520STFM Just Arrived

[flashjazzcat]

My 520STFM arrived today and I immediately stripped it down to clean it. Next to my restored 65XE, though, it looks pretty yellow, and clearly needs the Retrobrite treatment (I managed to avoid that with the 8 Bit machine, which came up like new with a replacement keyboard and a soak in the bath).

 

 

The motherboard is Revision F2; I take it the empty spaces are for TOS ROMs. No easy RAM upgrades with this one, I fear!

 

Apart from doing the Retrobrite treatment on it, I wouldn't mind upgrading it to 1MB and trying to find a hard disk for it. I also believe these models came with a 360KB floppy drive, and that fitting 720KB model is preferable?

Edited March 5, 2009 by flashjazzcat

[Sub(Function(:))]

I wouldn't mind upgrading it to 1MB and trying to find a hard disk for it. I also believe these models came with a 360KB floppy drive, and that fitting 720KB model is preferable?

 

Best Electronics seems to have RAM upgrades for the STFM. They also have floppy drives on the same page. Most of the later games did come on a 720 disks, so it is recommended to upgrade.

 

Hard disk may be more of a problem, the easiest solution is to find a ASCI to SCSI interface (such as IDC link), but these are hard to find. Another solution again is Best Electronics and they have some Megafile hard disks in these plug directly in to the ASCI port on the back of the STFM. There have also been some internal IDE projects out there but I think these require the desoldering of the CPU.

 

If you only want to play games there is little need for a hard disk.

 

All the best with your new acquisition. I just wish I had more time to play on my STe, they were happy times

[flashjazzcat]

Best Electronics seems to have RAM upgrades for the STFM. They also have floppy drives on the same page. Most of the later games did come on a 720 disks, so it is recommended to upgrade.

 

Hard disk may be more of a problem, the easiest solution is to find a ASCI to SCSI interface (such as IDC link), but these are hard to find. Another solution again is Best Electronics and they have some Megafile hard disks in these plug directly in to the ASCI port on the back of the STFM. There have also been some internal IDE projects out there but I think these require the desoldering of the CPU.

 

If you only want to play games there is little need for a hard disk.

 

All the best with your new acquisition. I just wish I had more time to play on my STe, they were happy times

Yep, I got the new keyboard and RAM upgrade for the 8-Bit from Best Electric, so I'd be happy to deal with them again. Their ST/VGA cable is a tad overpriced, though, so I'm making my own (see other thread). I mainly want to run the ST in hi-res mode, and I'd really like to do a bit of C programming, perhaps write a few desk accessories, so a hard disk would be useful although they all seem quite pricey. I'll get a SCART cable so I can run low/medium resolutions when I need to. The manual mentions that the floppy drive may be 360K/720K depending on the model: I'm assuming mine is a single-sided, 360K drive.

 

I didn't actually power up the ST for the first time until I'd stripped it down and cleaned it as best I could, but it works perfectly. I got the thing for 10 GBP on eBay, just bidding for the hell of it; I didn't really have any objective in mind for an ST apart from restoring it to pristine condition (which is going to need the Retrobrite treatment), so I can't really justify spending large amounts of cash on it right now. I'm commited to a big 8-bit project at the moment, but when I get time I'm going to enjoy tinkering with the ST. I only wish I'd got hold of one twenty years ago: I would have used it for word processing and had a blast writing software for it. Speaking of software, I have precisely none (apart from the slew of games that came with it), so I'll need a word processor, and some flavour of C. Neodesk 4 looks good, too (I've tried it on STeem).

 

Anyway, thanks for those useful links!

Edited March 5, 2009 by flashjazzcat

[mellis]

Best Electronics seems to have RAM upgrades for the STFM. They also have floppy drives on the same page. Most of the later games did come on a 720 disks, so it is recommended to upgrade.

 

Hard disk may be more of a problem, the easiest solution is to find a ASCI to SCSI interface (such as IDC link), but these are hard to find. Another solution again is Best Electronics and they have some Megafile hard disks in these plug directly in to the ASCI port on the back of the STFM. There have also been some internal IDE projects out there but I think these require the desoldering of the CPU.

 

If you only want to play games there is little need for a hard disk.

 

All the best with your new acquisition. I just wish I had more time to play on my STe, they were happy times

Yep, I got the new keyboard and RAM upgrade for the 8-Bit from Best Electric, so I'd be happy to deal with them again. Their ST/VGA cable is a tad overpriced, though, so I'm making my own (see other thread). I mainly want to run the ST in hi-res mode, and I'd really like to do a bit of C programming, perhaps write a few desk accessories, so a hard disk would be useful although they all seem quite pricey. I'll get a SCART cable so I can run low/medium resolutions when I need to. The manual mentions that the floppy drive may be 360K/720K depending on the model: I'm assuming mine is a single-sided, 360K drive.

 

I didn't actually power up the ST for the first time until I'd stripped it down and cleaned it as best I could, but it works perfectly. I got the thing for 10 GBP on eBay, just bidding for the hell of it; I didn't really have any objective in mind for an ST apart from restoring it to pristine condition (which is going to need the Retrobrite treatment), so I can't really justify spending large amounts of cash on it right now. I'm commited to a big 8-bit project at the moment, but when I get time I'm going to enjoy tinkering with the ST. I only wish I'd got hold of one twenty years ago: I would have used it for word processing and had a blast writing software for it. Speaking of software, I have precisely none (apart from the slew of games that came with it), so I'll need a word processor, and some flavour of C. Neodesk 4 looks good, too (I've tried it on STeem).

 

Anyway, thanks for those useful links!

 

I had an ST in its heyday, and I absolutely adored it. Unfortunately, I had to sell it in 1993 in order to acquire my first Mac (an LC II).

 

About 10 years ago I acquired an excellent condition 520STfm that a friend had no further use for. As I had sold my valuable ST hardware years before, I no longer have a hard disk for it but I do still have all of my ST software. Recently the perfect solution presented itself.

 

In a different thread here on AA, they are currently accepting orders for a new run of UltraSatan disks, and I think you really should consider this option. In a nutshell, it allows you to use SD, MMC, and SDHC cards (the same as you'd use with a digital camera) as an ST hard drive. As you know, these cards are plenty large for storing ST software, they're inexpensive, and they're very reliable. For around $100 (US), you can add what amounts to an ST hard drive that is several gigabytes in size and you don't have to comb through old stock trying to find a small, compatible SCSI-1 hard drive to use with the ST. Also, my understanding is that the memory cards can be formatted so that they can be used with a PC (via card read) and with the ST, thereby giving a great way to shuttle software between the two (although I've never actually done this).

 

As to developing for the ST, I really think you should consider setting up a GCC cross compiler so that you can write/compile software on your host PC and then run it on the ST. It will be worlds faster, and modern GCC compilers are sooooo much better than any C compiler that was released back in the day. Combine a cross-compiling GCC on your PC with an UltraSatan, and you have a good way to test, as you can switch the SD card between the ST and the development host.

 

Hope this helps...

[flashjazzcat]

I had an ST in its heyday, and I absolutely adored it. Unfortunately, I had to sell it in 1993 in order to acquire my first Mac (an LC II).

 

About 10 years ago I acquired an excellent condition 520STfm that a friend had no further use for. As I had sold my valuable ST hardware years before, I no longer have a hard disk for it but I do still have all of my ST software. Recently the perfect solution presented itself.

 

In a different thread here on AA, they are currently accepting orders for a new run of UltraSatan disks, and I think you really should consider this option. In a nutshell, it allows you to use SD, MMC, and SDHC cards (the same as you'd use with a digital camera) as an ST hard drive. As you know, these cards are plenty large for storing ST software, they're inexpensive, and they're very reliable. For around $100 (US), you can add what amounts to an ST hard drive that is several gigabytes in size and you don't have to comb through old stock trying to find a small, compatible SCSI-1 hard drive to use with the ST. Also, my understanding is that the memory cards can be formatted so that they can be used with a PC (via card read) and with the ST, thereby giving a great way to shuttle software between the two (although I've never actually done this).

 

As to developing for the ST, I really think you should consider setting up a GCC cross compiler so that you can write/compile software on your host PC and then run it on the ST. It will be worlds faster, and modern GCC compilers are sooooo much better than any C compiler that was released back in the day. Combine a cross-compiling GCC on your PC with an UltraSatan, and you have a good way to test, as you can switch the SD card between the ST and the development host.

 

Hope this helps...

The UltraSatan disks sound very interesting indeed: an ideal solution. I went for the SIO2SD solution on the Atari8 and it's absolutely brilliant, and this seems to offer all the same benefits. I'll seek out the Satandisk thread: it sounds a worthwhile investment.

 

As for cross-compilation, that's something I haven't even gotten into on the 8-Bit yet: my preference is to run my own proprietary assembler in Atari8 emulation on the PC! I kind of like the minimal development environment on the target machine, but let me say that I wouldn't compile 200K of Atari8 assembler source code on a real Atari8 any more: only in an emulator with a ten-fold speed increase. I'm sure the advantages of proper cross-platform development well be even more pronounced on the ST than they are on the 8-Bit, so it's certainly something I'll look at.

 

Thanks for these useful comments. I've only had the ST for a few hours, and yet I now have a clear plan of action! I say again, I wish I'd had the ST back in the day: it looks way cool on my desk, even with the yellowing!