atarifanboi

Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for them :-)

I will most likely be up for two of these. I can appreciate you are filling exisitng orders, and I've waited since the 80's for decent video on the 8Bits, so I can wait a bit longer :-). Do you have any eta for these landing in the AtariAge store?

I tested the drives in another ST, an STFM, and they all work, including the 1.44Mb drive as a 720Kb drive. As of last night, none of the drives (2x720Kb and 1x1.44Mb) worked at all in the modded STE :-( despite the original drive working the previous night. I'll have to revisit all the solder joints that are visible in case there is a dry joint somewhere, I'd be grateful of any troubleshooting advice from anyone with experience of this mod please.

Moonsweeper, I'd appreciate your sagely advice please. I plugged in to do some testing today, as for me, it's a fairly big mod, and I want to know I haven't just screwed up a perfectly good STE! When connedting the original ST 720Kb FDD, everything works fine, and I can format disks, and move files around, delete them etc, which seems to suggest that the Ajax FDC is working as expected in the mod board. I swapped out for a 1.44Mb FDD, which I'd tested pre mod, and it worked fine as a 720Kb unit. I connected it up both with and without the HD select wire connected, and I'm not getting any head seek activity at all (it does twitch on power on, but after that nothing). The drive motor rotates, and the disk spins, but the heads sit static. The drive is D0 select modified, and I have rotated the cable 180 degrees, and the busy light illuminates exactly as per the working 720KB drive during boot, just no head activity. I have another STFM that I will try the 1.44Mb drive in to test if it works as a 720Kb drive in a stock machine, but if you have any thoughts in the meantime, I'd be very grateful.

So, soldering iron has been out again, and I'm close to finishing, just got to finish modding the floppy drive now. Here it is overall, you can also see Alan H's dual IDE interface: Here's the board installed: The 16Mhz connection: And it all fits nicely under the FDD: As soon as I get the FDD modded (Just needs the HD sel wire, DF0 is already done), and testing done, I'll report back on functionality.

Ok, so stepped a little further forward tonight and got the Ajax FDC desoldered from the mainboard as below: I took my time, using a mixture of desolder pump and desolder wick, and got a good result with no pad damage Ajax is now fitted to the board: and I'll hopefuly get a chance to fully fit it soon. Note, even though it's not visible here, the MCF pad is now soldered!

Yeah, I have a solder sucker and have encountered pad damage on other projects, so I will probably run down to the Maplin near work tomorrow to get some de-solder braid, thanks. As for the MCF pad, I was going by the image online, and it's not 100% clear, so thanks for the spot, I will do that before I install the board

I have a 65XE with possibly the most awful video I ever saw on an 8 Bit Atari, so I'd be interested in 1, possibly 2 of these for PAL. Do you have any idea of cost as yet?

Took an hour out this morning to get the board assembled : Next stage is to desolder the Ajax controller from the STE, VERY CAREFULLY . As I have no experience of desoldering from STE's, does anybody have any advice on this to avoid PCB damage? Once I've done that, I'll get some pics of the install uploaded. As I have Alan H's dual IDE adapter installed, I have a clip on wire on pin 10 of the ASCI socket which might get in the way, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, it might be a non issue.

Board has arrived, but I'm too tired to be getting out the soldering iron tonight, so it's going to have to wait for the weekend, so long as I'm not too busy!

Order is now in for the board :-)

Having set that jumper, I can see the option in GEM as you say, but no 1.44Mb compatibility, even with a replacement modified drive, so looks like the kit is what i need. However my only concern is that I already have the Ajax controller, and the article seems to mention the WD1772 exclusively. I guess I will have to reach out to see what difference this can make. Thanks :-)

Hi Everybody :-) I've been wanting to upgrade my Atari STE to 1.44Mb fdd for a while now, and was mostly thinking it not possible without using aftermarket add ons. Having done some reading about the Ajax floppy disk controller on the Best electronics web site, I decided to pull the machine apart, and to my surprise discovered not a WDC controller, but an Ajax. This to me begs the question, of is it possible to make my STE run with a 1.44Mb fdd, since the board has the E6 jumper and also TOS2.06. If anybody is able to comment, I'd be grateful.

That wouldn't surprise me at all Moonsweeper. I know from looking the the copy of the 1010 service manual I have, there is a bridge rectifier on board, and as far as I can see, I think you're right, it all gets dropped to DC on board. My 1050 came with a supply from an Atari printer, possibly 1020, and runs fine and dandy on that.

Just in case anybody in the UK is looking to replace their 1010 power supply, or like me bought a 1010 from eBay without a power supply, I have found a suitable replacement from Farnell/element 14 (Yep same element 14 Ben Heck is associated with), and the best thing is it came in a day or so and didn't break the bank at just £6.52! It's possible that there us a US or Euro version out there too, on one of the localised element14 sites. The UK item is here: http://uk.farnell.com/ideal-power/77db-10-09/power-supply-ac-ac-15w-9v-1-1a/dp/2368019 And meets the requirements set out in here http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-are-the-power-requirements-for-my-atari-components_44.html The key thing to remember is that these devices run off AC power, not DC. In fact, once this arrived, I'd swear it looked identical to the PSU I had with my original 1010 all those years ago