exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Eliminated the floppy drive by booting up without it connected..
displayed desktop info and watched for a few minutes.
Still happens but the time interval between these 'dimmings' possibly longer ?
next step trying a different TV/monitor
followed by monitoring the video signal with a scope I guess.

Possibly incompatibility I think..
That or the AKURA TV I was using has issues.
Borrowed the NEON branded TV from my A1200 setup.
It has been running for over 6 minutes now and no sign of sporadic dimming.
How long can I stare at a screen without blinking...a few miutes I guess...lol
certainly the picture overall is brighter and sharper.
Once fully rebuilt I may try and find another NEON TV just for the Atari.
:D

Time I started on the case...or more precisely...that layer of cardboard insulator between metal and pcb.
As you can see from the pix...at some time in it's life this Atari had been stored somewhere quite damp if not wet..
Luckilly the mainboard pcb was repairable..resulting in a working computer.
..but lines of rust spots are evident on the metal..which wire wool and rust converter were used on..
It will never look pristine again but it is now under control.
The cardboard seperator did not fare so well ..it fact it has warped..torn and uneven surfaced.
Rather than try to re-use it I have started cutting a new one from 1.5mm white plastic.
Got to go slowly with this as it is brittle and inclined to crack and shatter..
The sheet I'm using used to be the backlight difuser in a TV.
everything has its uses in another life.
lol

Quick question ...is there any reason an ACSI2STM should not be powered from the ATARI STe 5v ?
I no longer need the modulator so isolated the centre of the phono from the modulator...and linked this to the modulators 5v thus bringing 5v external to power a hard disk device.
a usbc to phono pigtail would then hopefully provide power.
This mod is fully reversable if need be...and avoids holes drilled in cases (a pet hate of mine)
rgds
VS

Another question which is puzzling me ..
Although my Atari appears to be functioning correctly ..the diagnostic cart I've aquired behaves oddly imo.
It functions as it should...the tests all appear to behave as they should but the actual display of the onscreen menu takes quite a while to populate ?
I would have thought this menu would appear almost instantly...not written to screen one character at a time slowly until complete ?
can anyone suggest why this might be ?
I haven't timed it but would guess it takes about a minute to completey display a full memu.
The individual tests themselves appear to run at normal speed ?
rgds
VS

Vipersan wrote: 16 Feb 2026 10:56 Another question which is puzzling me ..
Although my Atari appears to be functioning correctly ..the diagnostic cart I've aquired behaves oddly imo.
It functions as it should...the tests all appear to behave as they should but the actual display of the onscreen menu takes quite a while to populate ?
I would have thought this menu would appear almost instantly...not written to screen one character at a time slowly until complete ?
can anyone suggest why this might be ?
I haven't timed it but would guess it takes about a minute to completey display a full memu.
The individual tests themselves appear to run at normal speed ?
rgds
VS

So the menus should appear almost immediately, but do appear to draw line by line, though very fast.

Potentially I'd suggest a couple of things:

1. Check the diag cart is set specifically for the STE and not the ST. I'm not 100% sure if it would make a difference as I'm not in a position to test right now, but worth a look.
2. Hook up a serial cable to the ST and the other end to a PC running serial software, see what the menu looks like when coming over serial.

Thanks for the quick reply Jonnie.
Not sure I have a suitable serial cable..but I'll order one if needed.
I take it it is a straight serial not null modem ?
I have tried shifting the yellow jumper on the cart..
it makes no difference to the speed of display.
To give an idea of what I am describing...I took a short video clip of the first few seconds and uploaded to my dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/64zz69rs ... ln96t&dl=0
This really is the only slow part .
Once the menu screen is established the tests can be selected and appear to run at normal speed..though I have no frame of reference for this.
I'm just assuming.

I've not specifically watched to see how fast the menu appears, though it's not lightning fast on any machine, including the TT. I'm guessing that it's writing to the serial port at the same time and so the screen update is as fast as the serial connection output.

stephen_usher wrote: 16 Feb 2026 12:11 I've not specifically watched to see how fast the menu appears, though it's not lightning fast on any machine, including the TT. I'm guessing that it's writing to the serial port at the same time and so the screen update is as fast as the serial connection output.

So theoretically it could be a serial problem...which might be diagnosed if I had a harness ?
which of course..I don't
It could be I have yet another damaged trace I'm unaware of...or yet another bit of damaged silicon.

How "slow" is slow? The equivalent of 9600 baud, which is what the output to the serial port is? If so then that's normal.