Jump to content
IGNORED

Another unknown EPROM...


DavidMil

Recommended Posts

I found an 2732 EPRON in the loose side board from an old 810 drive. When I pulled it out and looked at it on the burner it says:

 

* THE CHIP - VERSION 1.0 © 1983 Spartan SOFTWARE OF MINN. INC

 

There is nothing on the chip itself, just the black aluminum cover over the window. It was in slot A102. Is this a Archiver chip?

Seems like I had one. It might have been pirated though.

 

DavidMil

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found an 2732 EPRON in the loose side board from an old 810 drive. When I pulled it out and looked at it on the burner it says:

 

* THE CHIP - VERSION 1.0 © 1983 Spartan SOFTWARE OF MINN. INC

 

There is nothing on the chip itself, just the black aluminum cover over the window. It was in slot A102. Is this a Archiver chip?

Seems like I had one. It might have been pirated though.

 

DavidMil

 

 

Yep, it's an Archiver chip. I have 3 or 4 of them. A full dump and post would be nice. We could see what Open Code it has...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool! Is there any other changes needed to replace the stock ROM in an 810 with a 2732 of this? I have a stock Rev C 810 now I'd like to try it in.

 

Edit: I'm guessing there's extra wiring needed since isn't stock 810 ROM only 2K / (ala 2716)?

Edited by Nezgar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool! Is there any other changes needed to replace the stock ROM in an 810 with a 2732 of this? I have a stock Rev C 810 now I'd like to try it in.

 

Edit: I'm guessing there's extra wiring needed since isn't stock 810 ROM only 2K / (ala 2716)?

Mine has some jumpers and cut traces.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool! Is there any other changes needed to replace the stock ROM in an 810 with a 2732 of this? I have a stock Rev C 810 now I'd like to try it in.

 

Edit: I'm guessing there's extra wiring needed since isn't stock 810 ROM only 2K / (ala 2716)?

The Chip uses a 2732 and uses 2k modified original plus 2k Archiver code which is controlled by an Address line.

The installation guide is somewhere here on AA...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool! Is there any other changes needed to replace the stock ROM in an 810 with a 2732 of this? I have a stock Rev C 810 now I'd like to try it in.

 

There are three blue wires on the back of the board. they look to be manufacture type changes though..

 

1st. Wire from pin 21 of chip A102 (the Archiver chip) to pin 11 of chip A104 (6532 chip)

2nd. Wire from pin 20 of chip A102 to pin 2 of chip Z103 (CD4067 chip)

3rd. Wire from pin 18 of chip A102 to Ground.

 

It also looks like there are also three cut traces:

1st. Between pin 21 of chip A102 and pin 16 of chip A101

The other two cuts are right at the pads of pins 20 and 18 on the A102 chip. The traces both connect to a large trace

right beside them that I'm assuming is 5 volts. (Sorry, I'm to lazy to get up, dig out my 810 manuals, and look it up).

 

Like I said, these are all blue wires (bent very neatly) like those used by manufactures to do all sorts of post production

modifications, so I'm not sure if they pertain to the Archiver Chip or not.

 

DavidMil

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

B&C/myatari.com sells a Super Archiver upgrade for the 1050.

And the 1050 Super Archiver+Bitwriter has been reimaged by tf_hh as well. I'm looking forward to receiving mine shortly.

 

I also think Archiver/Super Archiver may be MegaSpeedy modes? (I don't have one of those-yet)

Edited by Nezgar
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archiver/Super Archiver are/were a CSS product.

 

http://nleaudio.com/css/products/superarch.htm

http://nleaudio.com/css/products/superarchII.htm

 

BitWriter IIRC was the product sold by CSS before

they came up with the Archiver offerings.

 

When I got my package from B&C, the manual was for

BitWriter and the software was for Super Archiver II.

Graphics in the manual didn't match the software

screens and much confusion reigned upon my poor

addled mind. Called Bruce to ask what up and was

told it's all the same, you've got the latest and

best one from CSS. Almost no help at all. :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the 1050 Super Archiver+Bitwriter has been reimaged by tf_hh as well. I'm looking forward to receiving mine shortly.

 

I also think Archiver/Super Archiver may be MegaSpeedy modes? (I don't have one of those-yet)

 

No, the MegaSpeedy can´t emulate the BitWriter 1050. The SuperArchiver 1050 is included and can be used by the MegaSpeedy.

 

The BitWriter needs a lot of more electronics "around". Of course all of them could be placed also in the CPLD used by the MegaSpeedy, but this would take much more space in the CPLD than all other expansions. At last I´m not sure if the special design of the BitWriter with frequency controlled bit-pattern write would really work with an emulation.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archiver/Super Archiver are/were a CSS product.

 

http://nleaudio.com/css/products/superarch.htm

http://nleaudio.com/css/products/superarchII.htm

 

BitWriter IIRC was the product sold by CSS before

they came up with the Archiver offerings.

 

The SuperArchiver II is only a software update enabling Medium (Enhanced) Density. The hardware (just an EPROM, 2 KB static RAM and an 74LS00 glued into one "black box") is the same.

 

The genuine Bitwriter requires a SuperArchiver, so I can´t imagine that the Bitwriter was sold first :)

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

 

Ask and you shall receive.

 

David

 

 

Open Code is 18FF

 

I have dumped David's 810 Archiver EPROMs myself, and confirmed the first byte in the previously attached dump was corrupt. The first byte was $FF (resulting in CRC32 = 60D9BF2B), but should be $14 (CRC32 = 00721693).

 

Attached is the corrected dump.

ARCHIVER Open Code 1814 00721693.BIN

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice one Nezgar...Nice to see an original Chip for once :) rather than the same copies that circulated...

 

PS, where is the open code on the chip?

 

I presume its encrypted as a 18 ff or ff 18 search drew blanks..

Edited by Mclaneinc
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

 

I have dumped David's 810 Archiver EPROMs myself, and confirmed the first byte in the previously attached dump was corrupt. The first byte was $FF (resulting in CRC32 = 60D9BF2B), but should be $14 (CRC32 = 00721693).

 

Attached is the corrected dump.

Nice catch, So the correct Open Code would be 1814, not 18FF...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice catch, So the correct Open Code would be 1814, not 18FF...

 

Oh, excellent! I didn't realize it's just derived from the first two bytes. I've updated the filename of the attachment.

 

So, maybe it would have worked anyway with the previous open code and $FF in the first byte of the ROM?

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

Slowly getting to repairing a number of non-working 810's I was thankful to receive from @Savetz, and one of them I've been able to revive turned out to have a CHIP/Archiver 810 mod installed, along with a slow-RPM switch. Never having seen the 810 Archiver ROM run on real hardware until now, I immediately noticed the power-on behaviour was different - it seeks from Track 39 to 0, and immediately back to 39 before idle timeout. Atari's 810 Rev B and C ROMs wait at track 0 during the idle timeout, seeking back to track 39 when the motor stops.

 

Anyhow, first order of business was to dump the EPROM to find out the open code:

1356382268_810ArchiverHxD.thumb.png.e2b38a69a1943b48da47a84cb1be0638.png

So the open code is 1595 - this is different from the other ROM's I've seen shared so far, so it's nice to find another new one in the wild! I confirmed this open code works with the Archiver 1.0/1.2 software.

 

To answer a pondering of mine in an earlier post in this topic, I confirmed that with the drive in "OPEN" mode, that SpartaDOS X locks up accessing the drive, just like the Archiver 1050/Emulator mode does for the 1050, because it starts already "open". With the drive NOT in open mode, it actually works quite dandy basically as an 810 would normally work, even under SDX, so that's nice.

 

I also confirmed it formats disks with the tighter "chicago" sector interleave. Although most software can read sequentially without missing any sectors/blowing RPM's, SpartaDOS X, and even DOS 2.5 will miss at least 1 out of every 8 or so sectors. Only low level sector copiers (ie MyCopyR) seem to be able write without a skipping a beat. (I need to test this more with the Stock ROMs to compare)

 

This drive has a 4KB 2732 EPROM, twice the size of the stock 2K ROM. Anyone know what a known "original" installation looks like to compare? EPROM is dated 1982, right around when the Archiver would have been released. ( (c)1983 as we can see in the ROM dump itself) Highly unlikely to have been MASK ROMs produced for this mod.

 

1688947943_D2732A-3Archiver810.thumb.jpg.5252010d3e627c24908635e15a1a3105.jpg

 

Reverse side necessary wiring changes to map the extra address line for 4KB, and chip select inversion for the EPROM:

1877688506_Archiver810SideBoardReverse.thumb.jpg.8628828eeefeefb11210836a23056e3c.jpg

(top left is the other end of the slow-RPM trimpot wire. Appears to be GND)

 

Looks like the last guy who had it apart damaged one of the pins on the data separator daughterboard, and hacked in a replacement square pin header. It was actually protruding an extra 2mm from the rest of the pins, so I heated the pin up with the soldering iron and levelled it equal to the rest.

123422686_810ArchiverPinReplaced.thumb.jpg.837a2723a563f2dd1e36b6dad5c31094.jpg

 

There is a second trimpot wired between ground (from the side board) and pin 7 (IN-) of the LM2917 Frequency to Voltage Converter. It drops the RPM from 288 to 266 or so. The drive can still read sectors at this speed, have not tested writing, but this would have been used to write tracks with more than 19 full sectors to duplicate some protection types.

1624719171_810ArchiverSlowRPMA100.thumb.jpg.8714417c10ded69938cc48ca972aa3d4.jpg1176812207_810ArchiverSlowRPMTrimpot.thumb.jpg.9e85e14a5054e95dfc6147a26d40c61b.jpg

 

Lastly, the mech itself in this drive had some issues... Loud track seeking silenced with a little dielectric grease, grinding noise in the drive motor could not be silenced with light machine oil... found that the grinding would cease if sideways pressure was placed in the opposite direction of the way the belt would normally pull.. many years of wear and idleness pulling the motor shaft one direction... so my genius idea was to remove the motor, rotate it 180 degrees, and screw it back in. :) The wires were just long enough to still reach, reinstalled the belt, and the motor is silent now! Lastly, the mech could read, but any writes would corrupt the sector written, and could no longer read. Head cleaning made no difference. Confirmed a mech from my working 810 worked fine, so I knew it wasn't an electrical issue. I solved it simply by rotating the felt pressure pad 180 degrees, so I guess pressure is more evenly placed across the head now. No problems formatting, writing, reading afterwards. The drive should be good for another 38 years now. 8)

 

ROM dump attached.

Archiver 810-2732-Open Code 1595 7759E071.BIN.BIN

  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 2/4/2018 at 4:04 AM, Nezgar said:

I'm curious if SpartaDOS X 4.4x refuses to talk to a real CHIP/Archiver at all like I have seen with a Happy 1050 running the uploaded CHIP code.

This is because SpartaDos sends a Get Percom Block ($4E) which is interpreted by the Chip as a Set Shutdown Delay.

The Chip does not return any data for the command Set Shutdown Delay but SpartaDos expects the 12 bytes for the Percom block.

This is why SpartaDos X seems to be blocked while initializing.

With SpartaDos X and The Chip in drive D1: you must hit the Break key to go on (or wait for the timeout).

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/14/2020 at 12:18 AM, Nezgar said:

To answer a pondering of mine in an earlier post in this topic, I confirmed that with the drive in "OPEN" mode, that SpartaDOS X locks up accessing the drive, just like the Archiver 1050/Emulator mode does for the 1050, because it starts already "open". With the drive NOT in open mode, it actually works quite dandy basically as an 810 would normally work, even under SDX, so that's nice.

14 hours ago, ebiguy said:

This is because SpartaDos sends a Get Percom Block ($4E) which is interpreted by the Chip as a Set Shutdown Delay.

The Chip does not return any data for the command Set Shutdown Delay but SpartaDos expects the 12 bytes for the Percom block.

This is why SpartaDos X seems to be blocked while initializing.

With SpartaDos X and The Chip in drive D1: you must hit the Break key to go on (or wait for the timeout).

 

Thanks for the definitive explanation "why". I now know since using a real 810 Archiver that the command becomes only available when the archiver is "Open" so a "Closed" archiver 810 works perfectly fine with SDX... The "Archiver Emulator" code upload for the 1050 Happy is always open, so that one is not really usable with SDX.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

@Nezgar, I jumped here from the message you posted yesterday in the thread "Atari 810 ROM replacement".

Reading the details of your 810 with the Chip, I am interested in adding the speed change in my 810.

On 1/14/2020 at 9:18 AM, Nezgar said:

There is a second trimpot wired between ground (from the side board) and pin 7 (IN-) of the LM2917 Frequency to Voltage Converter. It drops the RPM from 288 to 266 or so.

How many ohms should the trimpot should have?

Is the trimpot the only addition to do in the 810 to be able to change the speed? (I mean that there is no trace to cut, pin to bend or anything else to do)?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...