Zogging Hell

Mine always did with my STs, iirc it did not require one with the TT. Always presumed it was the TOS version, all the STs I tried it on were 1.02.

Hhhm I suppose the other things to check are.. The cable (ribbon cable) between the ST is ok - perhaps replace (again as Paranoid mentioned)? Might be worth checking over the Satandisk for any soldering faults - iirc these were put together by hand, and a small bit of soldering error like dry solder joints, could cause an issue. Try another Satandisk psu Of course there are the general things like reseat socketed chips, recap motherboard and so on. I'd be surprised if the DMA chip is to blame, but perhaps replacing it might put your mind at rest

Does sound like the Exxos unit may be faulty. Part of the 'fun' of using the ST was hitting its memory limits, first trying to run something like Write On in 512k and realising that you can only use two fonts, then upgrading to 1mb and realising Magic has stolen most of that. 2.5 was workable - 1mb for multitasking system and font system with trimming and the remainder for use. No matter how much you have you eventually run out on the Atari, I used to run out of memory on my 14mb Falcon. It wasn't until I had 64mb on my Milan that I was free from the out of memory blues.

There is a resister patch you need to do if you have the original Satandisk (rather than Ultrasatan) which might fix your problems. I had partitiion loss with my Satandisks and my Mega ST 2 before I got it done, afterwards no problem. Its a fairly easy mod even if you have only a slight bit of soldering skills. Check for the power off partition loss link on here.. http://joo.kie.sk/?page_id=86

So have you deactivated the onboard memory when you try and run it in 4mb mode? I used 2.5mb for quite a while back in the day and it was more than enough to run most things, Magic and Geneva should run fine with it (even with NVDI, although you might want to trim the font use down a bit and lower the print and font buffers - and maybe trim those auto folder programs and accessories). You'll only run into problems if you try and run Mint (which isn't much cop on a ST anyway) or load large pictures (or a picture heavy WP file) for example - but even a 4mb ST will choke on most JPEG files, it probably won't even load a single modern JPEG before it runs out of memory. You can quite happily run a multitasking OS and pretty much all the software out there for the ST, remember 1mb was considered standard by the end of its commercial life, and many users were still using 0.5 and getting away with it. I would suggest running single tasking for memory intensive stuff. You could probably use Teradesk as a desktop as it is pretty memory light. Really if you want to run a NVDI contemporary 'power user' system from back in the day you need at least a TT or a Falcon (pipe dream as that may be for most users today) or a ST fitted with a 12mb upgrade, a graphics card and 030 accelerator. You could also try some different software, I don't know what you want to run, but That's Write is a decent WP for a lower end system and comes with a built in font system. NVDI 2.5 or Warp 9 could also be an option as they don't use as much memory as a full fat NVDI or Speedo GDOS system. Or you could even install a blitter and then you wouldn't get as much benefit from the screen acceleration portion of NVDI anyway - the blitter does make a hefty difference to desktop usage.

Ha, not sure how that happened, I wasn't a massive fan, and probably dozed off during that moment (think I was just waiting for Harrison Ford's cameo performance). For some reason despite all the CGI it didn't look as convincing or spectacular as the original (to me anyway). Still it was better than those Star Wars sequels.

The enormous Atari logo scene seemed to be missing from the actual movie though, unless I blinked and missed it..

It's good fun, but occasionally a bit buggy, so (I can't remember how the save works) save fairly often! You can occasionally get trapped in the scenery and there is also the rare complete crash, though that may have been down to my hardware.

Can you work out where it came from on the keyboard? Or is it from the motherboard? I would be a bit wary of swapping things out of other consoles without knowing the exact component values

Legend (the later version by another software house) and Shadowlands/ Shadow-worlds are games sort of in the Temple of Apshai style, can't fully remember if the former was real time entirely though (although I spent a lot of time on it a few years back). Nethack as well maybe or Times of Lore?

You will probably have difficulty cleaning it without one of those kits without opening the drive up. It usually is not a massive challenge, and probably will just involve taking off the top shielding from the floppy drive. Then use a q-tip/ cotton bud to gently clean the drive heads with isopropyl alcohol (which is basically the same thing the kit does anyway).

Both can do Truetype (as long as you get Speedo 5 - the earlier revisions don't support Truetype) so you can nick the fonts off your PC if you want. Speedo also does Speedo vector fonts (some of which come with the package), which were a very expensive font type back in the 80s/ 90s, and unsurprisingly (given the name) are pretty fast at rendering. I'm not sure if Bitstream, who made the speedo fonts is still going, and the fonts were not that widely available and cost a packet. Speedo fonts are probably better quality than Truetype but due to the cost never took on. I believe Speedo GDOS may also do another font type (postscript type 1 maybe?). Both packages will also load the old style GEM bitmap fonts as used by the original GDOS. NVDI does only come with a Times Roman u-like font called Baskerville, and a sans serif font called Franklin Gothic (iirc), which I suppose is a bit like Arial. But as I say you can pretty much use any Truetype font you can find out there.

Either Speedo or Nvdi will be the best choices,the last versions of both allow you to use standard Truetype fonts. NVDI has the bonus of a screen accelerator. Don't bother with original GDOS, it is a ball ache to set up, with different fonts needed for the screen and the specific printer. They are also bitmap fonts for the original, which look great at the size they are designed for, but you can't resize them without becoming a pixelly mess.

I think (emphasise the think here) that back then Quantum Paint may have had a 4096 painting mode (with the same scan line restrictions as Spectrum), although I believe it might have been as interesting to actually use as Spectrum (as in awkward). Edit - it did, but seems it was a bit of a kludge - https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n2/quantumpaint.html

That game looks bonkers, like Treasure Island Dizzy on amphetamines! (if the original wasn't weird enough). Pity the levels look a bit empty of baddies, looks like it would make a good engine for a Sonic style game

Grin, I doubt it - I'm pretty bad at Donkey Kong at the best of times

From Little Acorns (text adventure with graphics and wicked sense of humour), Dark Wars (DM Clone), Paths of Glory (Legend clone), Bio Hazard (Xenomorph like), Towers (DM Clone) and Walls of Illusion (DM Clone) would be my PD/ Shareware favs (they are all adventure type games). Mystic Well was also a pretty nice Dungeon Master like game if you can get past the graphics. Also liked 'Going down with the Captain', which isn't remotely like the title suggests (more plugging holes on a sinking ship), The Obscure Naturalist (defies genre) and Spectral Sorcery (puzzle game). Because the ST's scrolling could often be somewhat lack lustre, I was always pulled towards strategy and adventure games on the platform more than shooters. I hadn't seen Crash Time Plumber before. The graphics look pretty damn good. Will have to check it out.

That labelling might give it away as an 1040 STe (that is a good thing!) You could upgrade the ROM to TOS 2.06, but if you want to play games then it is probably best to stick with what you have (presuming it is TOS 1.62) Ebay should supply the simms, you want 4mb of them at 120ns + for a maxed out computer, but for most games you will probably not need that much. Really don't bother with the language disk, the only thing of any real use on it is the control panel - and there are better control panel apps out there, ST Basic itself on the language disk is renowned for being garbage. Nothing on the disk is essential to using the ST. If you want a decent basic try either GFA or Hisoft Basic.

Looks really good compared to the original - well done, one thing I did notice is the new car seems to be scaled a little large compared to the other traffic (and maybe the screen play area?). As the other cars and lorries go past you they look about half the size of the players car, but I can't remember whether the original game was the same - perhaps you are planning to replace them as well though? As for the silver fox riding shotgun,to paraphrase the words on the Chequered Flag Jaguar box, this is a drive to Grandmas

I suspect for a short while in the mid 80s it was probably the best consumer system you could buy for 3D graphics (without spending lots of money), though I'm sure some super PC of the time (fast 286 upwards) with some specialist cards could beat it easily, or some exotic custom hardware. I would also stick my neck out and say it is a trifle ahead of the Amiga on that front. There are a shed load of 3D games on the ST, other notables (as well as Paranoid's list) include things like Falcon, Conqueror, Virus, Carrier Command, Battle Command, Thunderhawk, Elite and Frontier (as well as a shed load of other tank and plane simulators). There are also some excellent apps including Antic's 3D stuff and the 3D construction kit. The ST also has a very nice version of Wolfenstein if we include fake 3D.

I remember reading an article/interview with Shiraz where he stated the YM was meant to be the equivalent of the bleeper in the PC and Mac Plus, really only something for system sounds rather than actual audio. He also alluded to the real sound chip coming later, though whether that was the DAC in the STe or Amy is unclear. Sadly I can't track this down online at the mo. I presume at the time he saw some sort of 'blitter like' later arrival (which iirc he also referred to as a ST graphics chip in the same article), though how it would have tied into the system is unclear.

Yep I believe it was software and external hardware that did the trick. There is a thread on it over on Atari Forum http://atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=24607

The Sonovista Falcon (i.e. the black top you have there) is actually quite a rare variant of the Falcon, it was used to create visual displays for television programs if I recall correctly, so I would probably keep it like that if I were you. They are pretty rare even by Falcon standards

I've got three of them which have the belt, one I replaced the belt on, the other two I haven't bothered. They are only a few pounds here in the UK, which is about as much as I would want to spend on something so ancient, although someone not in the UK you would have to consider the postage (or another supplier). Personally I prefer the disk for playing games as I appreciate the whole sound/ loading/ aesthetic thing (I'm an archaeologist by profession after all so do like old outdated things!), but admit it is purely for nostalgic reasons - I certainly wouldn't dream of using it for running apps on them nowadays with things like Ultrasatan about

Coolnovelties (no association) on ebay sells drive belts for the SF354, which is the usual thing to go on these.. there is a rubber belt which turns the disk - this perishes with time. This is an easy fix for anyone who can use a screwdriver. These are single sided drives though so may be that is your problem, as they won't load double sided disk games. A description of the symptoms for each drive would be helpful. The SF314 is a bit more complicated there are a number of things it could be - most likely dirty drive heads - but there are other things like the heads being out of alignment or the caps on the drive going (depending on model). You could swap out the drive for a PC one though you will need to change the id no (search on here for a thread about it no doubt). If you are not into disk drives from a nostalgic perspective then floppy drive emulators really are the way to go though.