1040STF video problems...

[Ze_ro]

A week or so ago, I bought an Atari 1040STf at a thrift store. At the same store, I was lucky enough to find an Atari SH204 hard drive at the same place. I wasn't, however, lucky enough to find any cables for either device.

 

So, realizing that I had no cable that would fit the goofy video port on the back of the machine, I resorted to more primitive methods, and used a custom cable that I had made that had straight pins wired to RCA jacks (It's worked for me in the past). I wired it up and turned the system on, but got no video at all. I could hear tones being played when I hit keys on the keyboard, and I could hear disk drive activity, but I get absolutely no signal at all... not even some transients when I turn the system on.

 

I have another Atari ST in the basement that I bought years ago... it's a 1040STFM, but it doesn't work properly. When I hook it up, it turns on, but just displays garbage on the screen (although with a green border around the screen) and doesn't even spin the disk drive. I'm not ST expert, but I'm guessing that the TOS roms are dead. Anyways, I hooked this machine up the same way to the composite monitor, and I at least get the garbage that it shows on the TV... so I know that my monitor and cable are working.

 

Hoping that I could combine the two broken systems into one working one, I opened both of them up... however, they were too different internally for me to do much. The STF had 6-chip roms (TOS 1.4), and the STFM had 2-chip (unknown version), so I couldn't switch those... plus, I noticed that the STF actually had a 4MB memory expansion installed (score!). So I gave up on hacking the hardware and put them both back together.

 

Is there anything on the ST that could prevent it from outputting a composite signal? Since the machine had been upgraded, and had obviously been used with a hard drive, I'm guessing that the previous owner had been a bit of a power user. Is it possible that the machine was set to only boot up using a monochrome monitor or an RGB monitor or something (Unfortunately, I found neither at the store)? Is there any way to force the machine to boot up with composite output by holding a key or something? I think that the machine is actually working fine, but just not sending out a composite signal for whatever reason.

 

Also, I noticed that the hard drives use a strange 19-pin cable (I had to count the pins twice to make sure). Although it's shaped a lot like a normal 25-pin parallel cable, are these 19-pin cables hard to find? My brother suggested taking a 25-pin cable and just sawing off the edge so that it'll fit.

 

--Zero

[+Mitch]

The lack of the "M" in the machine name means that it doesn't have the RF modulator. It also means that it doesn't output a composite picture through the monitor port, only RGB. So, if you want to use that system you will need to find an RGB monitor.

 

Mitch

[Ayreon]

Or a tv with rgb.. every SCART tv will have that

[Ze_ro]

ST's without the RF modulator can't do composite out either? Damn... that sucks. Oh well, at least that means that the machine probably isn't broken after all.

 

Does the ST use digital RGB or analog RGB? I remember when I was building an RGB cable for the Jaguar, I initially was trying to hook it up to a Commodore 1902 monitor (which was digital RGB), and it wouldn't even come close to working. Once I realized my mistake, I got it working with a Commodore 1084S (analog RGB) without trouble.

 

Oh well, since I have nothing that'll fit the ST's video port, I'll probably just wait until a video cable (and hopefully, an SC1224) shows up at the thrift store.

 

--Zero

[+Mitch]

It's analog RGB.

I was actually able to get a 13 pin din socket at my local electronics store for a couple bucks. You may want to check around.

 

Mitch

[Ze_ro]

Cool, thanks for the advice.

 

I just realized that Apple II's use the same 13-pin cable for their disk drives, so maybe it's more common than I thought (unfortunately, it's not detachable from the disk drive, so I don't know if there are actual male-male cables for the Apple... but it's reassuring to know that other devices use the same connector).

 

--Zero

[jens]

Oh well' date=' since I have nothing that'll fit the ST's video port, I'll probably just wait until a video cable (and hopefully, an SC1224) shows up at the thrift store.[/quote']

Try to find an atari to scart cable. Then you'd be able to us any monitor with scart-input.

Btw, in Amerika you have afaik a lot of sc1224's, whereas we in Germany have lots of sm124. I prefer the monochrome monitors as you can better do work (midi, writing) with them.

[Ze_ro]

Unfortunately, SCART doesn't help me much, since I have nothing that can use it (North America doesn't see many SCART capable devices unfortunately). If I come across an ST video cable at the thrift stores, I could easily patch together a cable that would let me plug the ST into a Commodore 1084S monitor. Chances are though, that if a video cable shows up, the monitor it's meant for will likely be there too, so I might not even have to bother.

 

At any rate, I'm more interested in using the ST for casual gaming rather than actual work. I have plenty of other capable computers to do word processing and such, so my Amiga's, Apple's and Atari's don't see a lot of productive use.

 

--Zero

[Noeljb]

I live in East Texas. If you live close enough or are willing to pay the shipping I can solve your video problem. I have video cables ( will give you the pinout if you want) or I will give you the two 1040s I have. You must take it all, Hard drives (two 110 meg), monitors (2color 1 Mono), "B" drive, Clock, tweety board, aqnd software out the ars.

 

You must promise to give it a good home.

[Ze_ro]

Damn, I'd love to take it all... but I live too far away to pick it up or to afford the shipping I'm sure I'll find the equipment around town eventually.

 

--Zero