to be dos formatted and my pc cannot read it.

They are dos formatted, or at least very similar, but atari ide is byteswapped. Unfortunately you can't just plug an atari hard disk into a PC and expect it to work, not without some modification at least.

Huge problem since the floppy on the Falcon isn't working.

You can use a PC floppy drive with some minor modification. I use Sony MFP520. It involves a very minor modification to change the drive ID. You loose disk change sensing, but it's enough to get out of trouble. :)

Hope this helps! :)

[Gyrussfanx]

Thanks for the tips. In regards to the floppy (according to the seller on ebay) he couldn't get even a known good floppy to work even after changing out the floppy controller.

I do have a netusbee but I need to get the drivers on here. At the moment I can't see any screens anymore. Not sure what combination of resets and/or tinkering might have caused a problem.

[Gyrussfanx]

So now all I get is black screens on both RF and VGA out. I'm not sure what I could have possibly done while taking pictures and doing the resets so I have questions regarding diagnosing. Is it possible to turn the falcon (motherboard plugged in) and have it work? Do certain points need to be grounded? I'm not really sure why it suddenly is doing this. From what I understand the falcon is not meant to be fragile (again, getting back to this being a lemon).

[Tomswork]

Does the fan run on the cpu and get the power light on the keyboard. I always start at the power supply. I agree with the post to check the video connector for function then solder joints. If you have a meter to check voltage and ripple that would also be good to know

Tom

[troed]

(again, getting back to this being a lemon).

Nothing you've posted indicates this to be "a lemon".

Yes, I believe it's possible to poke around with NVRAM to cause a Falcon not to boot. I'm worried that in your eagerness to prove lemonness you've managed to break something.

/Troed

[Gyrussfanx]

I'm sorry, but what do you mean to prove it is a lemon? All I've done is give you pictures and do the key commands you asked for. The machine does not work like I expect. so I only have so long to discover if this was something I need to dispute or not? It was bought on eBay and the description (according to others and a personal friend) is deceptive. I am not a hardware expert but am willing to do some basic trouble shooting. I'm not sure why you believe I am leaning one way or another. I just need to understand what I am dealing with here. If this isn't the place to do that, that's fine just say so but I don't think accusing me of breaking a machine to prove it's a lemon is appropriate at all.

[exxos]

@Gyrussfanx May I suggest you send your machine to @Steve For diagnostics ? as I fear things seem to have gone from partly working, to not working at all very quickly.

[Gyrussfanx]

I would agree. I'm not sure what I could have done by removing a few screws on the shielding, just to take some pictures. Is there an email address for me to contact Steve at?

[exxos]

I would agree. I'm not sure what I could have done by removing a few screws on the shielding, just to take some pictures. Is there an email address for me to contact Steve at?

Hes on the forum https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/membe ... ofile&u=97

[troed]

the description (according to others and a personal friend) is deceptive

This is what's stated in the description:

"Unfortunately the floppy drive does not work. Swapping the Ajax chip, ribbon cable and using a known good drive did not change the results. The video output is also fuzzy and slightly distorted. Though the screen is readable, there is some interference on that circuit."

There doesn't seem to have been any problem that isn't covered above until you dismantled it, which at some point got it to stop outputting video. My point wasn't that you've broken something intentionally, I'm worried that it happened anyway.

You've come to the right place to get honest answers. Those might not be the ones you want though.

edit: I don't think there's a single person here that would consider $2500 to be the right price for a Falcon with the above disclosed problems, even for being in the USA where prices are higher than in Europe.

/Troed