Zogging Hell

Don't see why not, pretty much anything that will run from GEM should be ok from a hard drive. All the versions of Cubase I've used do, including Pro24 and 12, which predate Cubase Lite (although I've never used that version for the record).

Depends whether you play original games or not, if you do a replacement floppy drive is the only way to go. If you don't a Gotek is probably the cheapest replacement.

If you unplug the drive does the computer boot every time? (white screen). This could also be your PSU flaking out..

Is this (the original version that is) the one that is literally impossible, as there is a bug near the end that stops it being finished?

The Marpet memory upgrade clips (or should I say squeezes?) over the top of MMU and under the shifter. The shifter is in the silver box in the middle of the ST motherboard (its the largest chip in there). The mmu moves about depending on motherboard revision, but is a square shaped chip (there are two or three in there depending on whether a blitter is installed). If the chip is socketed it will look like just that, a chip in a socket (the shifter mostly is, the mmu not so much), if the chip is soldered directly to the motherboard it will be a pain to add a memory upgrade. Back in those days you would get some extra sockets that would plug into the Marpet that kinda acted like an upside down socket, which would fit over the offending soldered chip. They were a bit crappy though and usually worked loose at the slightest opportunity. You usually had to glue gun them in to keep them from popping off. If the shifter is not socketed, you are buggered, unless you feel comfortable desoldering the chip and fitting a socket and a new chip (or the original if by some miracle you haven't cooked it during the desoldering) or soldering the upgrade directly onto the chip itself. It tends to be the later STFMs that are soldered (cost cutting). If you have TOS 1.04 (unless the system has been upgraded) and a late release date/ motherboard revisiion, you are more at risk of this. If your chips are socketed, you simply have to orientate the one bit of the upgrade correctly over the mmu then push the pins in between the chip and the socket. This is a little hair raising the first time, and also puts some extra strain on the pins in the socket, which might make the socket a bit unreliable if you ever take the memory out. From memory the other bit for the shifter, you remove the chip, add the thru socket and then reseat the shifter, making sure the orientation is right (or fried chip results). It's not hard after you have done one, but can be little daunting for the first timer. You just need to make sure you check everything a thousand times and read the manual a lot. I believe Exxos also has some memory upgrades, which are probably going to be a darn sight more reliable than some ancient simms/ memory and a marpet upgrade.

If the PSU is firing out some flakey voltages all sorts could get warm! The simms should get a little warm, particularly as they are sitting next to the PSU on the STe, however as a next stop on trouble shooting you could try taking some of them out leaving you with the minimum and if that works swap them over and see if the others cause issues. I would suspect PSU though, Exxos does do a 110v new replacement for £60, search for 110v, he appears to have 4 in stock.

You could set up a fan to blow down through the grill if your worried about it. If the caps haven't been replaced by now it is probably time to do it anyway. If you are going down the upgrade route a stable PSU is essential. If you can solder just get one of Exxos's recap kits and change over the power supply, far better than buying a new second hand PSU that will likely have the same problems.

Magic was awesome back then, a combo of it, NVDI and Jinnee brings Mac level useability, with incredible speed (for a 8 - 32mhz cpu platform). Kept me from having to buy a Mac or PC for many years longer

I'd keep the accs and auto programs to the minimum if you can, as the more there are the more there is a chance of conflict. In these days of endless storage I stopped using a boot manager and instead hand crafted different (auto) folders containing different sets of programs for the various circumstances, I then just rename the folder auto and reboot. For example I have a basic folder which just has some of the basic essential patches like folder xxx and so on, for booting in plain TOS. I then have a GDOS folder for programs like Timeworks that really only get on with clunky old GDOS. And a 'power' (ha ha) user folder with NVDI, Magic and all the trimmings (and 2mb of ram gone like that!). Managing the autofolder is a bit of a dark art... the key rule is 'less is generally better'. Get a program called autosort (or another called dirsort) as some programs need to be run in a certain order. This program allows you to change that order in one go. I would definitely put NVDI in there for any desktop serious work - it does use a chunk of memory but is worth every byte, particularly if you want to run papyrus or Atari works.

Mint or Multitos will probably be a bit painful on a plain vanilla ST, although it can run (forget web browsing on it as well though - you could try CAB or wensuite, but I imagine they will render very few sites well these days). You could use Magic or Geneva for multitasking well enough though, which are a bit less resource heavy (Magic is actually about as fast as single TOS when it is installed). You probably won't need to use the external floppy much, only a few games are sensible enough to use it and it you have a hard drive you won't need it for serious apps. I'm not sure why Sysinfo would crash, have you tried another version or something similar, like Profile? Do you still have your original TOS, can you swap the replacement out and see if it (Sysinfo) works then (just to eliminate something subtle has gone wrong with your flash)

I've never used both together I'm afraid, it sounds like something in assign sys is not right, either a path is wrong or something. I believe the way you had to organise things in Speedo's fonts folder was also slightly different to NVDI.. I might be recalling wrong, but I think Speedo liked all the files in the same font directory, whereas NVDI can have them in sub-folders, so you can organise by font. Have you got a working Speedo without NVDI at all? Perhaps install Speedo first, then make sure the assign.sys and anything else NVDI will overwrite are back up. When NVDI has installed, deactivate GDOS in the CPX, and copy the original assign sys etc back.

Which did you install first? Only asking as Speedo and NVDI like putting their vector fonts in different places and which ever one was installed last will overwrite the assign sys of the other. There are also three different Speedo programs in the auto folder on the install disk iirc, some are limited in types of fonts I seem to remember..

Wolf doesn't work on the ST with the light gun afaik, neither does Thunderbolt, which is a shame as they would have been just the games for it. Particularly Thunderbolt which has to make do with joystick control for the second player. I think Wolf predated this gun. Wolf does work with guns on the 8bit though.

Usually they (the memory upgrade) plugs in over the MMU, occasionally the pins can get dirty, or bent too far backwards to make good contact (they become more brittle with age). Sometimes, in the case of late STs the upgrade had to be soldered on top, but as you have a STF I would guess yours is socketed. If you can see only plastic casing rather than pins that would be the case. The bit of the upgrade that fits over the shifter has pins which are pressed down between the MMU and its socket so to remove you will need to carefully pull straight up (make sure it is socketed first though!). The other bit of the memory upgrade usually goes into the shifter box (the metal box), where it is either soldered on top or if socketed, the shifter fits into a socket adaptor, which then fits into the original socket. To remove this first take the adaptor out of the socket, then remove the shifter from the adaptor and replace this in the original socket. Check both If the upgrade isn't soldered I would remove it to test the ST without another weak link. The MMU may need a replacement socket if this is the root cause as it will be hard to rescue one with weak connections. Another thing to note, if the ST is sporting 4mb then the original memory on the motherboard will have been deactivated by cutting some resistors, these will need to be resoldered if this is the case (as otherwise the ST will have no memory at all). Is the Z-ram kit a simm style kit or otherwise?

PSU and the memory upgrade are probably the most likely next culprits to check. The PSU may (will probably) need a recap, and the memory board may need reseating (hopefully it won't have gone bad, but you will have to completely remove it to check if it has). You will need to check that the PSU output is correct, even if it looks like it is powering the ST, it might have all sorts of problems. Might be worth checking the caps on the motherboard as well.

Okay quick atarimania search brings up: Cyber Assault Orbital Destroyer Skeet Shoot The Enforcer Fire Star All by Trojan Space Gun By Ocean West Phaser Loriciel Slightly more than I remembered, although Space Gun is the only big hitter there.

There were about four games; three that came with the gun, a separate game by the same company and the only commercial game I know of which is Space Gun from Ocean. The gun works about as well as on the 8bit, although the ST's increased CPU power makes it slightly more bearable than say, the Speccy.

The ST basically will see it as a normal hard drive, does the drive have a special cable or is the conversion to the STs port handled by the drive itself? ICD utilities are here: https://sites.google.com/site/stessential/hdd-tools. Copy this to a floppy then connect everything up and turn on the hard disk and then the ST. Plop the disk in the drive and boot. The icd program in the auto folder should then load and detect the drive (sometimes depending on the ST you might need to reset the computer a couple of times to recognise the Syquest). If the drive has already been formatted/ partitioned then you will just need to add an drive icon to the desktop to allow you to access it. I would suspect the cartridges have already been formatted if the drive was already been used with an ST. Might be worth checking for some goodies if so... If the drive hasn't been formatted then you need to use ICD format on the disk to do the dirty work. You would need to format and then partition the drive. I have a 230mb Syquest drive which I use with the Link II cable. The ST sees it as a normal hard disk, a little slower than a normal scsi drive though, although fairly comparable to an early Atari branded hard disk.

I used an Epson EPL5700 laser, which was HP compatible for a long while (it amazingly is still on the first toner cartridge, despite years of fairly heavy use), but I used speedo gdos or NVDI to print. IIRC correctly there was a review of some program in Atari ST Review that could make 1st Word work natively with HP deskjets or lasers but ideally 1st word likes Epson compatible stuff. If you want to print off that HP you are better off looking at something like Papyrus, or other GDOS programs (Calligrapher, Tempus Word, MS Write, That's Write etc spring to mind). If it is just text then Everest is a GDOS compatible text editor, just be prepared to loose some of the formatting. NVDI is a fairly large overhead though, and most of those WPs I mentioned are pretty heavy weight as well, which might make space tight on a plain 1040. Marcel might work with Laserjet though, and if there is an option to print to a HP deskjet I would try that, even though it is for inkjets.

Is this low res you are trying to display? If so try booting in mono and see if it works. If so one of the chips that controls the resolution has probably failed and will need replacing. The keyboard not being attached may well stop it booting though so definitely make sure it is plugged in first. When you opened the case did you detach the power/ HDD leds by accident? This is quite easy to do.

A bit similar to zzips question but I'd like to know if the STe was deliberately 'hobbled' in terms of capabilities to stop it cannablising sales of the TT/ Mega STe.

What happens when you format a floppy with them?

Actually the STe can do 2.5mb of ram, you just need a patch program Not really worth it though given the price of 30 pin simms.

You could swap the keyboard with the STFM in the short term although it is quite a simple fix if you have used a soldering iron before. The STe will not need the Marpet board (just 4 x 1mb 30 pin simms) to max it out, although if you only want to play games 1mb will be plenty, which you already have in your STe. The STFM and STFs will need the Marpet board (or better Exxos's alternative), although check whether any of them have surface mounted chips as you need a special connector which fits over the top of the chip (or you can solder direct to the chip) if they do.

I think having the keyboard unplugged may cause a problem even if its not the cause of the three bombs. There is a clock in the keyboard and a processor (it's basically a mini computer in its own right). Crazy Cars will also need the joysticks, so not having a response from the keyboard controller processor may cause an error. Get that keyboard back in before anything else