Fiddling with Atari STE

[protek]

A word of warning: Never ever burn ROMS to a machine that you don't have, otherwise you may end up having to get one just to get them into use. I had burned a pair of TOS 2.06 ROMS some time ago and just had to get an Atari STE where to put them.

I received the Atari 520 STE that I won from huuto.net today. It was yellowed and there was a small piece of the case missing from the Jaguar joystick ports. Apparently it seemed to be made in purpose, probably to accommodate a bigger connector.

The SIMM slots are fully populated so it should have at least 1 MB and with good luck 4 MB of memory.

First thing to do was to upgrade the TOS ROMS to 2.06 that I had. I had quickly powered it before swapping the ROMS and all appeared ok. Can't tell for sure as I had no TV connected. Just that power led came on and floppy started clicking.

I put it back together, carried it upstairs and connected it to the TV with RF cable. The RF modulator's best before date appears to be expired as I hardly could see the boot screen with Atari logo and the desktop later on. In fact I couldn't get the TV to find the signal with auto tuning and even with manual it seems to loose it with every boot.

Booting seems to take longer (1-2 minutes showing the Atari logo) before it goes to desktop and floppy no longer clicks and has the led lit. Not sure if this is just TOS 2.06 specific feature or something to be worried about. Have to make a proper RGB cable to find out. Good thing that I have a spare DIN-13 plug.

More to follow...

 

[thgill]

Its normal for a STe to take a while before it hits the desktop. And with TOS 2.06 its even longer since it does the memory test at the beginning.

 

[protek]

Its normal for a STe to take a while before it hits the desktop. And with TOS 2.06 its even longer since it does the memory test at the beginning.

Check. Thanks! Good to know that my homebrew ROMS work.

EDIT:
Can't remember which language set I burned. The original is Swedish with Scandinavian character support. Wonder if the UK TOS supports the Scandinavian characters. Guess I'm going to find out sooner or later. Depends, when I get the chance to make the cable.

 

[Methanoid]

EDIT:
Can't remember which language set I burned. The original is Swedish with Scandinavian character support. Wonder if the UK TOS supports the Scandinavian characters. Guess I'm going to find out sooner or later. Depends, when I get the chance to make the cable.

If we're allowed to talk about burned Roms then could you do me some 2.06 UK Roms for a fee? I've just bought an STE on eBay..

 

[protek]

EDIT:
Can't remember which language set I burned. The original is Swedish with Scandinavian character support. Wonder if the UK TOS supports the Scandinavian characters. Guess I'm going to find out sooner or later. Depends, when I get the chance to make the cable.

If we're allowed to talk about burned Roms then could you do me some 2.06 UK Roms for a fee? I've just bought an STE on eBay..

The other bay UK has a pair available with BIN price. Can't really beat that price even if I just covered my expenses.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Atari-520...pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item231f567de4

 

[cosmicfrog]

yay this saves me from plugging in my ste \o/

 

[protek]

Made the RGB cable. The STE works perfectly. Will upload some pics tomorrow. Good thing that I have the MicroMys, which supports also ST.

 

[protek]

Here's a few pictures of the STE booting and in operation. Sorry about the bad lighting. I actually have the light on but somehow the camera takes dark pictures. The TOS 2.06 is nice because it tells you how much memory you have. In my case, there's only 1 MB, so I'll probably be looking for a set of four 1 MB 30-pin SIMMs at some point. You can bypass the memory and mass memory checks by pressing enter. The colors on 2.06 are slightly different from the original green in 1.6 and older and you can actually change them. It also seems that I had made a Swedish TOS to get the Scandinavian characters. I formatted one floppy to test it and saved my settings on it.

Seems like I have to finally give in and install a floppy drive into my PC to be able to write disk images.