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Simple & Useful Project - For your P-Box


Omega-TI

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Compared to some of the amazing projects I've seen for the TI, this seems like it would be an easy project in comparison. Essentially it's just a PCB with two edgecard connectors designed into it and few components to support the speech. Plug the speech onto it, then plug it into the P-Box. It's not like it would need a case or anything.

 

 

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Compared to some of the amazing projects I've seen for the TI, this seems like it would be an easy project in comparison. Essentially it's just a PCB with two edgecard connectors designed into it and few components to support the speech. Plug the speech onto it, then plug it into the P-Box. It's not like it would need a case or anything.

 

 

 

The beginnings of that project are here. Putting it in the console is also at Mainbyte. Putting it in the console, though perhaps trickier would still allow use of the nanoPEB/CF7+.

 

...lee

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The beginnings of that project are here. Putting it in the console is also at Mainbyte. Putting it in the console, though perhaps trickier would still allow use of the nanoPEB/CF7+.

 

...lee

 

Yeah, I was kind of hoping for a new modern version of the RAVE board, pictured below. With todays technology I bet it could easily be half the size. A group buy on PCB's for something like this would lift all boats at the same time... especially those guys with a Geneve as I believe it's the ONLY way for them to have speech.

 

c6812786b20af3145a665e0fa55c8577.jpg

 

Hey Lee, I like it! +1 if anyone builds it!

speech_peb.jpg

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I would like to be able to put my speech inside the PEB too! Michael's looks nice and simple as well - maybe he's still making them?

 

I WANT ONE!!!!

800px-Synth_adapter.jpg

 

How about it Mike? Do you have any for sale? If not, would you be willing to share your PCB design so it could be built and assembled over here without huge overseas shipping rates?

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Michael's board looks distinctly like a one-off, hand etched board. If there really was interest in a PEB speech adapter, I could take one of the designs and do a new layout for it--after I finish with the through-hole IDE board. . .which is progressing nicely lately. I'm getting close to the 70% line on that one, although the last 30% of any board is usually the longest part, as it often involves rearrangement of components to get more optimum trace flow.

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If there really was interest in a PEB speech adapter, I could take one of the designs and do a new layout for it--after I finish with the through-hole IDE board

 

Dude, that WORKS FOR ME! You want me to work up a poll to gauge interest? I'm thinking a group buy of anything you design would be cool. You know me, I'm already a +1!

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Oh, my good old speech board ... LOL.

 

Some points:

 

1. No, I don't build those boards anymore. Look at the date: 1995. Don't even remember how I did it. :-)

2. What I remember is that during that time I learnt how to program GALs in my university courses. So this was kind of a practical application.

3. As I noticed (much later) it is not fully complete: I forgot to check AMA/AMB/AMC which makes my Geneve produce some burping sound now and then.

4. Apart from that it has some ugly error on it. IIRC I mixed up the pins of the regulators.

5. This is actually a self-edged board; I think I needed some attempts to get it properly aligned.

 

BUT one good point: I designed the board with Eagle. I noticed that there are some people who know Eagle, so if I can find the file it can probably still be read and improved. And maybe there's the GAL programming somewhere. I'll have a look.

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I WANT ONE!!!!

800px-Synth_adapter.jpg

 

How about it Mike? Do you have any for sale? If not, would you be willing to share your PCB design so it could be built and assembled over here without huge overseas shipping rates?

No Mike!-dont let them have it, how else can they empathise with us lowly European types and our huge overseas shipping rates!! ;)

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Like I said--this one will be a while, as I really want to finish the IDE board first. I'm finally about to send off for a test run of my clone of TI's original 128K card for the PEB--and I finished that layout almost four years ago!

 

Hmmmm, I'm a patient guy, but I dunno about a 'possible' four year wait; I could die before that! ;)

 

Oh, my good old speech board ... LOL.

 

BUT one good point: I designed the board with Eagle. I noticed that there are some people who know Eagle, so if I can find the file it can probably still be read and improved. And maybe there's the GAL programming somewhere. I'll have a look.

 

Hmmmm, a possible head start here. I know it sucks, but my baby needs some love and tech, so when it comes gear for it, I'll get the first one that is produced and works.

 

No Mike!-dont let them have it, how else can they empathise with us lowly European types and our huge overseas shipping rates!! ;)

 

:grin: :twisted: BITE ME! :twisted: :D

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Like I said--this one will be a while, as I really want to finish the IDE board first. I'm finally about to send off for a test run of my clone of TI's original 128K card for the PEB--and I finished that layout almost four years ago!

 

So, TI made a 128k board. Is there information on that floating around?

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They did. It worked much like an enhanced 32K card, in that it gave the normal 32K space. Where it changed that was that there was also a bank that sat in the DSR space at >4000 and another bank that sat in the cartridge space at >6000. This gave you the possibility of programs that filled up to 48K of expansion memory, assuming you didn't need to bank the DSR space in and out. The card also banks in the remaining memory into various parts of the 32K spaces, so you could conceivably build large programs that used the whole card and banked the routines needed for individual parts of program execution at the time they were needed. All the bank switching is controlled by the PALs on the card via SBZ or SBO commands. I have all of the documentation for it, along with the original schematics. Urbite used what I had to reconstruct the PAL code, and I also have a partly assembled board I bought from Mike Dudeck ages ago. It didn't have the PALs, so I disassembled the bits that were assembled to use the bare board as a template during my reconstruction of the layout.

 

I thought it was an interesting prototype, which is why I decided to work on it. Mine is not the only one out there--one or two assembled boards exist in the wild, one of which was assembled as a 64K board (I suspect it was probably used as the prototype for another TI memory board that never made it into production--the 64K ExtraRAM board). I have the documentation for that board as well. . .but I haven't done a layout for it yet (it is a back-burner project that I've done a little work on though).

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They will NOT do anything useful. Two 32K cards probably won't cause the system to crash--but they give you nothing over what a single card will, as they occupy the same place in the TI memory map.

Thanks Ksarul. That's what I would figure, but I thought I had remembered reading about it. Anyway, I guess it's just best to find a SAMS card if one wants more memory.

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My 128K TI memory boards are on the way to me via DHL as of today. I only made a few of them to do a test build, but I'll probably have 5-10 bare boards left after I finish my testing. . .assuming they work properly and I didn't make any mistakes on the layout.

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  • 4 months later...

Not yet--I tried to get a run of the Nouspikel HyperAMS boards done and ran into a few issues with the layout, so I've been doing a new one over the last few days. I am about 60% done with that updated layout (I only had the Gerbers for the HyperAMS, so the only options were to buy a program that would directly edit Gerbers or do a new layout--and I prefer to have layouts in a nice editable CAD format, so I decided to redo it). This type of work is relatively easy, as I don't have to calculate the best path for traces, as that work was already done (there were no component changes, although some moved around a tiny bit).

 

To answer the question though, I'll probably get to the speech adapter after Chicago. . .and have test boards in hand sometime around Christmas.

Edited by Ksarul
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Not yet--I trie to get a run of the Nouspikel HyperAMS boards done and ran into a few issues with the layout, so I've been doing a new one over the last few days. I am about 60% done with that updated layout (I only had the Gerbers for the HyperAMS, so the only options were to buy a program that would directly edit Gerbers or do a new layout--and I prefer to have layouts in a nice editable CAD format, so I decided to redo it). This type of work is relatively easy, as I don't have to calculate the best path for traces, as that work was already done (there were no component changes, although some moved around a tiny bit).

 

To answer the question though, I'll probably get to the speech adapter after Chicago. . .and have test boards in hand sometime around Christmas.

 

smiley_23.gifOhhh, I'm getting excited. TWO new toys on the horizon!

 

Are there already any programs that would directly benefit from having a Hyper AMS card, or is this mainly a tool for the "Uber Programmer" guys?

 

I have less than basic knowledge of this card, so do you mind if I ask a few NOOB questions?

 

1) Will this replace the 32K card or will it be in addition to the 32K card?

2) Will this be a battery backed device that retains it's memory?

3) Will this be able to run larger (yet to be developed) paged programs in excess of 32K?

4) Will this also be able to function as RAM disk?

5) Do you know if this thing will be designed to bypass the TI startup screen and offer built-in menu functions?

 

I hope that was not too many questions.

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