Maxxx_Orbison

I bought the ultrasatan to be my means of transferring between my laptop and my atari but later found, after having the partitioning of my sd card dissolved, that the recommended minimum was TOS 1.62. So I've given up trying to use it with my stf since the highest it can operate is 1.04. I currently have no way to transfer files to or from a PC. I have done quite a bit of research, reading through these and other forums. I feel like maybe your assuming I don't know things that I do. I've been through plenty of trouble shooting and trial and error and have dug through the dusty and abandoned bits of the internet looking for information and resources on programs and hardware compatibility. I haven't found anyone describing what I've encountered and I can't trust my instincts because they haven't developed yet. My knowledge on my machine is a fractured and disconnected collage of what I've encountered looking for answers to specific questions. I'm sorry if I come across as whining or entitled but I really am trying my best to understand short of taking an intro to computer science course. I just need some help trouble shooting is all.

When I bought altered beast back in 2011 my st hadn't even been shipped. It wasn't until I tried to run that I realized it was incompatible. But it did run, it was just a staggering of ghost images all spread across each other. It was confusing but still discernible. Since it was the only program I had at the time, I tried playing it for the novelty and it was still pretty fun in a way. I managed to beat the first boss once. For the years that I've had this stored away in my closet, I've periodically taken it out and booted it up to make sure everything was still working and altered beast had always run without a hitch (except for the obvious problem of being a color game on a monochrome display) Mainly I'm trying to run Dr. T's KCS Omega which is perfectly capable running on a monochrome display, it just doesn't seem to want to run. Other then that, I'm having trouble even viewing the contents of the disks half the time. Some times it won't recognize that a disk is present, some times there are items missing that reappear if I enter, then exit a folder. Sometimes the text is all scrambled. I don't think it has anything to do with the monitor. I originally bought my atari to run cubase. I bought the program an dongle for about $150, a midex+ for $50, a Steinberg SMP II for $100, a VGA adapter, a monitor splitter, and various cables. Turned out the midex+ wasn't rated for US power and it nearly killed my whole system, melting a hole through the cubase dongle in the process. The dongle still worked for a couple weeks but it finally quit on me which meant no cubase, which meant no SMP II. Just an atari and a unplayable copy of altered beast. Discouraged and disappointed, I put my atari away and started looking at hardware sequencing solutions. I moved recently and in the process became interested in my atari again and bought an ultrasatan, never coming across the information pertaining to the TOS version restrictions (I'm running 1.0) until it was too late. So I decided to keep it simple and just buy some software. I bought a few Dr. T programs off eBay, a trackball mouse, and a midi expander that plugs into the modem port. About $120. And now my software might all be turning into garbage as I feed it to my artari disk by disk. It's a bit upsetting. I know that I'm freaking out some and it really isn't helping. I'm trying to keep my cool and I really appreciate you trying to help. My freinds all think I'm crazy for trying to use an atari for anything, let alone music, and especially after I got burned with that midex. I read through the manual (the falcon one, the stfm manual was in Finnish) and learned a little, but not really anything that helps in this situation. The only things I can think it might be is that either the drive is failing and possibly corrupting my disks in the process or the ram is not working as intended for one reason or another. I don't know how to test these theories or how fix them if they're correct. I tried formatting a disk to see if I could, and I could, so I'm leaning towards it maybe being the ram. Any thoughts?

Hey everyone. This is my first post. I'm sorry about the wall of text but this turned into equal parts plea for help and venting frustrations. I'm on my phone so I'm not going to go back and edit. Please bare with me. So after some trouble getting things up and going with an 1040stf a few years ago, I recently decided to try again at using it as a midi sequencer with my synth rig. I went on eBay and picked up a copy KCS Omega with a few other disks bundled in, got them home, fired up Omega, confirmed that it worked, had no idea what I was doing, decided to check out other disks. Here's where the trouble starts. I read the read me files and noted that most of the games most likely required a color monitor (I only have monochrome). I already had a copy of altered beast which would run fine, (audio worked, controls functioned) just the video was a bit scrambled, so I figured I could run the programs to see if the disks were still working. I try to run one and it acts like it's loading for maybe 5 sec before exiting back to desktop. I thought that was strange so I tried another and it does the same thing. I assume it's probably an error of some sort on my end and try to go back to omega only now it tells me disk may be corrupted! I think "This can't be right. It worked fine no 10 min ago" so I hit retry and get the same message. I hit cancel and it brings up the file window where all of the text is garbled nonsense. It even has a header of (($;""!/a@&6j())/ of xxkb available. So that's startling. I open a file and all of the text inside is normal. "Okay", I exit the file and everything is back to being as it should. "Huh", I open the program and "your disk may be corrupted..." I have to reset and then the disk won't appear. Take it out, put it back, corruption error, take it out, put it back, no problems, program won't run, reset, garble nonsense. Try a different disk, corruption error, rage quit. That was yesterday. Today I tried again and everything seemed to be going okay. No error, no random bs text, loads to the starting screen of omega, then the corruption error. Wth? So I try a disk I know works for certain. I pop in altered beast and run the .prg. It load for 10-15 sec and then I get three bombs and it shoots me back to the desktop. Is my disk drive failing? Is it my ram? Do I need to reset my chips? Should I just give up and buy a Mist? I've put so much time and money into this machine and every time I think "This is it! It's finally going to do what I need it to do!"I It's like it hears me and says "not on my watch" and I'm another $80 in the hole. TL;DR: My atari is a money pit and should be burned but it won't happen because my ego demands that I wrestle it into submission.

Thank you again. You've been a lot of help. I find I'm often out of my depth with these older machines. Things I've grown up taking for granted that they should "just work" tend to be a much more complicated ordeal. It's nice to know there a community out there with the patience and willingness to share their knowledge with clueless people like myself.

Very good to know, thank you for the reply! I do have one more question, and I'm not sure if this is the place to ask but it seems to fit the theme of this thread. Dongles. Are there any compatibility issues between regions due to power regulations? Say, hypothetically, I live in the US and wanted to buy a copy of C-Lab Creator from Australia. Would the dongle fry or break my atari? I ask because I've encountered this issue with peripherals before and melted a perfectly good cubase dongle due to ignorance. I don't want to make that mistake again.

I know this thread is nearly two years old but I figured why start a new thread? Does the same go for euro programs running on us monochromatic monitors? I really need to know.

Interested in one, maybe two if the price is right.