Xebec

This is awesome! How are you connecting these towers to the STs exactly? can you attach it to a regular 'wedge' ST via ACSI port or similar?

If inappropriate, please delete post ... but I saw what happened with TerribleFire* over in the Amiga community over a few years, and I hope we don't see anything similar happen in the A8 community. I just wanted to say thank you again to all of the people here who make this community awesome and give us wonderful toys to play with and a strong dose of nostalgia at the same time. This group is especially awesome as I was a bit too young to really get super involved in local groups related to the Atari 8bit so, (outside of BBS experiences and 1 copy 8bit party back in the day) I enjoy getting a real taste of what that might have been like.. today. Thanks Atarians! *TF did a lot for his community (and for the ST) and seems like a great person. I wish him well.

Way too young. Only met him briefly but he was a really good person and great to talk to. Condolences.

Thank you all - learned a lot here actually from this thread. I didn't realize the Mega ST had an ability to mount a drive internally - I assumed with the pizza slice drives that meant external only. I do like the Mega ST keyboard a lot though as Darklord points out (when I bought my Mega STE 5-6 years ago I asked for the 'older' style keyboard as it had the function keys that look like the AIO ST's..) I'm sure the blitter alone helped TOS a lot.. it's ashame the original ST's never had that. Any recommendations on where I can go to read more about the video cards offered for the Mega ST (not-E)? Did those cards drive all TOS / graphics output or was it basically a two monitor deal if you wanted to run all software?

Hope you feel better soon!

What were the main reasons for purchasing a Mega ST back in the day over a 1040ST(fm)? From what I can see it adds: - More memory out of the box (2/4MB) - Blitter installed by default (= faster TOS, desktop publishing?) - A non-standard expansion bus of some kind but I'm curious what was actually released for it? - Detached keyboard (= ergonomics improvements) - Battery backed clock - Somewhat reduced desk space usage (monitor stacks on case) - An opportunity for a noisy fan (hello Noctua from the future!) Anything else? The lack of real bus slots feels a bit like a miss here? Thanks..

Hey Atarians, Did BBS Express for the ST ever eventually support ZModem, or any other 'faster' protocols than Ymodem-1K? (even FModem which was basically 4K blocks YModem)? And did they ever add support 'lazy support' for storing files on multiple hard disk partitions? Background: I ran 3 different Atari BBSes over time back in the day.. BBS Express (Pro?) on the 8bit, BBS Express on the ST, and FoReM the ST, before switching to PCBoard.. While I loved BBS Express for the ST, and even co-wrote a trivial pursuit game with my Dad (that Keith Ledbetter eventually asked and then took over development of - Keith is awesome), the kid in me just wanted more games.. so after my father kinda got out of the BBS and Atari scene (but left me with a nice 65MB harddisk on the ST) I switched to FoReM for it's improvements in file transfer protocols, and also because I remember you could just feed it drive letters and it would store files "warez" across all of them with no fuss. Given my machine was probably TOS 1.02 (520STm) - I had 4 x 16MB partitions. I also remember Fidonet being interesting but I never quite got that running (or at least not for a long period of time). Thanks! John

It would be nice to have a version of this with higher clock speeds / cache or similar ideally too.. I think even a clock doubled 6502 without cache would help for a good number of instructions that aren't waiting on the bus..

Just want to echo this. I also sent a donation recently as Jon provides us with wonderful toys

Hey I resemble that remark!

Today I screwed up, but was able to fix it... I just wanted to document in case anyone else makes the same mistake. Mistake: You have a machine with an Ultimate 1MB installed, and a SIDE 2 cartridge, but flash the U1MB ROM to Incognito ROM accidentally. Symptoms: The system sits at a black screen when powered on (you might see a very fast bios screen/logo appear then disappear), unless you have the SIDE2 cartridge installed. When you power on with a SIDE2 cart installed, you see "Incognito" instead of Ultimate 1MB. The challenges: When the SIDE2 cartridge is installed, you can't mount .ATR files - regardless of settings in the BIOS in this configuration. With an older firmware SIDE2, the loader mounting will just fail. With a newer firmware SIDE2, the .ATR files won't even show in the Loader. In this config without the loader, the SIDE2 boots to SpartaDOS X regardless of whether it's disabled in the BIOS or not. The system also refuses to boot off D1: from an external device (i.e. SDRIVE-Max). If you run UFLASH.XEX from the SIDE 2 Loader, UFLASH will not see the hardware or give other errors on the opening screen. What I tried/didn't work: Updated SIDE2 to latest (v3.1 w/SDX as of today) firmware via a fully stock 800XL, various SIO, PBI, HardDisk, SpartaDOS X on/off, etc. What worked for me (system is 800XL + U1MB + UAV): - (Probably Optional) - Update the SIDE2 to the latest firmware in another system (See Flashjazzcat's excellent video for this) - Download the proper firmware zip for Ultimate 1MB - Boot into SpartaDOS X - Attach FIRMWARE.ATR to D2: via an external device -- SDRIVE, SIO2PC, etc. - Run UFLASH.XEX from D2: - Run the standard 'flash full ROM' procedure - Power OFF - and you're good!

Thanks - That's actually what I was looking at -- just humor me for a double check -- to connect from the inside of the Atari, I'm soldering to the 4th pin from left / 2nd pin from right?

Hi! Another Idiot here -- for Step 5 -- "The empty pin on the video DIN connector" - I can't tell which are empty and which are full?? .. I *think* Chroma is the end pin from the right? (the one on the right sticking out the most, or just right of the center pin)

Any recommendations for how to best avoid the noise of wiring up chroma/luma from the monitor socket to the retrotink? If I do this project I'll be want the 800 to still work with Chroma/Luma CRTs ..

Where would I get the 30W 9V A/C unit?