What upgrades for a STacy?

[skeezix]

hey guys, been awhile since I've posted here (and so glad to see A-F back up as well, woot!)

 

Hoping you can help me out with some fun ideas! I've spent way too much time being productive, help me waste time well!

 

Random babble/preamble: I've spent far too much time on other projects the last few years so not had too much time for ST related hacking. (Some of you may recall I wrote an ST emu, a 3/4 of a Time Bandits remake that I am thinking of finishing, maintain many ST emu ports to many handheld devices, and still keep up an 'museum' version of my old BBS, among other crazy hacks.) If you used an ST emu on Palm, GP32, GP2x, Pandora you've probably seen my hand

 

I've repaired a ST Book but find its mostly just an awesome piece to have, but not something you use too much -- the monitors on them go with age, so its not really great to use, and is a fragile beast; I've got a TT030 that I need to play with more and see what I can do on it nowadays, but it takes up a lot of space. So I'm thinking of working on the STacy some more I'd like to score a Falcon, but just seems like its going to hit me for $1000, so hard to budget..

 

My STacy 4 is pretty stock and in mint condition - I break it out for Empire and text adventures on occasion (I'm an arcade machine collector too .. I prefer 'the real thing' to emu versions when I can; odd stance given how many emulators I've hacked on over the decades ); without getting into real wiring changes, what sort of little upgrades can I do with it? I've spent a huge amount of time with retro-ST (doing the emu projects and whatnot) and done some hacking with ARanyM (ported it to the Open Pandora device that I've spent the last year or to fo spare time hacking on), but I'm not really on top of MagiC or MiNT or Easy etc .. generally had pretty poor luck whenever I've tried to get into them.

 

- Ethernet (or better yet, Wifi 802.11b/g?) an option for a STacy expansion cart or something?

- Converting the drive to SD would be interesting, but probably a pit; doing it on the TT or Falcon is a piece of cake I imagine, given the IDE interfaces

- OS -- what do people run on an ST, TT, Falcon, these days? Are folks still using original GEM/TOS, or is everyone using Mint or MagiC or something else? (sure, you eat up RAM, but RAM can be upped..)

- need to look into ppera's cool hacks, such as his floppy emulator so can load floppy images right on an ST machine and use them .. may be a lot easier than writing out floppies anymore

- what else?

 

I've spent so much time hacking on emu code to make trick games and demos work, the retro stuff, that I'm not on top of the 'current' OSes, great apps and demos, and such.

 

Any word on great stuff to try?

 

(the coolest project ever would be to put a nice new LCD onto an ST Book, and hook up an SD instead of floopy interface, but so few ST Books around I doubt it'll happen, and so few remember anythign about how the STB even works

 

jeff

[OldAtarian]

I saw a webpage once where someone managed to install a 68030 upgrade in one but it's a very delicate procedure and not recommended unless you really know what you're doing. STACY parts appear slightly more prone to being accidentally ruined than other ST's for some reason.

 

There are hard drive upgrades available but you can't use the controller board that comes with the STACY because only a small number of drives are supported.

 

In general, upgrading a STACY is something you don't want to undertake unless you really know what you're doing, as mentioned previously.

[+wood_jl]

I can't help you, but I share interest, and I give you +1 for furthering that interest, and your general level of enthusiasm for the A16+. Bravo!

[+DarkLord]

Hi there. First of all, congratulations on owning a solid, working

STacy, let alone an STBook. Both are rare beasts these days, especially

the STBook!

 

I've got a STacy 2. So far, I've upgraded the memory to 4 megs, getting

the memory from Brad Coda at Best Electronics.

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/

 

I sent the motherboard itself off to Alex Yu at ATY Computers who socketed

the 68000 CPU for me. (my soldering skills are *scary* non-existent)I picked

up a Fast Technology's T25 accelerator from B&C Computers to use there. An

Adspeed would work as well. I also picked up an original STacy carrying case.

http://www.atycomputer.com/

http://www.myatari.com/

 

I picked up an UltraSatan unit from Jookie over at AtariForum. I don't think

he's making any more, but Zaxon is - you can PM him there. The UltraSatan

is a dual, hot swappable SDcard reader for your ST. It is *awesome*. I've

removed that super-heavy internal 20meg hard drive and replacing it with the

UltraSatan. Here are various threads for that.

http://www.atari-forum.com/

http://joo.kie.sk/ultrasatan/

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18687

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16318

 

I also picked up a 1.44 floppy drive upgrade kit from Ralcool at AtariForum.

Again, PM him there to see if he has any left, or can make some more. He even

included a black faceplate drive for me.

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18847

 

As for networking, I've got an EtherNEC, and I also bought a Hydra. These units

plug into the STacy's cartridge port, and then into your LAN. In my case, I've

also bought the DLink DWL-810+, but haven't actually set it up yet. Check Atari

Forums again for Hydra availability.

http://www.atari-forum.com/

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 230559226357

 

Finally, I continue to search for a viable LCD replacement, right size, specs

that will allow ST-Low and ST-Med rez's to display correctly, ect... I would

also love to see one of the many USB mouse adapters support a wireless mouse.

That would be very cool for the STacy and STbook as well.

 

Hope all this gives you some ideas...I know I've loved owning and working on

my STacy. Great machine!

[+DarkLord]

I saw a webpage once where someone managed to install a 68030 upgrade in one but it's a very delicate procedure and not recommended unless you really know what you're doing. STACY parts appear slightly more prone to being accidentally ruined than other ST's for some reason.

 

There are hard drive upgrades available but you can't use the controller board that comes with the STACY because only a small number of drives are supported.

 

In general, upgrading a STACY is something you don't want to undertake unless you really know what you're doing, as mentioned previously.

 

The Super STacy article is here:

 

http://atari.st-katharina-apotheke.de/home.php?lang=en&headline=SuperStacy&texte=stacy

[skeezix]

hey DL I've been tracking down arcade and Atari gear a long long time. (I actually used to work for a computer store as a kid, as their Atari salesman; I worked that connection like hell at the time .. got some rare oddities I'm sure

 

 

Thanks for the links, will check out a few for sure; getting the ST/STacy/etc onto the network would rule, of course (Which leads into a topic I opened on A-F .. what 'current' OS/desktop/kernel options are most feasible .. I lost track of it all over the years, with Thing, Jinnee, MagiC, MiNT vs MultiTOS, etc etc .. so many things are old and dead, versus the current and usable. When it comes to modenr driver support, and support of the widest set of apps, its impenetrable to find the right info http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=20253&p=177591

 

Cart based networking would be great, no mods needed!

 

Switching the hdd to CF has been on my mind lately; also for the STBook (where I ended up getting a 80GB laptop IDE drive working, but with only a fraction of the space available.) (The trick with the STB is it has no floppy or other communicaton method really, and the serial/parallel options stink. I'm tempted to write a USB->serial file transfer thing for it, but I'm already committed to dozens of projects)

 

Adding CF to the STacy would be sweet, make transfer a lot of a lot easier (especially if its dual slot, so one can be ejected while the machine is live?) Will look into it. Is it externally visible? (ie: In the STB, my mods are internal .. I can open/close it fast these days, but really.. its fragile and best avoided. I need to cut a slot in the case in the battery compartment one of these days.....)

 

(opefully MiNT has ssh support somewhere .. scp to/from an ST would make my heart happy)

 

--

 

You using a browser on there? IRC client? Any tips to good apps that way?

 

Really, a good list of modern-ish apps.. theres got to be one; over th eyears I keep running into the problem of this app only works with this environment, or this verison of an environment; really painful

 

--

 

Many thanks for the tips, I'll get to digging!

 

(and yes, I know, my BBS is neglected, I'm too overcommitted to things

 

jeff

[+DarkLord]

hey DL I've been tracking down arcade and Atari gear a long long time. (I actually used to work for a computer store as a kid, as their Atari salesman; I worked that connection like hell at the time .. got some rare oddities I'm sure

 

<snipped>

 

--

 

Many thanks for the tips, I'll get to digging!

 

(and yes, I know, my BBS is neglected, I'm too overcommitted to things

 

jeff

 

Umm, my machine like yours I'm sure has TOS 1.04 stock (I'm talking about the STacy and not the STBook of course).

I've been running the NeoDesk/Geneva combo. I like it a lot, although like so much ST software, its not supported

anymore - although Dan Wilga does still have the webpage up. MagiC/Jinnee is a very popular combo as well - although

I've never used it. I'm not sure what the current status of running MINT on an ST is. At one time, you could run it,

but not with a desktop - I'm not sure if that has improved or not. I'm thinking not. Teradesk is still going and its

still supported. So there is at least one recent desktop replacement. Also, you can use PPera's "soft load" TOS loader.

It will allow your machine to boot up with TOS 2.06. This is really very cool, but I've had problems getting it to

work the way I want to. Others report it works fine for them.

 

Yes, you can swap SDcards out on the UltraSatan, even with the machine running. The UltraSatan is very, very cool. Oh,

it is actually an external box that hooks up to your ACSI port. It even allows you to directly share files with a Windows

machine (although there are some limitations there).

 

Hmm, for internet use, you can browse the web with CAB, the Crystal Atari Browser. It will work fine with images turned

off (that dithering thing is just....awful, IMHO). Its still rough compared to any modern browser though, and I don't

think its supported anymore so its probably not going to get better. There is HighWire, but I think it requires MINT.

Newsie still works for newsgroups and e-mail. Telnet, ftp, IRC, and even instant messenger apps are out there too. So

there is actually a lot you can do. Oh, BTW - I'm referring to all these apps running under the STing stack.

 

This is a very good place to start for software:

 

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16525

 

HTHs...

 

PS and yeah man, get busy and give that BBS some love!

[skeezix]

is MagiC still around? Can't seem to find any live links for it ..

 

Can it handle normal singletasking TOS/GEM apps, or just apps tuned for MagiC? Shareware or now freeware?

 

jeff

[+DarkLord]

is MagiC still around? Can't seem to find any live links for it ..

 

Can it handle normal singletasking TOS/GEM apps, or just apps tuned for MagiC? Shareware or now freeware?

 

jeff

 

Its not commercially available or supported anymore, as far as I know. Umm, there were some download

links over at AtariForum - you'll have to search there I guess.

 

I think most software is compatible with it, from what I've heard - I've never used it. I don't think

its been release into the public domain in any official form yet.

[wongck]

for MagiC on 4MB machines, get the older versions like v4 or v3.

They use less memory.

And be careful of v6, it may kill your HDD due to some logging.

[HiroProX]

I'm working on a couple of screen replacement ideas. The first being a straight across replacement for ST High.

[+DarkLord]

I'm working on a couple of screen replacement ideas. The first being a straight across replacement for ST High.

 

Hi there.

 

Okey-dokey, please keep us updated on anything you find out. I know

I'm not the only one interested!

[HiroProX]

I'm working on a couple of screen replacement ideas. The first being a straight across replacement for ST High.

 

Hi there.

 

Okey-dokey, please keep us updated on anything you find out. I know

I'm not the only one interested!

 

What I'm looking at for a "direct" replacement is a 640x400 resolution EL panel the same size as the original LCD. The big advantage, it'd be MUCH more readable than the standard LCD, and provides a replacement for the numerous owners of STacys with dead screens.

Edited December 17, 2010 by HiroProX

[+DarkLord]

What I'm looking at for a "direct" replacement is a 640x400 resolution EL panel the same size as the original LCD. The big advantage, it'd be MUCH more readable than the standard LCD, and provides a replacement for the numerous owners of STacys with dead screens.

 

That would be nice, and definitely a start. More so when you consider the

$199.00 replacement price for said screen, using original equipment.

 

I *still* want to eventually find a color replacement though, that will

let us do lo and med rez...

[skeezix]

Colour on a STacy would be simply amazing, since the STacy is essentially a full ST; using a STacy and jacking in a colour monitor just seems wrong

 

jeff