846 replies to this topic

[MEtalGuy66]

I am producing this board:



I am making an inital production run of 22 boards.

This is a drop-in replacement for the original board in the MIO hardisk interface by ICD.

This is the version of the MIO that has 1 megabyte of ramdisk/print-spooler memory.

Additionally, the serial and paralell ports have been "fixed" in this design, to accomadate standard PC-compatable printer and modem cables.

CURRENT ORDER LIST:
Tim Henley___________________________________________1 unit
Dan Winslow__________________________________________2 units
Jay Snellen___________________________________________1 unit
Thomas Edmister______________________________________1 unit
WareRat_____________________________________________1 unit
Almost Rice__________________________________________ 2 units
Dan Olson____________________________________________3 units
Guitarman____________________________________________1 unit
RobPattonDotCom______________________________________3 units
RemoWilliams_________________________________________ 1 unit
JGS Enterprises________________________________________2 units
Ray Paladino__________________________________________2 units
Pontus Oldberg________________________________________2 units.

TOTAL ORDERED UNITS: 22

ORDERING CLOSED

Edited by MEtalGuy66, Thu Jul 20, 2006 10:49 PM.

[Almost Rice]

PMed

[UNIXcoffee928]

Excellent work!

Great attention to detail!

You should check out this link, it may save you some time in production:
http://www.fullnet.c...mg/gooteepc.htm


Check out my drafting font post, it might come in handy.


You might be interested in some of the other topics that I have been working on, as well.


Best of Luck!


UNIXcoffee928

[warerat]

Really nice work! PM sent.

Maybe you should do the layout my for my 800 PCBs... Only three ICs per board.

Are you using Protel?

Edited by warerat, Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:21 PM.

[classics]

Has this been built and tested already? Any pictures?

[Almost Rice]

Maybe you should do the layout my for my 800 PCBs... Only three ICs per board.

is this for slot 2 or slot 3?

[MEtalGuy66]

The board is being manufactured professionally, it will be much better quality than the original MIO boards that ICD made.

The logic portion f the board is 100% accurate reproduction of the original.

Heres what's been changed: The power supply circuit has been "beefed up" quite a bit. Much wider traces, and slightly larger holes to accomadate larger (higher wattage) diodes, regulator, etc.

The paralell and serial ports have had their pinouts and gender adjusted to the newer "pc compatable" standards.

The 32 SIPP ram chips have been replaced with a single 30 pin SIMM, and logic to "or" the 4 CAS/RAS signals, as well as generate the additional Adress line (a9) to properly adress a single 1024k bank, rather than 4 separate banks of 256k, which was the case on the original design.

Other than this, the layout is 100% identicle to the orginal, and has been METICULOUSLY checked several times.

[MEtalGuy66]

Has this been built and tested already? Any pictures?

No, it has not at this time.

As I said, the layout has been meticulously checked several times, to be 100% equivelant to the original. In fact the (very low quality) image of the board layout shown above represents over a month of very careful and meticulous work. An actual original ICD board (with all components removed) was used as the basis for most of this work, in addition to the actual schematic. Every possible measure has been taken to assure the accuracy and integrity of this design.

That said, these will be "first run" boards, and there is alwayse the possibility of slight indescrepancies. Any necessary "post production" changes will be made in the most profesional manner possible, and I do personally guarantee a working board to anyone who orders one.

My objective is to provide these at the lowest possible price, and the highest possible quality.

Each of these boards has 1241 thru-holes. Over 1100 of them are solder joints.

After board manufacturing costs, and component costs, I will not be making anything for my assembly/testing time. 100% of the money from the first 17 orders will be used to order components and get the boards made.

If there is enough interest, I will make a second production run, and at that point, I may be able to "pay myself" a few dollars for labor.

I do this completely for the purpose of making a well-supported product available to more people in the ATARI community.

Edited by MEtalGuy66, Thu Jun 8, 2006 3:31 PM.

[Albert]

This is very cool! I had a 1MB MIO board a long time ago that I used to help power an Atari 8-bit BBS I ran at the time. The MIO board was instrumental in allowing the board to run quickly, as all the BBS index files were placed into RAM on the MIO. And the modem was plugged into one of the MIO's serial ports, as was a printer that was used to print logs. Oh yeah, and two 20MB MFM hard drives were also going through the MIO.

Truly a great piece of hardware at the time, but sadly I no longer have it. And I've pretty much given up hope of ever finding a 1MB MIO board, so I could potentially use your board to "upgrade" a 256MB model. Great job, and I look forward to reading more about it!

..Al

[warerat]

I do this completely for the purpose of making a well-supported product available to more people in the ATARI community.

Thank you for all your time and effort in this!

[danwinslow]

Ken's proof that old school atari 'prima donna' engineers live on!

[MEtalGuy66]

Ok.. First of all.. Id like to apologixe for the delays. I had some serious problems with my house and living situation to attend to for the past few weeks.

Now, I have finally finished the design work on the new revision MIO board, and have also located all of the necessary parts to build it.

There is however one situation that has arisen..

In order for me to keep the cost at or below the promsed $150.00 mark, I am going to have to order about $2,000.00 worth of parts at a time. This is due to the per unit price of the parts which is greatly deendant on the quantity that you order. I have spent 2 weeks researching vendor pricing, and right now, it looks like the best price I am going to get on a reasonably small order is going to come to about $2,000.00US.. The board manufacturing cost is going to run about $500.00.

This means that I will need pre-paid orders for at least 17 boards initially, in order to make a production run feasible..

The other alternative is to increase the price per unit, which I do not want to do..

What do you guys think?

[Goochman]

How many pre-paid orders do you have comitted?

[Guitarman]

You have one order for a new board here. Will you need any extra for the original board??

[danwinslow]

I will gladly pre-pay for my two. Guys, Ken here is the real deal.

[DamageX]

For someone who has never owned an MIO, what would be needed besides the board itself? And it's compatible with 50-pin SCSI harddrives?

[MEtalGuy66]

Guitarman, you dont owe me a thing for your original MIO. Rest assured that it will be COMPLETELY rebuilt with 100% new parts, at no cost to you.. I cannot possibly express the level of grattitude I have for you trusting me with it, and none of this would be possible without an original board to disassemble and closely examine. The board is completely bare of components right now, and ready for brand new sockets, chips, caps, etc.

I will gladly pre-pay for my two. Guys, Ken here is the real deal.

Thanks for your support, Dan..

Yes, I am really really really serious about doing this.. I have a good 3 months of work in this thing now, and I really hope I can get the funds together to produce it..

I will not spend a dime of anyone's money unless I have enough to fully realize the finished products. So far, one person has prepaid me (I didn't ask for prepayment yet), and the money is still sitting in my paypal account. If I do not make good on this deal, Almost Rice, and WareRat can come to my house and kick my ass.

Anyone else who wants one can go ahead and pre-pay.



Now.... In the event that we DON'T get enough orders to fund this.. There is an alternative....

I can have the boards made, sell them as bare boards as cheap as possible (probably between 30-40 dollars each) and include a list of parts, with part numbers, and vendors, and each person can assemble his/her own. Any necessary post production fixes (blue wires) would be posted on here. Again this would be a "last resort" and I really prefer to assemble and test everyone's board here, so that I can fully stand behind it, like everything else I have produced & sold.

Like I said, if I do not produce the ENTIRE FULLY POPULATED board, I will refund EVERYONE's money first, and then if I decide to sell the boards bare, that will be a totally seperate deal.



ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS THREAD FOR THE FIRST TIME:

YES! I am talking about producing a new and updated (but 100% compatible) version of the MIO interface, originally sold by ICD. This is a hardisk interface and fully UART driven PC standard serial & paralell interface that plugs into the PBI bus on your atari. It is FULLY supported by Spartados, and a LONG LIST of Spartados utilities and applications.

The price is $150.00 for the mainboard, fully populated, ready to plug into an 800XL.

This does not include the case, heatsink (just a flat piece of aluminum sheet-metal), power supply (just a standard wall-wart transformer available from radio-shack, etc.), or the XE adaptor board (but this is the next thing I will be making, and it will also be offered as inexpensively as possible.)

SO if you can, Jump on the band-wagon, and order one, and help make this thing possible!

PAYPAL $150.00US to: kjones66@earthlink.net

Your name and shipping info will be added to a list, so make sure all info is correct.

Also, I have started a list in the beginning of this thread (under the board picture) to show current order status.

Thanks, Guys....

Edited by MEtalGuy66, Fri Jun 2, 2006 1:20 PM.

[Almost Rice]

If I do not make good on this deal, Almost Rice, and WareRat can come to my house and kick my ass.

<snip>

again: PAYPAL to: kjones66@earthlink.net

I don't know about warerat. He is a bit scrawny

How about me paying for it locally? It will save you about $9 in fees.

Edited by Almost Rice, Fri Jun 2, 2006 7:25 AM.

[MEtalGuy66]

How about me paying for it locally? It will save you about $9 in fees.

If you want to do that, I'll just go ahead and add you to the list, and after everyone else pays, and it's time to order the parts/pcb's, I'll let you know and you can pay in cash.

[Almost Rice]

What is the specs for the PS? I just got a MIO and it did not include a PS.

[warerat]

I don't know about warerat. He is a bit scrawny

Scrawny enough to keep your MyIDE+Flash cart!

[MEtalGuy66]

What is the specs for the PS? I just got a MIO and it did not include a PS.

Actually, I dont know. heh. The one I have for R&D didnt come with one either.. But.. looking at the design, it has a full-wave rectifier, and uses a 7805 regulator for the +5v, and a 78L15 for the +15v.. Both these devices have a max input voltage of 35v.. The 7805 is a 1amp regulator, and the 78l15 is 100ma... So to be safe, Id say the psu should be able to deliver between 18-30volts AC, 1000ma... Theres no way the device will draw this much current, but for stability's sake....

Edited by MEtalGuy66, Fri Jun 2, 2006 3:32 PM.

[Beetle]

I think an used Hewlett Packard printer PS would do the job. They have 30V DC. I used one to run my 1050 (in accident - but the drive took it without problems).

Greets,
Beetle

[Almost Rice]

Actually, I dont know. heh. The one I have for R&D didnt come with one either.. But.. looking at the design, it has a full-wave rectifier, and uses a 7805 regulator for the +5v, and a 78L15 for the +15v.. Both these devices have a max input voltage of 35v.. The 7805 is a 1amp regulator, and the 78l15 is 100ma... So to be safe, Id say the psu should be able to deliver between 18-30volts AC, 1000ma...

ICD MIO power supply
Looks like some has talked about this problem.


I have played with some of the settings and I could not SDX to format it. I think I need the disk for the MIO.

Edited by Almost Rice, Fri Jun 2, 2006 11:14 PM.

[MEtalGuy66]

Yep.

Edited by MEtalGuy66, Mon Jul 3, 2006 2:15 PM.