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Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 22:34
by JezC
@rubber_jonnie Are you trying to jinx yourself here? At least put a 'yet' at the end! ;)

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 04 Jan 2021 23:08
by rubber_jonnie
JezC wrote: 04 Jan 2021 22:34 @rubber_jonnie Are you trying to jinx yourself here? At least put a 'yet' at the end! ;)
:dizzy:

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 16 Jan 2021 16:52
by rubber_jonnie
Well, this Mega is now pretty much done and dusted!!

:girldance: :girldance: :girldance:

The final hurdle was the arrival of the PSU frame from a friendly FaceBooker in the Netherlands.

The PSU (I already had a spare Mega PSU PCB) was quickly completed:

PSU_Rebuilt.jpg

And finalised later with the addition of the fan. I may look to get a quieter one later.

It's had:

1. DMA replacement to fix the FDD problems.
2. Marpet style SIMM memory upgrade to take it to 4MB. I could never get the strange upgrade to work and don't know if it was the RAM I got to fill the empty slots, or something else.
3. Replaced all the bus pull up resistors as per the mandatory fixes.
4. WD1772 data bus pull up resistors as per the mandatory fixes.
5. Cleaned up corrosion in the battery box and reinstalled the battery cable.
6. Upgrade to TOS 1.04 with IDE patch and boot up info screen.
7. 'New' floppy drive.
8. CF hard drive with Megabus IDE adapter.
9. Damn good clean!

Here's what it looks like:

Inside_1.jpg
inside_2.jpg

And getting a test done of the newly installed RAM.

Testing.jpg

I will do one last thing and will connect up my new test harness and verify everything works as it should, but so far it is :)

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 18 Jan 2021 06:26
by atari030
Fantastic, well done.

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 18 Jan 2021 11:22
by rubber_jonnie
atari030 wrote: 18 Jan 2021 06:26 Fantastic, well done.
Cheers :)

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 18 Jan 2021 15:01
by JezC
Looking good... just needs a more sympathetic style of keyboard to complete the look!

;)

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 18 Jan 2021 15:46
by rubber_jonnie
JezC wrote: 18 Jan 2021 15:01 Looking good... just needs a more sympathetic style of keyboard to complete the look!

;)
I don't know, I really like my little Cherry :)

I even still have a joystick and mouse port thanks to my Eiffel. :)

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 18 Jan 2021 16:01
by rubber_jonnie
So here's the gang all together:

The_Gang.jpg

Top one is my Mega4 which I had all sorts of fun and games with and now is an awesome machine, middle is a Mega ST1 which has been upgraded to a patched IDE compliant TOS 1.04 and PPs Megabus IDE with a 2.5" HDD, plus a 286 ATOnce PC adapter card.

Finally the subject of this blog, a Mega ST1 with 4MB upgrade, which also put me through the mill. Nice to have them all running now, in fact I don't think I have a dead ST in the house :) (I think that's probably tempting fate if I'm honest!!)

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 18 Jan 2021 16:11
by exxos
rubber_jonnie wrote: 18 Jan 2021 16:01 Nice to have them all running now, in fact I don't think I have a dead ST in the house :) (I think that's probably tempting fate if I'm honest!!)
2 weeks later... RAM fault.. RAM fault.. RAM fault.. :lol: :hide:

Re: RJs Adventures in Mega land III

Posted: 18 Jan 2021 17:00
by JezC
rubber_jonnie wrote: 18 Jan 2021 16:01 Nice to have them all running now, in fact I don't think I have a dead ST in the house :) (I think that's probably tempting fate if I'm honest!!)
If only I could say the same!
I think I have more than 20 working STs now....but still 7 or 8 to fix (mostly RAM faults).
Too much to do, so little time (for retro projects)... :cry: