Yrouel

If your machine has an unpopulated space for a Blitter you can add it. I didn't have to do anything else beside soldering the socket (after emptying the vias) and installing the chip, but some board revisions require 2 solder jumpers (W3 and W4 next to where the Blitter is meant to be) to be opened (unsoldered) in order to enable the chip. I spent 20£ shipping included, GadgetUK had ordered 2 spares for himself and offered me one after I wrote in another post I was looking for one (I couldn't find the proper kind of socket which is PLCC 68 2.54mm pitch with STAGGERED pins while nowadays the common ones are non staggered)

Thanks to GadgetUK I now have upgraded my 520STfm with a Blitter My board and specific revision (C070789-001 Rev. B) doesn't have any jumper to alter in order to enable the Blitter, I just had to solder the socket and install it.

Hello I'd like to add a CF card to my 520STfm but so far I found only a solution that's meant to plug above the cpu after soldering female headers on its pins. That to me seems a rather nasty bodge that I'd like to avoid. All the signals are also available where the Blitter would be and male PLCC plugs do exist so my idea would be to have a small board with the male plug and components on the bottom plus a CF card connector on the top. Anyone knows if something like that has already been made? Otherwise would someone more capable then me adapt ppera and popsel ST IDE to be a compact CF card to blitter socket adapter? This would require a single wire bridge to a pin of the ACSI port (should be possible to draw power for the CF card directly from the blitter slot). Maybe it would be possible to also have a blitter socket in this board to retain that feature.

Yeah I imagined that it would be expensive eventually. For now I'll leave it as is (it's back toegether now), I just tried a couple of games and it works really nice I ordered one of those Gotek floppy drive emulators so when it'll arrive I'll consider to make the modifications to install it. P.S.: the pitch for the socket is 2.54mm I realized now the error in my previous post.

Thanks I wanted to add a blitter but I couldn't find the right socket for it. It's a PLCC 68 with 1.54mm pitch and staggered pins while nowadays the non staggered kind are more common. Also I didn't find a source for the blitter chip itself. However more then a blitter I was intrigued by the possibility of installing an IDE controller board in the same socket (instead of soldering a mess of wires) using a male PLCC plug.

Hello, I recenty upgraded TOS and doubled the ram in my Atari 520STfm. Overall I didn't encounter particular difficulties, only some annoyiances like figuring out the order of the EPROMS and the pain of unplugging the via from solder. I luckily found axial capacitors that look factory, I'm very happy with that. Here few pictures of the finished job (actually after I took them I tidy up the floppy power cable moving to its proper position J9 on the motherboard):