Introduction and a couple of STf questions

[AkaiAtari]

Hi - first post in the group. I'm a musician by trade and recently have been involved with recreating a lot of 80's type music. Long and the short is I've ended up with a bunch of old equipment such as Akai and Emu samplers and some old FM machines in order to get the raw sounds that I can them sample into my Mac.

I cadged an old Atari 1040 STf from a local recording studio which comes with SoundDesign which allows me to talk to these old samplers and transfer files. The machine was supposedly DOA with the finger being pointed at the power supply.

First things first - this machine hasn't been used for many a year and looked like it had been stored in a dustbin along with 20 years worth of sweeping up. I stripped it down completely, even removing all of the keys, and gave it a good clean up. When putting it back together I though I'd see if it would boot up. No joy so I unscrewed the power supply. Thought I'd give it one more try and it booted up fine. However if I tighten down the two screws that go in from the top then it won't start. Relax them off a bit and it starts. Strange one and I was wondering if anyone has an idea of this behaviour.

So when it runs everything functions including the floppy and it runs fairly well. However it is running TOS 1.0 (1985 displayed on the info screen). There are six chips arranged in two banks of three under the power supply. Ideally I would like to upgrade this to 1.04 as there is some Akai specific software that appears to be written for 1.04 and 1.06. Looking online I've found the 6 chip set available from the States for around £25 which seems reasonable. What doesn't seem reasonable is the £25 for postage. There are options in the UK but these are two chip solutions. Are these viable for the STf with the two banks of 3?

Thanks in advance.

 

[galax]

You need the 6 chip set, unless you don't mind a bit of soldering (see 6 chip to 2 chip conversion, or there are ways involving wires for earlier motherboards). I'm surprised no-one is selling these in the UK, perhaps the EPROMs are becoming scarce?

 

Shipping insured from the North America is expensive, and if the uninsured & untracked package is reported missing the eBay seller has to give a full refund (including shipping!) so many aren't willing to risk it. You might be able to buy outside of eBay at your own risk.

Edited January 27, 2016 by galax

[calimero]

Welcome aboard!

 

Take a look here: http://www.exxoshost.co.uk/atari/last/store.htm

 

ask Exxos if he can help you and arrange delivery...

Edited January 27, 2016 by calimero

[ataricrypt]

Argh Calimero beat me to that, yes do see Exxos as he knows tons about STs and a damn fine chap to boot. Helped me a bunch lately!

Welcome aboard from me too

[AkaiAtari]

Thanks guys for the info. I've been looking at Exxos' site so will get hold of him. I've also got a mate who's an electronics engineer and has a few EPROM programmers so that might also be an option. Is TOS 1.04 available to burn your own EPROMS?

[calimero]

check this: http://www.avtandil.narod.ru/tose.html

 

you can burn TOS into eproms but you need to split it and I am not sure how to burn in into six chips