Mega STE partially defect ... hints welcome

[Peter Dassow]

Hi,

after I tried several times to get a SCSI DCAS 34330 drive up and
running with my Mega STE (without success), I expirienced a non-working
second (external) SF-314 floppy and also the original Seagate ST157N
can't be accessed after rebuilding the original hardware configuration.
Surprisingly the internal floppy drive works well, and the computer
shows the GEM desktop as usual.
If the DMA chip died, I guess the internal floppy drive would not work,
too. So it's a mystery for me what can be defect... may be I have moved
the little ACSI pcb also a bit (because of the short SCSI cable), but at
the moment I am totally unsure where to look first.
Any hints for a smart repair ?

Regards
Peter

[Ronald J. Hall]

Post by Peter Dassow
Hi,
after I tried several times to get a SCSI DCAS 34330 drive up and
running with my Mega STE (without success), I experienced a non-working
second (external) SF-314 floppy and also the original Seagate ST157N
can't be accessed after rebuilding the original hardware configuration.
Surprisingly the internal floppy drive works well, and the computer
shows the GEM desktop as usual.
If the DMA chip died, I guess the internal floppy drive would not work,
too. So it's a mystery for me what can be defect... may be I have moved
the little ACSI pcb also a bit (because of the short SCSI cable), but at
the moment I am totally unsure where to look first. Any hints for a
smart repair ?
Regards
Peter

Hi Peter. Have you tried using these drives with other Atari machines,
just to verify that they are working?

Would go a long ways towards trouble-shooting your problem. At least, you
could rule out the drives being bad, and then concentrate on the Mega STe
itself.

[Peter Dassow]

Post by Ronald J. Hall

[...] after rebuilding the original hardware configuration.
Surprisingly the internal floppy drive works well, and the computer
shows the GEM desktop as usual.
If the DMA chip died, I guess the internal floppy drive would not work,
too. So it's a mystery for me what can be defect... may be I have moved
the little ACSI pcb also a bit (because of the short SCSI cable), but at
the moment I am totally unsure where to look first. Any hints for a
smart repair ?

Hi Peter. Have you tried using these drives with other Atari machines,
just to verify that they are working?
Would go a long ways towards trouble-shooting your problem. At least, you
could rule out the drives being bad, and then concentrate on the Mega STe
itself.

This would be a good idea (to narrow it), unfortunately I have no other
"ST" machine here.
Is there a block schematic diagram of all important STe chips out there
(how they working together) ?

Regards
Peter

[Guillaume Tello]

Post by Peter Dassow
Hi,
after I tried several times to get a SCSI DCAS 34330 drive up and
running with my Mega STE (without success), I expirienced a non-working
second (external) SF-314 floppy and also the original Seagate ST157N
can't be accessed after rebuilding the original hardware configuration.

I once had a similar problem.
The flat cables for the floppy and hard disk where nearly dead, I think
that when opening the machine, removing them, plugging, unplugging etc,
I must have cut it because it was too old. SO when rebuilding the
machine, nothing was working anymore.

I solved the problem with new flat cables.

Guillaume.