Introducing: AntiX, the ANTIC Switch !

[Level42]

That was definitly not my intention Gunstar and no worries I have my moods too due to things happening in Real Life. Again...not my intention at all...it was in fact a try to be funny but ....plain text on a screen never carries emotions across

[Gunstar]

That was definitly not my intention Gunstar and no worries I have my moods too due to things happening in Real Life. Again...not my intention at all...it was in fact a try to be funny but ....plain text on a screen never carries emotions across

I forget that sometimes my intentions don't carry through text well either, and sometimes have others reacting to my posts in similar fashion, I need to remember I'm not the only one it happens to!

Edited October 21, 2018 by Gunstar

[+mytek]

Hey we're all getting older and cranky with age. At least I know I am . Also sometimes people just see things from a different viewpoint initially, so from their perspective what someone else is saying appears wrong.

 

I was thinking of what it would take to electronically switch both the Antic and GTIA for situations where you want absolute accuracy. One problem that many people would overlook in doing something like that, would be the color adjustment. I've noticed when swapping GTIA that it often requires a different color adjustment setting on the trim pot. That's one thing where AntiX is better, since you're always using the same GTIA.

[SS]

Hey we're all getting older and cranky with age. At least I know I am .

No me, man. I am so much mellower than I was as a young man. I used to be so angry all of the time, now I'm so much more like "whatevs...".

[Gunstar]

No me, man. I am so much mellower than I was as a young man. I used to be so angry all of the time, now I'm so much more like "whatevs...".

I'm not sure it age yet with me, but the stress of work and everyday life plus caring for a difficult and contrary 80 year-old mother my siblings left up to me. When I was a single guy living alone 3 years ago, I was also a much happier and mellow guy. I just need a vacation, at least from my mother. She refuses a nursing home and I'm honoring that even though I have power of attorney over her, but it's a miserable life dealing with a miserable person and it starts to make you miserable too.

Edited October 22, 2018 by Gunstar

[_The Doctor__]

she's 80, she should be happy... a good number of us aren't going to see that age!

 

I don't know why she would be miserable but maybe you can find some things she used to enjoy or at least felt good about and help her relive or do something like whatever it was again. It's tough. Some folks are a special kind of **** **** ******* ***********

[kiwilove]

I'm sure many of us here - would agree you are doing the right thing - in taking care of your mother - although she may be a **** ** *** ***.

Growing old is a ***** as they say.

 

The majority of my parents' generation have passed on - and when you've now become that generation - you see that the cycle of life turning full circle.

 

We never give enough credit to those who have raised us - and for what they have done in their lives - and passed onto us. Most of them tend to quietly exit their life - having to be with one who doesn't - must to hard to live with.

I can only guess she's not really angry with you - but more with the situation she is in - having to deal with the limited time she has left...

 

Harvey

[tane]

Good to hear your positive results and Ill be setting up manufacturing soon because we already have interest in about 25 AntiXes, which is amazing !!!

 

Is there an update?

[NuClear235]

Isnt Antix just making together signals of two ANTICs ? Then is chip select by power pin ?

Isnt woking just solder two ANTICs together and add switch selecting power to first or second ?

[Gunstar]

Isnt Antix just making together signals of two ANTICs ? Then is chip select by power pin ?

Isnt woking just solder two ANTICs together and add switch selecting power to first or second ?

Piggy-backing like that only works if both chips would work at the same time, like POKEY stereo or another PIA chip for some upgrades and dram chips, etc., because not all pins on the second chip are connected, only certain ones and other connections and support chips are required on other areas of the motherboard. And if you want to avoid the support chips piggy-backing and connections to the motherboard then you have to make a daughter board for these upgrades too, as has been done.

 

It won't work for one chip on and off, even if you take power away from one or the other because the other pins will still receive signals on the other connected pins interfering with the other.The Antic chips, needing only one or the other, you have to keep them completely separate as if you are removing one completely from the socket and installing another, because in this situation you have to have a switch for every or nearly every pin on the chip which is what ANTIX does.

 

If it was possible to just do what you say, I and many others would have done it long ago with the Antic, GTIA and even CPU's!

Edited January 21, 2019 by Gunstar

[NuClear235]

So is at bottom of PCB any sophisticated logic array switch ?

Did anybody see it ?

 

Piggy-backing like that only works if both chips would work at the same time, like POKEY stereo or another PIA chip for some upgrades and dram chips, etc., because not all pins on the second chip are connected, only certain ones and other connections and support chips are required on other areas of the motherboard. And if you want to avoid the support chips piggy-backing and connections to the motherboard then you have to make a daughter board for these upgrades too, as has been done.

 

It won't work for one chip on and off, even if you take power away from one or the other because the other pins will still receive signals on the other connected pins interfering with the other.The Antic chips, needing only one or the other, you have to keep them completely separate as if you are removing one completely from the socket and installing another, because in this situation you have to have a switch for every or nearly every pin on the chip which is what ANTIX does.

 

If it was possible to just do what you say, I and many others would have done it long ago with the Antic, GTIA and even CPU's!

[Gunstar]

If you actually read the first post in this thread it explains it.

[NuClear235]

Oh, now I see.

Is aready possible to buy it ?

 

 

If you actually read the first post in this thread it explains it.

[Gunstar]

Not yet, but PM Level42 and see if it isn't too late to be added to the pre-order list. I'm going to do the same to see if I can get two instead of one myself.

 

No money is involved upfront in the pre-order, it's just so he knows how many to make/have made. He'll announce when they are ready, or PM those on the list with the price and then you can decide to buy for sure, though I think he did give us a ball-park figure on the price.

Edited January 21, 2019 by Gunstar

[Fred_M]

Level42 and I have received your registrations It is not too late

 

As Gunstar explains, the registration is just an interest survey. Later this year the Antix (and the Antic chips) will be sold by Rewind Games in the webshop. People can buy any amount of Antix PCBs (Antic chips will be limited to 1 PAL and/or 1 NTSC for each Antix PCB). There is no need to register twice if you want more than one. At this moment Level42 is quite busy dealing with some personal stuff, but I expect the Antix will be available in the coming weeks/months.

Edited January 21, 2019 by Fred_M

[SS]

Am I remembering correctly that the AntiX might be able to be software controlled, maybe through the U1MB? Or will the external switch be necessary regardless? I am trying to decide which machine I might want to install it into.

[flashjazzcat]

I couldn't get software control to work in an elegant or reliable fashion.

[Mr Robot]

The U1MB has a couple of pins that you can control from the bios. Lotharek used to sell a device called a u-switch which allowed you to turn devices on/off using those pins but he has stopped selling those since he added the functionality to the stereo board he sells, I guess that was the only thing people used to control with it.

 

EDIT: I couldn't get the u-switch to turn my cart slot on/off in my XEL when I tried and I ended up using a latching pushbutton for that. I put it down to my noobness and lack of documentation for the uswitch

Edited January 22, 2019 by Mr Robot

[SS]

I guess that answers which machine to put the AntiX in. The 600XL it is.

 

My 600XL already has an ANTONIA board installed and it already has an enlarged opening in the case where I'll probably be able to snake the AntiX switch through. I still need to get a DVI SOPHIA board for it though and remove the channel select switch so that I can better access the opening in the case.

[flashjazzcat]

The U1MB has a couple of pins that you can control from the bios.

Yes indeed, which is why I designed the newer firmware so that the user can employ 'plugins' specifically targeting whatever device the user wants to control via the spare signals.

 

Lotharek used to sell a device called a u-switch which allowed you to turn devices on/off using those pins but he has stopped selling those since he added the functionality to the stereo board he sells, I guess that was the only thing people used to control with it.

Probably in the majority of cases U-Switch was used with the Simple Stereo board, but I also have a U-Switch soldered to an internal KMK/JZ IDEa hard disk adapter in a 1200XL. The HDD adapter is taken on and off the bus via an U1MB BIOS plugin which writes to one of the U1MB IO pins. It's rather a shame that the little boards are no longer available since they had a variety of applications.

 

EDIT: I couldn't get the u-switch to turn my cart slot on/off in my XEL when I tried and I ended up using a latching pushbutton for that. I put it down to my noobness and lack of documentation for the uswitch

I wasn't aware it was possible to deactivate the cartridge slot on a 1088XEL (I assume that's the hardware you mean). What exactly did you attach the U-Switch to?

[Mr Robot]

I wasn't aware it was possible to deactivate the cartridge slot on a 1088XEL (I assume that's the hardware you mean). What exactly did you attach the U-Switch to?

 

I made a little board to bend the cart port over by 90' so I can get an Ultimate Cart inside a 65mm high case, I put a switch on pin 14 to enable/disable the port. I run an SD cart extender to the outside of the case and have the reset button on the front panel too. The case lid is smoked glass so I can still see all the led's on the boards inside.

 

 

 

I'm hoping to do the same thing with the new PBI DragonDartII

[flashjazzcat]

Ah - most ingenious! I can't see any reason why U-Switch wouldn't have worked there (it controls the aforementioned IDE adapter perfectly well), but you need to watch out for logic polarity. The jumper on the board controls that (i.e. whether logic 1 is switch closed or open), and there's a further level of control in the plugin API, since 'Enabled' can be mapped to either logic 1 or 0. You could also have had a duff board, of course, unless the U-Switch works elsewhere.

Edited January 22, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[Mr Robot]

I took the uswitch from a stereo mod in my 800xl, I may have killed it getting it desoldered but I don't think so. I think it was the lack of documentation really, I couldn't work out which two pins on that 2x3 header should have the two sides of the cart line on it. I tried all sorts of combinations and none of them worked so I went for a physical switch. I find pressing the reset on the Ultimate and hitting reset on the xel keyboard doesn't return me to the menu correctly, it's always blank like theres an sd card inserted but it's blank. if I power cycle it's always there ok. The having to power cycle thing means it's logical to me to power off the xel and hit the switch anyway so it's fine.

[NuClear235]

What version will I need for 130XE with Sophia installed ?
Antics chips I have.

[Level42]

There will be only one version.

 

The only difference will be for the 400/800 which will require an extension flat-cable PCB.

 

I am sorry about the delay in the project. The main reason for this is a little thing I have been going though and it's called... divorce. It's fun, you guys should try it !

Anyway...I am actually now through the divorce process.....and my ex will be leaving my house march the first which should bring me back to having some peace and quite and time for fun stuff.....

 

OK back on topic:

Here's a little video I shot during the ABBUC JHV demonstration. It's interesting because it shows switching ANTICs by using one of the outputs of U1MB and the menu to switch WITHOUT resetting.

As you can see this works.

 

The U1MB switching possibility is very much depending on the firmware you use. (By the way you do NOT need a U-switch to switch AntiX. You only need to hook up one wire between AntiX and U1MB).

 

I have tried it with the original Candle firmware (the version that Lotharek delivers when you buy U1MB) and it works absolutely flawless. Not saying always without reset, but not resetting between switching ANTICs is just an (interesting) gimmick.

 

With Jon's Firmwares I had very mixed results depending on the version of his firmware. As it is now, it works for me. I use my 600XL with NTSC ANTIC 95% of the time. Only when I run a demo or game that is PAL specific I switch back. This sometimes requires me to execute a few resets before it works.

 

The issue is that Jon's firmware does advanced tricks to detect f.i. if there is a Stereo POKEY installed. Personally I wouldn't need that detection because I "know" I have one installed. Maybe a special version of the U1MB firmware could be made that refrains from this advanced toggling of the U1MB output ports during boot-up and include AntiX as one of the devices in the menu.

I don't know, Jon definitely put a number of hours of trying to get it to work but I think he lost interest because AntiX is a pretty dumb and "rough" device in that it is not a software controlled thing. This normally requires that AntiX is switched BEFORE powering up and left alone until switched off. I'm not saying it damages anything when you try to switch on the fly, but it sure crashes anything that is running when you try.

I have actually deliberately hard-switched between ANTICs numerous numerous times to make sure it wouldn't damage anything....

 

Anyway....so....either you use a mechanical switch OR you live with whatever (small) issues there are using U1MB with Jon's firmware (IMHO, a U1MB _without_ Jon's firmware is only half as great....Jon's work is simply brilliant and everyone should send him 10 euro's or so if you use his firmware).

 

Here's the video which shows that potentially....switching is very possible...

 

Edited February 2, 2019 by Level42