Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

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rubber_jonnie
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by rubber_jonnie »

No 3d printing required, seems I'd already run off a set of short stand offs and had them stored away, so the floppy got mounted just fine. Wiring harness is now made for the battery box, so I need to test that out too.

I've decided that a new reset switch is in order, as this one is all kinds of wobbly, so that's on the way along with a PS/2 mouse from exxos' store :) If I find a spare PS/2 mouse in the meantime, well it doesn't matter, I'll have a spare.

In the meantime I need to get a Gotek in. It was good to test with a real floppy, since you can observe the behaviour better at bootup, but for flexibility I want the Gotek.

The last thing to sort is the oddest. The diag cart reports 4MB consistently now. It was flip flopping between 2MB and 4MB until I tweaked the MMU socket, now diag cart says 4MB consistently. BUT, the diag cart RAM test does report errors.

Running Sysinfo shows 2MB, with bank 0 seemingly ok, no sign of bank 2. More RAM tests required I think, and I do have lots of spare RAM if repairs are required.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by rubber_jonnie »

One more discovery, it seems like the PSU isn't all it's cracked up to be, as additional load, like a floppy or my CosmosEx seems to cause an inability to boot and weird instabilities.

Hooking up a re-capped STFM PSU seemed resolve this, so I also tested a spare Meanwell, and it works just fine with that, so I'll replace the PSU with that next.

Once the power instabilities are resolved, it's going to be working out why only 2MB out of 4MB is seen by TOS, so I'll run the diag cart memory test, see what's what.

If somebody more familiar with Megas than I am can advise on the memory bank layout for these machines, I'd be grateful of the help, as I'd only want to replace anything that is faulty, not everything.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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DoG
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by DoG »

Bank 0 seems fine then. Have you tested piggyback the ram chips on Bank 1? It might work depending on if the chip(s) that is faulty is not shorted inside. You just fit a ram chip on top with friction so that the legs touch each other. Depending on how many you have you can try piggyback all of them on bank 1. Otherwise just do 1 at the time and turn on the computer in between and test it with diagcart.

What does the diagcart says is faulty?

Bank 0:
U40= bit 0
U41= bit 1
U42= bit 2
U43= bit 3
U44= bit 4
U45= bit 5
U46= bit 6
U47= bit 7
U48= bit 8
U49= bit 9
U50= bit 10
U51= bit 11
U52= bit 12
U53= bit 13
U54= bit 14
U55= bit 15

Bank 1:
U60= bit 0
U61= bit 1
U62= bit 2
U63= bit 3
U64= bit 4
U65= bit 5
U66= bit 6
U67= bit 7
U68= bit 8
U69= bit 9
U70= bit 10
U71= bit 11
U72= bit 12
U73= bit 13
U74= bit 14
U75= bit 15

mega4.jpg
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I think I got this right above. Hopefully someone will correct me otherwise.
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by rubber_jonnie »

Thanks DoG, I'll have a look at this tonight when I get home from work.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by rubber_jonnie »

Ok, Meanwell PSU hooked up and working nicely. Needs a bit of a tweak to get the wires looking nice, but so far it works, so happy:

IMG_20191030_220323.jpg
IMG_20191030_220323.jpg (341.76 KiB) Viewed 3880 times
Ok then,let's have a look at the RAM goings on I say to myself. Nope, PSU suddenly dies when I plug in the floppy, so I trace whats going on back to freyed power connections for the floppy. Ok,that's fixed. Now can we look at the RAM? Yes? Yaay finally.

SYSINFO shows bank 0 is working, so happy days:

IMG_20191030_220932.jpg
IMG_20191030_220932.jpg (273.19 KiB) Viewed 3880 times

Nothing at bank 1 though through TOS, but Diagcart shows 4MB installed, and test run shows the following:

IMG_20191030_215433.jpg
IMG_20191030_215433.jpg (374.4 KiB) Viewed 3880 times

So, based on the info DoG provided, it's U69 that is dodgy.

Next thing I need is some suitable RAM chips, since I have only STFM RAM chips spare, so I'll have to go on the hunt for TC511000P-10 chips so I can try a piggyback test.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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rubber_jonnie
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by rubber_jonnie »

This sort of crap makes me very annoyed :cussing: :cussing: :cussing:

Insanity_or_Insult.JPG
Insanity_or_Insult.JPG (34.24 KiB) Viewed 3876 times
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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PaulJ
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by PaulJ »

rubber_jonnie wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 11:14 pm This sort of crap make me very annoyed :cussing: :cussing: :cussing:
Insanity_or_Insult.JPG
Jon, if you can't find any reasonable let me know and I'll send you a couple.
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by rubber_jonnie »

PaulJ wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 12:17 am
rubber_jonnie wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 11:14 pm This sort of crap make me very annoyed :cussing: :cussing: :cussing:
Insanity_or_Insult.JPG
Jon, if you can't find any reasonable let me know and I'll send you a couple.
Thanks Paul, I made some enquiries last night, hopefully I'll hear back today, so I'll let you know. As always, the level of help to be found on this site is excellent.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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PhilC
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by PhilC »

I might have a couple spare too RJ, if you need them then PM me.
If it ain't broke, test it to Destruction.
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PaulJ
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Re: Looks like I'll be getting a Mega ST4 soon

Post by PaulJ »

rubber_jonnie wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:50 am Thanks Paul, I made some enquiries last night, hopefully I'll hear back today, so I'll let you know. As always, the level of help to be found on this site is excellent.
When I got my first mega it had a bad chip but in the main bank of memory so it wouldn't boot. Luckily the diagcart was able to identify the bad chip via the serial port. I had a hard time finding the chip at a reasonable price. All the single chips were from people attempting to get rich. So I ended up ordering two lots of 8 from different manufactures. Both lots work great so I ended up with some extra's. :D
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