Re: [MiNT] Installing on a MegaSTE

[Alan Hourihane <alanh@fairlite.co.uk>]

On Wed, 2010-01-13 at 14:21 -0500, Mark Duckworth wrote:
> On 1/13/10 1:59 PM, Christos Tziotzis wrote:
> > Hi,
> > A friend and I tried to install MiNT on his 4MB MSTE without XFS. 
> > However the memory usage was approximately 3MB of RAM living only 1 to 
> > the user. As you can see this makes the system almost useless. So:
> > Is there a way to minimize the memory usage?
> > Also could this be an effect of left over code in MiNT? And if so, 
> > should there be a clean up of the code?
> > The system was: MiNT, XaAES, Teradesk, and Ethernec driver.
> > Thanks.
> > Christos
> This is about right :(.  I too want to run mint on my MSTe so I hunted 
> solutions and found one.  The Magnum STe.  This isn't for sale anymore 
> and wasn't for sale for very long but it is a 14MB st ram board for 
> ste's.  They also made an ST variant as well as a TT variant that 
> allowed 256mb! of tt ram.  I searched for a couple weeks and got in 
> touch with the author.  I found the schematics online and hunted down 
> all the components to build a board.  The author graciously sent me the 
> CPLD code as well as the gerber files to have a pcb made!  The author 
> even gave me permission to sell the boards with profit!  If all goes 
> well I'll have 2 MSTe's with 14MB of ram and the parts to build 6 more 
> of them to send to people!  If it works, I will buy the rest of the 
> components I need to make as many as possible but the CPLD is no longer 
> available through normal channels.  I still have to go over the gerber 
> files and submit it to batchpcb.  The CPLD's are very expensive so any 
> boards produced are going to be well over $100USD in components and pcb 
> cost alone but hey...  Also an associate of the developer has several 
> Magnum ST and TT boards left and I asked him to send them to me which he 
> is doing for the price of postage!  These guys definitely have no atari 
> interest anymore.
> 
> But between this and the MSTEIDEM there is a reason to built mint for ST.
> 
> The sad thing is between Aranym, 2 TT's and my falcon, I have no idea 
> WHY I want to make my mste usable with mint... I just DO.

I've got the Magnum ST here.

I'm contemplating ripping open my Stacy and popping it in.

But the MACH210 should be replaceable by another CPLD as the code for
them could be easily recompiled to something else. That's of course if
you have the CPLD source code and not use the hex dump.

Alan.