All four machines were manufactured at Atari Taiwan Manufacturing Co. (indicated by the "A1" prefix in the serial numbers).
+| Machine | Serial | Manufactured | Board |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mega ST 2 | A1 7B 4010182 | 11/1987 | CA200019 / C100167-001 Rev.5.0 |
| Mega ST 4 "High" | A1 05 4009044 | 05/1990 | — |
| Mega ST 4 "Low" | A1 08 4011143 | 08/1990 | — |
| Mega ST 4 Heirloom | A1 08 4011015 | 08/1990 | CA200019 / C100167-001 Rev.B |
| Keyboard (Heirloom) | A1 07 4085985 | 07/1990 | CA200043-004 |
A few upgrades have been bought or built but aren't in a machine yet, either waiting to go in or kept as spares:
Serial: A1 08 4011015 · Manufactured August 1990 · Board: CA200019 / C100167-001 Rev.B
+Original keyboard: A1 07 4085985 · Manufactured July 1990 · Board: CA200043-004, fully disassembled and cleaned on 6 March 2022.
+This machine serves as a nostalgia and comparison reference. When problems occur on one of the modified Megas, I can test against this unchanged original state to distinguish bus, flash, or configuration errors from genuine hardware faults. It can also be used as a test platform for uncritical experiments, but stays as close to original as possible for nostalgic reasons.
diff --git a/retro/mega-st-high/index.njk b/retro/mega-st-high/index.njk index c9a60b0..227048c 100644 --- a/retro/mega-st-high/index.njk +++ b/retro/mega-st-high/index.njk @@ -11,6 +11,9 @@ parent: "/retro/"Received for free in 2026, this Mega ST 4 was fully rebuilt and is today my primary workstation. It's the most capable machine in the fleet, running Geneva as a real multitasking environment.
+Serial: A1 05 4009044 · Manufactured May 1990
+Bought via eBay as a bargain, this Mega ST 4 is today my LowRes demo and gaming machine. It's the most heavily expanded of the fleet, but tuned for fast disk-image swapping rather than productivity.
+Serial: A1 08 4011143 · Manufactured August 1990
+I had originally cut out the TOS ROMs to experiment with external solutions, and afterwards it was unclear whether the board had been damaged in the process. Moving the Cloudy/Storm ST combo to this machine via the MegaBus connector brought it back to stable operation. The actual problem turned out to be a poorly and incompletely soldered CPU socket.
diff --git a/retro/mega-st2/index.njk b/retro/mega-st2/index.njk index 91ac412..c717ff3 100644 --- a/retro/mega-st2/index.njk +++ b/retro/mega-st2/index.njk @@ -14,6 +14,9 @@ parent: "/retro/"It runs on original TOS with the internal RAM configuration, without the separate 4 MB expansion, which was removed for testing purposes and now sits set aside.
+Serial: A1 7B 4010182 · Manufactured November 1987 · Board: CA200019 / C100167-001 Rev.5.0
+Everything in this machine was moved over to the Mega ST 4 "High" that I was given, including its original power supply. It's not really a parts donor though, it's simply the spare machine now that the new Mega 4 carries the main setup. Back then it had an intermittent fault: after being on for a long time it would eventually show a white screen on boot. I first suspected the 4 MB expansion and removed it, but the fault persisted. Only after reverting it to the old TOS and a fully original state did it run stably again.