ParanoidLittleMan

Yes, of course. Without cache 16 MHz gives only minimal speed gain (some 15%), with it it is 60-70% . And no sense for cache on while stay at 8 MHz. Mega STE cache of 16 KB is pretty much compatible with most of SW, so no need to keep it off when CPU is set to 16 MHz.

On DL page with table there is field 'Val' . C there means completed, checked thoroughly (as is explained below). There is 180 of such, so over 10% . I was thinking about something similar - dividing games by category, start letters, and then volunteers could select what to test. Of course, it is not so simple - much more games starting with S than with Z, for instance. There are popular games, genres, known games, not known games ... Things are that there are few people who do it from time to time, so I got few days ago in e-mail: "Hi, I played Curse of the Azure Bonds to the end, STE TOS 1.62 4 mb Ultrasatan. Thanks, it was unplayable on floppies when I tried 30 years ago. Mark Keeling" With this tempo, I guess we will have 50% somewhere around 50th wave of covid - 2040 . Yeah, not optimistic. It's up to you folks to make me optimistic 🙂 And under 'folks' I meant politicians too .

In last weeks I went through all those my hard disk adaptations, checking compatibility of old ones, especially with iTOS. Most of it (99%) works very well as is, some don't have exit to Desktop, state saves, some eat too much disk space (lot of short files), so I updated half dozen of quality games: Bubble Bobble Hero Quest Gunship F-16 Combat Pilot Galdregon's Domain Forgotten Worlds Zak Mckracken and the Alien Mindbenders - 3 lang. versions: De, Fr, En . New: Pole Position They are at top of DL table by default. There were some problems with game Forgotten Worlds - it is not so well coded, and tends to write in high RAM, what destroys HAGA cache and other. So, it is still with old GAMEX system, what has direct access to hard disks (with mine and couple other drivers only). And this one is tested until end. Others may wanting that you do it 🙂 http://atari.8bitchip.info/fromhd.php

Confused people will be always confused. Different issues ? Repairing electronic, computers has it's methodology. It is something what people learn over years - in specialized schools, by self. The real bad thing is that some think that is enough to describe problem, put here some photo and magic - and will get instructions how to fix it. Folks, this is not movie, this is real life. Things happen much much slower. In normal times usual way was to bring machine into service. In normal time people would not mocking about other's troubles.

Seems like CPU failure. Although, there are other chips connected to reset signal on bus - some must pull too much current, and that makes it low. So, need to remove them to see which one is it. That pull up resistor is bad is unlikely, but it is easy to check - just must desolder one pin of it to measure it properly with ohmmeter.

Maybe could just check it with removed 74LS05 . Then should have at least some 4 V at reset pin of CPU. And connect it for short to GND will perform reset, like when pressing reset button while all chips are OK. Then will know will machine become alive, so no other error(s) .

Here can DL hard disk v. and watch short YT video of game play : http://atari.8bitchip.info/SCRSH/cybermind.html

Sorry folks, but thread is about TOS/GEM icons and how to get/convert them for WEB page (usual pic. formats like png.). Don't think that OP had all those custom icons in mind.

This are not desktop icons. Bee is mouse shape, bombs are shown by GEMDOS part, not GUI/GEM . To get bee make it busy - not joke - like open floppy disk. Bombs - should run some crap SW what likes to crash 🙂 Well, I let someone other to post such SW . I know some games which crashes under certain conditions, but that needs little plus work to reach there.

I don't think that there is any tool for Win, Linux what can extract icon bitmap data from TOS image. And I know exactly where they are (iTOS with new icons), it is just that this is not something what many people will ever use. But thing can be done really simply. Just run emulator, go to Desktop appearance - there are all icons - 5 types . Drive icon, trash can icon, ordinary file icon, runnable file icon and folder icon. Or use good screenshot where all it is present. Then can 'steal' them with some good paint program from it. All icons have bitmap data and mask data. 2 colors only. In any res.

Just to add that I do not scan - how would scan over 1000 box covers ? Of course I DL them, make some contrast, color corrections by need, cut off most interesting part and convert it with special SW in ST(E) hi-color mode, regular 256 color BMP for 32 bitters. And unlike crackers "we are the best ..." messages, this pictures can be removed, if someone don't like them, or has problem with disk space. There are normally 3 files Fxy273.HST, Lxy273.HST - 70 KB long, first is for STE, second for ST machines. xy240R.BMP - for Falcon, TT - 78 KB. If file not found game starter will just continue with game launch.

Since this popped up in couple recent threads here, and is overall actual topic, I will write here some facts, thoughts, experience, and will dare to give some advice too, even if I'm by some last persona who should do it 🙂 Playing in emulators - that's indeed decent solution, and we have some well done emulators with Windows, Linux, MAC versions for that. But I will focus here on playing with real HW, so no more about Atari ST(E) emulators. Except: HW emulators - yeah - MIST, MistER ... probably that's the future. But we still have original machines working well, so : Indeed main question here is storage - from what storage device, what media to load, start game(s) ? 1. From floppy disks - that's how it was in Atari years, and games were sold, distributed on floppy disks. 2. Hard disk - it became interesting around 1990, when prices went lower, so even game publishers/programmers added hard disk install option in some cases. 3. Cartridge - not used by game publishers, except maybe in few cases as copy protection. But it is possible to place on limited 128 KB capacity some quality games. Myself did cartridge versions of about dozens of games. 4. HW floppy emulator - indeed very popular now. First was HxC, and it had SD card and USB versions, later was not much popular, even if it was better for some copy protections. Format support is limited, and in case of games it is best to go with cracks, deprotected versions . Now more complications: from floppy disks : A: using strictly original ones. This is what is obsolete, unreliable, costs time and money, and worst - disappointment almost guaranteed (sooner or later). Yeah, disks have limited life time. B: making so called 'flux' copy of original, with specialized device - like Super Card Pro. And it is relative popular now, plus lot of images available online, for free. Images are btw. of pretty large size - can be 60 MB per disk. Other device, KryoFlux seems getting forgotten - maybe because restrictions, explained with now really complete obsolete copyrights ? C : using so called cracks, copies with deactivated copy protection. As everything it has good and bad sides. Good is that is writable to floppies with regular Atari ST or even PC, images are short, then there are often some trainer/cheat options. Bad is that it might be not flawless - some damaged sections of data/game levels, not fully deprotected ( Potsworth & Co. by D-Bug - last level will fail) ... Then some screens might be spoiled by cracker messages (even on pictures !) ... Menu disks are special case - packing as much is possible games on single disk, usually with slow depacking, so slow start. There are few people, crews, who did/does as much as possible faithful to original 'cracks' - so no fancy intro, 'we are best, f* the rest' type messages before game start, no forced packing, etc. Well, at least all it should work with Goteks and it's clones. Hard disk, or now rather Flash card adapted games (some call it patch - what is just stoopid. Although, I'm sure it is just taken from Amigaists 🙂 ) . Why saying adaptation ? Because in big % of games it is not about changing floppy access part with hard disk access code. About 60 % of Atari ST(E) games using TOS calls for file (disk) access, so as is usual to say Trap #1 calls. Some use XBIOS 8 calls (direct floppy sector access - Sundog) - and it is easy to redirect to hard disk. But, disk access is only one of problems what appears in this 'business' . There are TOS version compatibility problems, RAM usage problems. On this page are several details, based on experience with plenty of games: http://atari.8bitchip.info/playfhd.html More details may follow ...

I don't think that using any SCSI drive for everyday work, fun and storage now is good idea. They will not last for long - talking from own experience. So, if manage to make this Syquest 10 MB work, need to save files from it and give to some museum (what can be personal one too 🙂 ). Well, since it is formatted, there is no data, so I think that really should not waste time with it. And that formatting of it took lot of time can be sign of it being faulty. 32 GB SD card price is now under 10 bucks. Easy data transfer with modern computers ...

Just spotted another error in TOSEC - where is btw. really obvious that something is wrong, even without opening ZIP files. So, Medway Boys Menu blah blah 097.zip is 652993 bytes, while (a) version of it is 296332 bytes. As is said, (a) v. is same, only with different bootsector - so no way that so big size diff happen. And yes, that's some other game/menu disk . And will it be ever corrected, or just copied to other places, sites as is ? As things are, we are in period of not saying thanx when someone points on error in constructive manner - no, we are best, we never made mistake type attitude will rather happen. Or just complete ignoring. I could give dozens of other examples of errors, which drag over decade, and nothing is corrected or noticed. And that stays for almost everything in today society - today you can not say something to salesman - arrogant response will happen in most cases. Funny thing is that many of them care more to play some smart man, expert about what they sell (and no, they are practically never experts, knowledge level is very low, + they will lie a lot, just to present it as something best (reminds on some crew in Atari waters ?), instead to just listen to customer and doing what he wants/expects. They lose with that attitude plenty of customers and traffic. Idiot times, this is it. Ahh, sorry for telling the sad facts - am I the bad guy now, or those who act badly ? If it is clear anymore what is good, what is bad ...

So, Lotharek offers too plexy version. Must be some trend now. I only can hope that soon we will see some tatoo-ed solutions too - sorry, too much football, pardon soccer on TV this days 🙂