Need some diagnostic theories for a TT030.

leech · December 15, 2015

Finally got some time to attempt to resurrect my Ataris. First up, the TT030. At first I plugged it in and only got a black screen, but then noticed the reset switch had broken and was pushed in, after pulling that out it gives me the white screen (TOS 3.05 doesn't have the memory test that 2.06/3.06 has) but it sits there at that white screen and does nothing. When pressing the keyboard, it gives the 'tink' sound out of it's speaker, but it seems like it's still in a sort of stuck reset mode, because it doesn't tink every time I hit the space bar.

I did get a new reset switch to replace it, so will probably be doing that tonight. But let's get onto the questions....

1) What is the difference between a TOS 3.06 UK and US? I've seen someone had the UK roms for sale, but haven't bought them due to not knowing the difference there.

2) I do have a TT Fast RAM card, CA401058 with 4 SIMMs in it, looks like it's configured for 1mb SIMMs, so probably only 4mb of ram, I'll worry about upgrading that later.

3) I've seen a few mods upgrading the ST-RAM in the system, mine are all socketed so I'm not sure if I could just pop the chips out and replace them with bigger chips? I did see that it tops out at 10mb of ram though.

4) Has anyone ever thought to recreate a VME graphics card and market it? They were way too expensive to get a hold of back in the day and are still rare to find now (for either my Mega STe resurrection or the TT030)

Thanks for any suggestions/help with the white screen issue. I do have an old hard drive connected to it, but have no clue if it still works. It grunts and hums if that's any indication

Someone elsewhere had suggested that it could be the ram needs to be cleaned up. Since the ST ram are socketed on the motherboard and the TTram card is just a bit dusty, not sure where I could clean much. But I'll dust it off and see if that helps (after all, in another post I shook a 1040STf a bit, a dead centipede fell out, and now at least TOS comes up!)

leech · December 19, 2015

Woo hoo, replaced the reset switch in the ol' TT030, and now it boots up just fine to the desktop. Even the ancient 120mb scsi drive I had attached to it is working. How to trick it into using TT High resolution, I've never seen it work.

guus.assmann · December 19, 2015

Just connect the correct monitor.

The TTM 195 would do nice, if you can find one that still works.

Roumor hasit there's a concerter available. But that's quite expensive.

No chance of connecting any TFT, don't bother to try.

leech · December 21, 2015

I have the Compaq P110 21" CRT that I connect to it. It supports up to 1600x1200@75hz if I recall. I think at one point I'd found some old 19" black and white monitor (at the time it was super huge, since most monitors back then maxed out at 14") but I don't think it quite worked, and we ended up tossing it. TT high is 1280x960 (not sure refresh) but probably needs some trickery like the ST does to get a VGA monitor to switch between monochrome and color (I have one of Best Electronic's cables now for the other ST's, but since the TT doesn't have the normal ST monitor out, I can't use the cable there. That of course brings up the question of, why didn't the Mega STe also use VGA output? Crazy Atari was still trying to sell their own monitors or what?)