exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Sometimes you say to yourself, 'what if?' . Today my 'what if? ' revolved around trying to find a way to make the beta IDE interface work in my Mega ST 1 without removing the 68k CPU.

Based on an earlier attempt and exxos telling me that the IDE adapter needs a CPU plugged in for it to work correctly, I plugged the PAK 68/2 into the IDE adapter, and then plugged the whole thing into the socket that's already soldered on top of the CPU.

Since the PAK can work with the original 68k in place I figured it must be disabling it somehow, so should help me get around the problem of the IDE interface needing a CPU plugged into it.

Bearing in mind it has German TOS 1.04 installed on the mainboard, and 2.06 on the IDE interface and the PAK, I really didn't have high hopes.

This is what it looks like:
First boot I get this:
Slightly surprised I'm seeing this at all I wait, and the busy bee pops up, then dissappears, but then the desktop doesn't arrive and I have a blank screen.

Don't ask me why, but I decide to switch the CF card over to a different one, and lo and behold I get this:
I'm still slightly surprised it actually booted at all.

To say it has problems is fair, since the floppy drive is misbehaving, but I think perhaps I'll do the mandatory fixes to it and see if it helps.

You need TOS 1.04 on the MST Mainboard for the PAK and TOS 2.06 at the PAK. No need of TOS onto the IDE Interface.

Now thats a tower setup! its probably the sils causing it to be unstable again. I never got my pak to work in any of my machines. Everything is just so fickle its unreal. Trudie will be more friendly anyway :)

frank.lukas wrote: 14 Dec 2019 18:04 You need TOS 1.04 on the MST Mainboard for the PAK and TOS 2.06 at the PAK. No need of TOS onto the IDE Interface.

Thanks Frank, having tried the PAK in a few boards, I knew about the need for the onboard ROM on the mainboard, but wasn't sure what would happen with the IDE ROM.

However I did also try with the IDE ROM removed, and as you say it all works just fine. Well,apart from the instabilities, but that's another story altogether.

exxos wrote: 15 Dec 2019 00:17 Now thats a tower setup! its probably the sils causing it to be unstable again. I never got my pak to work in any of my machines. Everything is just so fickle its unreal. Trudie will be more friendly anyway :)

@exxos Once I've got over the problems with the Mega 4 I'll look to do a SIL replacement here, and also look at the mandatory data bus fixes too, see if I can make this run nicely.