#oneaday Day 430: Repair Shop

Been thinking about how to fix up that "new" Atari STE I got… or the one I had from before.

Here are the problems that need solving:

• The STE I had from before has a knackered joystick port. This is a common problem that can be fixed by resoldering the connections on the joystick ports, which are actually on the keyboard's PCB. Unfortunately we don't have a suitably delicate soldering iron — though my wife reckons she can borrow one from someone at work.

• The "new" STE I have acquired doesn't boot Rod-Land for some reason, showing corrupted graphics and three bombs. Three bombs indicates an "address" error, which, depending on who you ask, can mean something is wrong with the RAM or the floppy drive, or both, or perhaps something different altogether.

There are a few possible solutions, none of which are guaranteed at this point:

• Solder the joystick connections on the "old" STE. This is a well-established fix, but potentially risky — plus, as I say, it requires us to borrow a soldering iron with a bit more precision than the one we have here.

• Swap out the RAM from the "old" STE to the "new" one to see if that fixes the problem. Getting the RAM out isn't a huge problem since STEs used easily removable SIMMs, much like DOS/Windows PCs, but opening the STE up does involve taking out lots of screws — and swapping RAM from one to another requires that to be done for two machines. There's also no guarantee this will fix the problem.

• Swap out the floppy drive from the "old" STE to the "new" one. Exactly the same considerations as above… plus I'm not 100% sure how "swappable" those floppy drives are. There's no reason why they shouldn't be… but again, there's no guarantee this will fix things.

• Swap the keyboard PCBs between the two machines — I know the joystick port on the "new" one works, so this is probably the simplest solution, and the most likely to work without the potential of anything messing up. The only downside is the "new" STE has much more yellowed keys than the "old" one. If I really felt strongly about that, I could always swap all the keycaps over. There's also the possibility that the joystick ports in the "new" one could fail in the same way as the "old" one, at which point soldering either or both of them will become necessary.

Computers are never straightforward, are they? Still, at least when you're dealing with hardware from this era, you tend to be dealing with actual, relatively easily identifiable, physical problems rather than the sort of seemingly indecipherable issues you have to deal with today. You can look at a knackered ST and tell what is wrong by looking at it in most cases, whereas if your PC doesn't boot, it could be any one of a thousand different things. Believe me, I know, all too well!

Well, whatever we decide, we'll give it a try later this week. I might even try to be brave and do it myself, but we'll see! 🙂