Awesome story, and need some help with a possibly broken shifter.

[leech]

Many moons ago, I had an Atari Mega STe, but then the monitor stopped working. Came to find out that the circuit board inside was cracked. Not sure if it was while it was being moved, or because my older brother is a jerk. Either way it stopped working. I had ended up getting a TT030, because it can be used with a VGA monitor, but unfortunately as everyone knows, the gaming compatibility isn't all that great. So I ended up getting an Atari 1040STf from a friend, along with his SC1224. Pretty sure it had some weird issue with the video where little graphical glitches would appear everywhere. I had taken it apart and found that a capacitor had somehow broken off the board. I always meant to replace it, but never got around to it, and now I have no idea where it was connected to, or what the capacitor was. I think it was in the shifter area.

 

Anyhow, fast forward to today. I found in this glorious forum that a Dell 2001FP monitor should work with a cable to connect up the old STs! So I pulled out the 1040STf (my Mega STe, sadly was left with it's cover off and tucked away and mice did their business on it, I cleaned out most of it, but haven't dared to power it on yet (need to finish cleaning it). I plugged it in, connected it to the Dell 2001FP with my shiny new cable from Best Electronics, and fired it up... and was rewarded with a black screen!

 

NOooo! But wait... it gets better.

 

I pull it apart to see if I can again find where that capacitor had snapped off, and maybe compare it to some motherboard pictures online (couldn't really find any that had the shifter just like mine) and while I was blowing some dust out of the ol' girl, a dead centipede fell out. A CENTIPEDE... I about laughed my fool head off.

 

Anyhow, I put it back together, and hooked it back up, low and behold, I have video! Unfortunately the video is quit horribly off. I've tried playing with the phasing, but haven't had any luck. The true test will be if I can get my Mega STe working on it, but it'd be nice to have a working 1040STf as well (also need to see if I can't get the TT030 to do more than give me a white screen and make the 'tink' noise.)

 

This will give me at least one computer from each family of Atari computers. I have the 800, 600xl, 800xl, XEGS, 130XE, 1040STf, Mega STe, TT030, (and just recently) Falcon030.

 

Attached are some images. (Now that I think about it, I should have taken a picture of the centipede.)

 

P.S. Pictures wouldn't attach, so here are some links.

 

https://thefnords.org/1040stMB.jpg

https://thefnords.org/STlow.jpg

https://thefnords.org/STmed.jpg

https://thefnords.org/SThi.jpg

 

Not sure what is up with ST hi, but it's all sorts of unusable.

Edited December 15, 2015 by leech

[walter_J64bit]

Good luck your ST's, oh one more thing I don't see an Atari 400 in that list or a 1200XL.

[exxosuk]

I would try a RAM test program and make sure your RAM is ok first of all.

[leech]

Ha, yeah well, the Atari 400 was a hideous blemish on an otherwise awesome line of computers. 1200XL, a friend of mine had one, I haven't had a chance to really get one, I'm also missing a 65XE...

 

I can't actually get the TT to boot to a usable desktop. So not sure how I can test the ram? I know the TOS upgrade has one built in, so I'll probably end up getting that.

 

I'm considering giving my Mega STe a nice bath with some isopropyl, anyone see the harm in that?