*** Feature/3 page/ 1811 words/4 grabs/ Steven Balgey **
*** HEADLINE:Dr Steve's House of Upgrade Horrors ***
*** STANDFIRST:Upgrading an Atari is normally a simple process, but 
sometimes things go wrong and the process then becomes far from simple. 
***
In the summer of 1995, I decided to add a hard drive to my Atari STe. I 
searched the adverts in Atari World and settled upon a 365Mb drive from 
Compo, which included all necessary leads and software for the ST. I then 
had the intolerably long wait for the drive to arrive...
It arrived the next morning, so I hooked the drive to my STe. After 
switching on the drive, and listening to it spin up, I switched my monitor 
and  STe on. The computer boots off the hard drive. The hard drive 
software recognises the six partitions already installed on the drive, and 
soon I'm looking at the standard TOS desktop. Yet, it isn't the desktop 
I'm used to, there's an extra icon for drive C:.
After installing icons for the other partitions, I began to install 
software onto my hard drive, starting with the Forget Me Clock software. I 
then installed MagiC 2 and rebooted so MagiC was running. I followed  and 
began to install SpeedoGDOS 5. The installation program ran and appeared 
to install, but open looking in the folder containing my Speedo fonts I 
found that the file names were all corrupted. I thought this was probably 
due to the Speedo install program not liking MagiC.
So I reset, and used the GE-Soft setup program to format the drive. All 
appeared to be working fine, the drive was making chugging noises, but 
after a while the chugging stopped but the red activity light stayed on. 
After a while, I decided this wasn't meant to happen so I switched 
everything off and went and had some lunch.
After lunch, I tried to format it again, and it still hung. I decided it 
wasn't software incompatibility,  as it shouldn't hang whilst formatting, 
so I decided to ring the Compo help line, but the repair guy wasn't 
available and I was told to ring back later.
I decided to try again, while I waited to ring back . This time it 
formatted, so I proceeded to partition it. I then started installing 
software again, but I decided to leave MagiC out in case it was causing 
problems. I installed some software with no problems, so I played about 
for a while but things started to corrupt again.
I was beginning to think that my STe had one of the DMA chips which can 
cause problems, my STe was made in 1990 and so was quite likely to have 
one of the problem chips. I had checked my DMA chip before I had ordered 
my hard drive and it was labelled CO25913-38, but old ST magazines 
suggested the problems were with the CO25613-38 chips. I decided to ring 
the Compo help line again and ask them what they thought, I was told that 
the CO25913-38 chip could cause problems and that it would cost œ50 to 
replace it.
I decided to try the hard drive out on an ageing STFM with TOS 1.02, and 
to see if this would eliminate the drive and controller from being the 
problem. The STFM gave some surprising results. It certainly wasn't 
working, sometimes it would boot up, and other times it would bomb whilst 
scanning the partitions. I decided that it was probably the drive or 
controller at fault, but to be certain I decided to take it with me to my 
Grandad's the next day and try it on his TOS 1.04 STFM.
The drive formatted and worked perfectly with my Grandad's computer, so it 
was reconnected to my STe. Suprisingly, the drive appeared to be working, 
so I installed some software and used it for a while.
Whilst I was reading my mail from the NeST on-line network, my message 
base became corrupt and the messages were all made up of funny characters. 
I decided there was something wrong with my hard drive.
The next day, I rang Compo again and explained the problem to them, they 
suggested that the Top-Link hard drive controller was probably at fault 
and suggested I send this back to them. I returned the controller to them 
with a letter explaining the problems I was having.
 A new Top-Link controller arrived after a few weeks, and my STe was 
reconnected to the hard drive and I formatted the drive and began 
installing software again. This time, there was no problems everything was 
working fine, or so it seemed...
A couple of weeks later, Atari World issue 6 landed on my doormat. Whilst 
reading this issue, I noticed a letter saying people with the CO25913-38 
DMA chip could have problems using hard drives. I thought to myself, I 
haven't. A few days, later I was using my STe quite extensively on a 
Sunday afternoon, it had been on since around 12:00pm and I was busy 
programming with Lattice C. The compiler kept coming up with errors, I 
looked the error up in the manual which said that the some of the files 
the compiler was producing were invalid. I looked at the directory, were 
my source files were and sure enough the directory was corrupted.
I decided that I must have a dodgy DMA chip in my machine as my STFM could 
still read the drive. I was a bit annoyed at this point as I had a physics 
essay that had to be in that week, and it would be quite difficult to do 
with my STe out of action.
Anyway, the next day I rang up Paul Rossiter and asked if he could repair 
my machine, he said he could and as I live relatively close to him to drop 
the machine off in the evening.
With my STe, at the repair shop I was forced to use the STFM to write my 
physics essay, which was a bit of pain, having become used to the speed of 
the hard drive. Anyway the next day, Paul Rossiter phoned to say he'd 
fixed the machine, so I collected it and set it up with the hard drive. 
Both, have performed fine since, touch wood. And I even managed to finish 
my physics essay on time.

Memory

My problems with my hard drive, unfortunately weren't my first problems 
when upgrading an Atari. The year before my Grandfather decided to upgrade 
the memory in his 520STFM to 1Mb. However, he didn't want to fit the 
upgrade himself, so he asked me to fit it for him. He had ordered an 
Xtra-Ram Deluxe board on my advice, as these boards were well-praised in 
magazines like Atari ST Review at the time. As I was away when it arrived 
in late July, he had a look at the instructions and decided that he wasn't 
going to attempt fitting it himself, and waited for me to return.
When I returned, I read the instructions that came with the upgrade before 
attempting to proceed with the installation. The first problems began 
before I'd even finished stripping the machine down. The instructions for 
the upgrade said that to remove the shielding from around the motherboard 
(the main part of the computer) you had to remove the power supply, and 
then remove the top shielding, however on this machine (and both of my own 
machines) the power supply is screwed into the bottom piece of shielding, 
so can't be removed. The top piece of shielding can't be taken out as the 
reset button and power switch pass through holes in the back of the 
shielding.
A quick phone call to Marpet sorted this problem out, on machines like 
this the whole of the shielding and motherboard must be removed from the 
case and then the top piece of shielding can be removed. Once the 
shielding is removed you need to locate the MMU chip, which is responsible 
for making sure the right piece of memory is accessed and the SHIFTER chip 
which handles the graphics. The memory upgrade board plugs in over these 
chips, and this is where the second problem lay.
The connection to the SHIFTER chip is made by unplugging the chip from its 
socket, plugging a small circuit board into the socket and then plugging 
the chip into the new socket on the circuit board. This part proceeded 
without any problems, great care was taken when removing the chip to make 
sure none of the pins were bent during the process.
Problems began when I tried to fit the adapter onto the MMU chip. The MMU 
chip comes in many forms, square, or the rare rectangular one, sometimes 
they are connected straight onto the motherboard and sometimes they are in 
sockets. The upgrade supplied an MMU adapter for a square, socketed chip, 
but the ST had a chip that was connected straight to the motherboard. My 
Grandfather sent the adaptor back to Marpet, with a note asking for the 
correct sort. Unfortunately, I wasn't around to fit this when it arrived 
so he took it to a friend who repaired video machines, and asked him to 
fit it.
When the machine returned it wouldn't work, when he switched it on all 
that happened was a white screen appeared. He rang me up and asked what 
was happening, so I shot 50 miles down various motorways to Coventry, to 
have a look. Upon looking inside the machine, I immediately saw the 
problem, the MMU adapter had been placed over the wrong chip, so I 
switched it over hoping this would solve the problem. Unfortunately, it 
didn't there was still only 512Kb memory in the machine. As I couldn't 
stay for very long, I left the machine working as a 512Kb machine and 
arranged to fit the upgrade when I was coming to stay a couple of weeks 
later.
When I tried again to fit the upgrade, I still didn't have any luck, but 
it was the most interesting upgrade I've ever performed. As I had 
dismantled his computer setup, my grandparents decided to rearrange the 
furniture, this meant that I would place part of the computer on the table 
next to me and when I went to pick it up again it was on the other side of 
the room! These were not ideal conditions in which to perform an upgrade.
Having had no luck, my Grandad and I decided to take the computer with us 
to the Atari show in Birmingham in December, which was in a few weeks 
time. The guys from Compo who were fitting the upgrades at the show 
managed to make it work and my Grandad is now the happy owner of a 1Mb 
STFM.

*** Pictures ***
Fname: CRRPTDIR.GIF
Caption:Corrupted directories, I saw a lot of these when trying to get my 
hard drive to work.

Fname: 1MBMEM.GIF
Caption:It took six months before I finallt managed to get this on my 
Grandad's Atari.

Fname: DESKTOP.GIF
Caption:This isn't the desktop I'm used to, there's an extra icon for 
drive C, my hard drive.


Fname: FORMAT.GIF
Caption:The only indicator the drive is doing anything is a quiet chug 
noise it makes, but if that stops you'll wait for eternity.