German 1040STfm conversion

[Timothy Kline]

Good afternoon, everyone!

 

I recently crossed over into ST land, although I'm an eight-bitter at heart. It's more out of curiosity than anything, since I'm far more comfortable and familiar with the Atari 8-bit series.

 

Anyhow, I recently obtained a German 1040STfm that powers up to desktop just fine, although the desktop is definitely in German. I swapped the 240v supply with a 120v from a non-working 1040ST someone suckered me with on greedBay (as-is, indeed!!), and made sure it boots to desktop and that the floppy continues to work--both of which are yes.

 

I'd hoped I could also pull the TOS chips from the 1040ST and swap out the German TOS... but the 1040ST uses a 6-chip TOS array and the G/1040STfm uses 2-chips-- so that appears to rule out my swapping idea.

 

So, here are my noob questions:

 

1. When connected to the SC1224 monitor, I can see that faint flicker which I presume is because the G/1040STfm still thinks it's at 50Hz. Will switching to a multi-sync monitor resolve that?

 

2. Will swapping TOS to USA-based resolve the flicker (and language) issue?

 

3. How can I go about obtaining a compatible 2-chip TOS?

 

Sorry, but looking through this forum found some close-but-not quite situations, and I really am completely new to the ST series.

 

Thank you, in advance!

--Tim

 

[EzdineG]

Hi, Tim! Swapping for a US TOS will indeed make the machine boot to 60hz. If your motherboard still has the six TOS sockets, I believe there is some jumpering that can be done to have it accept the six (I may be wrong here though.).

 

I currently have a UK 520Ste. I'd like to take all of this further and convert the output to NTSC in the future. I'll get around to finding out what that entails some time soon. If anyone knows, I'd be happy if you could share

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Timothy Kline]

Hi, Tim! Swapping for a US TOS will indeed make the machine boot to 60hz. If your motherboard still has the six TOS sockets, I believe there is some jumpering that can be done to have it accept the six (I may be wrong here though.).

 

I currently have a UK 520Ste. I'd like to take all of this further and convert the output to NTSC in the future. I'll get around to finding out what that entails some time soon. If anyone knows, I'd be happy if you could share

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Only two of the 6 spots on this German mainboard are socketed for TOS chips, unfortunately.

 

German 1040STfm == > C070789-001 Rev. D1 / 2-chip TOS

US 1040ST == > C070523-001 Rev. D / 6-chip TOS <-- Not working, so I took the power supply off it and used it in the German system

 

--Tim

[goaltoss]

There are a few members on the board who will burn you 2 chip TOS for you machine.

You could still use the 6 chips on the German ST but you would have to solder in sockets or solder directly to the board. Then its just a matter of bridging a few jumpers.

 

Otherwise if you wanna spend $30 you can buy these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ATARI-ST-STE-STFM-STF-MEGA-TOS-ROMS-1-02-1-04-1-60-1-62-COMPUTER-OS-UPGRADE-/141651533843?hash=item20fb16e013:g:xw0AAOxy3NBSd4bR

Edited July 2, 2016 by goaltoss

[ggn]

Exxos can burn a pair of EPROMs for you: http://www.exxoshost.co.uk/atari/last/store.htm

 

I can program other language's on request. Please write in the checkout notes your request. Please do not email separately as I get 100's of emails each week and it makes hard work to keep track of emails relating to orders.

.

 

Note that he lives in the UK, so add postage!

[Timothy Kline]

Thank you goaltoss and ggn for the leads. I think I'll wait for the multisync cable to arrive from BEST Electronics, size up things at that point.

 

Ultimately, this may end up in my closet, with me a bit wiser about any potential ST purchases in the future. So much for crossing over from the 8-bit. Better to stick with what you know. O.o

 

--Tim