Hello from Belgium
Posted: 18 Feb 2022 08:33
Hello everyone,
During my holiday break at the end of '21 I stumbled upon some repair videos on Youtube, related to fixing an Atari ST.
Watching the machine working again brought back memories from years past.
I was so intrigued that I searched for more videos related to the Atari ST, and was positively surprised there is quite an active community.
Found the atari-forum site, looked around and signed up ... and then later I found this place.
Hi, my name is Daniel, proud owner of an Atari 520STFM.
In the late 80s, as a student, I bought the machine with money earned from my first job during the summer-holidays.
Had it upgraded to 1MB the next year. Then, yet another year or so later, purchased a Megafile 60.
Had loads of fun playing around mainly with STOS and all kinds of magazine cover disks.
After graduating in '92 I got side-tracked into the PC world. Probably like so many others.
All my Atari stuff was gathering dust at my mother's house. Until I was bitten by the nostalgia bug from watching the Youtube repair videos.
During one of my visits to my mother I took the opportunity to gather all the Atari material. Wife was not thrilled me taking all this "garbage" home.
In the meantime the 520 has been switched on. All seems to be working. Floppy drive spinning and reading old disks with no issues.
The mouse needed some cleaning. As for the monitor, a Philips CM8833 (original, not Mk2) isn't displaying properly.
It shows a white image, but you can't make much of it as it seems to have trouble with horizontal and/or vertical sync.
It probably needs some solder joints being reflown, maybe some recap, or its flyback replaced ... or all of the above.
As of writing I am in the process of replacing the flyback and the HOT, and the notorious broken power switch.
As it took quite a while to get replacement parts shipped and delivered I have purchased an OSSC, ST2VGA and scart cable.
From few short attempts using the scart cable it seems the STFM suffers from a video issue, as the OSSC looses sync when screen displays mostly white image. No problem with regular desktop, and the issue also doesn't occur using the ST2VGA and VGA input of the OSSC.
Recap of the video output of the STFM is next on my list, I guess.
To my surprise the Megafile started up, and after being greeted with the typical sound of the inititalization sequence, powering up the ST brought me into a desktop with all hard disk partitions available.
I have ordered an ACSI2STM and a PARCP-USB in order to transfer and backup all files from the megafile before it dies ... or before hearing-loss. I cannot remember the megafile used to be that loud, back in the days.
Anyway, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
regards,
Daniel
During my holiday break at the end of '21 I stumbled upon some repair videos on Youtube, related to fixing an Atari ST.
Watching the machine working again brought back memories from years past.
I was so intrigued that I searched for more videos related to the Atari ST, and was positively surprised there is quite an active community.
Found the atari-forum site, looked around and signed up ... and then later I found this place.
Hi, my name is Daniel, proud owner of an Atari 520STFM.
In the late 80s, as a student, I bought the machine with money earned from my first job during the summer-holidays.
Had it upgraded to 1MB the next year. Then, yet another year or so later, purchased a Megafile 60.
Had loads of fun playing around mainly with STOS and all kinds of magazine cover disks.
After graduating in '92 I got side-tracked into the PC world. Probably like so many others.
All my Atari stuff was gathering dust at my mother's house. Until I was bitten by the nostalgia bug from watching the Youtube repair videos.
During one of my visits to my mother I took the opportunity to gather all the Atari material. Wife was not thrilled me taking all this "garbage" home.
In the meantime the 520 has been switched on. All seems to be working. Floppy drive spinning and reading old disks with no issues.
The mouse needed some cleaning. As for the monitor, a Philips CM8833 (original, not Mk2) isn't displaying properly.
It shows a white image, but you can't make much of it as it seems to have trouble with horizontal and/or vertical sync.
It probably needs some solder joints being reflown, maybe some recap, or its flyback replaced ... or all of the above.
As of writing I am in the process of replacing the flyback and the HOT, and the notorious broken power switch.
As it took quite a while to get replacement parts shipped and delivered I have purchased an OSSC, ST2VGA and scart cable.
From few short attempts using the scart cable it seems the STFM suffers from a video issue, as the OSSC looses sync when screen displays mostly white image. No problem with regular desktop, and the issue also doesn't occur using the ST2VGA and VGA input of the OSSC.
Recap of the video output of the STFM is next on my list, I guess.
To my surprise the Megafile started up, and after being greeted with the typical sound of the inititalization sequence, powering up the ST brought me into a desktop with all hard disk partitions available.
I have ordered an ACSI2STM and a PARCP-USB in order to transfer and backup all files from the megafile before it dies ... or before hearing-loss. I cannot remember the megafile used to be that loud, back in the days.
Anyway, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
regards,
Daniel