Megamania

Is it a problem if it is soldered? Can I just desolder it, or is it going to be a problem (i.e. it won't fit unless it's perfectly clean)? I'm asking because I was going to buy one of those pokey chips soldered on a game cartridge that are being sold here on the forums...

I swapped the Pokey chip from a working Atari 800, and I got sound again! I'll just need to put my hands on a Pokey now. Thanks guys!

Thanks everybody for all the inputs. I will try exchanging the chips from one Atari 800 to the other, hoping they're not soldered. Can you give me an idea of where Pokey is located? I searched google but I want to be sure I make no mistakes.

When I was very close to finish restoring an old, bad condition Atari 800, I realized it has a weird problem: I get no sound, except for (apparently) the noise generator. For example, when I turn it on I get the familiar noise of the computer looking for devices. When disks are loading, I can hear the "bleeps". When I try a game, I only get *some* noises and no music. In Berzerk, for example, I can hear the synthesized voice and very few other noises; River Raid is completely silent except for a low-volume "mmmp" when I shoot a missle. Megamania is completely silent. I know it's not the video cable or the TV because both are working fine with another Atari 800. Any ideas about what I can do? I know I can break it if I just start try to fix it on my own, so please help me!

thanks, drive formatted and up and running!

You don't know how many google searches I had done before your post, but... you were right! First of all I looked for pictures of scsi hard disks, and found that there often are switches on the bottom of the disk. I checked mine, and found two switches. Yeah! I then looked and searched and tried. Conclusion: THE DISK IS BEING FORMATTED NOW! I had to set both switches (I confess I tried all combinations) for the hard disk to be recognized. THANKS again for your precious advice so far, Gunstar, jflemaire and ppera. I'd have given up without the help from this forum. One last thing: is it ok to create a set of 512MB partitions, or should the boot partition be smaller (16/32MB)? This is on a TT and I'm using ICD PRO 6.5.5. I'm asking because every time I partition the disk it takes hours to test it for bad sectors...

Ok, some progress... If the original internal drive is connected and I connect the new one to the external unit, the external disk is recognized! (some proper ID setting was required, because the settings that worked for the Falcon didn't work with the TT). However, when the external disk is recognized, the internal drive spins but is not seen anymore. Mutually exclusive! This is some progress because it proves that the drive is ok and could work on the TT... I think. However, I can't get the drive to be recognized if I install it internally... It definitely has to do with SCSI termination, in my opinion. I don't see a SCSI termination jumper on the drive though. I feel I may be close to solve this problem, but still need some expert's help...

Thanks for your suggestions. I had searched before and have just searched again, but found no solution. I installed a program called atari-fdisk-cross (for linux) and ran a test of the scsi disk on my pc. Here is an excerpt: Can the "at least unusual" note be the cause of my problems? And how can I fix it? I'm not even understanding what the problem is... You know, I would give up if the hard disks had never been recognized, but since they were recognized the first time I formatted them...

http://little-nz.com/public/halflife/valve/sound/pacmanhl/

Anybody? I'd really appreciate some suggestions. EDIT: Ok, I realized that for some reason the TT doesn't like the external unit, or even a simple SCSI cable! The computer will freeze at boot if I connect the unit internally AND there's the external unit connected (even if it's switched off, or if only the SCSI cable is connected - can it be a SCSI "termination" problem?). If I connect the new hard disk internally and leave the external SCSI interface unused, I get an "unrecognized unit" message. The strange thing is that at my first attempt (before re-formatting it), the hard disk WAS recognized.

I re-formatted/partitioned the hard disk(s) with ICD 6.5.5-PRO with my FALCON. Everything went fine, and all the partitions are accessible (these utilities have a "enable partition" feature, and the two partitions which weren't shown were not enabled by the Atari HD utilities...). Both disks work fine when connected to the Falcon through a SCSI box. However, they are not even recognized by my TT030! The partitions are all smaller than 512MB, but that's not the point - the drive is completely ignored by the TT (although the hard disk's led blinks when the TT is booting). I tried attaching them externally and internally - AHDI says "no unit", ICD either hangs or says "unrecognized unit". Strange, because the same drivers detect the hd on the Falcon! Needless to say, the old TT hd still works perfectly, so it's not a matter of wires, broken connections, etc. I'm wondering if there are any dip-switches to set on the TT... Or any special settings on the hard disk? it has a 20-Pin J3 connector: -the first 3 positions select the disk ID, -4th: FLT LED/Blank -5th: BSY LED/Spn Sync -6th: 5V / unused -7th: Delay Spin/GND -8th: Stagger Spin /GND -9th: Write Prot / GND -10th:Spin Sync /GND The only position i'm setting is the 8th, otherwise the hd doesn't spin, and the 1st one to select the hd ID. So, thanks to your suggestions I've solved all the hard-disk related problems with my Falcon, but I'm lost with my TT. Any ideas?

You're right! But I finished formatting/partitioning at 1a.m. (see my previous msg) after a day at wrok and I was dead tired... sorry about that. I used the Atari hard disk utilities (last version, I believe). When I run them, the disk is seen as partitioned in 4 partitions plus some unused space.... In addition, another strange thing is that the same SCSI disk when attached externally to the TT is recognized at boot (or when running ahdi.prg) but not accessible. Please bear with me guys, I really want to sort things out... EDIT: ok, I know, I should stop working on the ataris late at night. The hard disk is not accessible on the TT because the partitions are around 1GB each, while TOS 2.x/3.x limits partition sizes to 512MB, right? If that's correct, I still have to find out why I'm only shown 2 out of the 4 existing partitions...

So, today I received two quantum 4,2 GB scsi hard disks. I connected one of them to an external scsi box which is attached to my Falcon. The hard disk was correctly recognized at boot, so I formatted and partitioned it to one big partition. I used the Atari Hard Disk Utilities because they are the ones I'm more comfortable with, and (more importantly) I have a problem with my floppy driver on the PC. The drive was partitioned, but not accessible. I tried to reduce the partition sizes to around 1GB (999MB to be on the safe side), so I ended up with 4 partitions of 999MB each, and left the remaining space as unused. Things got better: I can now access 2 of the four partitions. That can be ok, but I'm wondering why? Is there any way I can access all 4 partitions?

Ok, I'll go with ICD then. I also realized I have a SCSI CD Rom and an Optical 44Mb removable drive (not an Atari Megafile, it's scsi if I remember correctly) in my cellar. I don't even remember if it came with the MSTE, the TT or the Falcon. I'll try to get them back up and running today... and I'll let you know. Thanks!

Thanks guys. I bought the hard disk (3 euros) but I don't have it yet. I'll try to install it in my TT030 first. I have the ICD Pro V 6.5.5 utilities and the Atari HDI 6.0.6.1 (a "repackaging" of the original disks). Which one would you suggest to use? Any significant differences?

I have found this SCSI hard disk and I thought I'd take it for my TT or Mega Ste: Quantum Atlas II 3.5 series 4550S HN45S011 REV 01-C XLXY1 It's a 50-pin, SCSI 1, 4,5 GB hard disk. It's very very cheap, so I might give it a try anyway, but what are the chances for it to work on my TT030 or Mega STE? What's the maximum capacity they can handle? I wouldn't mind using just a small partition of the hard disk, if that's necessary/possible. At the moment I just have a 100MB disk on both systems, so even being able to use 1GB out of a 4GB disk would be a great improvement.

I opened my MegaSte and found a maxtor 7120SR, 120MB 50pin SCSI Hard Drive. Now I guess I have to find a way to connect it to my SCSI Adaptec Card. I guess the best solution would be an external box, but I was also thinking I could draw the power from the Atari, so that I'd just need a proper scsi cable to connect it to my PC. Is that too risky/silly? When I figure this out, next step will be opening the TT and the Falcon (which is in a weird box, by the way). Thanks for your help so far, guys! EDIT: I've been searching for a while, but haven't found a definitive answer: what are the physical sizes for hard disks supported by the MegaSte, TT and Falcon? I know there are size limits for partitions, but when looking for a hard disk, beyond what size should I avoid going?

I understand that the Falcon has an IDE hard disk, so I just have to grab the hd and connect it to my PC. But even if I have a SCSI card on my computer (which I do), aren't the Mega ST and TT030 hard disks ACSI? Don't I need some adapter to connect them to the SCSI card?

Wow. Thanks for all the info. But are the MegaST, TT and Falcon hard disks IDE? I thought they were all ACSI/SCSI. Does writing to floppy with these utilities work with USB floppy drives as well? Otherwise I'll have to look for a standard floppy driver... EDIT: just found this regarding FDutils: So, if this is confirmed I really have to grab an old-style floppy disk driver...

My doubt came by seeing that it's an Atari program. So am I supposed to copy disk images to the Atari hard disk and then use them from there? And thanks for your patience... I've been out of this world for too long.

If I understand correctly, the .img files are not floppy images, but ROM dupms. Thinking about it, it does make sense... So it looks like there's no way to override the rom tos by loading a tos image, right? And now that you mentioned the Falcon NVRAM settings, I remember messing up the computer by touching them a few years ago. The computer would boot up, but no screen. If I remember correctly, I had to create a recovery disk to blindly reset the NVRAM settings to default. So I'll touch it with care. :-) I downloaded Teradesk and it's running on the mega ste now! english is much easier to me! On the other hand, what do you suggest using JayMSA for, in my case? Thanks a lot, gianfranco

Hi everybody, I have a Mega STE, a TT and a Falcon 030 which haven't been used for ages. I'd like to get them back to life again (as I did with my 8-bit a few weeks ago), but I need your help. All the machines have a german tos. I understand german, but I'd very much prefer to have an english (or italian) version. I have TOS images (.img files) on my computer, but I have no idea (1) how to write them to working floppy disks and (2) if it possible at all (and how) to bypass the original rom tos at boot (did I have to insert the floppy and press "ALT" at boot? hmmm... memories). I switched to linux a few years ago, so I'd prefer a solution which doesn't involve using windows (but I can use it if needed). Also, my floppy disk drive is USB. I've read that a "regular" floppy driver may be needed. Is that true? I tried a simple "dd if=[tosfilename.img] of=/dev/sdb", but the floppy I got is unreadable both on linux and on the Atari. As I said, a good start would be to be able to have an english-language TOS. After that, I'll try to convert games/applications from my collection to floppies. Any help on this will be much appreciated!

So... after a bit of thinking I decided to order a SIO2SD interface from Pigula. The package arrived today (it took a while because I placed my order in the worst moment of the year for the post) and I'm very satisfied with it. I configured it to load the on-screen configuration when shift is pressed on powerup (like Hias suggested), and I must say I don't think I'll regret my purchase. I'll just need some time to sort all my favourite programs out. And I also installed AtariSio (which incidentally was my first experience at compiling in Linux), so my Atari collection is definitely back to life! Thanks again you all! p.s. Hias, if you're reading this - if you need any help with AtariSio, I'd be happy to give you all my assistance. I can't help you with programming (my last experiences were with C, 6502 machine language, and then Visual Basic...), but I'd like to support the good cause (i.e. linux+atari). :-)

You know, except all the interviews where he said that it was an intentional and conscious business decision on the part of Nintendo not to increase production. Basically, he snapped his fingers and produced a chronic shortage. I haven't read the interviews, but while it's no doubt "intentional and conscious", I don't think it means "we like to sell less to keep the attention high". That would make no financial sense, and Nintendo is a for-profit company. What they said usually means "we made a few business plans, and the best financial and most profitable solution is *not to invest* to produce more". In other words, they probably realized that setting up the production of more consoles (in-house or outsourced) would decrease profitability.

Thanks a lot for all the information. I installed AtariSio only very recently, so there's still a lot for me to try out (I switched to linux in 2005, and since then had not used my sio2pc cable anymore). And I'm going to download your duplicates script and check it out. :-) I'll try to contact him (or maybe he is reading this already...). I just hope I can be of any help. I know my way around in Linux by now, but it depends on what level of help he may be looking for. Thanks again! gianfranco