Falcon first steps... (semi)-old Atarian with (semi)-old Atari

anzac · July 14, 2016

Starting a new topic as appropriate...

and as i have written before:

_{"i thought this would get some answers going.... never had an Atari 8-bit system, though maybe i´ll get one in the future. all my Atari experiences were ST based. from an 520STfm (later upgraded to 1MB), a MegaST that was my uncle´s machine, then finally an STe for me that i personally upgraded to 4MB when i was maybe 12-14 years old...}

_{i don´t post much in forums though i follow the topics as best as i can. life managed to get all my Atari machines from me and for years i have dreamed of replacing my STe (better than go ask my ex-wife is she still keeps it in the shed or thrown it away)....}

_{bigger dreams.... having one day a MegaSTe or a Falcon... the machines i wanted as a teen watching the Atari magic fade and go away.}

_{20 years of work in IT followed and recently in craigslist style site we have in Portugal, i saw a listing for some music equipment including some Atari related. i contacted the person, who was a professional musical technician and he still had the Falcon and was willing to sell it!}

_{better yet, he didn´t ask for the sky! it was actually something i could afford, since it was in the same country but relatively far from me, i had a friend that lives nearby pick it up and he will ship it to me this week....}

_{i confess that i wait eagerly to actually seeing a Falcon, turn it on and see the magic working again..."}

_now...

_{The BeaST has arrived....}

_{It´s a german 4MB/60MB version.}

_{Getting two bombs when starting up. Falcon service guide says:}

_{"BUS ERROR. COMBO IC asserted bus error."}

_{anyone has encountered this before? maybe in the trip some chips got loose? would that old ST trick be of help?}

_{thanks to the others who replied in the previous thread. yes, simple TOS will probably be enough, but i feel like i should try an advanced version of the software the machine is capable of running... just because...}

_{now i CAN get a 14MB upgrade, maybe even a CT60, though i more inclined to keep the Falcon as stock as possible.}

_{Confused if i should get an UltraSATAN or the new CosmosEX from Jookie. would the RTC from the UltraSATAN bypass the need to Exchange the NVRAM on the Falcon? also, don´t know if the CosmosEX has RTC function.}

_{any chance to buy keys to replace the German setup?}

_{Thank you all for any comments.}

Edited July 14, 2016 by anzac

anzac · July 14, 2016

*UPDATE*

Pressing ALTERNATE when booting bypassed the hard drive and it booted to desktop ok.

Changed some video settings, seemed to work, though I got 3 bombs during a screen rez change.

Language was English both on desktop and menus, though after one restart, it had reverted to ST HI REZ, with the icons in German and menus in English.

On the first successful start-up bypassing the hard drive, I had drive A, B and an icon for a disk C

The floppy that came in the drive (there are several more in the box) was read and displayed the contents, though with warnings that the floppy disk might be bad and having to retry and/or eject/insert several times.

Zogging Hell · July 14, 2016

Might be something in the autofolder causing havoc and creating the bombs. Try opening drive C and renaming the 'auto' folder to something like 'autox' so non of the programs in there auto load during boot. If the bombs stop then there is something in there causing a problem. If it is rename the auto folder back to auto and then try deactivating the programs one by one in the auto folder by changing their extnsions from prg to prx. Hopefully this will narrow down the problem.

By the sound of it you might also want to check the NVRAM settings (and probably do the battery fix if it hasn't had it already).

The crash during resolution change might be a rogue desk accessory - early versions of X-Control and some others didn't like the resolution being change after they loaded.

If the floppy was in the drive during shipping, the drives head might have clonked into it at some point. Always best to take them out when the computer isn't in use