Repairing a ST Book.

[AndresPlazaR]

Quick update:

Transferring programs using parallel cable between my STacy and STBook.

PXL_20240824_033746624.jpg (263.48 KiB) Viewed 770 times

I also tried PARCP, and it worked perfectly (and, of course, it is a lot better interface than STTRANS).

Andres.

[alexh]

Awesome repair. An STBook or a Stacy is on my list of things Atari I don't have. How people find them I don't know they never come up even broken.

[Cyprian]

what a great setup.
congrats @AndresPlazaR

[Darklord]

Awesome repair. An STBook or a Stacy is on my list of things Atari I don't have. How people find them I don't know they never come up even broken.

There's one on Ebay right now Alex but it's ridiculously priced and been there forever...

Oh wow - never mind. It's apparently gone now. Did someone seriously pay $3500 + for it?

Geez...

I hope you can find one. They are very interesting machines to play around with. I've had
a blast with mine.

[Darklord]

Thanks for that picture. I hadn't realized (never having owned or even seen one in real life) how much more
compact the ST Book is than the STacy.

[alexh]

Robert Tercsi,a regular here, sold one of his STBooks in June

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166824932577

I had my eye on it but £3k is beyond my pocket

[AndresPlazaR]

Thanks for that picture. I hadn't realized (never having owned or even seen one in real life) how much more
compact the ST Book is than the STacy.

Yes! It is truly a laptop; comfortable to carry and use it... in tour lap. The vector pad is a little hard, but you get used to it.

Andres.

[Darklord]

Hahahahaha, you could use a STacy on your lap but I think a small desk would
be much more appropriate.

[AndresPlazaR]

Hello!

So, a few updates and info:

* Thanks to someone here in the forum (I haven't asked permission to mention his name), I own another STBook (UK version). It was functional, with similar problems than my first one: 4 bombs at booting, hard disk toasted, screw support of the hinges broken.

* Looking into a TOS (UK version) to burn, I learned a lot of things. The most important is that the factory TOS requires a working and partitioned hard disk, or a floppy drive, to boot; if not, you get the 4 bombs.

* The "American" and "German" versions of TOS (for STBook; the ones not marked as "-mikro") from https://www.avtandil.narod.ru/tose.html are patched versions that allow TOS to boot without the need of a working HDD or floppy drive. So, they are extremely helpful to start repairing a STBook with a broken hard disk.

* Because there was no UK version on that site, I manually patched (long live hexedit!) the version that I downloaded from the original TOS chip and czietz was kind enough to recalculate the CRC for me. It worked perfectly.

* Using another CF to IDE adapter, I replaced the broken hard disk. Then you can access the P: drive (the ROM disk) and use the utility to partition the hard disk.

* One thing to notice is that trying to partition a "big" CF card (for example 4 GB) with the utility in the P: drive fails. I used a 512 MB and it worked perfectly.

* At this point I was able to fully use the STBook, but I notice a different behavior: to power it on you just need to press the Power On button; you don't need to press the Reset button also (like my first one). Both main boards are the same revision. The only difference is that this second one was recapped. So, looking at the schematics I decided to replace C100 (10uF, 16V) in my first one and voila! Now it just starts pressing the Power On button.

* The caps used in the second STBook were through-hole, not SMD, so I replaced them. Caps removed:

s_PXL_20240918_022912173.jpg (415.9 KiB) Viewed 433 times

s_PXL_20240918_022923304.jpg (523.42 KiB) Viewed 433 times

New caps and battery support:

s_PXL_20240919_023402597.jpg (493.42 KiB) Viewed 433 times

* While removing the through-hole caps, one of the terminals of capacitor C232 lifted . At least it did not break; I was able to soldered the terminal and I used a little of hot glue to support the capacitor.

* I think the only thing left is to repair the support for the hinges: that will be similar to the first one.

* One thing I'm designing is an adapter to connect a USB mouse to the STBook. I already made an adapter to connect a Mega ST keyboard, and it works perfectly fine (both keyboard and mouse). My next step is to integrate a Raspberry Pi Pico to do the "magic".

I think that's all for now.

Andres.