TheNightOwl

I'd lean towards the 65XE because I prefer the form factor for regular use but would miss the top mounted cartridge slot. +1 for the 800XL too. 🙂👍

I suppose the Power Pack might have prevented many users from buying new games immediately with their ST but after that you'd think the interest for newer games would come. From a consumer perspective it's hard not to be happy with the games bundled in though and I played many of them constantly over the years when the ST was my main computer. 🙂

What a great list! The applications that immediately came to mind for me were: Print Shop - that got so much use in our family for making things. An incredible piece of software to encourage people to use a computer. I remember making a lot of images and borders using the PS Companion (?) too. Micro Illustrator / Atari Artist - really got into graphic art thanks to these and both the Koala Pad and Atari Touch Tablet. I may not have been a terribly good artist but I enjoyed the process! Typesetter - a number of high school assignments were made with this and when I found I could combine it with pages that had Print Shop borders (yes, double printed) I was able to leverage both with great results.

I have one of these too in my collection and I look at it as being an obscure item that might be worth a talking point or two when I show things off to anyone curious. 🙂

Hi Pete - nice seeing you here! 😀

I liked the original one the most but thought 6 was pretty good too with that metallic like sound at the end. Will add I'm not making comparisons to how the other platforms handled it as I never played the game before so going into this with fresh eyes and ears. 🙂

Wow... This is looking amazing! Incredible work! 😁

Best of luck with the repairs - it looks like a cool project! 😀

I have many great memories of drawing in Atari Artist (?) when I was young so appreciate seeing this.

I think I used FDT for a couple of years during my University studies when I was dialling in to work on projects. I remember it being incredibly slick which made my terminal sessions seem a whole lot more interesting.

This might be wrong but I thought that there used to be demos that would flash the disc access light in time to music? Would not surprise me to think you'd see something like this in Llamatron considering it's from Jeff Minter. 😀

While not a detailed tear down, this is a great video that does let you see inside and how Commodore made everything fit into the case:

A guy I used to know had one of these when they were first released - even now I still think it was an incredible piece of work. Has anyone ever done a tear down of one? Curious how the internals are compared to a C64.

I had no idea there were any other good paint programs beyond Atari Artist / Microillustrator but then I was a kid and just happy to be drawing pictures on a computer. I was lucky though to try both a Koala Pad and Atari Touch Tablet and both are amazing but I'd prefer the Touch Tablet if I still had one. Its size and dimensions were much closer to 1:1 with your screen and for me that helped a lot.

Interesting hearing the stories of new C64 users as I'm one too! I got my first C64 more than a year ago to go with my A8 and first thing after plugging it in, the "black box of death" PSU fried the computer! At the time I didn't know about just how unreliable and dangerous they were. Thankfully there was someone in my area who could fix the C64 and I imported a modern PSU from a seller in Europe. Now both my 8bit machines share a place of honour in my games room. 😀

This was the coolest news I had read all week - kudos for doing something like this that must have taken ages to complete.

Uniterm also helped get me to finish my degree and kept my ST useful far longer than it might have. Nice seeing I wasn't the only one it helped. On topic: My time as a dedicated Atari user came to an end the moment I saw PCs with VGA adapters and sound cards... If you wanted to play the latest computer games at their best the PC was the place to be. TTs and Falcons barely made an appearance here in Australia from what I could remember so there was little incentive to upgrade which was sad.

I really enjoyed IMII on the ST - a great version of the game that looks fantastic! Completed it a couple of times too. It's not as hard as the original game in the C64 though IMHO (which I also never completed) - I think it is much less random as each themed tower has a limited set of rooms to choose from and one of them always has to be the one with the safe (containing the music tape) so it's easier to plan out your approach. It's been years since I last played it so my memories might not be 100% but I do remember a gaming mag of the day (Zzap64 or C&VG) mapping the game out and showing all the possible rooms in each tower... perhaps even showing how to traverse them too (?).

Thanks for putting all this together - I think I've barely scratched the surface of what my SIO2SD can do (I don't even use the multiple drives) so seeing all this now makes me want to experiment a little more.

Nice work! Just taking the connectors and chips as a guide to the size it already looks like you've shrunk it by a huge amount. With the RF Modulator gone you'd now have a neat little hole at the back of the STFM case too. Would that be big enough to fit a connector or wiring for external devices (say a cased HxC)? Guessing though people would use it to mount a toggle switch (ROMs, Drives, etc) which is a nice neat solution. Apologies in advance if anything said is wrong - I'm learning as I go.

Please keep up with the updates - it's great to read how you're figuring it all out. As someone who is terrified of upgrading their stock STFM due to the prospect of having to cut up parts of the case or shielding to fit things in (but knows it'll need to happen eventually to keep it running), the possibility of getting a compact motherboard that works just like my old machine but allows the room to hide upgrades internally has a lot of appeal. If it means I don't need a crash course in soldering all the better.

Thanks for the extra info, much appreciated! I had heard of Best Elec. but not B&C so that's another useful resource! Have been unsure in the past of trying to order because the postage costs (to .au) might be excessive. Definitely gives me something to think about though. Will also run a few more tests with different AHDI disks and a spare 520 just in case it's the ST that's the problem.

I just got my hands on my old SH205 from when I was in high school, hoping to get it up and running again with my 1040STFM. The issues I'm facing sound almost exactly the same as what's described here. It had been safely stored away so was hoping it'd be good to go but the software is having trouble identifying it and keeps asking if the cables are connected properly. The thing is definitely well past its lifespan but it'd be fun seeing the old beast and its massive 20Mb storage working again if it were possible but I wonder if I might have run into the same issue as you did. How did you diagnose it?