Some of the Q-BUS stuff is very cheap. Pity I am in
the UK. I thought
the Atari Mega ST4 was a little expensive given its untested. I know it
needs a special video lead to test but mine popped a video driver. Also
technically it doesn't usually boot from disk. The OS is in ROM but it
will read a settings file from floppy.
On Atari Mega 2s, the two I have come across has bad internal floppy
drives. And they're really cool looking, so no desire to replace with a
generic PC one (that will work, but not fit the plastic.) So I opted on
mine to add an ultrasatan board mounted to the RF shield internally, with
the SD card exposed on the back where the epansion board cover is. I used
an external floppy to copy software to the SD card on the ultrasatan.
My friend landed a Mega 2 as well, and his drive was bad as well. I
haven't attempted to repair yet but it might be worthwhile to figure out
what the failure is on these rarities.
- Ethan
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: Ethan O'Toole