wildoliver

I think it was a very good decision that Atari didn't go with the 5 1/4" floppy system. It was dated, low capacity, fragile but far worse it was big, think about the practicalities of trying to fit that big drive in to the ST case, it would have meant either a bigger case which would have made a bulky ugly machine, or external drive which would have made a messy ugly system. The St showed such success due to it's neatness of packaging. I like the quirkiness of the larger disk system but it's archaic, it's a novelty now nothing more. Even at the ST launch time it was dated and people with foresight could see it's days were numbered. And they were right.

Things like this do annoy me. You don't own an item till a deal is agreed and money has been paid, had the OP paid the seller and then he came back and said "sorry I've sold it to someone else" then fair enough, but all he did was bid a low offer and the seller sold it elsewhere, what a total and utter waste of bandwidth coming on here and complaining. I sell lots of bits over various forums and get lots and lots of time wasters, some of them agree to buy an item then disappear off the face of the planet, and others bid you in the nuts and expect you to jump at the offer! For those who struggle in this area here is a little guide on how to buy something. See it advertised. Contact the seller and negotiate a deal. Pay for the item. It's only at this point you have any right as a buyer to moan if the seller backs out of it. Grow up.

I have a pair of STs for sale. Both nice machines. First up STfm 520. Very very clean condition, I've never seen a case in this condition it has not got a trace of yellowing, totally and utterley grey. Comes with box (discovery pack) and polys. I will also throw in a motherboard with a 1024 memory on board up to you if you choose to upgrade the machine or keep it original. Will come with a mouse and a pair of joysticks. Fully tested and working (been using the machine myself). £40 postage circa £15. STE, I'll have to check the tos and memory status but will be a late model with at least 1 meg of memory. Will come with a mouse and 2 joysticks. Fully tested and working and in good condition. £40 postage circa £15. Now these items are first come first served, whoever posts up "I'll have x machine" gets it. Payment by paypal (as gift) or cheque/bank transfer/registered money in envelope. I do have a mono Atari monitor (SM144 from memory) the first person to say I'll have one has the choice of if they want it (free) but it may increase postage slightly. I've actually been using it on the FM and it makes a nice package. Collection absolutely welcome from YO25 8SP in East Yorks England, due to the weight of the items I'd prefer not to post abroad it would cost much too much (circa £30 to Europe probably a lot more to the US) and just wouldn't be worth it.

Yes that berk bid on an item of mine on ebay then cancelled his bid just before the end of the auction meaning someone won them for peanuts. He's now banned from bidding on my items!!

No probs hope you enjoy it as much as I'm enjoying Plutos!

The time has come to appraise the many machines that have collected on my journey to Atari heaven (a nice 1040 STfm and STE). Firstly I am in the UK, I'm happy to post worldwide but obviously at your own risk and cost. Also bear in mind we are crippled by a 2kg limit on parcels abroad by Royal Mail or 4kg of printed paper (which none of this lot will pass for) failing that it's courier and expensive. I've just done a few bench tests and I have circa 8 working machines, ranging from a Tos 1.0 1040 STFM up to Tos 1.98 STEs. In among this lot are 2 fms with memory expansion boards and a lot of early disk drives with the wide button eject and seperate drive board. That's the good bit. The bad bit is a fair few of the machines are lacking nice cases (either broken or yellowed to hell) and original working disk drives are scarce (unless people want a modded PC drive fitting). I reckon there is potential to make maybe one or 2 perfect machines up with original drives and the rest in poor cases with PC drives or break for bits. It would be a real shame to break these for bits as they are all nice working machines (just run a diagnostic on them all to get the specs, no issues whatsoever bar one STE which has a dodgy RF modulator so I'll either break it or repair it.) I have very few RF cables I can spare but I do have plenty of: Kettle leads. Mice. Keyboards. Motherboards. 2 STFM memory upgrades. Scruffy cases (will be keeping the mint ones for now till I have some full machines to sell). Power supplies. Early ST Disk drive external boards. A load of duff drives, some just needing belts (I believe). I'm open to offers on these. Also open to offers on complete machines, I suspect I can do a pair of STEs and a pair of FMs, maybe more. I'd sell a machine fully tested, mouse, rf cable, kettle lead, joystick or 2 and a few games. I should have some bits heading on to ebay this weekend so if your interested before then let me know! Olly

Rodland is found and packed up ready to go. I'll bob it in the post to your return address next week. Oliver

Many many thanks you are a legend! It's arrived and I foresee a broken joystick or 10! I used to have super stario land years ago, it never really grabbed me to be honest but wasn't a bad clone, don't have it now I don't think, I may have parasol stars and I'm sure I've got rodland. I'll have a ferret on my next free day. Olly

I forget what the output is from the monitor port but from memory it's an rgb feed, in theory if you connect all the pins together it should provide a mono feed. Wait for someone to confirm it before trying it though!

Rather horrifyingly I've realised that my estimate was a little low. I have in the region of 150-200 cover disks and a hell of a lot of other discs, I thin there will be an ebaying session this weekend!

Honestly, I'm not looking for anything right now, but I'd like to see pics of a collection like that! Please post! At least I can dream of a nice collection, then. I'll try to get a pic up, to be honest it isn't a nice collection it's just a mess! On the positive side I've got loads of disk boxes with it all (remember those!) so I can sort out the chaff and send it on it's way in nice bundles with the machines as and when I sell them!

I suspect someone will answer this better than I soon but. Why do you want to run mono? If it's because you think you have to then provided the TV has a coax port which it will then just tune the tv in the st and enjoy giant screen st loveliness! If however you need to run hi res for a certain program then I suppose you can use a hi res emulator, I've found a couple in among my mountain of discs, or I'm not sure but a scart socket running off the monitor port may possibly run at high res? Not sure.

As part of my rebuilding on my collection I have gone a bit mad on ebay. I have conservatively estimated my disc collection to be circa a thousand, that's not that bad in terms of a collector but when you consider I only want circa 5 games to play on the machines it's a little excessive! I'm going to be sticking up my surplus stuff on here and ebay soon, as I now have my 2 machines, monitors and joysticks. What I do have however that I'd like to go to collectors on here who have helped me out recently (plutos and llamatron for instance) is a load of ST cover discs, I reckon I have circa 100 of these, including some very early ones from 1989. I'm not going to catalogue them as I haven't got time but if anyone needs any specific discs then just drop a note on this thread and first come first served. Not doing this for profit, doing it to put something back in to the site, so say 60p a disc including post. The rest of the discs range from proper games, copies, shareware and a huge amount of applications, allsorts from first word plus through the education software etc. I've put this message in here as opposed to market place as it's only of interest to ST people and I'm not trying to make any money, I also don't want to keep bumping it up as once interest has died down I'll just chuck it all on to ebay. Oliver

ooo yes please!!! I hope your in the UK, either way though how much do you want for it? I´m in Finland,but i can send you a copy for free. Your a legend! Same address as above please, same deal too, is there anything your hunting? I may have it!

Just Plutos really! Noticed you have a speccy, I got a load of disks today delivered in a spectrum box believe it or not!! Sadly the box is in really good condition but the idiot has taped it!! If it's any use to you I'm sure I can get it over to you.