STe crashes on boot up

[walter_J64bit]

My STe crashes on boot up when I have no floppy disk in Drive A this is annoying, All I want to do boot off the hard drive anyone have ideas on what do to fix this?

[Tillek]

But if you boot off the floppy with (I assume) a hard disk driver in the auto folder, it works?

 

Or does having a (blank) floppy in there cause it to boot from the C drive as expected?

 

And the obligatory questions of which hard disk driver you're using, TOS version, etc.

 

[Tillek]

7 hours ago, walter_J64bit said:

My STe crashes on boot up when I have no floppy disk in Drive A this is annoying, All I want to do boot off the hard drive anyone have ideas on what do to fix this?

But without answering those questions, my first "guess".... the installed driver on the C drive is likely corrupted, so when the system tries to read it, it crashes.  If it was something more like the partition type was invalid, I'd assume you'd get a desktop (but without a C drive or with an icon for C that doesn't actually work).

 

So first, I'd try re-installing the driver.

 

[walter_J64bit]

2 hours ago, Tillek said:

But if you boot off the floppy with (I assume) a hard disk driver in the auto folder, it works?

 

Or does having a (blank) floppy in there cause it to boot from the C drive as expected?

 

And the obligatory questions of which hard disk driver you're using, TOS version, etc.

 

It's odd a blank floppy will let me use my Hard Drive without the blank floppy the STe just crashes and the I'm using the TOS that came with the System (Rainbow TOS)

[walter_J64bit]

2 hours ago, Tillek said:

But without answering those questions, my first "guess".... the installed driver on the C drive is likely corrupted, so when the system tries to read it, it crashes.  If it was something more like the partition type was invalid, I'd assume you'd get a desktop (but without a C drive or with an icon for C that doesn't actually work).

 

So first, I'd try re-installing the driver.

 

re-installing the driver I was thinking about that. 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

It is TOS 2.06 which crashes when no floppy in drive A, or no floppy drive attached - only if no working autoboot hard disk attached, if yes then no problems.

Here it is TOS 1.62 (or 1.06 ?) . Reinstall of hard disk driver is what should try for sure, but problem can be something around floppy, maybe even TOS ROM unreliability - what can be because weak PSU - so, if electrolyte capacitors were not changed in last 10 years it is  certainly needed to do.

[walter_J64bit]

16 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

It is TOS 2.06 which crashes when no floppy in drive A, or no floppy drive attached - only if no working autoboot hard disk attached, if yes then no problems.

Here it is TOS 1.62 (or 1.06 ?) . Reinstall of hard disk driver is what should try for sure, but problem can be something around floppy, maybe even TOS ROM unreliability - what can be because weak PSU - so, if electrolyte capacitors were not changed in last 10 years it is  certainly needed to do.

I do have some old STfm's, I just might looking into changing out PSU with them to see if that help out before reintsalling the drivers.

[TGB1718]

On 7/13/2021 at 9:22 AM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

what can be because weak PSU - so, if electrolyte capacitors were not changed in last 10 years it is  certainly needed to do.

I'm not normally an advocate of capacitor replacement but I've an STE that has issues with floppy drives including a GOEX, it's also

not happy with an ASCI2STM device I built, under load, the +5V line is just over 4.8V so I had a look at the PSU and 2 of the 2200uF

capacitors have very slightly "domed" tops, all others are perfectly flat, so on this occasion I have ordered replacements and will

see how thing are when I replace them.

 

Did Atari just use poor quality/cheap components in ST's, as I have several Atari 8 bits and there's never a problem with those.

[Fivetwenty]

Good source for information about ST power supplies is Exxos site, it would be better to replace all the recommended caps because you can not always tell about how they look if they are good or bad. Sometimes electrolytics just vaporizes slowly leaving empty shell behind and everything looks good outside.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Electrolyte capacitors are known as not long lasting components, generally in electronic - so by audio, TVs, computers ..

And it can be weak/bad without any visual signs. So, better replace all them in PSU, not only 'domed' ones. It costs not so much (at least should not, however there might be some shops with good prices (for sellers)) .

Other thing is that high frequency - like over 20 KHz makes degradation process faster. There are special type capacitors for that in last decades, used mostly on motherboards, where switching regulator freq. can be over 100 KHz. It is not rare that on some lower quality PC motherboards capacitors in regulators go bad after only couple years.

 

Atari ST and followers used quality components generally. You can not expect that it work flawless at age of like 33 years. Plus, it is possible that 8 bit Ataris did not use switching voltage regulators in PSU, but simple analog ones, so they worked without high. freq. - and that is good for capacitors, not so good for PSU efficiency, and that became more important with more powerful computers which consume more electric power too. And switching PSUs, regulators became mandatory in those years - dictated even by law in most countries.

 

[ojanhk]

51 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

 

Did Atari just use poor quality/cheap components in ST's, as I have several Atari 8 bits and there's never a problem with those.

Hi, Actually I would say that capacitors used by Atari on both 8bits and ST line are pretty good compared to other brands. I’ve a few Macs from the same years and most of the capacitors have leaked everywhere on motherboard and analog board. Same goes for 2 Amigas I’ve had with lot of leakage. On all the Atari’s I have, I’ve changed PSU capacitors to be safe, but apart from 1 PSU, most were running smoothly with proper 5v before recapping. 

[TGB1718]

On 7/14/2021 at 9:37 AM, TGB1718 said:

+5V line is just over 4.8V so I had a look at the PSU and 2 of the 2200uF

capacitors have very slightly "domed" tops, all others are perfectly flat, so on this occasion I have ordered replacements and will

see how thing are when I replace them.

Some of the Cap's turned up today and interestingly when I used the solder extractor on one of them, the pad on the PCB came off with the solder,

I'm very experienced with soldering so didn't overheat or leave the iron on too long, I suspect the pad had already detached itself mechanically through

cracking, if that's the case, then this capacitor would not have been smoothing the supply as it should, wish I had "scoped" the DC rail before I started.

 

Still I've done a track repair and as soon as I get the remaining capacitor delivered, I'll be able to see if this was the cause of my issues with floppy

drives and SD devices

[TGB1718]

Cap's all replaced, 5V line is now 5.1V spot on as per the spec.

But strangely the 12V line is 10.8V, I checked the DC level at D102 and it's 10.83V,

when I use my scope on the AC side of the diode and select True RMS it says 10.83V

so I'm thinking it's just the way it is.

Ripple and noise are almost non-existent, but according to the spec the 12V line can be +/- 1.2V

which makes mine just fractionally inside spec, that seems a very wide tolerance to me though (10%).