Just looking for some advice. I'll be picking up a Mega ST4 and a Megafile sometime within the next couple of weeks. I have no experience with the Mega ST's since I've only owned regular ST's / STE's in the past. Is there a particular version of TOS that I should be looking at getting if the Mega ST comes with an older one? Or does it matter? The reason I ask is that I've heard the Megafiles sometimes have issues with older version of TOS. I don't know what the most 'recent' version of TOS is for the Mega's, so I suppose that would be another question I have. Any other advice regarding the Mega ST's is also appreciated. It also comes with some Eiffel thing to allow connecting of a PS/2 keyboard and mouse since the Mega keyboard is not included; and also has a Viking video card in it, which is probably useless since you can't find the monitor anywhere for it. So I'll probably just use my SM124 here. Thanks.
Jason
Had a nice surprise this evening. The Megafile 30 actually has a 60MB hard drive in it. I confirmed by looking up the drive model and it formats to 60MB automatically. Perhaps someone upgraded it back in the day. I thought that maybe it had the wrong lid on it with the Megafile 30 label, but the bottom also shows SH305, which is a Megafile 30. I wiped the drive clean and reformatted with ICD utilities. As it was, the drive had issues reading information, so must have needed a fresh format.
That’s a beauty! Wish I would have never sold mine back in the late 9os.
My list of Rolling Stones bootlegs started in atariwriter + on my st. Converted the file with pc-ditto and then eventually moved to excel (or whatever Corel’s version that was packaged with my win 98 pc).
sadly my mouse started to fail and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it and that was before eBay was a thing.
great score!
Thanks for the pictures - love'm! :)
That Mega ST's case has got some discoloration going on there but retrobrite (or similar) will take care of that.
Looks like they have that back panel on the Mega ST already removed for the Viking card.
According to SysInfo you've got 4 megs of RAM and TOS v1.4 so you're in good shape there.
Gotta love how sharp those SC124 mono screens are! BTW, sometimes using the monitor controls you can "stretch" the visible image to fill more of the screen.
Putting a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive will make the Mega ST boot up faster - it keeps TOS from looking for a floppy for so long.
I couldn't tell - what hard disk driver software is it using? Probably Atari's AHDI but it might be something else.
I see 6 partitions icons on the desktop? You can highlight one of them, then from the drop-down menu pick "Show Info" and it will tell you it's size and other info.
I'm not sure about a PS2 mouse or corded USB mouse? I guess that's to go with the Eiffel because you don't have an actual Mega ST keyboard, right? [I've never used an Eiffel adapter in case you can't tell :) ]
Take a little bit of time and a little bit of effort and you're gonna have a great setup there! :)
Just picked it up this evening. Here are the pics. Still need to get a ps2 or usb corded mouse (doesn’t work with wireless), but other than that, things are working so far.
There are a couple of message threads out in some of the forums about doing this, IIRC, but I'm not sure if there were ever any definitive answers/results.
I know you probably wouldn't want to give the Megafile up (they are pretty cool, after all) but there are other options.
The Mega ST has accommodations for an internal hard drive.
Something like Lotharek's internal Ultrasatan should work. I've got one in my Mega STe and it should work in the Mega ST as well. There's a back plane that comes out just for expansions and I'd imagine it would be fairly easy to get someone to do a 3D replacement for that.
HTH's. :)
I have one more question about Megafiles. Eventually one day all of these drives will fail. Finding a replacement drive, and one that works, is probably not easy considering they're RLL/MFM. Would anyone happen to know what other options there are for replacing the hard disk in a Megafile? With an IDE or a SCSI maybe? What's involved and how easy is it to source parts?
First of all, congratulations on a Mega ST and a Megafile! These are awesome versions of the ST line.
Once you get it, and assuring that everything boots up okay, determine which TOS version is in it. Generally speaking, older Mega's had TOS v1.2. It will either be the 2 chip set or the 6 chip set of TOS ROMs. If it's a newer Mega or someone has already upgraded it, it could be TOS v1.4. If it's TOS v1.4, you're good to go unless you want to use a TOS decoder board (such as the STorm ST/combo) and go to TOS v2.06. If it is TOS v1.2 - then I recommend that you upgrade to at least TOS v1.4. Changing from v1.2 to v1.4 is usually pretty painless.
(Download Sysinfo to get a system report)
As far as memory goes, most Mega's are 2 or 4 megs but some really early versions only had 1 meg of RAM.
That's too bad about the missing Mega keyboard. They are considered by many to be the best ST keyboard out there, complete with cherry switches.
The Megafiles came in 20, 30 and 60 meg versions, IIRC. Maybe you'll be lucky and have the 60 meg one! :)
There are several upgrades available, like the already mentioned STorm-ST. The Cloudy board, the Lightning ST board, a NetUSBee, or WiModem232 for communications, etc,...
https://wiki.newtosworld.de/index.php?title=Storm_ST
https://wiki.newtosworld.de/index.php?title=Cloudy
https://wiki.newtosworld.de/index.php?title=Lightning_ST
https://www.cbmstuff.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=59?
The Mega ST has an onboard RTC, powered by 2 AA batteries in a small compartment on the back left top corner of the main unit. Make sure and check those for corrosion/cleaning/replacement.
If you are going to be using the Mega ST a lot and/or leaving it running continuously, there is a small "hack" recommended by Best Electronics that I did to my Mega ST4 (of course, it runs 24/7!). They recommend removing the protective bars in the case over the fan because they are so close together that they actually restrict airflow.
If it comes with the original Atari mouse, you might want to consider upgrading. I recommend either a Best Electronics True Mouse or the "MouSTer".
https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/accesori.htm
For audio, you can easily bring the ST's mono signal out so that you can deliver it to a pair of powered speakers. I did this with my Mega ST4 and the difference in sound is pretty amazing.
Well, that's about all I can think of for now, right off the top of my head.
HTH's - and if you have any questions at all, just ask - somebody will step in to help!
:)