            SUPERMON GIVING PROBLEMS?

If,  on powering up,  you get a ringing type of noise,  you  have 
without a doubt a dirty cartridge slot,  or special MMU and  GLUE 
chips.

The first can happen either after some use of the cartridge,  or
even the very first time you plug it in.

The cause for this happening after some time of use is simply  an 
accumulation of dirt and dust,  and the simple remedy is to clean 
the BOARD contacts with a pencil rubber, and that is it.

The  reason this happens with new cartridge slots appears  to  be 
that a thin film of lubricant (oil) has been left on the contacts 
after  manufacture.  This  oil should have been  removed  in  the 
factory,  but  it  seems that quite a few  cartridge  ports  have 
missed the cleaning process.

Fixing this problem can be done two ways,  the fast and the  slow 
way. The fast way is to get hold of a can of contact cleaner (NOT 
the oily type,  the type that leaves no residue at all. Give both 
the slot and the board a good spray and that should be it.

The slow way is to keep cleaning the contacts on the board  every 
time  you unplug the cartridge,  and this way finally get rid  of 
all the gunk.

So,  if you get this problem,  don't panic,  and above all, don't 
blame the Supermon cartridge,  as it has honest to goodness  gold 
(yes,  GOLD)  plated  contacts.  Blame the  manufacturer  of  the 
cartridge  slots,  and blame Atari for not having better  quality 
control.

Now  for the GLUE/MMU problem.  It seems that Atari had  some  of 
these  chips manufactured by a company called  IMP.  These  chips 
apparently have some kind of timing problem, and about 50% of the 
time  the  system  will  not power  up  correctly  with  Supermon 
installed. THIS IS NOTHING TO DO WITH SUPERMON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For  some  strange  reason  different  format  disks  behave   in 
different ways.  At the moment Atari (Aust) is trying to get more 
information,  and by the time you receive your Supermon,  we will 
hopefully have found a solution to this problem.

If  you  do find you have these  chips,  and  a  problem,  please 
contact me for the solution. Phone or fax is (07) 801 1218.

                                             Thank you,

                                             Will Visser.

