Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Upgrade your RAM from ST to Falcon.
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Icky
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Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by Icky »

Have just spent the last two weeks upgrading the Atari TT 2MB ST-Ram board. The 8MB boards are very scarce and so too are the 2MB ones. My TT had the 2MB board and along with the onboard 2MB took the TT to 4MB.
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Example picture of a 2MB board with DIL memory. I forgot to take a picture before removing the chips - hence the fuzzy image as there aren't many on the web.

I had been chatting with Lynxman on the German Atari forum who produces upgrade boards but it involves a lot of desoldering and removal of the DIL memory chips.

Any how many hours later I managed to get all the chips off. I did not need to desolder all the pins only the ones the new board fits into. Thus clipping the legs and leaving them in place made things a little easier.
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Instead of soldering the new board directly onto the original board as it would be a pain if anything was incorrect to remove and sort out. I opted to but in jumper sockets so that I could plug the new board in and remove if necessary.

Below is a pic of the upgraded board in place in the TT.
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Super pleased all went well and now the TT is sporting 10MB of ST-Ram.
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rpineau
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by rpineau »

Nicely done.
I've been hunting for 2MB STRAM card too for my TT, but they are hard to find and/or very expensive.
Does Lynxman has an online shop where one can buy his upgrade board ? (I don't speak German).

Thanks for the pictures :)
Rodolphe
Working ones : MegaSTE (68020) / TT030 / Falcon with AB040 & Eclipse / 1040STF
Need testing : Falcon with CT2
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Icky
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by Icky »

rpineau wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 6:33 pm Nicely done.
I've been hunting for 2MB STRAM card too for my TT, but they are hard to find and/or very expensive.
Does Lynxman has an online shop where one can buy his upgrade board ? (I don't speak German).

Thanks for the pictures :)
Rodolphe
Lynxman has no online shop as with most of us he is doing all this around a day job etc. I just PM'ed him on the german site in English. He says his english is not so good but I thought it was very good. We managed to sort out payment and shipping.

This is the link to his work and you can PM from there.
http://forum.atari-home.de/index.php?to ... #msg216235
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rpineau
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by rpineau »

Thanks for the link, but it sends me to their forum registration page ... I'll figure it out later when I have time
Rodolphe
Working ones : MegaSTE (68020) / TT030 / Falcon with AB040 & Eclipse / 1040STF
Need testing : Falcon with CT2
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by Steve »

That's pretty cool, but you realise there is the Storm TT ram upgrade available? You can use that to put up to 256mb if you wanted, makes ST ram redundant I think. I think the name of the man producing them is called Ingo on the german forums.
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Icky
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by Icky »

Steve wrote: Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:04 am That's pretty cool, but you realise there is the Storm TT ram upgrade available? You can use that to put up to 256mb if you wanted, makes ST ram redundant I think. I think the name of the man producing them is called Ingo on the german forums.
Thanks Steve. I have seen the Storm card but I already have a MegTT card populated with 128MB TT-Ram so purchasing another board for me is not justifyable.

I have not found a very detailed explanation of how the TT uses both RAM apart from on this article. There are two sections in the text on the differences of ST and TT Ram - http://www.sarnau.info/static/files/the ... panion.txt

The main one is the following - "Primarily, the video chip can only display screen data from ST RAM, and the DMA sound chip can only play data stored in ST RAM."

For me it was about expanding the TT as much as I could without modifying it too much.
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by Steve »

Thanks for the info! Maybe I will do this to my 2mb ST RAM card as well :) Once I fix my TT :( Unfortunately the other day my TT stopped turning on, and I have found that the bus logic GAL chips have fried for some reason. My friend in Germany is making me some new GAL chips so hopefully it won't be long till my baby is back in action.
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Icky
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by Icky »

Steve wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:54 pm Thanks for the info! Maybe I will do this to my 2mb ST RAM card as well :) Once I fix my TT :( Unfortunately the other day my TT stopped turning on, and I have found that the bus logic GAL chips have fried for some reason. My friend in Germany is making me some new GAL chips so hopefully it won't be long till my baby is back in action.
Fingers crossed for you. Keeping these things running is an art form and thanks to people like Exxos we are able to improve and prolong their life
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by Steve »

Just an update. I sent my TT to the guys behind the Lightning VME / Thunder / Storm in Germany. They have been very kind and fixed my TT for me :) I will be getting it back soon, and then I will do the 10mb stram upgrade too.
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Re: Atari TT - ST-Ram board upgrade 2MB - 8MB

Post by mrbombermillzy »

tuxie wrote: Mon Jun 04, 2018 3:43 pm Are you realy using the ST-Ram anymore ? My ST-Ram is always empty because it uses all Altram, normaly all applications should run out of the Fastram.
(Just my opininion )
In theory, ST RAM should be very useful for games. If we could urge new game developers to take advantage of the full available ST RAM, we could have an Audio/Video 'pool' of, well, 12Mb I believe on the TT!

Even the 4Mb of the St/e is better than the 1.5/2Mb of the Amiga 'chip RAM'.

However, Im still learning ATM. Someone like Anima or PPera could probably certify this for sure.
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