Hello from Belgium

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wanman
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:35 pm

Re: Hello from Belgium

Post by wanman »

Before I recovered this machine from storage it didn't occur to me it had an azerty keyboard en french TOS.
Having switched to PC in the early 90s I always have had a qwerty keyboard as I found it more comfortable to use, especially for development purposes with the many needs of brackets and curly brackets.
Back then I couldn't find a qwerty Atari, and even nowadays -in Belgium- all mainstream shops only carry azerty PC laptops.

As the current TOS is only 1.02 I was thinking of ordering some TOS 1.04 UK, but would then also need to find a qwerty keyboard to swap with current one.
Or would it just be simpler to search for a TOS 1.04 UK machine, and keep mine original as is?

Now that the machine is completely dismantled I will let my thoughts wander for a few days before reassembling it, with or without ROM upgrade.
Ah, decisions!

First, I only wanted to get the machine booted, and bring back some memories writing and playing games.
Now I am down into this rabbit hole and am looking to upgrade the machine. Or buy a second one.
How long before the room is filled with uncountable numbers of working and even more non-working Ataris?
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JezC
Posts: 2081
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2017 11:44 pm

Re: Hello from Belgium

Post by JezC »

wanman wrote: Sat Feb 26, 2022 3:49 pm First, I only wanted to get the machine booted, and bring back some memories writing and playing games.
Now I am down into this rabbit hole and am looking to upgrade the machine. Or buy a second one.
How long before the room is filled with uncountable numbers of working and even more non-working Ataris?
:lol: I know how that goes...I started with my original 1040 STF & Falcon...now I have over 30 ST's in total :roll:
wanman
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:35 pm

Re: Hello from Belgium

Post by wanman »

JezC wrote: Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:21 pm ...now I have over 30 ST's in total :roll:
So there are all those STs hiding. I was wondering where they all went.

I am potentially looking for an STE (preferably, but STFM with TOS 1.4 will do) with qwerty keyboard on second hand sites.
I know, back then, these used to be sold in Netherlands, UK, and "some" parts of Belgium. But most I can find are from UK. With brexit and shipping that might become quite an expensive purchase.
I myself now have an azerty with french TOS, although purchased (1988-1989) in non-french speaking part of belgium.
I don't mind the french TOS, but the azerty keyboard is quite uncomfortable for software development. As most languages heavily use brackets and/or curly brackets, which on an azerty layout are accessed via the alternate key (if I remember correctly).
Not the end of the world, but not quite practical.
There: rant over ;)
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JezC
Posts: 2081
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2017 11:44 pm

Re: Hello from Belgium

Post by JezC »

wanman wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 5:52 pm
JezC wrote: Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:21 pm ...now I have over 30 ST's in total :roll:
So there are all those STs hiding. I was wondering where they all went.
Not only me - there are a few other forum members with similar sized collections...honest! ;)
I am potentially looking for an STE (preferably, but STFM with TOS 1.4 will do) with qwerty keyboard on second hand sites.
I know, back then, these used to be sold in Netherlands, UK, and "some" parts of Belgium. But most I can find are from UK. With brexit and shipping that might become quite an expensive purchase.
I myself now have an azerty with french TOS, although purchased (1988-1989) in non-french speaking part of belgium.
I don't mind the french TOS, but the azerty keyboard is quite uncomfortable for software development. As most languages heavily use brackets and/or curly brackets, which on an azerty layout are accessed via the alternate key (if I remember correctly).
Not the end of the world, but not quite practical.
There: rant over ;)
Good luck with the hunt for an STE! Much rarer/pricier than an STFM over here in the UK at least. It's easy to upgrade any STFM to TOS 1.04 if you have access to an EPROM programmer - I've upgrade a few of my systems already, just waiting on the free time to upgrade some more.

:thumbup:
wanman
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:35 pm

Re: Hello from Belgium

Post by wanman »

Finally found the time to try and backup the content of the MegaFile 60.
Having ordered an ACSI2STM and a PARCP-USB I failed to get the PARCP working. Ordered an UltraSatan in the hope to connect it to the output port of the MegaFile and copy all files directly to one of the SD cards. However, I failed to noticed that the ACSI-to-UltraSatan cable I had ordered doesn't fit the MegaFile, as the power cord gets in the way. Didn't think of ordering the Mega ST cable adaptor, back then. Luckily I had ordered an NetUSBee together with the UltraSatan, figuring it might come in handy just in case the UltraSatan and MegaFile would play nice together.

After plugging in the cartridge and using uip tools I managed to see the partitions and files from the connected MegaFile.
Unfortunately, almost every file and folder is unaccessible. As such there isn't much to back-up.
I seem to remember having made a backup of the harddisk content onto floppies, many years ago, but have not been able to locate that specific box of disks yet.
I have a separate partition entirely dedicated to STOS. From the files and folders I see there is quite some work-in-progress, which I unfortunately cannot access anymore. And which I guess has never been backed up as I moved to PC platform around that time, and then never really cared for properly backing up all that "then obsolete" Atari stuff.

I am wondering if the failure of reading and writing files with the MegaFile means it is on its way out, or if it's the ST itself which is starting to fail, seeing that the parallel port also has issue when using the PARCP-USB?
wanman
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2022 5:35 pm

Re: Hello from Belgium

Post by wanman »

Not getting anywhere trying to retrieve content from the Megafile is set out to search for some backup on floppies.
I seem to remember having made a backup of the harddisk onto grey floppies.
But all I could find where mostly blue ones with "2DD" written in black on the spring loaded metal shutter. My collection contained only a few grey ones from Nashua, apparently around the time I transited away from the ST towards PC, as most of these disks have a mixed content of ST and PC files.

Luckily, a set of 19 blue disks where labeled "backup HD" and sequentially numbered, starting from 001.
Looking at the format of the numbering I probably must have assumed the content of the harddisk would require more than 99 floppies.
Fortunately the sequence numbers ends at 019, with content of C, D and E partitions.

I spent the evening copying the content of each floppy into a separate folder on the UltraSatan.
To my surprise not a single floppy encountered reading issues. Knowing how careless the floppies where tucked away, and the humid condition they remained in for the last 30 years, it is quite a pleasing surprise the data survived. And that since 8th and 9th September of '91, as those where the dates the backup disks were written.
In matter of an hour all backup data was moved to an sd card, to finally be transferred onto my PC laptop's SSD.

Unfortunately, the floppies don't seem to carry much of the STOS work-in-progress that I had seen listed in the different folders on the Megafile.
There are still a few floppies in my collection labeled as "work-in-progress". Wondering if these carry the missing STOS wips.
But it's getting late here, so that will be a story for another day ...
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