| | | ATARI ST IN AN IBM CASE | | | By Jon Clarke, Z*Net Pacific | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------- A Lion in Sheeps Clothing, An Atari ST in an IBM housing I have over the last few months seen many references to whether or not you can put a 520 or a 1040ST in an IBM housing, and to say the least some of the mail I have been reading is down right comical. The best saying on this subject was quoted to me by a friend of mine who was given an IBM AT, and when I visted him last he had all his Atari ST equipment neatly installed and for all I knew it was an IBM until desktop arrived. He said to me very seriously "IBM makes one heck of a housing, a bit of a shame about the mother-board, so I upgraded it to an Atari ST!" Well what could I say, I had done the same thing several months before, so I knew the headaches he had been through. In his case he had it configured as a Tower unit, hmm that was even more work than normally required. I would like to set the record straight right here and now. 'YES', you can put a 520ST and 1040ST and just about any type of computer including your 8 bit Atari's in another type of housing. While in some cases it is not an easy job, I hope to outline what you need to do in this article. The most important thing to do is a little planning, and to fully understand what you wish to do with this project, for instance.. * Do you want a second or third disk drive, 3 1/2" or 5 1/4" or both? * Do you want to include a harddisk drive, controller, and host adaptor? * Do you want to upgrade your on-board RAM at all? * Do you want to upgrade your TOS version at the same time, or do you want to keep your old TOS as well and make them switchable? * Do you want to install a "ROM" drive, in your Cart port? * Do you want to delay the ST from booting so it may auto-boot your HD? * Do you want to switch the power on and off from the front panel? * Do you want a reset button on the front panel? * Do you want to switch Monitors from your Housing or just plug them in and out each time? * Do you want to be able to select which floppy drive is in drive A & B configuration, and be able to select what side to write to? * Do you want to be able to Write Protect your Hard disks with Hardware? * Do you want to use your cart port for things like Spectre, Replay? * Do you want to mount your modem inside the housing? * Do you want to run all the equipment from an IBM power supply? * Do you want to use Midi? * Do you want to use your centronics port? * Do you want to use an IBM or 101 type keyboard, with your joystick and mouse ports? * How big do you want the housing to be, and will it sit flat or vertical? * How much money do you want to spend? Planning is the answer, if I had taken a few minutes to decide what I wanted to do and made a "shopping list", I would not have spent all the extra time repositioning all the drives to fit something else into the case, each time I decided to change my mind on some little thing. So first things first, make a "shopping list" of "wants", by this I mean if you want to do something you have to go out and get it for the RIGHT price. To complete this project it cost me about $200, by the time I got a housing, 150watt power supply, a 5 1/4" disk drive, 2 NEC 3 1/4" disk drives, new 25 pin ribbon connectors, new 9 pin ribbon connectors, 120 megs of hard disks, a controller, and Host adaptor, ROM card for the Cart port, and connecting wire. The secret to all of this is, when you have made your "shopping list" you then know what you want to do, now all you have to find out is what will do what you want (how's that for double talk), and when you find that out, you can go fore-armed to your dealer/computer repairman, or computer auction/junk sale and ask for what you want at YOUR price. If you are prepared to wait, you will get the right price. I found the best source for hard disks is from your repairman, from most Systems Managers. They have them lying around in a so called "dead" state. Did you know that of all the dead drives I have ever received only 2 of them have been dead! So offer to take them off their hands with a small donation to their staff social fund ie $10, or go buy your service man a beer or two, it works! Last but not least, Computer auctions are an amazingly cheap source of everything, the last one I was at, I spent about $300 and got 14 40 meg Hard disks, 3 NEC 1036 3 1/4" drives, a Teac FD-55GFV 5 1/4", 2 IBM 150 watt supplies, a colour TV and heaps more, so remember to look in the newspaper for sources for your "shopping list". Now that you have decided you want to continue with transplanting your ST into an IBM case what will do what, for me? I hope this little list will help you in your search... Disk Drives Floppy: 3 1/2" * You can use your Atari drive if you want. * NEC 1036 a double sided 720k drive. * Matsushita model JU-253. NB: These I have found the best, as no extra buffering or the likes is required. 5 1/4" * The commercial one you may already have. * TEAC FD-55GFV * TEAC FD-55G NB: These I have found the best, as no extra buffering or the likes is required. ROM Drives: These are avalible in many forms, all you need to do is get a cart board and blow your own eproms with your favorate programs in there, and map it to a drive. Cost anywhere from $12 to $36 not including the eproms. Hard Disks/Controllers/Host Adaptors: This is an 100 page article in itself. You can use your existing hard drive/controller/host adaptor, or look in most mags for adverts on kit sets for these like the Supra or Triangle Kits, and the list goes on. In my case a group of us down here are using an other type of Host adaptor, which will emulate the "IBM Motherboard Slot" and is real cheap to build or buy, along with this we can use most IBM 1/2 card/ controllers but I prefer the Omiti 5520 or 5527 for it's speed, this means you can get controller cards from as little as $15 in the local repair shops "Junk Bin". Hard disks, well this is up to you, what size, how many etc, what brand. Remember in the IBM housing you have lots of room to play with, and the limit is that of your pocket book and piece of mind. Types of IBM Housings/power supplies: Look around in many cases you can buy an IBM/clone housing for about $70 with a 150 watt power supply already installed, wow that is like being 1/2 way there. Make sure you have a control panel on the front of the housing for, say switching the reset button, turning the computer on and off, switching between TOS's, turning your ROM drive on and off, for drive select A&B, or what ever you have decided to do. Now if you have a 150 watt supply you can feed the following with the supply and you will no longer need the Atari supplies.. a. Your ST b. Your disk drive(s) c. Your modem (in most cases) d. Your Hard disk(s) and controller(s)/host adaptor(s) Last but not least make sure you can fit your ST mother-board into the housing with a little room to spare. How do you do this? Simple, flop your ST over so the keyboard is face down on a towel and measure the 4 sides of your ST, that is the smallest your case can be, ie an IBM PS2 model 30 sized case. I have not given any measurements here because strangely enough the sizes vary from model to model. If you wish to use your cart port, measure how long your longest cart is and add about 1 1/2" and make sure the housing is at least that high. Upgrade your RAM/TOS: Again this is up to you how you go about it, if you are into D.I.Y (DO IT YOURSELF), look in "Computer Shopper" for cheap ram chips, it costs about $150 to upgrade my 520 to 2.5 megs. Again you can look in most mags for companies who will either sell you a kit to do it or they may do it for you. If you get a company to do it, wait until the guarantee has expired before doing this mod, so you have piece of mind. Remember if you have TOS 1.1 and you do, do a 2.5 meg upgrade do not "PANIC" if the computer appears dead for about a minute when you boot it up, it is merely clearing ram and appears to take forever to compare the 512k or 1024k ram you had before. It was at this stage I bought "Rainbow TOS". Another source of amusement to me has been the comments re-switching TOS, on Fnet I received last week, one fellow was so sure it could not be done, well again to set the record straight it CAN be done. However, you will be required to re-burn your existing TOS sets into an eprom, and switch between the banks on these eproms, thus you will need a switch on the front panel to do this. The only real advantages of this are.. * If you want to play games, not all games work with TOS 1.4/Rainbow. * Are programing, and want to be compatible with all ST's (like the 8 bit TRANSLATOR disk) * Faster boot up, with larger memory. * MS-DOS compatable disk formats. * Just want to be trendy! Please note this will void any warranty given by the "Atari" for your TOS, and will breach a copyright if sold!!! Monitor Switching: If you are lucky enough to have 2 monitors a colour and monochrome monitor, you can do a few things and here the choice again is yours. a. Use a montior switch box ie "Monitor Master", and mount it either on the back panel of the IBM housing or feed to the outside of the case and use it as you already do. b. Buy a Sony/Atari 13 pin monitor plug (male) and make a cable to run from the monitor to the rear of the IBM housing about 10 " long. Now make a desicion! Do you want to remain Atari standard or do your own thing with attaching your monitor(s) to the housing? If you wish to remain standard you will have to source 2 female 13 pin Sony/Atari 13 pin sockets and mount them on the rear panel, or get 2 D9 female plugs and mount them on the rear panel, either way it doesn't matter. Now one is for colour and the other is for mono. Take a line from pin 4 on the ST end of your cable and take it to a SPST switch, connect it though this to pin 4 onto the female plug you have called "Mono Monitor". Other than this line take all the other connections BAR pin 2 to your female connectors. Connect 2 "RCA" female sockets on the rear of the housing calling one of them "AUDIO" and the other "VIDEO". Now take pin 1 from the ST end of your cable to the center of the female RCA socket marked "AUDIO" and pin 2 from the ST end of the cable to the female RCA socket marked "VIDEO". Strap both of the earth connectors to either pin 13 or a common EARTH you have already set up. (please note on some early versions of the ST pins 2 and 8 were reversed, my 520ST is a 1985 vintage and pin 2 is video). This has now given you an outlet to feed to your VCR and your Stereo/Music center. To select your Mono monitor simply switch pin 4 on and off, that is the pin that goes to the SPST switch, it switchs the mono detect line, and will reboot your ST. NB:- I have not done any diagrams as pin selection is mentioned in Your Atari Handbook. Also if you do not have a modulator on ST you can simply go and get one from Radio Shack that only requires Video/Audio in and 12volt and there you have one, or you can connect up a video transmitter and send the ST to any TV in your house. The CARTRIDGE PORT: This part is somewhat difficult, all you have to do is one of three things. 1. Do not use your cart port 2. Make a right angle adaptor so you may plug in any cart, and mount it on the side of the Housing. (The easiest to do!) 3. Remount the cart port from horizontal to vertical, this sounds easy but it is harder than it looks. Now all the carts merely connect by pluging straight in "snap". Mounting the ST Mother Board: I found the easiest way to do this is to make up two alloy plates, one mounted under the mother board, and one over the top of the mother board. I used HEX standoff bolts to mount the plates and the mother board on so there was enough of an air gap, between all of them. I painted the Alloy plates Black so they would also assorb the heat. Use the mount holes on your ST to mark out the Alloy plates, this makes a template of where to drill the IMB case and the alloy plates, so they marry up with your ST mother-board.. Now a few tips.. * Leave the Joy stick/Mouse ports on your ST mother board. * Drill a hole over the GLUE chip, for those of you with the old problem with the "Glue chip" this will save you stripping your case to re-seat this little beasty. With a hole over it you can use a pencil to do the same thing. (Drill the hole in the TOP Alloy Plate) * Mount your Floppy drives,Hard disks,etc on top of the top Alloy plate thus allowing for a good mounting surface for all the other equipment you wish to install. (Floppy and Hard drives should line up with the holes in the front of the IBM housing) * Take the look at where your keyboard plugs into your mother board (this is the Hard bit :-) you only need to take 5 of these to your keyboard, if you choose to mount your joystick/mouse ports on your new keyboard. This can be done by getting a 5 pin din socket and mounting it on the rear of your IBM case. Take the 5 wires to here and on the other end have a male 5 pin Din plug going to either.. 1. Your old ST housing 2. Your new 101 type keyboard. If you are going to use a 101 type keyboard remember this.. 1. You will have to remount the Keboard processor. 2. You will have to re-matrix the keyboard. If you are going to use your old ST case (the easiest way of doing it), you will have to put in 2 D9 male sockets, one for the Mouse and the other for the joystick. It becomes a birds nest of wiring so do not do this "Like a bull in a china shop." Well now you have done most of transplant you are ready to boot it up and have a full blown IBM/CLONE look alike but with the RIGHT MOTOR, an ATARI ST. This project is an on going thing, as you will find that you will want to add bits and pieces here and there, and make it a little more friendly with bells & whistles, for instances LEDs on all the Hardisks, leds that indicate Formating, a Track indicator for the floppies and the list goes on, now you have the room to play in, and the Lion is no longer in Sheeps Clothing! YOU SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT ANY OF THE ABOVE UNLESS YOU FELL YOU HAVE THE TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE TO COMPLETE THE TASK, AND THIS WILL SURELY VOID ALL WARRANTIES ON ALL EQUIPMENT USED. The Bottom Line:- Nothing is impossible, it just takes a little longer!