Vortex AT-Once PC AT Emulator and STE Booster board

[aftertheflood]

Hi

Can anyone advise if i were to fit the STE Booster, would my existing AT-Once emulator, which currently piggybacks the atari cpu, plug into the booster board ?

Thanks

https://www.ricardo.ch/de/a/vortex-ato ... 35459694/

[mikro]

I can't advise you in this specific case but my educated guess would be that it wont work: a couple of years ago I tried ATonce 386SX Mega STE + MonSTer, which offers Dual IDE, ALT RAM and Flash TOS and it didn't work (it also sits on the CPU).

[aftertheflood]

thanks, i suspected it may not. my initial concern was the height tbh. its already quite tight and have next to no room for a heat sink on the 286 chip.

[mikro]

You can read about my experience here: https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=41076

[aftertheflood]

ha. that was going to be one of my next posts. was looking to buy the sd4st+ and was wondering if at-once would see it. cant recall if the 286 came with and ide interface. pretty sure i never attached it. but i still have the box so i'll take a look.

from memory for the heat sink i think i've got a small piece of metal that wedges the 286 to the ataris metal shielding. it stopped the emulator crashing after 10mins use, but found it odd vortex never offered any better solution. i even recall ringing them some 33 years ago and they just said it will get hot. lol.

[tzok]

That's strange as 286s or even most 386s used in PCs never required heatsinks. I have AT-Once in my 1040 STf machine and it works without any heatsink. To be more precise I have this AT-Once+ replica: http://atari.myftp.org/atari16bit/atonce/atonce.html

I know the Author had serious difficulties with finding 286 that would run stable at 16MHz on this board.

[rubber_jonnie]

One question, you mention that you want to fit this to an STE, but the Vortex card uses a DIP style pinout, but the STE has a PLCC CPU socket. How were you intending to plug in the Vortex?

[tzok]

There were adapters for MegaBus and PLCC socket.

[rubber_jonnie]

There were adapters for MegaBus and PLCC socket.

Fair enough, I assumed there may be, but I always like to understand what folks are thinking :)

[aftertheflood]

That's strange as 286s or even most 386s used in PCs never required heatsinks. I have AT-Once in my 1040 STf machine and it works without any heatsink. To be more precise I have this AT-Once+ replica: http://atari.myftp.org/atari16bit/atonce/atonce.html

I know the Author had serious difficulties with finding 286 that would run stable at 16MHz on this board.

yes. i didnt expect to fit one, it may not help there is very little airflow between the 286 and the ste metal shielding etc. eitherway my solution stopped it misbehaving.