Xebec

Dear Atarians, I have a Mega STE and am currently using an Ultrasatan externally via the ACSI port. If I bought an internal adapter for this (i.e. http://www.lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=92)- are the SD cards accessible if you remove the top cover (HDD side) of the Mega STE? Do you need to have a HDD kit originally with the Mega STE of some kind? I bought this Mega STE a while back but saved some $$ by foregoing the HDD option.. Thanks! John

This is exactly what I was curious about! -- The ST didn't seem to follow the Jack Tramiel path of 'make a cost reduced version to increase sales' like he did with the A8 line, (or the C64). Yes I know the ST had some price reductions over time, but given how much the Amiga came down in price (500), I'm surprised Atari Corp's eventual answer was an enhanced ST with some more features rather than a model "as-is" with significantly reduced price.. The R&D quotes from the early 1990s were for all of Atari Corp -- not just the ST line; but definitely agree by ending the ST line would have a natural effect on reducing R&D at least somewhat. Interesting that Atari had more of an orderly winddown than Commodore. Thanks for the great response!

Hi All! Just curious - I see posts now and again about 'what should have been' for the STE, and AGA/AAA Amiga, etc.. From my understanding, Commodore starved and strained it's engineering department and that's what essentially sent the Amiga to the grave. In the case of Jack Tramiel's Atari, it seems that Jack's (reasonable) desire for retirement and handing the business over to his sons had the same effect. I have never really heard much about how Atari came to decide to what computers to build after the 520/1040ST. The 520/1040 were very clear in purpose as Jack wanted something to take the 16-bit market with. After that, was Jack making the decisions on what to do with their engineering talent or was someone else? (Side note -- I do have an Atari stock report from 1992 where the forward talks about 1992 having been a difficult year, Atari's desire to carefully grow the Falcon030 computer and introduce the Atari Jaguar console in the near future. The report says that in 1991 R&D efforts were refocused because "the company realized it's ST, Mega, and TT computers would not be competitive". Of note, Sam Tramiel's name is on these documents. Finally they note R&D as $22.9M in 1990, $15.3M in 1991, and $9.2M in 1992. Atari only had 270 employees as of March 1993)

I wonder if the 68030 with it's additional data cache (256 byte) would make a big difference out of the box?

Thanks so much for doing this! Definitely better than stock -- off the cuff I'd say around 50% faster, but i'd agree to unlock the performance the ST ram is really holding this back.. --

- It's a bit complex, but the intro scene with the various 3D parts would be a great way to see how much the 32 mhz makes a difference!. The game does fit on a single 720kb floppy -- I don't know why some of the versions out there are multiple or larger floppy sizes.. Here is the version on 2 x 360KB floppies you can probably just merge.. http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Files/files.html

Thanks! Let me know how your Gotek reprogramming goes. I tried to reprogram one a while back and had no luck getting the software to talk to it..

This is awesome! I'd love to see if this boosts the speed of games like Frontier Elite II...

Got it - I was trying a few that were listed on here and other sites as having MIDI output but no luck.. I'll try a few more and see what's going on. In any case, pretty exciting to have this for the Mega STE.. YM output.. PCM output.. and now MIDI

That would be truly excellent and appreciated! Thank you!

Hi Atarians! I have a Mega STE, and I was curious if there is a recommended 'quieter fan' (model) that someone could point me towards for quieting it down? .. and is the fan mainly for the power supply or is it needed for other components? (could I replace with a fanless PicoPSU?) Also, Ultra Satan and HxC Floppy emulator.. I assume the best thing for these is just to box them up and run them externally? there's no real way to attach a HxC internally without hacking the case for the LCD and buttons? (or has anyone done a cool mod keeping these internal?). Thanks all! John H (Former BBS Express! Pro 8bit and ST SysOp)

Hello fellow Atarians! I have a Mega STE and a Roland MT-100 (basically the MT-32 board with additional 'stuff'). My question is - how do I get 'certain' games to output MIDI that don't seem to have an option? For example, Kings Quest IV, Heros Quest I output MIDI correctly (And sound good!), but they had a MUSIC.PRG that let me set the output. Then I tried booting other games like Bomb Jack, Chopper X, and Karate Kid II, and I only get the YM sound output. They don't appear to have any music options (Bomb Jack has on/off as an option..). Is there any trick? Perhaps an accessory I need running? Thanks

Just wanted to cheer you on for this upgrade

Not my video - but this appears to be a reasonably priced solution for outputting color to VGA monitors: The board (GBS8200) appears to cost around $25 USD from various sources. If you're willing to do some cable hacks, and can get packages shipped to the middle of nowheres, maybe this will help Good luck! P.S. Does the SC 1224 not work?

When I find someone to fix my Atari i'll send you as many details as you can use .. (In my case i tried two different CF cards.. prepared a few different ways - via windows, via linux, ensuring the right partition types, etc..)

This is a great idea - I like buying these upgrades as it helps support the community at least.. (on top of being fun to mess with), but for a 30+ year old computer, I'd prefer not to use my extreme novice skills on the board..

Hi there - I don't know if this is widespread or not -- My experiences were: 800XL - NTSC U1MB ROM 1+ Stereo Pokey professionally installed by Lotharek System worked fine for everything for a month or two Tried all kinds of tricks - could not get it to load ATRs later I flashed to "v3 beta" (which is really v2) and same deal. An email I have from another atariager who flashed the chip for me said (in response to 'can you send me an ATR that works for you via SIDE2 / .ATR loading): After pressing spacebar and getting the D1: then Press the ENTER key the screen will go dark......... some people have had success by pressing the shift key+reset key to get the atr to boot,..........but I have had better success by pressing help+reset to get back into the BIOS screen and then pressing the ‘Q’ quit button and when back into SDX then type COLD /N and the atr should boot..... IF it has a DOS file on it some game atr’s are difficult to boot.. I usually just boot those with SIO2PC either APE or ASPEQT 8.8 .... This has been difficult for me also ... try J. Holliday’s MATR.EXE version beta 8 from Atari Age.com .... You would have to see me do the BIOS ‘L’ attaching to really understand it but I have been doing this on several upgraded Atari computers since the beginning of the upgrade availability (Ultimate1Mb)... (Thanks)

Hi folks! I was curious if there is anyone out there that does repair on Atari 8bits these days? I have an 800XL that had the U1MB and Stereo Pokey installed by Lotharek.. However, after some use, the system now just displays an orange or yellow color screen and does nothing more than that after power on. If it matters, I never could get the U1MB+SIDE2 to load an .ATR -- from the private emails i've received from folks, this looks like something that only happens occasionally anyway I know these are old computers, but this is one of my original 800XLs (NTSC) and I'd like to see if someone good with electronics is willing to try to fix this. Obviously I would pay for time. Alternatively, if someone has a working 800XL with U1MB they want to sell, if it's actually managed to load .ATRs via SIDE2, I'm interested.. Thanks all, John H

As stated - I would like to buy an Atari 800XL with U1MB. I have replacement keyboards and cases if that is a problem. Power supply optional. I would prefer one with other upgrades such as Stereo Pokey, but the U1MB pre-installed and verified working is what I care about Thanks much, John H near Philadelphia, PA

Hi Folks, I attempted the .ATR upgrade of U1MB to version 2, and it failed on the first bank. When it asked me if I wanted to restart, I hit 'n' assuming that would take me back to SpartaDOSX to re-load the program. Of course not Is there someone here who would (for a fee) flash my U1MB for me? Thanks much, John H near Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA

Well seeing that my Ultimate 1MB was purchased a while ago and only recently installed, I decided to Flash with ultimate2.atr from Lotharek's website to try to fix my .ATR loading problem. Guess what? The ROM successfully erased, and when getting ready to flash Bank 0 it just exited the program, and I have a dead Atari. Awesome. Does anyone have an actually working Atari 800XL with the capability to load .ATR files that I can just buy? or someone who knows what they're doing and can fix this for a fee? I guess it really is just time to give into emulators only as a way of remembering the Atari

I paid Lotharek himself to install the device, so hopefully he can (Yes you can laugh at my weak soldering skills )

Thanks -is there any easy way to identify whether my U1MB is v1 or v2? I saw another thread where 'candle' indicated that you'll see options for PBI if it's version 2. I do see the option to select what ID it is, not sure if there are other options implied?

Thanks Lotharek - unfortunately that's not what happens for me. After fixing the partition table problem above (I didn't realize windows would even read FAT32 partitions without a proper table), I can now mark files as shown in the video.. but when I hit enter to load, it sits there for a few seconds, and then resets and goes back to the BASIC "READY" prompt. (Even if basic is OFF from the SIDE loader) I have tried two different CF cards -- one sandisk and another more generic brand. I've also tried 'smaller' partition sizes of 480MB incase that makes a difference. If someone has the time and is willing to help, I can compress up an image of the CF card to see if it's something with my card configuration or files.. I've tried a lot of different .ATR files. Also if it matters, I have nothing connected to the SIO bus to avoid conflicts with drives.

Hello! so after a crazy week of work. I did finally use Gparted to delete and create 2 partitions.. it did prompt me along the way to create a new partition table. The good news now is, with PBI on, if I go into the bios and hit 'L', it will see the FAT32.. and .xex's work.. I can also mark files as D1/D2 now which I could never do before.. but when i hit enter to load/reboot, it just goes to basic or the 'missle command' in the U1MB. This seems to be regardless of what i actually set 'basic' and 'xegs' cart slots to.. any further suggestions? thanks for this one..