I want to max out my original 520ST. Help?

[LoTonah]

I have one of the original ones, with the external floppy drive.  I'm think I've located a good multisync LCD for it but it hasn't arrived yet. 

 

I'd like to make this my one and only ST.  I have two others, a 520STfm and a 1040STf... I no longer have room for all this.  I like the smaller one because of the footprint and the fact that its the original model.

 

I've tried, briefly, to figure out what my options are, but that was a few years ago and I'm sure things have changed.

 

So, what are the recommended upgrades?  It has TOS in ROM, but I'd like to get a better version.  Or maybe a switcher board for more than one TOS version.  As much RAM as possible.  USB port?  SD card reader?  PS/2 mouse adapter?  I'd also like to put a high density floppy drive in the external drive if possible... would that just need a 1.44Mb mechanism and a floppy controller chip upgrade?  Is there a blitter available?  Is the BEST Electronics keyboard upgrade any good?  My original STfm, before it died 20 years ago, had a 4096 color mod board and 4Mb of RAM in it.  Is there something like that?

 

My other option is stuffing a raspberry pi in it, but that seems... dirty, somehow.  But also compelling.

 

Any help (and links!) would be awesome.  Thanks!

 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I don't see why you call it 'original' model - all later models are original Atari too ?  I would call it rather beginner model, and as such it has some flaws compared to later ones. Like TOS version. Lack of support for 2 chip TOS. Less space for RAM expansion (and others) - yeah, smaller footprint can be not good for everything. And no space for blitter - later models have it.

The thing is that I had 520 ST back in time. I did many upgrades, but blitter was not one of them - not impossible, but really hard. RAM expansion is possible up to 4 MB, but will need lot of soldering, unless you find some special board what fits in - small chances, really.

HD floppy - I made such upgrade around 1990 - original FDC worked at double clock rate (luck), needed some extra circuit, and that was useful then. Now, not really in my opinion. Generally, floppies are now real PITA, just too unreliable. People goes rather on HW floppy emulators like Gotek.

By me, most useful, and really easy upgrade is SD card 'reader' - we call it adapter. Most popular is UltraSatan - has two SD card slots, RTC, and is well supported. It's basically hard disk for TOS. No need to open computer to use it. SD cards are cheap now, and you can place all Atari SW on single card. Will need TOS upgrade for really good work - and yes, TOS switch is good idea too. How it looks in simplest case can see here:  http://atari.8bitchip.info/tosimav.html

At middle of page - using double capacity EPROMs, which fit directly in sockets.

PS/2 or USB mouse adapter is another easy 'upgrade' , and should be easy to find.  There is NetUsBee adapter for cartridge port, what has LAN, USB port. But don't expect that mouse via it will work in everything - in big part of games will not. Mass storage via it is very slow and not much compatible.

[Colleton]

You can install TOS 1.04 with no problems.  Exxos makes a 4MB MMU type ram upgrade that works very well.  Between these two mods, you'll be able to connect a hard drive and run pretty much any software.

 

Here's my 520ST with both of the above mentioned mods...

 

 

[+slx]

Once you have all that RAM in, you probably want to use something sexier than TOS 1.04. I never looked back after having tried first NeoDesk and later MagiC.


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