DarkLord

Funny.

Why not just use one of Lotharek's internal Ultrasatans and adapter boards instead of the "gutting" and "hotwire" options?

Thanks, appreciate those...

And...that one worked fine - thanks!

I would certainly open it up and check all visible connections as well as re-seating any socketed chips. Inspect the power supply and see if anything obvious sticks out (blown caps, etc). Examine the battery bay - clean it and make sure there's not battery acid leakage or damage over the years. And congratulations on getting a Mega ST! I love mine, it's a veritable tank and a real workhorse for me.

Okay, some great pictures there! Loved the acoustic modem. I'm also a big fan of those old style IBM keyboards that weigh about 10-15 pounds and are near indestructible. I love that responsive feel and aggressive click. Unfortunately, I could not get HNF.ZIP to uncompress. Windows 10 here kept saying it was an invalid file...

Yep, the original was pretty limited. P.Pera at one time had a mod to the original controller board that allowed drives larger than 1 gig to be used. I've got Ultrasatan's in both my Mega STe and STacy. Both work fine with multi-gig SD-cards. I replaced the original controller with Alan H.'s card in the STacy and the one from Lotharek in my Mega STe. You can see the one from Lotharek here: https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=49

Okay, just finished reading it - good stuff. I have only -1- complaint. For some reason, I couldn't find a listing for "The DarkForce! BBS" among the other BBS's. This is obviously an oversight...

The guy who put a Pak 68/3 accelerator board into a STacy for the very first time, dubbed it "Super STacy". I'm good with that. I'll just leave "mini STacy and "STacy mini" right where it's at. You're not wrong about pricing. Like so much retro stuff these days, the costs are amazing. I noticed at SouthernAmis that even in the 8bit world, the MIO's are going for $350-600.00 on Ebay. That's actually right - the internal ACSI port is the same on the Mega STe and STacy - they share the same controller board. Interestingly enough, some STacy's have a place on the motherboard, with an external cover, for the Mega ST port as well. My STacy has the external cover and the place on the MB for the connector but it's not actually there. It's mentioned briefly by John Jainschigg here: https://www.atarimania.com/documents/atari-stacy-Atari_Explorer_September_October_1989.pdf

Well, anything to bring in people is a good thing, IMHO.

Awesome, thanks! Looking forward to reading it.

Please...just don't call it a "mini".

Awesome, thanks for the report - looking forward to additional information.

Hahaha, no problem. I'm usually the bug. Now go, forget this stuff (only for a while) and have a great time in Germany. Don't forget - we want pictures!

I had -> 11 <- ST's at one time, but decided to clean them out. I'm pretty sure I've got enough STacy spare parts to build another 1 or 2. I know I've got something like 3 or 4 spare STacy motherboards.

Yep, what Tillek posted - the ST Book. Smaller, lighter, and...much, much more *fragile* from what I've gathered from users experiences. Aside from a collectors point of view, I much prefer the STacy.

I got lucky here. BBS Express! ST uses a top downloads report that's available from within each File Sig. On top of that, there's Top 10 Downloads software designed just for Express. I use it with DarkForce!. I hope you can find an easier way of doing that with Michtron - that looks convoluted.

I have 3 main ST's. I use my Mega ST4 to run "The DarkForce! BBS". I use my Mega STe for generally everything. Playing games, writing code/scripts for my BBS, playing music (MIDI is great), calling other Atari BBS's, playing "euro" style computer demo's (zen out!), etc,... I use my STacy for my Atari ST "fix" on the go. Before I retired, I took it to work on slow nights and played games. Good times! Love them all, use them all on a very regular basis.

Congratulations.

I'd definitely want a mass storage device of some kind. I personally would never want to run from floppy. Hmm, in "limbo"? I'm assuming you're talking about the Top 10 Callers list? That software works on a very simple premise - call and do nothing else...lower score, call, post messages, upload files, etc...higher score. New users getting audited for their birthday is perfectly normal. Assuming the caller puts in the correct birth date, then whenever they call on their birthday they'll get a notification from the BBS, wishing them a good one, as well as being posted in Today's Events. Just another (free) service we offer at The DarkForce! BBS...

Well, I'm the wrong person to ask about emulators. I like real hardware and software. But that's just me - a lot of people go the emulation route and are perfectly happy with it. You can set up BBS's with either the 8bits or the ST line. I personally feel that the ST line has a bit of an advantage because of the stock serial port speeds being 19200 from the get go, with options/mods capable of taking it to 38400, as well as a few other things. I'm sure the 8bit crowd will tell you that the 8bit is better because it does ATASCII graphics. The point is, you can setup 1st class BBS's on either system. It comes down to personal preference, I reckon. The telnet part is dead easy these days, IMHO. Grab a WiModem232 Pro from Jim Drew and you're set. It's a wonderful piece of hardware. You'll have to set a few parameters with your router but that's not too hard either. HTH's.

Hehehe, I can remember a couple of hard drives that I've owned (way back when) that sounded like jet aircraft warming up whenever they were turned on. I logged in with SyncTerm. I actually called twice. I ended the first call a little prematurely because I went back and double-checked on SyncTerm being set to 19200. I downloaded 2 files, one with Xmodem and one with Ymodem. Both topped out around 512cps or so. I need to do some lower speed downloads with SyncTerm here, with Xmodem and Ymodem and see what download speeds I get at 19200. I'll get that info back here soon.

Hmm, I did finally get around to trying this out and I had the same result on my Mega STe as well. Even booting up totally "clean". I also tried running it from the AUTO folder and a copy moved out of the AUTO folder and into the main archive folder. No difference. I already had P.Pera's Image runner software installed - I'll try that next. Thanks for the heads up.

Looks good!

Good man!