flashjazzcat Posted June 21, 2009 Share Posted June 21, 2009 (edited) Would there be any hardship associated with booting TOS 2.06 from a hard disk device such as SatanDisk, rather than upgrading the ROMs? I ask because 2.06 is rather attractive, but the only ROM set I can find is a bit on the expensive side... I should add that I don't have a HDD for the ST yet. Edited June 21, 2009 by flashjazzcat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonsunnyboy Posted June 21, 2009 Share Posted June 21, 2009 It is certainly possible, however it will chop away over 300K of your RAM so if you only have 1MB or less, it is not a good idea. If your machine has 4MB, it surely is an option and possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted June 21, 2009 Author Share Posted June 21, 2009 It is certainly possible, however it will chop away over 300K of your RAM so if you only have 1MB or less, it is not a good idea. If your machine has 4MB, it surely is an option and possible. I hope to fit 4MB eventually, so I won't be short of RAM. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 It is certainly possible, however it will chop away over 300K of your RAM so if you only have 1MB or less, it is not a good idea. If your machine has 4MB, it surely is an option and possible. I hope to fit 4MB eventually, so I won't be short of RAM. Thanks! If your machine is an STE, the just get hold of 4 30-pin 1mb simms and plug them in. It's that simple Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted June 24, 2009 Author Share Posted June 24, 2009 If your machine is an STE, the just get hold of 4 30-pin 1mb simms and plug them in. It's that simple Yes, I know! I already did a 1MB upgrade on an STFM with the 200+ solder joins that entailed... looking forward to dropping those simms into the STE. Getting hold of them isn't that easy, though (if you want to avoid hefty postage costs). I managed to order 3x1MB simms on ebay for 5 GBP including shipping but I'll need one more (matching) stick to make 4MB. The machine has 4x256K at the moment so I assume I could run 2x1MB with 2x256K for 2.5MB in the meantime...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimo Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 you can certainly put 2x1meg sims in there, not sure about the extra 1/4 though. IIRC there were lots of compatibility issues with 2 1/4 meg STs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 you can certainly put 2x1meg sims in there, not sure about the extra 1/4 though. IIRC there were lots of compatibility issues with 2 1/4 meg STs Well the idea is that the code that detects the memory installed at boot time only looks for 512kb, 1mb, 2mb and 4mb. It never occured to anyone at Atari that someone could isntall 2.5mb. This is fixable though with a small program that sits on the AUTO folder and puts the correct value to the MMU. On another note, I really think that 2mb are quite enough for a normal ST! (so far I never needed 4 - it seems an astronomical amount of bytes to me ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jens Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 I once had a 520 ST (not 'e') with TOS 1.04 and 2.5 megs of ram. Ran very well, even without any programs in teh auto-folder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 I once had a 520 ST (not 'e') with TOS 1.04 and 2.5 megs of ram.Ran very well, even without any programs in teh auto-folder. Well, then you didn't run any programs that needed more than 2.5megs Or games that rely on the MMU detection to get ramtop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jens Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 TOS itself said it had 2.5 megs installed, so where should've been a problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ggn Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 TOS itself said it had 2.5 megs installed, so where should've been a problem? Like I said, some system variables are initialised wrong, so programs trusting those can easily crash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted June 26, 2009 Author Share Posted June 26, 2009 Well, the 3x1MB SIMMs arrived and 2.5MB seems to boot up and run fine but I haven't run any memory tests yet. I imagine 2 or 2.5MB is plenty, but it's a shame to have a spare 1MB lying around. I'm keeping my eye open for another one of these to bring it up to 4MB: I'd have spare 256MB sticks to swap if anyone wants some. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jens Posted June 26, 2009 Share Posted June 26, 2009 Like I said, some system variables are initialised wrong, so programs trusting those can easily crash I just found out it depends on the mmu which is used. IMP mmu's don't allow different sized ram banks, others allow them. And I certainly know that there are programs which have problems with ram sizes in Atari machines. Some tell me there's not enough ram if I use more than one meg, but they're happy with one or just half a meg. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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