techie_alison

Ijor. How are you doing? Good to see you.

Oh don't worry about it Carmel. For Christ's sake!! The ROOT admins I believe were : Brume, Silver Surfer, myself. Site Admins : Brume, Silver Surfer, Mike, myself. That password list I don't recognise anyway. We had regularly gone through the users. That's not our list. The images are still hosted.. Anyone have the alternative site? I should know it..

I don't think we need to see all of that. :-) OK. So someone has done a rm -rf . Why bother to take down Atari? Can't they go after some Net Nannies, and wind them up? :-)

OK. I've just logged in. What's happening? Mike, can you give me a ring or email? PeSTs!! Those of you who were waiting, they're ready to go. I just need your addresses. EPROMs are next on my list. Aly ps. also, can someone post the backup Atari Forum link please? I can't remember what it is. It's the one that we all end up going to when this happens.

Paint Shop Pro 4. It's so reassuringly old (and stable), and it runs on anything from Win95 up. Only a 4MB install. Also saves in the various Amiga/Atari formants, .IFF etc. Certainly enough formats to get it onto an ST in some form or another. I still use it with XP. Although the install is a bit back to front, to get it to work with a Restricted (non Administrator) Profile. You need to promote the user to an Admin, ...do the install with that user, ..and then demote them back to a plain user. I run Linux here 99% of the time, and when I do use XP it's NEVER as an Administrator.

Don't put them in clingfilm/cellophane, ...I'll tell you that. Years ago (about 20) I put LOADS of comics in the loft wrapped in clingfilm to protect them. Suffice to say that the clingfilm decomposes, and the comics weren't must better either. The best ST's that I have are wrapped in those BIG clear plastic bags, and the air is sucked out. Then the bags (containing the STs in their boxes) go into black sacks. My two jewels are a Mega STE (4MB 44MB from factory), and an STM (which I repaired and upgraded). Also knocking about are : a 520STFM, a 1040STFM, a 520STE, a 1040STE, and a 4160STE. Still looking for a Mega ST, and a 1040STM (I'm not even sure that they made them, I think they just went straight to the STF with the 1040). It's quite difficult really storing stuff longterm.

Hail Silver Surfer. Hail Silver Surfer. Hail Silver Surfer.

Not sure what's happened. Silver Surfer is looking into it. He's getting the hosts to look at the SQL server and perform a reboot. At the moment we can't even get in to repair it. I have a 35MByte backup of the database on my desktop though.

Excellent :-) C'mon people, give them some support.

My ST in the 80's was brilliant. It was a 520STFM and had a single sided drive. The first games were Star Wars, Star Trek, and Tai Pan. All of which I've managed to collect in mint condition. I used to go to the computer shows at Wembley and Alexandra Palace with my Dad. We came back on one occasion with an external DSDD drive, about 100 blank floppies (of which only about 50 worked), oh and about 1/2 dozen empty IBM XT cases. They were certainly the days. One of the earliest hacks I did was to make the DSDD drive externally bootable, which I think was by cutting a couple of tracks to the sound chip and swapping them over. We also had an external 5 1/4" drive for it too, and used to run PC-Ditto (God knows why). The swapping of copied games at school was rife, that and the Automation disks that used to go about. I had a little 14" Philips RGB SCART television for it. Those were the days where you used to be impressed with the VT52 emulator and hooking it up to a PC (CTTY COM1) and getting a DIR on your ST screen. Cover Disks were also important, as were the monthly magazines. Before I even had an ST I used to buy ST World (an American mag I think) and read that. I've still got them at home. A multiface-ST (blue one) was bought in a junk shop somewhere at a bargain price. This was the TV advert that was being shown at the time. It was Christmas I think, maybe 1987. . I didn't have the Discovery Pack though. It was the advert before that, I think the one where there were all the people in a dark room with numbers on their heads or something, and the screen smashed. A friend and I used to play Bubble Bobble for hours upon hours on end. We had Competition Pro 5000 Clear joysticks. Elite was another one that was just fantastic. When I grew up there was Centipede and Pole Position II in Sports Centres and stuff. I used to hire an Atari 2600 from the local video tape store, for something like £3 for a Saturday and Sunday. Bloody loved that!! We also had a BetaMax C7. Wonderful memories of the 80s.

Ta Well I've got to stop you tinkering with other things haven't I.

Recreated from the Service Manual. Produced using CorelDraw 7.

Recreated from the Service Manual. Produced using CorelDraw 7.

Dahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

You have mail. :-) ...containing a 70-page PDF of the Field Service Manual that I've just spent a week writing.

Dahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Ohhhh. They're the other chips. Not sure right now. Not sure where you'd get them either. If you're able to then I'll put a 72-pin SIMM in that.

You could get a new Mega STE replacement here in the UK. £25 + the postage. Certainly with the good exchange rates now it's attractive. Like, in 2006/2007 I barely sold anything over your side of the pond, $2.1 = £1. But it's now picking up again now we're back to about $1.4 = £1. http://www.1632systems.co.uk/ (when it works, show an SQL error atm).

VGA monitor you can certainly use for hi-res, on both the Mega and your original ST. Most VGA monitors will work, a few won't though, pick of the draw. Your colour monitor will be fine and will work just as it did with your ST. The Mega ST models are practically identical to the STF(M) models (except for the lack of the TV modulator). They do have a blitter fitted though. Latest TOS is the 'Rainbow' 1.04 version. The later 'STE' versions, 1.06, 1.62, and 2.05, can work but it's a bit of messing about with addressing mods as they 'boot' at a different point in ROM to the earlier 'ST' versions.

Yep, the pointed tips for the Antex irons do the job. The alloy is a bit rubbish so they don't last long though, say weeks/months depending on what you're doing. But they can certainly do the job. Maplin are the people to get them from. Or Rapid if you're going to order a load of other bits too. I don't actually know which Antex you have tbh, as the 30w one I'm not familiar with. http://www.rapidonline.com/Tools-Fasteners...Soldering-Irons I think it's the 'M' 15w which I used to use here... 12w! http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=4048 Ahhh, I've just seen what I think is your 30w on Maplin's site. Let me have a look in my cupboards... as I think I have a brand new boxed Antex that I never used. Yep, a C15. Soldering is something that I find enjoyable, but the suitability of your iron plays a part in that. The bigger irons tend to be more cumbersome in the results that you can achieve (not the wattage). The wattage is the iron's ability to replace lost heat. The Weller WSP80 which I use now is an 80w. Certainly the lower wattage irons are more suitable for SMD work. It's a balance really on what you're trying to do. Heat *can* damage components, usually it doesn't but when it does you don't find out until later. They can withstand heat for a short amount of time. If I were you I'd get a different iron, say the M12 from Maplin. Or buy mine!! Ermmmm, a tenner. It'll just sit in it's box otherwise.

Excellent!! :-) Well if you do run into DRAM problems, then I have a few 256K pulls about here.

Take the chips out of the sockets, and go over every one of those solder joints with the iron. Heat up until the solder really flows. On a few of them put a bit more solder on. All that's to do is to reduce the likelyhood of dry joints. Don't worry. Don't give up!! We've all been there and know how you feel!! I'm just looking at that seeing if anything has been missed... RAS/CAS = done. +5v = done. Do you have any spare DRAMs? AFTER you've redone all of the joints, swap them out one by one. (piggy backing doesn't usually work and isn't a reliable means of testing, sometimes it'll work, sometimes it won't).

Some are, some aren't. But most are soldered directly to the board via a PCB header. You could remove the header, and put pin strips in. Not a big job but you'll need a hot air station to make a clean job of it.

They also do requests, ..if you ask verrry very nicely.

lol. it's just that it's holding a bog unblocker that i find funny. I'm just drawn to it, I don't know why.