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3.6 Stacy
Einige Tips zum STACY Portable
THESE STACY'S ARE VERY RARE IN EUROPE
Stacy in the US are Not very rare. Years latter, we still sell
them to Atari Midi User's! Matter of face we must still have 50 to 100
2 and 4 Meg Stacys in stock at this time!
I think you are a little confused on this Stacy Battery! All
Stacy's have an internal Battery soldered onto the Motherboard for the
Internal Stacy Clock! You can not see this soldered in Stacy Battery
unless you take apart your Stacy 2!
Now if you are talking about the empty Stacy Battery Pack location
behind the Keyboard, Yes, we have 2 Stacy Battery packs in stock! The
Gel Cell(Lead Acid type) pack, which requires you cut out plastic
inside the Battery compartment to fit the Gel Cell in, cost is U$D75.
Then we also have a Ni Cad Battery pack, which is a drop in, no
modifications required to the Stacy Battery compartment! Cost is U$D
99 The Stacy Owners manual, which has a Standard Atari ST owners
manual and a 12 page Stacy Addendum is U$D 12 Cost for the Stacy
Addendum with or without the Atari ST manual is the Same U$D 12.
The Connection for both of our Stacy Battery packs is located
inside the Stacy! You can see the connector on the Stacy motherboard
if you Look thru the 3 small Rectangular holes located on the left
side of the Stacy Battery compartment! Complete installation
instructions come with the Stacy battery packs we sell!
Am interested, I have just soldered on Mario's IDE/TOS2.06 adapter
and am running a 2 1/2 inch IDE drive in my Stacy4...
I also bought a Stacy2 for 2 weeks ago.I have modified it with 2
handmade SIPP's and a 50 MB harddisk.I contacted BEST ELECTRONICS.
Bradley is a very kind person which has still an enormous amount of
Atari parts. I saw that in a catalogue of his.In this catalogue there
are many hints and tips about Atari computers and.............the
Stacy. When the plans of an Atari-show in Brussels, Belgium are
finalized, he's probably going to that event, and then I will
certainly buy this catalogue. So I read you're modifying your brothers
Stacy.I like to read more of that. But let's start with my question :
WHAT'S THE BEST WAY OF DISMOUNTING A STACY ???
You used a 2.5 inch drive in the Stacy, why not a 3.5 inch SCSI ??
Have you done something about the powering of the Stacy, I mean a
batterypack, that lasts for more than 15 minutes................. or a
poweradapter, that fits in the empty batterycompartment?? Is it
possible to use a 1.44 HD drive ?? What's the best harddiskdriver ? I
returned after HDDRIVER, ICD and HUSHI to plain AHDI !! I already got
more reactions on my message in the newsgroup. I hope we can help each
other with question, hints and tips about this wonderful Atari model.
Ours is a Stacy4, Mario will be making his upgrade board to take
the RAM up to 14MB, it is not made yet, only a matter of time...
We have the Best catalogue, it is very good, the best source
around and valuable with the tips in it. Prices are rather
expensive... It cost us NZD36.
BTW, the early Stacy had the Mega bus port out the side. Later
models didn't, but the holes are still there on the PCB...
The Stacy has the Atari SCSI interface plugged in beside the PSU unit. It is not a very good interface. For instance, a friend put a 2 gig HDD in his Stacy and wondered why he could only see 1 gig. The interface is typical Atari, only half done. There are other problems and you can get around them maybe, depending on the drive. Becxause Mario makes the IDE interface which includes the TOS 2.06 upgrade as well, and because the IDE drives are cheaper in the 3 1/2 inch size and about equivalent in the 2 1/2 size - I thought this would be the better way to go. I left the SCSI 40MB drive in there for now and installed his interface with an old 120MB 2 1/2 IDE drive I had sitting around... I have not researched the battery issue and have given up on this issue. The standard battery replacements are just not worth it in my opinion because they don't last very long at all. The new Magnesium Hydride batteries may be OK, or some expensive Lithium one. I am sure soemthing could be sorted out, but the Stacy has high power consumption and I wonder how long it would go. However, with the 2 1/2 HDD, the power consumption would be a lot lower, so it depends if you want to research this question. What I did was to leave the SCSI drive in there, and I have really hacked the Stacy case, it may not have been strictly necessary, but I don't mind it. So what I did was to cut the case where the battery compartment is - I cut the bottom out and also the sides a fair bit. This gives me plenty of room to move for the IDE upgrade and 2 1/2 drive. The upgrade actually sits beside the CPU, which in practice, is beside the PSU board, since this sits over the CPU... I soldered the upgrade directly onto the CPU. This is slow work. It pays to take your time... Another thing which is a nuisance with the Stacy is the Trackball. The left and right buttons eventually don't work... Well I unscrewed the Trackball unit and very carefully cut open the micro switch itself and cleaned the insides with Isoproypl Alchohol. It's all very tiny. The micro switches are not made to take apart. I put some of this 'pressure-melting tape' I have around the micro switch top and this has held the 'lid' on the little switches just fine. Now the buttons works fine. I must say, however, that I have become a fan of Mario's Serial Mouse Interface. I use a PC 'Genius Netmouse' This has a rocker button for the middle button. This gives me a double click when I press forwards and a left-click-and-hold when I press backwards. It is the best thing ever made for the Atari computers without a doubt - as regards mice, trackballs and pads. It is definitely a 'must have' item. Actually, I can't wait for him to finally make up the PC keyboard/PC mouse interface (I am using this as I speak) as this combines two good things into one. I do find the Stacy keyboard a nuisance when I use it with Notator - It's the little numeric keypad keys and the arrow keys and the 'F' keys they are not easy to oeprate...
Taking the Stacy apart is a bit tedious. You have to get the
display apart and the trick is to undo the screws behind the 'Stacy'
label. Then the fiddly bit is carefully unclipping the two halves
without damaging the plastic. We used a small screwdriver to wedge the
case in the right way so the little clipping system holding the two
halves together would unclip! There are a few of these around the
display, take it slow and carefully.
You can either unplug the display to make further disassembly
possible, in this case you need to make a note of where all the wires
go. Either way, you need to unscrew a metal strap to give you more
room to move with the wires - you have to do what you think is
sensible.
The first time we did this was because the screen was very loose
at the left hand hinge. There is a powerful spring inside and we found
the screws coming loose...
However, upon closer inspection we found cracks in the area where
there is re-inforcing struts in the plastic, due to stress from the
spring. In this case I put a great deal of plastic around all these
areas with a plastic glue-gun. I used up a couple of plastic glue
sticks. Very worth while.
Another very bad problem can develop. This is chaffing of the
wires from the display where they then go through the shielding which
sits over the motherboard. I have put special 'pressure-melting tape
around the wires in this area. In fact this is the second time I have
disassembled the Stacy and this time I am removing some of the
shielding to fit the IDE interface and at the same time remove the
shielding which causes the rubbing on the display wires...
Another big problem with the Stacy is that the display backlight
goes dim. This has happened to me and so I most often use a seperate
display. However, the backlight is an electroluminescent type. It is a
thin piece of plastic sheeting which glows when the correct type of
power is applied. This is why the PSU board which is mounted over the
CPU on the Motherboard has additional circuitry to handle this...
I have checked around for replacements but they seem really
expensive.
Yes if you simply put in a new AJAX chip and I think TOS 2.06, or
you can risk double clocking your current AJAX chip - some can take it
others can't. For peace of mind, get the suitable AJAX chip.
We believe HD driver. We have AHDI, ICD pro, CBHD, To get a HDD
that is small these days is hard, to get access to multi gigabyte
drives with large partitions, well Mario has tested my 12 gigabyte IDE
HDD on his IDE interface with HD driver...
Informations from:
Bradley Koda (BEST ELECTRONICS)
Well, at least it worked for me to improve my screen brightness
about 80% anyway.
I found that there was a open circuit (partial broken circuit) on
one of the wires leading to the control box adjacent to the screen. I
found that the wire was broken inside the plastic wire jacket and was
hard to find. I discovered this little feature when I was fiddling
with the screen to measure voltages and voila'!
The culprits are the two white wires leading into the top of the
control board near the center (brightness) control potentiometer. It
seems to be ATARI's fault, as the wire was broken cleanly exactly at
one of the crimped ends. This increased the resistance of the
brightness control, decreasing the screen brightness.
I stripped the bad wire, soldered it back to the connector and
cleaned the terminals (chemical oxidization cleaning spray) on both
ends.
Now at least I have a working night light.
OK, I know you have all been asking for a Screen Fix for the
STacy, and I am working hard at trying to find one for y'all!
Well, I have probably the BEST temporary fix you'll ever need and
probably ever want for your STacy. Let's face it folks... We will
NEVER see a bright screen. Just drop it for now and follow these next
instructions for improving your machine....This way will make the
screen MUCH MUCH MUCH brighter than the original, and as bright as my
SM 124 Monochrome monitor.
Since we all have resorted to using an external 15 watt flouresent
desk lamp for illumination, the trick is to pass that light through
the LCD screen onto a highly reflective background. Note that as the
STacy screen dims, the flat background light gets a little darker as
well. This creates a dark background on which dark letters of the LCD
must be read. If you replace that dark background with one of a higher
reflectance, you get a VERY BRIGHT and super accurate screen! A piece
of white typing paper works fine, and I guess reflective paint will
also do the trick.
DISCLAIMER:
Lood Guck!
Technical Informations from Phil McCandless
Copyright © Robert Schaffner (doit@doitarchive.de) Letzte Aktualisierung am 23. Mai 2004 |
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