UNmodifying an Atari ST so it runs as Jack Tramiel intended

Here I take an Atari 1040 STF, clean it up, get it running and UNmodify it so it can run Atari ST software again.
#vintagecomputing
#retrocomputing
#atari
#atarist

[@user-dt7er7gw3t]

I was a hardware engineer for CCC and I worked on the project that used this 1040ST model. The computer was modified to use the CCC Graphics Server as a shared hard disk and concentrator that deployed classroom curriculum from a shared mini computer. CCC bought and deployed more 1040ST computers than anyone else. These systems lived a hard life in school labs.

[@powerofvintage9442]

That's sure the truth about this computer. It had lived a hard life for a while.

[@RickTheGeek]

That’s the part I want to see is the host machine this was connected to

[@powerofvintage9442]

@@RickTheGeekas would I!

[@user-dt7er7gw3t]

@@RickTheGeek Sadly, I do not have a picture of the Graphics Server that had a shared SCSI bus connection to the Atari 1040ST ports.

[@user-dt7er7gw3t]

The CCC ROM chip tries to boot from the SCSI port. The SCSI port would be connected to an interface module that connected on a shared bus with up to 7 other 1040ST computers. At one end of that bus was my MCI board that acted like a hard disk. The hard disk was shared by all of the 1040STs in the group.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Thank you for the detailed information here. I need to put the eprom back in and do a bit more testing then. I'll have to try with my SH204 as well as do a comparison of the ROM dump contents.

[@blackterminal]

I have a few ST units. Only one had ram errors. Ones case just fell apart. Several power supplies failed. Some had drive issues. They are reliable. My one from my childhood I treasure the most. I like just seeing it. Reminds me of happy times. Thanks for your video.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Thank you!

[@jasonk9779]

Ugh, the OS was SO terrible though. So bad. :(

[@blackterminal]

@@jasonk9779 I don't agree. It was simple and did everything I needed it also didn't need to be loaded from a disk.

[@cathrynm]

Seems like all the Atari ST's lived because they didn't have those Varta batteries exploding inside of them. Apples and Amigas, I'm scared unless I see a photo of the motherboard.

[@ShadowDrakken]

Bonus info, CCC is now Pearson, the company that does the testing centers all over the US for CompTIA, Cisco, and others

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Ah, yes, the company that says “your cat cannot be in the room during the test” as Tabby’s are renowned for their prowess in all things Splunk testing.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

Do not clean those pads on keyboard with IPA, always use demineralized water and then dry with cloth. IPA is attacking and dissolving the carbon material of the pads.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Thanks for the hint! I've always just used a light wipe of IPA. Maybe that's why the keyboard is having issues? (I think it's something else though because it wasn't working before I cleaned the contacts either).

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@powerofvintage9442 no, I dont think this is the issue here, the process is not that fast. It may be broken traces, sometimes the contacts on keyboard connector get dislodged/damaged by removing and re-attaching the keyboard from mainboard. Never saw dead components on keyboard itself, also if you have diagnostic cartridge use it, it will check the ACIA on the mainboard. Also those solder joints should be checked since that spot on keyboard PCB is stressed when replacing the mouse/joysticks, I know you looked at them, but....

[@blackterminal]

I didn't know about that.

[@blackterminal]

​@@powerofvintage9442myself I used iPa many times.

[@powerofvintage9442]

Maybe I cut that part of the video, but I did inspect the solder joints under magnification, and they looked dead perfect. So I decided to not reflow them.

[@jrherita]

This is a really interesting video - and neat on the modified ROM. I’m retiring soon and will definitely have to look into recapping my ST PSUs.. (have a 520STm, 1040STfm, and a Mega STe). Love these videos - thanks for putting these together!

[@powerofvintage9442]

Thank you! The Meanwell PSU replacement is another option as well if you don't want to recap.

[@blackterminal]

​@powerofvintage9442 There are cheaper supplies that should work too. Meanwell is a little expensive.

[@erikkarsies4851]

There were some problems with the 'first gen Atari ST'. So Atari probably upped the quality after that. The were exported to the former Soviet Union because they were so sturdy and had a large operating temperature range.

[@Retroguyuk75]

Brilliant work here my friend. I recently picked up a cheap STE and thought for a moment I'd been seen off as it had no blitter chip in it. Then I read "For the first time" later STE's had the blitter built into the MCU nice :). I've bought an Ultra Satan for mine and put a gotek in it as well. I didn't mind upgrading this one as I have an STFM as well that is stock with disk drive. The FM also has TOS 1.02 for better compatibility. I.E I like to play arkanoid etc on it :)

[@powerofvintage9442]

Thank you!!

[@paulstubbs7678]

I'm thinking the mods were to stop kids attending courses from popping in games disks and kind of skipping what they were there for.

[@Creamen]

Thanks for saving this baby

[@powerofvintage9442]

Thank you!

[@MyManicmonday]

can't wait to see part 2 =)

[@powerofvintage9442]

I need to finish my Marchintosh (Atari Macintosh emulation) video and then I'll get this keyboard video

[@timediavideo]

I envy you sir! Hahah! I just try to restore a 1040ST. Same model, same board revision and exactly the same floppy mechanism. In my case I had to recap the PSU, the GLUE chip was gone and the floppy drive refuses to work in exactly the same way yours did. When I saw that, I was hyped to see how you will fix it. And then it just started working after some IPA cleaning! Wow! You are so lucky. I got my IPA+cottos swabs out again right away, but was not so lucky. Still "not responding".

[@powerofvintage9442]

Believe me, I know I’m lucky here. Still need to get the keyboard working though.

[@alexhajnal107]

Would be interesting to see what comes up when you select *Desktop* → *Info*

[@ecdhe]

Cool video. Now, did you repair this ST for a specific reason or just for fun? Seems like you have enough STs to begin with.

[@powerofvintage9442]

I saw it on eBay for a very low price, probably because of the sticker on the bottom. I enjoy troubleshooting and fixing them and then reselling them for about my cost plus the eBay fee.

[@KLund1100]

Very good video for basic ST repair. You hit all the major points. Your luck on FD's are 180' from mine. Of the 30+ I've fixed over the years, I can count on 1 hand the number of working FD's. I get bad gooey belts, leaking cap PCB damage, frozen motors, bent metal, misalignment of heads, just dead for no apparent reason, on and on. I wish you clicked on DESK before you removed the eprom TOS chip. It would interesting to see what it might have said. You skipped over what you did to fix the base stand-off screw holes, etc. That curved heatshrink tool is great! Never seen that before. Keep the videos going !!

[@powerofvintage9442]

Good idea. I’ll put the eprom back in and see. I seemed to have lost some content. To fix the screw holes I used the plastic bits it had available and super glue and baking powder. I had most pieces for each stand.

[@dinkc64]

I love the old super glue and baking soda trick! Cheers

[@julianbrown1331]

Going to hazard a guess and say that the ROM changes which track the file table is written to (amongst all the other things it does) so that only discs formatted using that ROM can actually see any files at all. Wouldn't be too difficult to break that kind of protection using modern tools

[@gondorianslayer4250]

glad to see atari computers are easy to fix compared to most systems in the 90s and modern computers, lol. atari took notes. i wonder hwo far can you upgrade with them all.

[@TSteffi]

The modification was probably just a different ROM to make it use a different disk format. Maybe it would work with Amiga or Mac floppies.

[@markusfritze]

I would be interested to look into the ROM to find out what is going on. Because only one ROM was custom, it means no actual code could have been modified, because 68k opcodes are always 16 bit, so you need 2 ROMs to modify code in a meaningful way. My guess: the ROM is 99.9% original and a single byte or so was patched for the boot sector to not be detected..

[@aaronbrandenburg2441]

​@@markusfritzeis Joe start to make sense after reading this

[@MaggieKeizai]

Yeah, I always miss one or two as well. Even trying to be methodical.

[@ShadowDrakken]

How do you go about finding homes for these old machines? I have an old TRS-80 Model 2 in decent condition that I've been trying to rehome but no one seems really interested.

[@powerofvintage9442]

I primarily sell on eBay for my cost plus parts and to cover the ebay fee. I do try to provide a hard drive or gotek setup as well to help new collectors get up and running quicker. I've also sold to a few folks I've connected with in the past in the retro community.

[@stphinkle]

I suspect that the Computer Curriculum Corporation ROM does a few things. My guess is that it allows only software authorized by CCC on it. I also suspect that it allows booting from a network drive of some kind, perhaps some kind of network file server system or early drive sharing device. Perhaps it even adds server file storage for students saving files or network print capabilities. This type of setup would be useful in school computer labs, some types of corporate offices, and other applications where they want to control the software people use to authorized applications. Early servers and drive sharing systems were common but primitive in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. This type of chip would be also be a good software license enforcement mechanism as authorized versions would be the site license and server licensed versions sold to educational and corporate environments. This way they could more for school versions than home versions because they would not run on each others platform.

[@powerofvintage9442]

the CCC engineer that commented here confirmed your thoughts on booting and running software from a network drive.

[@kreuner11]

I'm more curious to see how the system operated while modified

[@powerofvintage9442]

It looks like a hardware engineer from CCC commented here as well. Sounds like the rom modifies the boot search to the ASCI port to connect to a software server. Kind of cool!

[@perinoid]

Was there only one chip modified? It's a bit strange, that in a machine, where two chips are needed to provide a full 16-bit address space, only one chip was replaced... Did you try to read this ROM and compare it with an original one? I guess, the difference was just a few bytes in an area of system vectors. But it's just my guess.

[@powerofvintage9442]

I know. I check all the ROM chips and only the one was modified. I did dump the contents but haven’t compared versus the original. I agree though that I also think it was minimal changes, just enough to lock down the system to their own educational software.

[@slaapliedje]

​​@powerofvintage9442 I wonder if the custom ROM chip only disabled the boot from floppy? Some game disks won't show their contents due to custom formatting (not sure if Time Bandits is one that does, but pretty sure Dungeon Master does this (though it has been 30+ years...) My other thought was... I wonder if they originally had a hard drive with it for the software, and if the software itself is on the archive.

[@user-pf3ye6yi9n]

The text at 19:30 suggests these machines replaced dumb terminals supplied with a minicomputer system, could that ROM be some sort of terminal software? It may just be badly worded and it does seem strange but when you look at the hardware of terminals of the time they are basically computers so when mass market home computers came along they would be cheaper than a terminal even if they were not being used to their full potential.

[@slaapliedje]

@user-pf3ye6yi9n I would think if that were the case, it would be on cart (the software) and just a few bits in the rom were swapped. If he would upload the rom dump somewhere, people could dig in and verify.

[@user-pf3ye6yi9n]

@@slaapliedje I see someone who worked for CCC has now commented. I was kind of on the right track in that a minicomputer was involved.

[@tonibianchetti]

Spoiler: no mention of Jack Tramiel except in the title

[@powerofvintage9442]

hah! dead on!

[@bigd5090]

It's strange but other than Blue War III I have no nostalgia left for this machine, my first home computer. The Amiga and its legacy has completely eclipsed the 1040 ST for me! I think not having access to those 1MB specific Team17 games and the awful sound on the ST version of Lemmings 2 was the last straw! That the music would actually cut out for the lemming cries/oks/yippees to be played was unforgivable! The Amiga also had a lovely intro, as did The Settlers (no ST version) etc etc.....Amiga forever!

[@slaapliedje]

I kind of think the ST was done raw by a lot of developers. Psygnosis, in particular, did really crappy ports. I'm pretty sure they gimped them on purpose because they loved the Amiga and only did the ST ports due to contracts or something.

[@jrherita]

It’s funny - I also grew up with the ST, and never had an Amiga until like 2012. For a long time I had no real interest in the ST for the same reasons as you.. but there are still quite a few gems (pun) on the ST that the Amiga doesn’t even have - Sundog, Oids, and a really nice ‘new’ game called Cosmos Chronicles. I added an ISA VGA card (via adapter) to my Mega STe and that turns it into a pretty good machine for connecting to (modern) BBSes.

[@powerofvintage9442]

I think for me the Atari ST holds the most nostalgia because it was my first and only computer before moving on to a Pentium in the 1990's. I have a little nostalgia for the pentium, but much more for the uniqueness of the Atari. I'm sure that if I'd gone the Amiga route, I'd probably feel that same way you do.

[@slaapliedje]

@jrherita I need to play Cosmos Chronicles still, did the English version finally release? I basically went from an 800xl, which I was a curious kid and broke our 1050 by looking at the Happy chip and placing it back in the socket wrong (just today, I inserted my replacement.. about 35 years later...), then we were computerless for a few years until we got one of the earlier Mega STEs. Which, I finally was able to repair the monitor for the other day, and now need to put the replacement motherboard into the old case! I also have a VME board to put into it. The funny thing is, the Atari STs overall seem like they are made with sturdier stuff than the Amigas. Though when you compare 8bits, the Atari 8bit line is way sturdier than the C64, which seems to have chips that just go bad when you look at it funny. I remember my friend's, he had to hook up some wire to ground it correctly so it wouldn't fry things or something. (If I recall, it was something with the joystick port? Been way too long.) I think the ST has always been better than the Amiga on the side of "just getting things done." Unless you were into doing animations, or graphic design (both possible, but the applications seem to have gotten a lot lore love on the Amiga) being productive on the ST seemed easier. Some of that is even due to being single tasking. Ha, to think how useful single-tasking operating systems are these days for people with ADHD...

[@genblob]

@@slaapliedje I think most of the psygnosis games on the ST are fantastic. Leander, Ork, Lemmings, Anarchy, Blood Money, and Menace are games I load up frequently. Shadow of the beast is the only psygnosis game that comes to mind that does a great disservice to the ST