exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Well @derkom hope things all work out for the best. No ideas what "Shameless" is but maybe they don't have it here in the US. Will be patiently waiting for your pictures. Best of luck with your "personal life flux" issues. :) :) :)

Ok, so having managed to get the real floppy drive & cable working as the internal drive on my H4 (so it boots from the floppy & can run sysinfo, Yartt & Gembench OK), I've now tried the same drive & cable (and floppy disc) in my H5 but still get the bombs on booting with a floppy in the drive.

I've then tried swapping the DMA, the 1772 & the YM2149F from the working H4 into the H5 but with no noticeable change in behaviour.

I'm using the same CPU & SIMM (both sourced from Exxos), keyboard, ROM & PSU as well as the other chips mentioned above in the working H4 & failing H5.

With no floppy in the drive at boot, it shows the desktop OK but them bombs when I first try to access a floppy.

It's a 720k floppy drive from another STFM, there's no PAL for the HD mod (yet - keeping things simple until it works & will then expand it in stages to ensure it still works as intended), jumpers set to boot from internal Floppy A, both drives 0 & 1 forced to 720k.

Using TOS 1.04 & that reports the single Floppy & 4M RAM (it's the modified image from @rubber_jonnie IIRC, so it may also support booting from IDE though I've not yet tried that.)

There is no ACSI connector soldered in yet, so I've not had chance to test the HDD. Also I've not yet bothered with the blitter (jumper set for no Blitter)

I've not yet done the 3.3v regulator or audio mod on the H5 either (but doubt they are related to the non-booting issue).

Images below which hopefully show the jumper positions & also the ROM selector jumper, RTC link, Flashy clock link etc., so if anybody has any suggestions for the next step I'll be most interested to hear them!


I tried to follow the steps from other successful build logs...but ended up having to copy the jumper positions from my H4, so it's entirely possible one or more of those is wrong!

My plan is to bring a 'scope home from work on Tuesday & see if I can spot any differences in activity when the floppy is first accessed between the H4 & H5 boards...

PaulJ wrote: 13 Aug 2021 14:56 @JezC , so why do you continue to hurt yourself with windoze. When using a iPhone the pics show up on all your devices for easy inclusion in a post. Windoze is such a dumpster fire, forced upgrades, numerous security flaws, etc..etc. I have “1” windoze machine to run my device programmer and it gives me more grief than all my Macs and Linux machines combined. When you only turn it on every couple of months you have to resolve all the BS MS throws at ya. Last time I turned it on to burn some EPROMs MS had interjected itself in the login process and I had to make a MS account to get logged in. Took me a while to figure out how to cut MS out like some malignant cancer. Then there’s build in apps that are acting like there a part of windoze attempting to have you purchase them. On a good day windoze is a raging dumpster fire.

I've kept one of my machines with Win 7 to minimise the 'pain' with Win 10 (Win 7 PC is used for the PROM programmer amongst other things). Work forces me to use Win 10 (there are a few apps including the IAR EWARM IDE for ARM processors which are not supported on Linux) :( but I do intend to get a Linux setup running (possibly on an older laptop I've freed up for that purpose) when time permits.
It's the windows updates breaking my music setup that finally made me resurrect the STs (& Falcon) & then the option for upgrades & more stable platform of the H4/H5 which has kept me down that path.
When I finally get the TF536 working on the new system with hard drive etc. & try Cubase 3/Logic on it, I'm sure the performance will knock the newer platforms into a cocked hat!

Anyway, when I finally get the time I'll be sure to ask for the recommendations for which flavour on Linux to try (Mint was probably the last one I've used regularly)

Jumpers seem fine I think. I suggest get a cart port on and use the diag cartridge. Test RAM out, and do the floppy drive tests.

JezC wrote: 15 Aug 2021 21:41 I've kept one of my machines with Win 7 to minimise the 'pain' with Win 10 (Win 7 PC is used for the PROM programmer amongst other things). Work forces me to use Win 10 (there are a few apps including the IAR EWARM IDE for ARM processors which are not supported on Linux) :( but I do intend to get a Linux setup running (possibly on an older laptop I've freed up for that purpose) when time permits.
It's the windows updates breaking my music setup that finally made me resurrect the STs (& Falcon) & then the option for upgrades & more stable platform of the H4/H5 which has kept me down that path.
When I finally get the TF536 working on the new system with hard drive etc. & try Cubase 3/Logic on it, I'm sure the performance will knock the newer platforms into a cocked hat!

Anyway, when I finally get the time I'll be sure to ask for the recommendations for which flavour on Linux to try (Mint was probably the last one I've used regularly)

I do feel your pain JezC. My last five years of employment I was forced to design code for windoze which really taught me to hate the poor excuse for an OS and its parent company. Unix is such a elegant OS while windoze is a pile of :shite:. @exxos your ":shite:" Smile is broken and if you type the word you get "shit" which really doesn't do my feelings for windoze justice. I would remove your ":shite:" Smile so it doesn't get used and I could find another more descriptive word for windoze.

Anyway JezC happy to see you were able to get your pictures up. I took a look at them and didn't see anything wrong. Sounds like your close though. Will continue to follow your efforts. :) :)

@PaulJ I've fixed the icon. If you want to bash windows please open your own topic in the chat area. Constantly bashing windows doesn't have much to do with @JezC H5 build thread.

@JezC Looking very nice sir! It'll be good to see it all wrapped up nice in a case :)

As for the TOS 1.04 image, I have uploaded 2, one patched for IDE with the additional details on boot, and one that just has the additional details, so it depends which one you downloaded.

If you do find it doesn't boot from IDE and you want it to, the patch is available online, or I can send you a copy of mine.

exxos wrote: 16 Aug 2021 08:38 @PaulJ I've fixed the icon. If you want to bash windows please open your own topic in the chat area. Constantly bashing windows doesn't have much to do with @JezC H5 build thread.

Yes, though @PaulJ I think there's plenty of scope for a topic just about the modern OS discussion and alternative setups for those of us who don't love Windoze!

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Aug 2021 09:32 @JezC Looking very nice sir! It'll be good to see it all wrapped up nice in a case :)

As for the TOS 1.04 image, I have uploaded 2, one patched for IDE with the additional details on boot, and one that just has the additional details, so it depends which one you downloaded.

If you do find it doesn't boot from IDE and you want it to, the patch is available online, or I can send you a copy of mine.

@rubber_jonnie Thanks... can't remember which it was either...but need to get something booting first :roll:

JezC wrote: 16 Aug 2021 09:46
@rubber_jonnie Thanks... can't remember which it was either...but need to get something booting first :roll:

Definitely a good place to start :)