Milan 040

[rustynutt]

Hi.

I can't tell what is this thing with the S3 cards not running, sorry.

It really mighty be that enormous amount of RAM on it, but as said above: I can't tell you. :-/

 

But, I took the Milan apart to see which S3 is running in it.

The chip is an S3 Trio64V2/DX.

Hth.

 

Mighty Sonic with Nemesis still would be fine.

I haven't got one, but the MS32 is mostly running nicely. :-)

 

Thanks for the S3 info. Thought I would try, 8mb would be nice over the OEM Milan card.

A friend has a second hand store addiction, with boxes and boxes of vintage PC cards. As well as vintage BSA's, we have that in common and must go dig through his boxes to see if there is anything there for the Milan.

 

Last year I sold my Might Sonic 32 and NOVA Graphics card on *bay (at a great $$$ loss I might add!). I think of all the Falcon stuff I've had, it was my favorite, it was the nicest thing for a Falcon. It took a lot of experimenting to get the Mighty Sonic to work well with the Nemesis at 44MHz, had to change a couple of IC's, and modify the Nemesis buffer installation. The Falcon would run day in and day out, and the fast ram turned the Bird into one bad '030! All softs worked fine, while I am not a musician, Cubase Audio 16 worked perfect as far as I could tell. I am a huge Apex Media fan, and the Expose worked nicely with the fast ram. I may have photos of the set up with the Mighty Sonic, PC 286 card, Expose and NOVA adapter all stacked up! That's when a Falcon Rack became necessary

 

I had purchased the Mighty Sonic back in 1993 from Alex at ATY Computer in California. Alex was one of the nicest Atari Service businesses around. When the Afterbuner came out, bought another Falcon, and NOVA from HOMA House in Canada. Two were not necessary, but that's what being an Atarian is all about. I went through the CT2 phase, but did not keep that long, the other two cards were 100% compatible without the fuss.

 

When the CT60 actually became available, had one ordered. It still sits, never installed. That was back in 2004. Soon after the CT63 came, and ordered one of those as well, which sits never installed. Rodolphe says "what a waste!". So that was when I decided to let the Mighty Sonic and NOVA go to another user. I took the Falcon board that had the Mighty Sonic installed into work at a clean room, and spent time cleaning up and repairing all modified connections. This Falcon, when the SuperVidel is actually shipped will get a CT60 installed. I am going to stay with a simple 20MHz bus, as this machine must last until I pass Also, last year found another Afterburner. With four cards, and only two Falcons, yet not yet wanting to trade or sell, begin looking to replace a third Falcon I sold last year set up for Cubase Audio. The user was a Musician, and felt good about it's new home. Last week on the auction site, won the bid for a Falcon. It was kind of expensive, but you must take what comes up now. It was advertised as a 4mb, with slight keyboard damage, The case looked good in the photos, so took the chance, as it was just a reseller offering it up.

 

I was surprised when I booted it up, memory check showed 14mb of ST RAM. I was pretty happy to see that. AHDI drivers did not detect a HD, figure it was pulled by the last user.

The memory upgrade is a RAM Gizmo card, kind of looks like a Falcon Wing, with the SIMMS located behind the floppy drive.

 

All the shielding is intact, and could not see if there was a puffer modification, so removed the front shield. Then I saw something that I did not recognize below a piece of protective card board. Off came the shield and cardboard, and was so happy to see this Falcon has a GE Soft Eagle Sonic running at 32MHz. The Mighty Sonic is nice, but difficult to fit under the keyboard. The GE Eagle only sits above the expansion pins as much as the circuit board is thick. Very compact. The card has the PGA style RC030, which begs to be boosted with a speeder! This will allow an Expose card and maybe the NOVA adapter too if the NOVA cables go to a video card out the back.

 

Just to say, I have worked long and hard over 30 years on the same job. I raised my son myself since he was age 3, now 29. January 31 this year will retire from that job. We had many hard times, ate hot dogs and macaroni most evenings for a good dinner. For both myself and son, who is also an Atarian, I think this was worth the sacrifice to be able to enjoy this hobby. We are not wealthy, and not bragging or making anything of the Falcons, or numerous other Ataris and Jaguars, it's just what we do. We worked hard for all we have.

Just to say.....it is a message board.

 

And with that, strayed a bit away from the Milan topic But today, Christmas arrived late, but it was an excellent gift!

[jens]

Yeah, a real Atarian came up. :-)

 

I like complaining about the Mighty Sonic 32 not being that nice as the CT2b is, as that beast actually is faster and holds more RAM, still being as compatible as the MS32 is in theory.

I had several talks to a longtime Falcon AB40 user who claimed he used an Eagle Sonic before, and it was all rubbish, having problems with the DSP - which are apparently the same problems that my Mighty Sonic has.

The Mighty Sonic sometimes locks up when starting FalcAMP. Never had problems with any other piece of software though. And it had been for months or even years without problems until about four years ago, when I decided to leave it in my cellar after moving house.

Some months ago a fellow Atarian stayed with me for some days, and I wanted to show him about this, but had to realize that after booting up and playing one mp3 file (without speakers attached, but definately not locking the machine up) it wouldn't do anything after having switched it off.

In december that guy was here again, we replaced the PSU, and now the Mighty Sonic Falcon is running MagiC or EasyMiNT, just as I need it, and sometimes even plays mp3 files. Demos are quite nice on it as long as they don't require an RGB monitor, having just a VGA attached.

 

Ok, enough off-topic from my here.

 

I had to laugh when I opened up the Milan as it's quite full around the card slots:

I have the S3 PCI, the PS/2 plug, RTL8139 PCI, RTL8029 PCI, RTL 8019 ISA, Soundblaster ISA there.

The different NICs are used for MiNTnet, Magxnet and STinG using different drivers.

I found someone with an RTL8029 PCI 100 mbit NIC, so this theoretically should give Magxnet fast ethernet as well, but the card is used in an old PC still, so I won't be able to obtain it.

 

My Milan still has not been used any further, as I'm fiddling with one of my TTs, running TOS, CrippleMiNT and EasyMiNT besides a testing environment for a recent linux-m68k system.

Made a partition available and put a root file system on it via MiNT, then went back to TOS to be able to bootstrap it.

We had tons of quite interesting error messages so far, but although some things will have to be adjusted the system comes up and allows me to type things on cli.

I should setup two further partitions and install NetBSD on it, so after dropping MagiC onto drive C: I'll have everything the Atarian might need.

 

Enough said for now, have a nice day, and good luck with finding proper Milan material. :-)

[+DarkLord]

 

Just to say, I have worked long and hard over 30 years on the same job. I raised my son myself since he was age 3, now 29. January 31 this year will retire from that job. We had many hard times, ate hot dogs and macaroni most evenings for a good dinner. For both myself and son, who is also an Atarian, I think this was worth the sacrifice to be able to enjoy this hobby. We are not wealthy, and not bragging or making anything of the Falcons, or numerous other Ataris and Jaguars, it's just what we do. We worked hard for all we have.

Just to say.....it is a message board.

 

 

We hear ya brother. I've got so much STacy stuff now, I think I could build a couple

of extra machines from the spare parts. But you know what, that's perfectly okay.

 

I'm a respiratory therapist at a small rural hospital (St Joseph Martin). This is my

31st year there. They have a retirement plan, but its one of those that works just

like regular retirement, so the earliest I can leave is at age 62. I'm 51 now, so I've

still got a long ways to go. I now what it means to put that much time in, so I'm

glad to see someone getting out, and I sincerely hope that the time from that

moment on is the best years of of your life!

[rustynutt]

On 1/26/2013 at 5:25 AM, DarkLord said:

 

We hear ya brother. I've got so much STacy stuff now, I think I could build a couple

of extra machines from the spare parts. But you know what, that's perfectly okay.

 

I'm a respiratory therapist at a small rural hospital (St Joseph Martin). This is my

31st year there. They have a retirement plan, but its one of those that works just

like regular retirement, so the earliest I can leave is at age 62. I'm 51 now, so I've

still got a long ways to go. I now what it means to put that much time in, so I'm

glad to see someone getting out, and I sincerely hope that the time from that

moment on is the best years of of your life!

3 more years

[+DarkLord]

Let's do the time warp again...

 

I'm 59 now....  LOL

 

[rustynutt]

On 4/12/2021 at 6:24 AM, DarkLord said:

Let's do the time warp again...

 

I'm 59 now....  LOL

 

Yes, added that up for you

Since the start of this post, as everyone else that has been around for years, have taken in a lot of knowledge for all different types of Atari hardware. During the "Great ST Purge" of 2015, and since, have downsized significantly.

3 Falcons and the Milan remain. The worse part is, since 2008, have learned to write at most 2 or 3 lines of code So many here are fluent in language. I can type up a storm, that's about it.

Happy with the 2 CT60 setups. Aquirred 2 years ago an Amiga 040-060 adapter, same design as Michaels. Without diving into the IC replacement beneath the CPU of the Milan, haven't been keen on going back to troubleshooting it. I'd found a good thread of all that's involved to have the Milan running well at 20mhz buss on the German Atari forum.

Currently reworking hacks done to my original 1994 Falcon over the years. Had a scare, after socketing the NVRAM, failed to boot the diagnostic cart. Turned out I'd only tacked the socket in place After resolving that, she lights up just fine. All the pins from the past that were cut for the Nemesis install have been socketed, like the ACIA'S. This allows an independent and much cleaner solution to providing the 500khz via oscillator to each, as well as a smaller smt 48 DSP clock on the underside.

Currently working 2 68040 PLL clock drivers into the system, one setting at the SDMA clock input, and other for expansion and COMBEL distribution across the board.

In the past have toyed with overclocking the FPU. It becomes unstable around 40mhz. Being not of sound mind, and not sure what caused the direction, discovered the FPU (and 20/22mhz bus) settles down using a 64mhz FPU clock. Think Exxos mentions this, at a much later date than I'd discovered. Not sure if we were of the same mind, or he actually read through one of my book post

I did it again! Too much brainstorming.

Last notes I have from Doug Little, he pointed out the clock driver on the AB is only rated at 70mhz (35mhz BCLK) and felt that could be leading to stability issues running the AB over 44mhz. Have a supply of 100mhz IC's, will be using those to test soon.

Where I'm kind of at is all this will still require fly wires across the board. An eBay seller that had some interesting 90 degree ISA card mounts said he'd be willing to make a custom board of my layout to resolve this, as did Frank Lucas. Just need to sit down and lay it all out once the AB is back up.

I'm visualizing an expansion pin supported narrow PCB, with onboard oscillators, Vcc, and pick off points next to critical clock line placement for the VIDEL, SDMA. Wondering, without a scope yet, if an inverted PLL clock from the drivers can replace the traditional Falcon clock patch.

Currently in a holding pattern. I'd offered to setup my spare CT60e and SV for another member on Atari forum and aid troubleshooting. He's not yet replied. User has been having no luck with Insanes CT TOS and his e for a year now. That offer will expire shortly

 

And where is Jen's? Haven't seen him post in some time, and always become concerned when an Atari user that is legacy to the platform just drops off.

 

 

[+DarkLord]

Sounds like you've actually been busy and have a lot yet left on your plate. 

 

Agreed about Jens. Used to post a lot in multiple places. Haven't heard from him

in a long time.

 

Anyone know how to get in touch with him?