New Falcon a lemon?

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Gyrussfanx
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Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2020 1:15 pm

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by Gyrussfanx »

For me it was thinking that I could swap in a gotek at some point at worst but I have a netusbee for my STF and was just gonna plug it in once I had the drivers loaded into the CF card. This wasn't a red flag as floppy problems seem to be the norm (from my very limited perspective). The video got my attention but I thought that might be a bad connection or a bad cap at worst. I did write to the seller a couple of times and he claims that all video modes worked for him on an old Dell monitor. So I'm at a loss here as to how bad it really was. Bad purchase, yup.
troed
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Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by troed »

The problems can surely be fixed, it's a question of getting it in the hands of either someone who can fault find it, or if you can learn as you go yourself.

/Troed
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alexh
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Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by alexh »

I don't know if this will help diagnostically, but the Falcon IDE HDD interface and the FDD interface in someway share logic.

My Falcon arrived (10 years ago) with an original Conner 2.5" IDE drive and an external SCSI drive. The floppy drive didn't work and the internal HDD didn't work. But the external SCSI drive worked fine... I used it like that for a while using a PCI SCSI card on my PC to transfer files. But eventually I removed the old internal IDE drive to swap in a CF/SD adapter and removing it made the FDD work fine, put the old HDD back in and the FDD stopped working. So something in the Falcon design is shared between the IDE HDD interface and the FDD.

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=18840

If you look closely it someone comments that the ACSI/SCSI ethernet driver under STiNG affects FDD which is something else to look for

http://www.anodynesoftware.com/ethernet/main.html
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Steve
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Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by Steve »

Gyrussfanx wrote: Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:23 pm For me it was thinking that I could swap in a gotek at some point at worst but I have a netusbee for my STF and was just gonna plug it in once I had the drivers loaded into the CF card. This wasn't a red flag as floppy problems seem to be the norm (from my very limited perspective). The video got my attention but I thought that might be a bad connection or a bad cap at worst. I did write to the seller a couple of times and he claims that all video modes worked for him on an old Dell monitor. So I'm at a loss here as to how bad it really was. Bad purchase, yup.
Gyrussfanx, the thing that makes this a red flag is that not only did the previous owner try different drives, he went to the effort of removing/socketing/replacing the chip that controls the floppy drive without success. This could be a rather deep rabbit hole to diagnose.
Atarian Computing
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Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by Atarian Computing »

As has been said, everything can be fixed.

I wouldn't be surprised that the problem is just a bad solder joint in the floppy connector on the motherboard. Wouldn't be the first time I've encountered it. Same with IDE. I had major problems on one machine and reflowing the IDE connector solved it 100%.
Gyrussfanx
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Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2020 1:15 pm

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by Gyrussfanx »

Thanks alex, steve, troed and atarian. I'm gonna send it off to steve soon to be fixed.
Plagued
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Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by Plagued »

This does sound like getting it looked at by someone who can test things properly is the way to go. you may also want to consider making sure everything that could be done to prolong its life has been. While it's another expense, there's no point in risking damaging your investment further if something like a PSU recap hasn't been done. and you can get the NVRAM sorted.
Regarding accessing the CF card with no floppy, you can pull the card and use a windows tool like "Drive Image" (I've used v1.35 on my falcon) with the card in a CF card reader to place files onto the CF card ....assuming it's got normal TOS partitions and not Mint ones (which due to the number of drive letters you've got, I'd be sure that at least some of them are standard and <1GB) Its upload function is very basic (single file) so if it's multiple files I've used it to dump a zip file on and then uncompressed it on the Atari, but it's an easy way to get some diagnostic tools on with a dead floppy, or install something big like Mint.
And finally just to prove that some of the components are indeed a bit unorthodox here's the same caps on my rf modulator.
rf_caps.jpg
rf_caps.jpg (150.7 KiB) Viewed 3796 times
Gyrussfanx
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2020 1:15 pm

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by Gyrussfanx »

Thanks Plagued. A friend is shipping a CF card to see if we can get some info. I am also going to have it looked at. And thank you for the image of the RF mod, it's a strange setup that Atari put there but as someone recently explained it to me, the Falcon suffered from being rushed then cancelled pretty quickly so I shouldn't be surprised that Atari actually did this and not one of the previous owners trying to solve the video issues. I had to ask though. :)

Also, thanks for the advice on DriveImage. I'm going to have to remember that one because without the floppy working if somehow this new cf has a problem I will be back in the same boat!
KLund1
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Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by KLund1 »

Regarding the lack of a method to get software into this ailing bird is that everyone is forgetting the IDE interface has 2, yes two, channels !!
All that is needed is a regular 2 drive IDE ribbon cable, and an ide to SD adapter, a smaller sized Sd card (<2gb), and HDDiver. (ICD or PPxxx can work too but a bit more effort is needed)
This is what I have in my falcon. The Sd card can be formatted with hddriver for a single windows compatible partition. (Windows only sees one partition on removable media) Then you can easily put the Sd card into a modern PC, copy files from the internet to the Sd card. Then put the Sd card back into the falcon, and copy files from the sd to the CF card root or auto folders. Then he can backup/change/update the VMram info, and also run more advanced diagnostics programs. If he already has hddriver as he says above, the total cost of this might be $15 usd.
He might want to try this before shipping to UK from US. Those international shipping guys are not too kind to our vintage machines.
I looked on the original ebay listing pictures, and yes the underside shows GER 220-240v 50hz, so it is a German machine and PAL. It must have made its way to the US and had it's PSU and keyboard changed for US usage.
Also reading the listing description, the guy does say there a definitely issues with this computer. It looks like he upgrade and tried to fix or at least identify what might be wrong and explain the problems best he could. I take issue with the word lemon in this thread title. I have seen and purchased Atari 'lemons' with had glowing descriptions of how well it works then get a bug infested, hair ball filled, containing some unidentifiable slimy residue machines that were wiped down on the outside to 'looked good'.
Oh, those pics above of the underside of the keyboard keys looks legitimate to me. Definitely falcon keys. Also I do not see any pics of the plastic under the keys. If it is not white or off-white, it is a Falcon unit. Wonder why the long talk about that. Gray falcon, white/cream ST(F,M,E)
When he took off the the top metal parts, I will bet real money he was not grounded to earth, and shorted something. Too bad, it will be hard to find the damaged part. This is a real shame, and easily averted if they would only ask about procedures before opening vintage equipment.
Exxos very much suggests a recap of all ST/TT/Falcon PSU's. The PSU in this unit may be starting to go bad and introducing voltage flutter into the machine. That may be part of the video display problem, though not all of it. I have one of Exxos upgraded PSU units and can not say enough about HOW GREAT it is!! Output is nearly a straight line on the scope after several years!!
I wish my wife would buy me gifts like this. (I get ties, and socks) If this is an early production unit, it is an even better gift then she thought it was!
I know the market for Falcon's seems to jump ever higher then back a step then higher then before so the sale price here seems to be in line for the US. But it is still a big chunk of change for a hobby. We should all remember the law of supply and demand. We can't change the supply, but we can change the demand. If a Falcon is priced too high, we all, as a group, should not buy it, and let the price go down over time. But this is hard to do with retied personal disposable income. If we all resist as a total community, it will lower prices, but greed will over take and I do not think it is possible.
Sorry for the rant, and long post!
But I still think this particular Falcon is something worth saving. What do you all think of my suggestions?
I hope all this helps.
Gyrussfanx
Posts: 25
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2020 1:15 pm

Re: New Falcon a lemon?

Post by Gyrussfanx »

Thanks KLund1, I have an imaged SD card and reader coming from a friend but thanks again for the suggestion! This unit IS going to be saved BTW but not knowing much about Atari Falcon's I wanted to ask the experts if they thought I was being fooled here when it comes to things being blurry vs outright distorted with black lines running through things. They look pretty different to me and set off some serious alarms with a local friend who is a falcon owner. He suggested this group as the experts so hence me asking everyone's opinion. I think in that regard questioning if it's a lemon seems fair.

In terms of shorting things:
All video problems and keyboard problems were happening before the case was ever opened by me. When you say, "he" I am not sure if you are referring to myself or the seller as the person who shorted something, it's still not clear that the actual problem is but I am going to have it looked at by a professional. I have opened and worked on plenty of PC's (just not Atari's). Even the seller (who I believe bought it from someone else) seems to really know what he is doing.

Some updates from the Seller (who is trying to be helpful when it comes to diagnosing the problems BTW and seems to be really nice and informed guy.)
- TOS was a new Burned 4.04 version that he(the seller) installed and he suggests maybe trying the old 4.0.1 that he shipped with the machine. He didn't attempt to swap them back and forth to see if what he saw as blurry video fixed the issue.
- RAM module - while he did say that the 14MB exxos module was new (the simm definitely looks it), I am not sure the riser card is. If you look at the images the solder joints on the back look kinda old/tarnished. The original 4MB simm came with the unit but putting it back in actually made things worse. So maybe it's the RAM?
- LOCAL help - a quick call to a local Atari expert (In NY) and he thinks there is probably memory issues with this module. He is a little closer than Steve in the UK so I am going to try him out first. (Sorry Steve!). They are going to look at the RAM first to see what's up then dig deeper. He also thinks the floppy and the video issues might have the same root cause.

I'm pretty determined to try and fix the "old bird" as Falcons seem pretty rare. Most feel I paid too much but in the states they are expensive. Maybe because there were just less of them here? Not really sure but as you pointed out someone converted a German machine to work here in the states just to have one!
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