FAQs for all Atarians

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

Recently the Atari ST emulator SainT was updated after a long gap and now supports the use of Atari ST floppy disks with the PCs floppy drive.

SainT web page

NCGM

[David Etheridge]

Hi folks,
I've been speaking to Barrie this morning (my Syquest drive mech is doing strange things -not bad after 8+ years of trouble free use) and he's now offering PC mice with the PeST interface, which offers great reliability and increased performance compared to the now aging Atari ones.
01925-823334 will put you on to the man with the fax'n'info.
Remember that Barrie has just about everything you need to keep chugging along -without him we'd have to give up!

Best wishes,

Dave.

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

I put in an order with Alison for a PeST a week or two back, and I she tells me it is nearly made I asked for her to make me the old version with the PS/2 socket, but recently she has started hard wiring some Microsoft Optical Wheel mice onto the PeST interface. I don't care for the Microsoft mice and hence why I asked for the old PS/2 version, which works with optical mice anyway.

NCGM

[David Etheridge]

Here's another Atari forum with lots of info for all Atari models. The ST section's not that large compared to the more game oriented lists, but there's some useful stuff here:
http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php

Have fun!
Dave.

[David Etheridge]

Hi folks,
here's the link to MyAtari, the online magazine, with downloadable zips of issues from 2000 to 2005:
http://www.myatari.net/

You'll find articles and workshops on all aspects of atari use, including music articles.

Best wishes,

Dave.

[David Etheridge]

There are links galore here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/atari-midi/links

with just about all you need to keep adding and expanding your Atari knowledge!

Dave

[David Etheridge]

And of course there's always the Atari notes on the SOSwebsite!
Do a search under Atari and you'll see lots of past hints and tips come up, like this one:
http://www.soundonsound.com/search?url= ... esults=yes

This is a good one for newbies:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr01/a ... inotes.htm

Best wishes,
Dave.

[David Etheridge]

Here are some links for the more advanced Atari user:
http://www.seimet.de/atari/en/hddriver.html

the home of HDdriver for your hard disk operations, and
http://www.application-systems.de/atari/produktefuratari.html

which includes MagiC (an alternative desktop system) and
http://freemint.de/en/

MiNt, which offers all sorts of fun and frolics for systems, networking and tools.

You can find some details on these from the Atari notes columns from SOS on the links in the above posts.

Best wishes,

Dave

[David Etheridge]

Hi folks once again,
it's seemed rather quiet on the Atari Music front recently.
However, appearances can be deceptive, as this new link will show that Atarians have been busy behind the scenes:
http://www.atarimusic.net/

This looks like it may be a biggie for the Atari music community!


Best wishes,
Dave.

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

Nice one Dave I will have to sign up with that.

NCGM

[David Etheridge]

The latest update is that AtariMusicNet will be going live in October.
I'll give you a heads up when it's fully up to speed.
You may find it surprising!

Best wishes,
Dave.

[David Etheridge]

As of today, there are 1186 members on the Atari MIDI users group!
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/atari-midi/

Onwards and upwards with Atari!

Dave

[David Etheridge]

Here's a site with schematics for building your own extra MIDI ports (a kind of DIY C-lab Export) plus lots of other useful hardware and software bits.
http://atari4ever.free.fr/hardware/index.html
Best wishes,
Dave.

[David Etheridge]

In 2010 there seems to be all sorts of stuff still available!
While quite a few of the old links seem to have vanished off the web, some are still going, albeit with the odd clunkers in links.

Here's a useful synth edit site for Atarians:
http://atari.mnx2010.nl/helpdesk/music/music.htm
which has a lot but is definitely clunky in the downloads!
the only way I could get them to work correctly is to type in all the info from the link, rather than clicking on the 'server 1' and server 2 links, that take you to an automated page which doesn't seem to work.
Obviously a bug's in that site at the moment.
Oh well, you gotta work with what you've got......

For Yamaha TX81Z fans, this will be your main port of call, with everything you need to know (and some things you don't!) all about your fave synth: sounds, editors and workshops:
http://the-all.org/tx81z/index.html

For D50 and D550 owners, I've found that there's a terrific amount of D50 patches on the net. Unfortunately, some sites remove sysex headers and generally mess things up for you.
In fact when trying to load sounds to my D550, even Dumpit's not a happy bunny, but I've found that Midian WILL talk effectively to a D50/550 and dump sounds without needing the handshaking routines.
You'll find Midian here:
http://tamw.atari-users.net/dwnloads.htm

If you can't find an Atari editor for your synth, then don't panic!
You can download sysex files from the net and convert the sound dumps to MIDIfiles.
Mex2Mid is the genius program for this, and you can find downloads here:
http://home.versatel.nl/m.tarenskeen/uni_man.htm
here:
http://www.home.zonnet.nl/m.tarenskeen/yseditor.htm
and here:
http://tamw.atari-users.net/hyart.htm

-so you don't need to be stuck for sounds for your synths, even if there's no Atari ed.
Note however that it's advisable to back up your onboard sounds as a sysex dump to your sequencer so that you don't lose anything.....

Hope this lot helps,
Best wishes,
Dave

[David Etheridge]

Thanks to Charlie in the MIDI users group, here's another ftp site with lots of Atari stuff:
ftp://ftp.iem.at/pub/ATARI/

Best wishes,
Dave

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

Thanks Dave I have just downloaded it to look at later.

Hey....guess what! Great news...I am now a lucky Falcon 030 owner!

It is a stock machine upgraded to 14MB. I've had it two days and not even plugged it in yet, as I have taken it apart to inspect and photograph. It's a German model so I am waiting for some English keycaps to arrive from another forum member elsewhere. I've already put a CompactFlash adapter and a 4GB card in for now, so the only remaining thing to get is a suitable SCSI cable/adapter and then I can plug an IDE drive in via my Acard SCSI->IDE adapter. I assume this should work ok, although having a noisy hard drive means I will need to house it somewhere to make it quiet. Finally I have some Soundpool gear coming shortly but I will need cables and PSUs for those. I'm not really sure where to get these SCSI and DSP cables yet.

I wonder what kind of compression Cubase Audio Falcon uses, i.e. lossy or lossless? I suppose it will be lossy considering the age of the software.

NCGM

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

Hey....guess what! Great news...I am now a lucky Falcon 030 owner!

I've had it two days and not even plugged it in yet...

Bad news....I cannot for the life of me get it to boot up to the desktop. Infact I cannot even see the initial bootup screen showing devices connected, stuff loading etc. All I get it a blank white screen; no floppy drive seeking either, so I cannot install any hard disk drivers. I checked the floppy power connector with a multimeter and got a steady 5.02V signal but I cannot say if the ribbon cable is okay yet. I have tried three different floppy drives, plus even plugged the Falcon one into my PC; the drive was seen and made disk access noises; Windows XP then said there was no disk in the drive. The green floppy LED did not light up but I know it works, because later I reversed the ribbon cable to force it on. The hard drive cable in the Falcon seems to work and power the drive, but due to no floppy I cannot put anything on the drive for the Falcon to seek and execute for bootup purposes.

Ahh well....it's an extremely expensive mistake for the time being, but hopefully I can get it working eventually without breaking the bank

NCGM

[Chevytraveller]

Just a thought, but I remember from my time at Digital Village in 93/94(we were the principal dealers for Falcons) that the memory boards were frequently the cause of many issues, among which was non-booting.. might be worth removing the Expansion board to see if it will boot from base memory..
Many had 4 meg basic as I remembered.. we managed to secure memory boards which used a single 16mb 30 pin sim which were quite successful and better made than the Atari boards.. might be some of those floating around somewhere..

Good luck

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

Thanks I did think of removing it but was not sure if any other RAM was installed. My STEs have SIMMs in sockets and I assumed the Falcon would have socketed RAM...

Are these the very boards you remember (CLICK FOR LARGER 640 x 480 photo)...



NCGM

[Chevytraveller]

ah yes.. the lovely Atari memory boards.. the Atari QCing was terrible at the time and almost half of the Falcons we had through were rejected because of this board..
I would have thought the original failings(dry joints etc) would have shown themselves by now, but it's still quite possible that something has failed.
Certainly worth trying to boot it without the board in place..

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

Great news!!! Long story short, it was not the RAM board it was a missing jumper on the motherboard. I was browsing the AtariAge ST Forum and found someone with the same problems as myself. So it now boots up very fast and the floppy works fine too. Boy am I so relieved because I feared a huge repair bill!

If anyone needs to know the solution I will dig it out and post it here; just ask.

NCGM

[David Etheridge]

Hi again folks,
I've just come across this free Atari site for developers, that also has some MIDI apps for Roland LA modules:
http://atariforge.org/gf/
and AMIDILIB is here:
http://atariforge.org/gf/project/amidilib/

Best wishes,
Dave.

[David Etheridge]

Here's a site that offers an Atari editor for Yamaha SY22 and SY35 synths- look at the bottom of the page for the download link:
http://www.plompy.co.uk/software/

More to come as I find them!

Best wishes,

Dave.

[Neo-Classical Guitar Man]

Nice find although I personally have a SY55 and TG55.

Earlier today I found this upgrade for the SY series, enabling 1MB of data card storage; you simply have multiple 64Kb RAM areas that you can format individually and put patch data on etc.

SY Upgrade for RAM cards

NCGM