Kamelie1706 Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 Hi i first wanted a 1040ste but ending up getting a mega ste 4! few questions/remarks - is it so the metal plate below the motherboard is soldered at the midi/video level? - some rust on the back plate - of course battery leakage but fortunately did not damage motherboard … wires were actually cut. What is the role of those batteries? Keeping time and bios settings? - screenshot from the seller shows red background. What does it mean? - anything wrong/missing on my motherboard? waiting for my rgb cable … Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anzac Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 Congrats! well, first that is a MegaST, not a MegaSTe. Still a great machine. the metal shielding is a pain but you can discard it if you want. batteries kept time and date red either means the background colour was changed or your video output isn't working correctly. If you boot without any disk on the drive, it should be the default green. you should seriously consider replacing the capacitors on the mainboard and PSU. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snarkdluG Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 The plcc socket is missing the blitter chip. The Atari will work without it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kamelie1706 Posted August 28, 2021 Author Share Posted August 28, 2021 Thx both - I am not missing tos chips? What are the 4 slots empty for? - what is the role of the blitter chip? main idea is to recreate a music creation station with monochrome screen … not necessary gaming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anzac Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 TOS could be installed in either 2 chips or 6 chips. You have the 2 chip version blitter is very cheap and easy to install. A nice to have. Screen draws and text scrolling will be handled better 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kamelie1706 Posted August 28, 2021 Author Share Posted August 28, 2021 (edited) Ok what is the blitter ref? Is blitter = math co processor? i found this Motorola mc 68882 fn25 fpu 25 mhz processor atari mega ste, falcon, amiga, apple Edited August 28, 2021 by Kamelie1706 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ojanhk Posted August 28, 2021 Share Posted August 28, 2021 I thought Mega ST were the first machines to have the blitter fitted by default. I guess your’s has been removed at some point. Be careful though, if you want to add one, some versions of the blitter requires a special patch on the Mega ST. The patch is not too difficult to make, needs a small IC and a few solder point. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kamelie1706 Posted August 29, 2021 Author Share Posted August 29, 2021 Thx … still need to search for potential source. Ideally figuring out the actual blitter reference for my board … one other aspect is the keyboard. My mega st has probably still a French tos (and I would be happy to keep it that way) but finding a French keyboard seems a bit of a challenge. I find more solutions in German/English… Was the mega st more flexible from that aspect (eg you can setup the keyboard layout in settings) or you have to install the matching rom? Just curious as probably the easiest road would be to adapt a German/English keyboard to be French…. (Re-reading this sentence make me laughing to death taken out of its context ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snarkdluG Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 You need to change TOS rom to get correct key map. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derSammler Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 10 hours ago, ojanhk said: I thought Mega ST were the first machines to have the blitter fitted by default. I guess your’s has been removed at some point. Be careful though, if you want to add one, some versions of the blitter requires a special patch on the Mega ST. The patch is not too difficult to make, needs a small IC and a few solder point. No, the early ones don't have the blitter. I had three Mega STs so far, of which I only kept one, and they were all missing the blitter. You can also not just install one. If the chip was missing from the outset, it means the mainboard will require some additional circuitry to make the blitter work correctly. Atari did some very bad hacking getting the chip to work on later Mega STs, as you already pointed out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParanoidLittleMan Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 I did draw schematic of Mega ST blitter patch circuit: 13 hours ago, Kamelie1706 said: ... Was the mega st more flexible from that aspect (eg you can setup the keyboard layout in settings) or you have to install the matching rom? ... It is same in all ST(E) machines - TOS version (language of it) determines keyboard layout. Here mean position of letters on keyboard, geometrically. You can swap keyboard caps to have correct letter on specific key pos. - well not 100% because will not have all needed ones available .. Then can use stickers .. There is some SW with which can change keyboard layout, but it is better to have it by default, so in TOS. And beside TOS language (easy to see by menu items, messages text, it is good to have best TOS for ST machines - 1.04 . Click on Bureau, Informations - if latest year is 1989 it is 1.04, 1987 means 1.2 (most likely for this machine). If it is 1985, someone downgraded your Mega ST to older TOS v. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SoulBuster Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 8 hours ago, Kamelie1706 said: Thx … still need to search for potential source. Ideally figuring out the actual blitter reference for my board … one other aspect is the keyboard. My mega st has probably still a French tos (and I would be happy to keep it that way) but finding a French keyboard seems a bit of a challenge. I find more solutions in German/English… Was the mega st more flexible from that aspect (eg you can setup the keyboard layout in settings) or you have to install the matching rom? Just curious as probably the easiest road would be to adapt a German/English keyboard to be French…. (Re-reading this sentence make me laughing to death taken out of its context ) Checkout out the pinned thread at the top of the forum. There are alot of places that sells things for the Mega. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zogging Hell Posted August 29, 2021 Share Posted August 29, 2021 8 hours ago, derSammler said: No, the early ones don't have the blitter. I had three Mega STs so far, of which I only kept one, and they were all missing the blitter. You can also not just install one. If the chip was missing from the outset, it means the mainboard will require some additional circuitry to make the blitter work correctly. Atari did some very bad hacking getting the chip to work on later Mega STs, as you already pointed out. It's not necessarily the early ones that come without, I think some of the low end Mega's, i.e. low memory configuarations, came without blitters even after the blitter was released and work perfectly fine if upgraded. My Mega ST 2 (2mb version) came without, but it was just a question of sticking a blitter in (making sure to get the correct orientation) and removing a jumper iirc. Has been rock solid since. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chri O. Posted August 30, 2021 Share Posted August 30, 2021 10 hours ago, Zogging Hell said: it means the mainboard will require some additional circuitry to make the blitter work correctly I was wondering what this thing is on top the CPU thanks PP. ? Long time ago my Mega ST 2 was upgraded with ICD Adspeed ST 16 MHz accelerator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.