exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Looking good!

I can imagine why it's busy at the moment. I'm sure it will calm down soon. As for the boxes, it'll be years before the last one is unpacked. :-)
(Actually, my Dad's still got one or two in the loft untouched since my parents moved into their house at the end of 1987.)

I saw your post on Stardot about having to shelve the Electron ULA project due to the chip shortage. That's highly annoying, but par for the course these days unfortunately.

stephen_usher wrote: 03 Sep 2021 10:12
I saw your post on Stardot about having to shelve the Electron ULA project due to the chip shortage. That's highly annoying, but par for the course these days unfortunately.

Yeah, I was pretty bummed out about that, I really want to revive that Elk, but can't even find a spare mainboard on eBay at the moment.

Really enjoying getting back into the swing of things :)

Had a group meeting of the 6502 club:


The demo is called Impossible But Real and is running on my 800XL with Ultimate 1MB, VBXL and PokeyMax dual.

And the Oric Atmos, which hasn't been out for a really long time, powered up first time and worked perfectly :)


And inside it was pristine!!


Happy days :)

:D :cheers:

stephen_usher wrote: 08 Sep 2021 08:11 :D :cheers:

My thoughts exactly :)

Well, had an interesting last 7 days or so from an internet perspective.

My broadband, which is fibre, kept failing over to the 4G backup, which I know because all failover events get logged in quite a detailed fashion. It's annoying because where I live ATM, 4G isn't great, so it is really noticeable when it happens.

Then I noticed the main router has its own logs, so I had a look at them, and lo and behold I've been getting DDOS attacks for the last week or so!!!

So basically, some pond scum has been DDOSing me because I'm on a Gigabit fibre connection and he thinks I might be a business. As it goes, the router has just handled it so although I lost internet, there was no intrusion, so well done BT (For once!!), but it has been mega annoying whilst I'm trying to work, then I lose connectivity and my VPN drops and I need to restart the fibre adapter and my router.

Fingers crossed the lack of any services here, so no websites, RDP, VPN like I used to run, will eventually make me a boring target and they'll go and bother somebody else.

Gits.

Ok, so bit of a story here. I bought an ST in September 2020 off a chap on Facebook. He duly sent it, but at my request sent it to my parents house because he was closer to them than me and I thought the courier journey would be shorter and less fraught going to them.

What I didn't count on at the time was lockdown preventing my planned visit, and it was only this weekend, just shy of a year later in September 2021, that I was able to pick up this bad boy:


I was right about the shorter journey, it has arrived in one piece :) Plus it turned out to be a big button model STFM, so it'll be interesting to see what mainboard it's sporting. It looks nice in this photo, but does need a good clean, and feels oddly heavy for an ST.

As usual, taking it apart is all part of the joy of collecting these things :)

@rubber_jonnie Nice that you've finally retrieved it from your parents... hope it was good to see them as well ;)

Aside: I'll hopefully be posting about my latest ST addition later...one very nice surprise with it already.

I know what you mean about the apparent weight of some of the earlier machines...even the floppy drives can add a substantial amount...as well as the PSU.

Pictures please... expecting TOS 1.02 but could be virtually any mobo in there!

JezC wrote: 13 Sep 2021 17:48 @rubber_jonnie Nice that you've finally retrieved it from your parents... hope it was good to see them as well ;)

Aside: I'll hopefully be posting about my latest ST addition later...one very nice surprise with it already.

I know what you mean about the apparent weight of some of the earlier machines...even the floppy drives can add a substantial amount...as well as the PSU.

Pictures please... expecting TOS 1.02 but could be virtually any mobo in there!

It was great to see them thanks:)

I need to get it pulled apart, see whats what. What is your nice surprise?

rubber_jonnie wrote: 13 Sep 2021 19:31 It was great to see them thanks:)

Glad you got chance after all the rescheduling over the last 18 months plus!

I need to get it pulled apart, see whats what. What is your nice surprise?

Mine appears to be a fully functional 70789 F2 board with TOS 1.04 in ROM (and socketed)! Shifter & DMA are soldered in...GLUE & MMU, 1772 & both 6850s are socketed - from my findings with my other ST's, the 6850s are not normally in sockets.
Case is a bit grubby & a few minor marks but keyboard is OK too, so overall I'm delighted with it!

It's a bonus from the late (F2) motherboard (one of @exxos' favourites I think), TOS1.04 & working Epson SMD380 floppy perspective...I just have to decide if I should upgrade the RAM on this one (and if so to 1M or all out to 4M) and scavenge bits off one of my other less functional boards.

No, wait, it's a foregone conclusion...upgrade this one as it's the only (working) Rev F board in the collection, so it's a keeper & just needs a nice memory boost!

Hope you get some nice surprises with your long button 520 STFM when you crack her open! I personally prefer the long button cases...probably because my original 1040STF came with that type of case (plus the red power & floppy drive LEDs, TOS 1.00 in ROM etc.)

:thumbup: