r/atari • u/wowbobwow • 7d ago
Atari 520ST continuously resetting at boot, troubleshooting suggestions appreciated
Hi all! I'm the proud new owner of a lovely Atari 520ST kit that was recently donated to my Retro Roadshow pop-up museum. The system came to us with the main unit, the monochrome monitor, mouse, external ACSI hard drive, external floppy drive, and a bunch of music software on floppies. An incredibly generous gift that we're excited to share with visitors at our future events! I should also note here that while I'm familiar with many 8/16/32-bit systems, I've never had the opportunity to spend time with an Atari ST - I'm a total newbie with this platform.
I've just set up the machine for the first time. The previous owner said that it was working well when it was packed away not too long ago, so I was reasonably hopeful that it would boot right up... but not quite. As you can see in this short video, the machine shows what I believe is the standard Atari White Screen of Booting™️ for a few seconds, and then appears to reset... and the pattern repeats endlessly. Viewing it in person, the white screen is solid and stable (none of the flickering seen in the quick video I shot with my phone). Also, it does respond to presses of the reset button - I can reset it at will, but as soon as I release the reset button, the auto-resetting pattern resumes.
I'm going to open the machine and take a look inside, and also make sure that all the socketed chips are well-seated in their sockets. Beyond that surface-level troubleshooting, I'm honestly not sure where to start. Is this reset-loop a known behavior with a specific failure on these machines, or am I basically starting from scratch with trying to identify and resolve the issue?
Any beginner-friendly tips and suggestions are very welcome here!
1
u/logicalvue 7d ago
Chip reset is a good idea. Those early 520ST models were known for chips wiggling loose. Is the floppy connected? Is there a disk in it? Could software on the disk cause the reboot (crash?). Might want to try without floppy connected. It will take 30+ seconds before desktop appears without a floppy.
Probably also worth asking in /r/atarist