Using CD-ROM drives & blitter upgrades on the ST machines?

[oky2000]

There are various options for the Amiga world (none particularly cheap though) to use CDs but I wondered which, if any, machines I could use a CD or even DVD-rom drive on and exactly how (SCSI external ones?)

 

Is there any way to fit a drive inside a 520/1040 case format too?

 

Also which machines had a blitter socket as Atari promised, only the early Megas or did the 1040STF ever get a blitter socket included on the motherboard?

[ParanoidLittleMan]

You can use SCSI CD ROMs (or DVD ROM) with ICD adapters. But simpler and cheaper is to use IDE CD/DVD - adapter is cheaper, drives are cheaper.

Internal in ST ? Hardly - there are some slime ones for notebooks, but they have non standard connectors. Not to mention that in any case you need additional power supply for CD/DVD drive.

 

If there is no blitter chip, there is no socket too - this is what I saw in some later 520/1040 STFs . Only space for blitter chip - so you can solder it directly, or PLCC socket.

[GadgetUK]

There's one of my postings all about the blitter - works fine in STFM. Just have to solder a socket on and close or open some jumper, plug blitter chip in and you are done. I think blitter needs a certain TOS revision, 1.02+ or something.

[delvis]

I have a DVD drive that I am adding to my Mega in a separate case. I bought an empty Megafile case. Also mounted the Eiffel and Ether NEC in it.

[atarian1]

Is that a Megafile 44 case? Or did you cut out an opening in a Megafile 30/60 case?

[delvis]

It is the Mega 30 and will be cutting the hole at some point. Was planning to use a power supply I had taken from an old SCSI case but managed to smoke it last night. (Shorted it out) So That part of the project is going to be on hold for now.

[oky2000]

Cool, an STFM with blitter would make a good project.

[GadgetUK]

I have spare sockets for these if you are in UK?

[oky2000]

I don't even have a soldering iron at the moment but will take you up on that in the future if I find either of my FMs have the blitter socket space reserved on the board

 

I forgot to say, those slimline laptop CD drives are also standard IDE you just need to get an adaptor plug that converts it to standard 44pin ribbon cable layout (the same connector you use to install them inside Amiga 600/1200 models and we all know how crap their PSUs are for wattage). They use next to no power also but are IDE only so would need an IDE interface that fits inside the ST casing etc.

 

I'm not sure what software is needed, if any, to access the CD filing system (on Amiga you need to install a program to actually read the CDs IIRC)

Edited August 29, 2013 by oky2000

[Bumzyman]

Cool, an STFM with blitter would make a good project.

Where would you get the Blitter chips from to attempt this project?

 

Edit: I found this thread HERE that talks about Best and B&C selling the chips, so I'll check them out and see if they are still available.

Edited August 31, 2013 by Bumzyman

[Bumzyman]

I found another interesting post about installing a Blitter in the STf STfm over on Atari Forum HERE

Hope this info helps.

[oky2000]

I had assumed I could take one out of a faulty motherboard from a 520STE (motherboards really are not repairable sometimes) but maybe they are not quite the same as the ones inside the regular Mega ST?

[GadgetUK]

I've successfully used the 9092 - that's what I would get. There's also a link to unsolder nearby. I did a quick video on you tube recently, but It doesn't cover the actual soldering.

 

 

Best watching on a browser that allows annotations as well. There's more info and a lot of corrections.

Edited September 2, 2013 by GadgetUK

[delvis]

Got a replacement power supply for the IDE CD Rom drive and started playing with it today. I have it hooked up to the Mega ST with Alanh - IDE board.

 

The HDDriver software sees the CD Rom drive on bootup. The two older software programs I have are not working correctly yet and I believe it is in the configuration files. The older Extendos Pro does not show any info supporting the IDE drive.

 

I may have to breakdown and purchase the newest version.

 

[GadgetUK]

Awesome stuff! What can you do with CD on the ST btw? Were any games ever released on CD?

Edited September 3, 2013 by GadgetUK

[ParanoidLittleMan]

You need beside driver filesystem extension - for instance MetaDOS by Atari (free) .

Then may need some audio CD player control SW .

So, can listen audio CDs - when connect output to amplifier. Copying files from CD or DVD onto hard disk or floppy.

Don't know about some Atari ST game released on CD. Surely can start some directly from CD, but it is minority.

 

I think that it is interesting, and I played some time with it about 10 years ago, but not really useful now, in era of cheap flash cards.

[oky2000]

Atari never released their CD-ROM unit so no CD games ever happened for the ST. To be fair the immense resources for Artists/Coders/Musicians was way above the budget of your average publisher.

 

Technically a missed opportunity, if there was a way to use Blitz Basic with CDTV native track/disc controls then with todays tools it would be an excellent way for a small group of talented people to do it justice (and by do it justice I mean make Cinemaware style games but with masses of speech, music, animations and complex gameplay/huge amount of levels. Ditto for STOS and CD access although it's harder to get CD-rom going on an ST without a standard IDE interface built in or a stand alone machine.

 

I think Jack probably would have realised this and backed out of the CD based machine market (it's not like the CDTV flew off the shelves even with Nolan Bushnell involved, shame really).

[delvis]

Okay just ordered the driver software to support my IDE DVDRW on my Mega ST.

 

http://www.anodynesoftware.com/