atari 1040STf no video

[19rsn007]

Hey people,

 

I just unboxed an atari 1040stf I got.

when I turn it on the floppydrive constantly seeks activity and the power led turns on and off.

No video on screen......

 

any idea's?

 

[EDIT] Correction...all I get is grey screen

Edited October 24, 2013 by 19rsn007

[Zogging Hell]

What are you connecting the STf to? The STf has no modulator in usually (unless it is an aftermarket option), which means it will only work without a monitor with some fiddling. The floppy drive should seek for a floppy disk at least until GEM comes up as you can't see it if it stops after about 30secs then that is what is happening (probably). If it does stop after 30secs it is likely that it is working. But you'll need to get a monitor.

If you are using a monitor then that is a different matter Try opening it up (while it is off), earthing yourself (touch a radiator or some non insulated metal) and then press down on any socketed chips you can see on the motherboard. You will need to take out the keyboard, shielding and floppy (possibly also the powersupply as well) to get at them.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Zogging Hell

[19rsn007]

well I tried connecting it to the composite input of my tv.

iirc pin 2 has composite output so I tried connecting it to my tv.

 

It gives a nice grey screen, the floppydrive tries to boot, after a while it stops, but the screen remains grey.

[Zogging Hell]

Sounds like the ST is ok then, but you'll need a monitor or someway to convert the signal the ST is giving out so it can go on a normal TV. Is the TV hi def and can it take a VGA connector? If so you could get a hi-rez vga output for your ST and try it in another monitor: PC one or if your TV has VGA in then you could try that. Probably want to check out the other thread on 1040 STF running on here at the moment.

[19rsn007]

I found out atari can do VGA, and now I am considering either VGA or RGB....

[Zogging Hell]

VGA can be done with an appropriate cable, but if playing games is your main interest it might not be for you as only ST High Resolution (i.e. black and white) will work this way without upscaling, and most (but not all) games run in colour.

[19rsn007]

Ok, today was the day I made a VGA adaptor for my st to find out....it's working

 

First test was on a 19" LCD screen

Then I tried the same adaptor on a 25" wide screen, and I must say it looks pretty good

 

Now how do I find out what TOS version it is?

 

 

 

All I need to do is build an RGB cable and find a TV in this house which takes RGB signals via scart

Edited October 28, 2013 by 19rsn007

[19rsn007]

and another little update....

 

I also made an RGB cable, which works pretty good

[Zogging Hell]

Nice work!

 

You can roughly work out TOS using the date in the info dialogue in the desk menu. 1985 is TOS 1.00, 1987 is TOS 1.02, and TOS 1.04 is 1989 (iirc). I suspect yours will be 1985.

[19rsn007]

hey,

 

My TOS is 1985, as seen in the first VGA photo.

Is it easy to upgrade the TOS by eproms replacement....or does it require a lot of modding ?

I have an eprom burner and some eproms, so it would be easy for me to burn them.

 

I played around with the STf yesterday, found out the floppy drive is still working as well, loaded interlink and some highres compatible games (Crystal Castles in highres looks nice btw.)

I took some photo's and I will place them here later today.

 

Thanks for all the help you gave me so far....

[Charlie_]

You can replace the TOS chips, up to Rainbow TOS 1.04 ... I think

[19rsn007]

yeah I read about it.

But would upgrading my tos just be:

 

take out the roms and replace them with eproms, or is there more involved ?

If I recall correct, my tos romset is a 6 rom version.

The TOS-roms are placed under the PSU board.

 

I opened up my ST the day I got it....

[Zogging Hell]

I think (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) if you can find an original set,with the right amount of pins, it is quite simple to swap the ROM chips over, there is a jumper that needs replacing or removing if you swap from 6 to 2 chip or vice versa. Even if you go with burning your own eproms (which will probably involve a chip with more pins) it is not that hard to wire them in (if you have some soldering skills). Have a search at Atari Forum, there are a fair few threads on that there (by people who are a lot more knowledgeable on the hardware side of things to me)..

 

In the meantime the main problems with the original version of TOS are dodgy hard drive handling routines. You can try and get hold of Big DOS which will overwrite this dodgy slow stuff (FAT Speed and Pinhead are also very helpful). With those you will barely notice the difference with yours and 1.04 (although you will loose some memory). TOS 1.00 is fine for games though. In fact some of the very early games refuse to run on some of the later TOS versions.

[19rsn007]

ah ok...... I'll stick to tos 1.00 for now.

 

I have soldering skills, but I don't want to mess with a perfectly working atariST, although I am considering putting the VGA port inside the ST, since there is room in the case where the RF modulator normally goes

[Zogging Hell]

I must admit when I was putting together my collection of ST stuff, instead of upgrading the ROMs I just brought a new ST with a more recent ROM in it. Things aren't as cheap as they were though. I think I got several STs for about 99p plus postage in the early years of this century. The only ROM upgrade I've done is adding a TOS 2.06 switcher into my original STFM. To be honest unless you use a hard disk (or use serious apps) there really isn't a lot of point upgrading. Even then a few utilities like the ones I've mentioned before will sort out those problems, possibly better than any thing a TOS upgrade will do. Memory is probably more likely to be a problem if you want to run serious apps. But for games 1mb is just about perfect.

[19rsn007]

ok so this evening I tried converting the RGB signal to composite signal with mixed results.

I was able to play some games taking the Red Green and Blue signal, combining it with horizontal sync and composite signalpin to a composite cable to my tvbox, but....

 

I had a pot connected to Hsync and I had to disconnect and reconnect it everytime I powered off my atari.

Also the signal is black and white, because I didn't have an encoder chip in the circuit (and no crystal to take care of the frequency in the signal).

 

gonna look so more into this and I will let you know how it turns out.

[19rsn007]

ok, so I played some games on my ST yesterday....big fun

It was hooked up to my TV via the RGB cable I made earlier.

I made 1 tiny adjustment to the RGB cable yesterday.... I made to output the audio on both left and right speaker....very nice

 

You can see photo's of it in the attachments.

I also attached a photo of the composite signal coming from my STF (remember....no modulator).
I am gonna work on getting a color signal out of it soon (creating a PAL encoder circuit in the process) so I could play games in color on the NONE rgb capable solution I have in the house.