No Fragments Archive 10: Diskmags/nf_archive_10.iso/MAGS/STEN/STEN08.MSA/NEWS.TXT/UPGRADER.ASC

Text File | 2010-04-21 | 13KB | 250 lines

                           STEN - JANUARY 1992
                           ===================


                  T  - Returns to this menu



                  F1 - Solutions and the problems they cause
                         Dave Henniker



                  F2 - Thought I'd upgrade my ST
                          Sean Marlow


                                ~~~OOOO~~~



               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
               ~                                         ~
               ~  SOLUTIONS AND THE PROBLEMS THEY CAUSE  ~
               ~                                         ~
               ~   A Cautionary Tale  by Dave Henniker   ~
               ~                                         ~
               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



    Aren't computers wonderful?  Sophisticated hardware and software tools
make it easier  and  easier  for us  to  satisfy our creative urges. Or do
they? To some extent, every new hardware or software acquisition brings as
many problems as it solves.

    Back at the  beginning  of  August  I  felt reasonably solvent, having
recently started a new job as a TV/VCR/Audio engineer.  I decided to treat
myself to a  belated  birthday  present  of a  Golden  Image  scanner  and
Touch-Up software.  I phoned Evesham Micros and  discovered that the price
had come down again and so I  let  the persuasive telephone girl sell me a
box of disks and a charity balloon as well.  Four  days  later the scanner
came but, suspiciously, there was a piece of paper with a name and address
taped to the cartridge.  It was obvious that  some other poor soul had had
to return the cartridge (or entire package) due to a fault.

    I  connected  up the power supply and scanner to the cartridge which I
then inserted into the ST.  When I tried out the scanner it didn't work. I
checked  the  power  supply  with my test meter and found that the primary
winding  of  the transformer  was open circuit.  The  power supply  had an
integral two-pin foreign mains plug and was supplied with a shaver adapter
- to enable it to be plugged into a conventional  13 amp socket.  I got my
variable  power supply out and, having adjusted it to the correct voltage,
connected it up and tried again.  Hey presto - It worked!

    To my dismay it  became  apparent that the plastic lens on the scanner
was distorted, giving me black  shadows down the left of scanned images. I
sent  the  scanner  back to Evesham Micros with a covering letter.  I dis-
approved of  their power supply and  pointed  out that  the fault may have
happened  because it was designed for 220 volts rather than the 240 we get
in the UK.  Eleven days later I still hadn't heard from Evesham Micros and
phoned them up.  They  reassured me that a replacement scanner was "in the
post".

    Meanwhile, I was  playing around with  Touch-Up and began to grow fond
of  its  peculiar  methods of drawing compared to normal screen-size paint
programs.  When the  new scanner finally arrived I discarded the dodgy two
pin  power  supply and substituted  one  meant for a Boots black and white
portable  TV.  This  had  normal 13 amp plug connections and was thus less
likely to fall over and  disconnect  itself.  Needless  to  say, I spent a
great deal of time scanning  images from all sorts of sources.  The Touch-
Up  software i ncludes a  separate program called Outprint which uses GDOS
printer drivers.  The Epson FX80 9 pin printer driver supplied worked okay
with my Canon PW 1080A  printer but I was limited in the size of picture I
could  print due  to  the low  resolution  of the printer, compared to the
resolution possible with the scanner.

    I soon began to lust after a Hewlett Packard Deskjet 500 printer and a
week or two later  I ordered  one from Mediaware in Crewe.  It arrived the
following  day and  worked  beautifully until I tried to print out a First
Word  Plus file  which  contained  graphics.  Naturally I  had  previously
installed the correct  HP driver in 1W+.  The ST Club had been kind enough
to send me a disk absolutely  crammed  with  utilities  for the HP Deskjet
500.  After trying out  several  1W+  HP drivers I still couldn't find any
which would print graphics.  Later, both the ST Club and GST (who distrib-
ute 1W+) confirmed that  First  Word  Plus  can  never print graphics on a
Deskjet.  There was another reason for phoning GST.  I  needed the Migraph
Deskjet Driver Pack so I could  print  out  scanned images from TouchUp on
the new printer.  GST are the  distributors  for  this software in the UK.
I ordered it using my credit card and was told I would have it "very soon"

    Three  weeks later, after  numerous frustrating phone calls, I finally
cancelled my order with GST and instead phoned Hisoft.  They said they had
it in stock but the price was £29.95 - £10 more than I'd bargained for. It
arrived  promptly the next day.  Having given up all hope of ever printing
graphics with First Word Plus, I also had to make yet another purchase.  I
needed a new word processor and ordered  Write On  from Cambridge Business
Software.  This  arrived  promptly  but  it soon became apparent that this
solution was not  without  its own  problems.  The  automatic installation
program  created  numerous font  files, filling up the disk.  Fortunately,
Compo were  quick  to  respond  when  I  rang  them for help and sent me a
version more suited to floppy use.

    My wife Jane and I soon grew fond of Write On and began to explore the
wonders of  macros and proportional spacing with full right justification.
Write On uses laser/inkjet printer fonts with a resolution of 300 dots per
inch  and  these are  greedy on memory.  For the first time I began to get
out  of  memory  errors/messages  despite the fact that  I  had previously
upgraded my 520 STFM from 512k RAM to 1 Meg.  Yet  again, it  seemed, that
a marvellous new solution had attendant problems.

    As an experienced engineer who has  built numerous electronic gadgets,
I felt  competent  to do a  DIY  memory expansion to 2.5 Meg.  I ordered a
disk with the instructions for a method using SIPS. I got the SIPS through
my second new job (in a computer company) at a favourable price and at the
weekend  I  set about the metal shielding inside my ST with a hacksaw.  To
cut a long and dismal story short, I ended up the following evening with a
dead computer. This was due to my own ineptitude/tiredness etc. The upshot
was that I ended up buying a new 2 Meg  STE the following day.  I had work
to do for my Technical Writing course and I had disks to send out to those
who had registered for Kozmic, my PD program.

    Yet  again I  had  solved a problem with the purchase of new hardware.
I'll  repair  my  old  STFM  and Jane  will use it for MIDI in her studio.
Naturally, the new  STE  is not without its problems.  I had expected that
lots of  PD programs wouldn't run and I was correct.  Fortunately  all the
important  applications  (WP, Deluxe Paint,  STOS, Touch-Up  etc) all work
properly.  Meantime I'm still looking for a good STE-compatible substitute
for DC Viewer.  Also  when I use my colour monitor I get RF patterns which
I didn't get with the STFM. I  tried fitting a ferrite ring to the monitor
lead but it didn't help. Incidentally, the version of  TOS  is  1.62,  not
1.98 as  reported  by  various  utilities.  The  error is  due  to the BCD
(binary coded decimal)  way  in which  the version number is stored. There
are some  benefits  with the STE  compared  to  the  STFM, eg the  blitter
chip speeds  up  redrawing the  screen etc and Write On and other programs
are noticeably faster.

    I'd  read  in ST Applications how  HP Deskjet users were recycling the
ink cartridges and thus  I'd not bought any spare ones.  I intended to use
the methods suggested for  injecting more ink into the valve on top of the
cartridge.  I couldn't get Sheaffer Script ink and had to settle for Quink
Also  when  I asked  in the local chemist for a hypodermic syringe I got a
particularly frosty reception.  Anyway, the  cartridge  finally ran out of
ink and I successfully topped it up with Quink.  It works OK but the print
is less black than with the real thing.  Also large A4 printouts with lots
of black areas have occasionally gone a bit streaky.

    I'm quite sure that many other computer users have experienced similar
hassles with hardware and software.  As I said earlier, wonderful creative
tools  like  these  should  make  it  easy to satisfy those creative urges
(drawing, writing etc).  Unfortunately, as  programs and the hardware they
use  become  more sophisticated, with  more and more configurable options,
their use becomes more fraught with difficulties. Time and time again I've
sat down at my  ST to embark on something creative, only to be sidetracked
by something which didn't work properly, eg at boot-up.

    Lessons I've learned include:  Be very careful before embarking on DIY
upgrades!  Don't  bother  phoning GST's helpline unless you want to listen
to piped music while your phonebill soars.

    I  should  now concentrate on doing useful work with my current setup.
But doubtless  I'll continue thinking about DIY hard disk installation....
Will I never learn?  When will it ever end?



                                 -~oOo~-



STEN:    You'll  be  glad  to know that Dave's now got  his  STFM  up-and-
running  again,  and that it's now powering his wife's  Midi  studio.   To
quote from his letter,  "I have now fixed my STFM!  As you'll have read in
the article,  I totally f***ed my 520 STFM when I attempted a DIY  upgrade
to  2.5 Mbytes.  using SIPS and lots of messy wiring - or so it seemed  at
the  time.   I had already tried to restore the computer to  its  original
state,  ie a 512K STFM upgraded to 1024K or 1 Mbyte....  1040 STFM??  They
musta  got  the numbers wrong surely.   When I did this  before  it  still
didn't work,  but I'd knackered the 16 sixteen pin IC sockets and possibly
introduced  a  short.   After I'd unsoldered all the sockets and  put  new
ones in,  Hey presto,  it worked!  I thought I'd blown the MMU chip, but I
hadn't."


                               -~~*****~~-


               You learn something new every day...
                    ...or how not to upgrade.


     Anyone  who  reads this STEN thing more often than  not  will
have  noticed  that I haven't written anything since  the  summer.
This  is  not  due  to any lack of interest  (though  I  admit  to
occasional  unfaithfulness to the ST as our office now  boasts  an
Apple  Quadra).  Nor  is the reason to be found  in  the  Editor's
sudden acqusition of good taste:  my ST has simply not been up  to
it.

     The initial idea, 4Mb RAM and a 16Mhz processor upgrade, seem
OK  if  a trifle extravagant.  But what the  hell,  I  thought  in
September, a faster ST before the arrival to our shores of QuickST
3 is no bad thing.  The 4Mb upgrade was no problem (Thank you,  Mr
Rossiter), but the processor...

     I  went  to  Silica  Sytems  and  bought  an  AdSpeed.  Being
computerate,  I foolishly decided not to have them fit the  thing,
only making sure it is STE compatible.  "Of course,  Sir"..
or words to that effect.  Total outlay to this point £170.  Having
got the THING home, I ordered the STE adaptor, which of course was
not mentioned at sale (Thank YOU, Silica SyS). £27.

     Installation was no problem. It booted off the Floppy, giving
a  natty "16Mhz" legend in the top left hand corner of the  screen
(Even more happening than a rotating Atari symbol...chill out).  I
was well chuffed, I was.

     Well,  then I made my second major mistake (no political  pun
intended):  I  booted  off my Supra Hard  Disk.  And  Booted.  And
Booted...  I  assumed my Supra was having one of its glitches  (It
had  one  before),  so I sent the thing up to  Frontier  Software,
whence it came from.  They were very nice about it  (considering),
but said a) Theres nowt wrong with't,  and b) Would I mind awfully
if I wasted someone else's time (Sorry, chaps).

     So I phoned tech support at Silica,  and they said  "ST..E.."
well it must be the DMA problem that STE's suffer from(DMA= direct
memory access, a fast bus to the peripheral devices). So time went
by.  At  some point I phoned Slough (what a name.  What a  place),
with  my  STE motherboard Revision number  (my  STE   having  been
uncovered more often than Sam Fox).  They said: "DMA?! Nope. We've
heard of this problem before.  The AdSpeed chipset is incompatible
with  the MMU (memory management unit,  a manager to  allow  large
memory blocks to be used by 68000 processors)!"

     Having  stuffed the poor old *8* Mhz square in the  place  of
the  THING,  I  have sent off the so-called "upgrade"  to  Silica.
Don't miss the exciting Lawsuit that will surely follow...

     Now the Quadra... there's a computer: 68040 processor running
at  50Mhz,  with  16Mb RAM,  and all only marginally  dearer  than
upgrading an ST....E!


                                                  Sean Marlow

                                ~~~OOOO~~~