Sm124 power supply auto switching?

[twoquickcapri]

I purchase a german falcon with sm124 mointor and been searching but hav'nt found the answer. I know the falcon is 240 only but what about tne mointor?

 

Also do any of you have any ideas what the switch below the logo would do? The system hasn't arrived so I haven't pop it open to look. Is there any common mods that many explain this?

[Fox-1 / mnx]

An original European SM124 runs at 230VAC - 50Hz.

 

That switch can be anything.

[Shredder11]

I remember seeing that Falcon on Ebay not so long ago. The mystery of the switch continues!

[Christos]

Suggestion, don't even bother with the monitor and hook it up to a VGA one.

[jens]

Open up the case when it arrives to see what the switch is about.

[+DarkLord]

Yes, we are all curious! (send more pics)...

[twoquickcapri]

Looks like an off switch for the speaker.

 

Also Do German Falcon Normal display the menu in english? I haven"t found any german. Also I dont have a harddrive icon. I know it has a one. I seen it and can hear it when the system start.

[Christos]

If the clock battery is dead it will default into USA english. The previous owner might have done that though for other reasons. TOS 4 is multilingual. Try to install devices from the options(?) menu and see what happens. Also alt+c will open the contents of a c: drive in a window.

[jens]

On the original Falcon disks you should find a program with which you can manipulate the NVRAM settings. You might use Bootconf by Uwe Seimet instead.

If the Falcon keeps the settings after a coldboot or a power off the previous owner had a reason to use English for the menus and the keyboard. If not, the NVRAM battery is dead, and you should consider a new one or use some tool to load other settings than the defaults.

 

One of my Falcons has a dead NVRAM battery, and I restore sensible settings with an auto folder program. Time is set via the internet.

[twoquickcapri]

The system didn't come with any disk. But I cant get the floppy drive to work anyways. I just get a bad disk error. I also have an ext. SCSI Cd-rom. Which dosen't show up ether. I've wanted a Falcon for at less 15 years now and finally get one and I can't get it to work. My lack of knowledge isn't helping.

[jens]

You can use any PC floppy drive to replace the Falcon one.

If that doesn't work, try another floppy drive cable instead.

 

Else try to find someone with a Falcon in your area to setup the hard drive including CD-Rom drivers and maybe GhostLink or ConNect95 to exchange files with a serial nullmodem cable.

If a CD-Rom isn't installed via extra software you won't be able to use it.

[twoquickcapri]

I tried a teac drive that I set to 0 and still get the error. I have no idea if the drive worked to being with. Its been sitting in a box with my spare computer parts since the late 90's.

[twoquickcapri]

Is this normal? (See Picture)

 

I was able to test out my teac disk drive in a STFM and it worked. But it still doesn't work in the falcon

[Christos]

I've never seen that. Are there any other upgrades to the mainboard? About the floppy, unplug the internal ide disk and try again.

Edited December 7, 2011 by Christos

[twoquickcapri]

I've never seen that. Are there any other upgrades to the mainboard? About the floppy, unplug the internal ide disk and try again.

 

The system is just a stock 4 meger

[jens]

No internal hard drive? That's quite unusual. I know Falcons with one meg of RAM and no hard drive existed, but I thought the average Falcon user by now upgraded those.

[Christos]

There is an internal hard drive on the first picture, and that's probably why the floppy is not working, the hard drive is broken.

[jens]

You might be right there, Christos.

The hard drive or its cable might be broken.

Me, too, had issues with that before.

[twoquickcapri]

No internal hard drive? That's quite unusual. I know Falcons with one meg of RAM and no hard drive existed, but I thought the average Falcon user by now upgraded those.

Sorry 80 mb. harddrive.

 

Well after removing the hard drive and cable I was able to format a floppy disk and run dive bomer. It the only legit game I have right now. So I'm pretty happy.

 

So what would you guy recommend to replace the hard drive? I was thinking the Compact Flash Upgrade Kit from Best Electronics.

Edited December 7, 2011 by twoquickcapri

[Christos]

I am not very happy with an ide2sd adapter i got but i believe people have better luck with compact flashes. The sd card is very fast when reading, but very slow on writting, i believe it has to do with the way the OS handles the writes to the harddisk. Most adapters and cards would work i believe.

[jens]

I took a 120 gb Toshiba drive which needs MiNT or MagiC, plus HdDriver for full use.

It's quite fast, and has been absolutely reliable up to now, so I can really recommend it, even if you just want to use the first few gigs.

 

Else CF cards seem fine for many Falcon users, so you'll have enough options.

[guus.assmann]

On my Falcon, a IDE to CF adapter works very well.

Only limitation is that using 2 adapters doesn't always work, this depends on the individual CF card.

The converters can be bought in Taiwan. Have a look at "dealextreme.com"

And use the HDD program.