An Arduino Mega 2560 Delivers Cyril Rossignol's Long Dream of an Atari ST-Driven Railway Layout
With an Arduino Mega 2560 acting as a hardware interface, this Atari STE can finally drive Rossignol's model railway layout — 34 years on.
Vintage computing and model railroad enthusiast Cyril Rossignol has blended the worlds of old and new technology to computerize his layout — using an Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller board and near-40-year-old Atari 1040STE microcomputer.
"A couple of months ago, while sorting old stuff, I found my old Atari STE. The one I used in the late 80s," Rossignol explains. "Back then, computing and gaming became my passion. Before that, I was into model railway. For a while, I dreamt to be able to control my trains with my Atari. But 14 years old me failed because the lack of knowledge and resource."
Released in 1989, as a follow-up to the Atari ST of 1985, the Atari STE is a microcomputer boasting 512kB of RAM upgradeable to 4MB as standard, an integrated 3.5" double-sided double-density floppy drive, an operating system with full graphical user interface in ROM, and a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 8MHz. While it struggled to compete against Commodore's Amiga, the Atari ST family retains its fan base today — and, as Rossignol shows, it can still serve as a base for practical projects.
"[This] is a small project I built over the weekend using my existing DCC-EX Command Station, my old Atari 1040STE, [and] a serial cable with a RS232 to TTL convertor," Rossignol explains of the model railway layout control system he has built as a nostalgic nod at his 14-year-old-self's dreams. The reason the project proved easier the second time around: a little modern technology in the form of an Arduino Mega 2560 board, with motor shield, running the DCC-EX firmware for layout control.
With the Arduino Mega 2560 providing a UART serial port which could be converted to RS232, albeit only after being slowed down to 9,600 bits per second in order not to overtax the vintage hardware, the control box can connect to the Atari STE. A custom program written in GFA Basic, running at a generous 320×200 resolution and 16 colors, acts as the user interface.
"The bit rate could go a bit higher on [the] Atari ST," Rossignol says, "but I left it to the default. This project is just for fun. I do not intend to develop it further. I already have a large touch screen control panel with better software to control my trains with the addition of few hand held throttles."
More information is available on Rossignol's YouTube channel.