Phoenix H5 for music production?

[Vectroplasm]

Hey there!

I wanna get into retro music production on Atari!
A family member gave me a 1040stf from his attic, but it's faulty (turns on and screen starts glitching up until it freezes)
I was browsing online for help and found out about the Phoenix h5
Seems like the way to go because I really need it to not fail on me should I ever use it on stage (and in general), and from what I read many of these machines are prone to failures these days...
But now I'm wondering....
Can this board basically give me a Falcon? (I wanna run the best version of cubase with the most channels)
Also, I have no idea what's wrong with the ST I have, so I'm wondering if I could break the new board if I install the chips I take from my original board and one of them turns out to be faulty? (or is there some easy way to check if they're still good or not?)

Thanks!

PS: Glad to see there's still a fairly active ST community going on! <3

[Badwolf]

Can this board basically give me a Falcon? (I wanna run the best version of cubase with the most channels)

The H5 is an STF remake with expansion possibilities.

There have been one or two attempts to do a Falcon re-created. I don't think any have (so far) got to production.

BW

[exxos]

If you're using music I assume you're using high-resolution / mono, in which case the graphics modes of the Falcon would not really be of benefit. You can fit a 030 CPU accelerator into a H5, which will be faster than the Falcon. But it does not make it a Falcon with DSP etc.

[rubber_jonnie]

The H5 is not a Falcon or even an STE, just an STF/M.

However, it does have many advantages in that it's a new board, with the aforementioned expansion capabilities and a much better design that suffers from less noise than the originals.

Aside from the expansion capabilities it also offers better 'standard' stuff, like VGA out and 1.44Mb floppies.

Your machine sounds like an ideal donor, with the one caveat that it may have faulty components, but that is always going to be a risk and you may need a 2nd donor or source problem parts to finish it off.

In terms of 'breaking the board' using the old machine as a donor, it's not likely as it's just a PCB and very durable, and as long as you use sockets for the ICs it won't be a problem as you just replace whats not working, and for things like logic IC's you can just buy new.

It's possible your old machine just needs the ICs to have their contacts cleaned and a reseat.

[Vectroplasm]

Ah no sorry, I was thinking the latest version of cubase was falcon only, that doesn't seem to be the case.
I was thinking that because I had 1mb ram and more is reccomended for the latest cubase.
But with this new board extra ram isn't a problem

[Steve]

Yep H5 is a perfect classic Cubase machine with the added benefits and possibilities of faster CPU (a few different options around these days, an Exxos 16mhz, a dst1 with alt ram, or a tf536) high density floppy, VGA port, get a Trudie IDE adapter for it... Etc etc etc, reliable, stable.

[Vectroplasm]

Yeah I think I'm just gonna go for the new motherboard then.
Could try to get this one running but I want better reliability than an almost 40y old motherboard :p
So alright I probably won't break the H5 by installing a faulty chip
But if it doesn't work because of a broken chip, is there a way for me to find out which chip I should replace?

[rubber_jonnie]

But if it doesn't work because of a broken chip, is there a way for me to find out which chip I should replace?

Yes, but it may involve troubleshooting techniques that you are not familiar with or tools that you may not have.

It may be worth going through some of the basics with your old machine first to see if you can make it work so you know you have a good donor.

Start by checking the voltages from the PSU. Be aware that the PSU has heatsinks which can be live with mains voltage, so steer clear.

The ST needs only 5v to boot. The original PSU is rated about 3A IIRC, but to boot without a floppy you don't need quite as much. 12v is not needed to boot to the desktop. A bench PSU is useful for this.

Then remove and reseat the socketed ICs one at a time (It avoids mixing them up!) and spray the sockets with Electrolube or DeOxit before refitting the ICs. That's about as much as you can do for basic troubleshooting.

[JezC]

Hi, one other point might be to say where you are based in case you are relatively close to some other forum members who might be able to help.

Even without additional expansion, you will have 4Meg of RAM on the H5, just buy the SIMM from the store as well as the H5.

Good luck!

[Steve]

@Vectroplasm a few of us will be at the cyber legends event tomorrow in Hythe: https://exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopi ... =20&t=5633

So if you're in the area you could always come and chat to folks. I'll have a few faulty motherboards for sale for anyone who needs doner parts.