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fibrewire

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Posts posted by fibrewire

  1. Posted · Edited by fibrewire

    Is possible for you to make 1 Atari Corvus Interface Card for me ?

     

    Working on a schematic in spare time. As soon as its finished I'll throw a few packages together for interested members. Then the gerber files and bill of materials will be posted in this thread and a few other places, and that should be it! If I can just get a ROM dump of the ADS Integrator board, David Small can show me how he modified the SIO vector directly in the Atari ROMs (no address-decoder/force new address in stuff) and how to patch the Newell RAMROD to operate with integrator functionality.

     

    It sure will be amazing to see the Atari boot directly from the Corvus Disk system, and even more amazing to see 8 Atari 800s booting into a giant BBS system :)

     

    http://analog.klanky.com/funstuff.htm#TCS

  3. Posted

    Daisy chaining drives works successfully with the Atari 800.

     

    Requires firmware version 18.3 on both Corvus drives, up to 4 drives for 80MB of storage!

     

    Took an older 34 conductor floppy ribbon cable with no keyed pins, cut the twisted part of the cable off next to the center connector.

    I then connected one end to the drive connector of the first drive, connected the other end to the processor connector of the second drive.

    All drives ship configured as drive one, so I followed the instructions pertaining to daisy chaining drives and reconfigured the second drive to 'drive 2'

    Link to full Corvus H-Series Service Manual here

     

     

    post-27823-0-26782900-1381303956_thumb.jpg

    Corvus Daisy Chain.pdf

  5. Posted · Edited by fibrewire

    We're running the whole thing in Antic mode 15 (graphics 8 ), so drawing icons - indeed, drawing anything - is a case of setting the relevant bits in the display RAM. Naturally the OS drawing routines are far too slow, so we have a bunch of custom routines to get lines and stuff on the screen. An icon is arranged in two parts: first, a list of bytes (2 x 16) representing the icon bitmap, and secondly, another 32 bytes representing the icon mask, which basically describes the "silhouette" of the icon against the background. To render the icon, we take a byte of the screen RAM, AND it with the complement of the corresponding byte of the icon mask, then OR that byte with the corresponding byte of the icon bitmap, before writing the byte back to the screen RAM. If the icon position isn't on byte boundaries, there's some bit shifting (rather: table lookups) involved, but that's the general idea. PMGs or other hardware features are not employed at the moment.

    Did you ever get around to experimenting with PMGs? The GUI is already very fast, but there's got to be something ANTIC could do to hide window redraw without sucking up too many cycles. If not, maybe on a window resize or new window the GUI will already start precomputing how the updated desktop will be presented with some of those extra machine cycles, and whenever the button is let go on a window drag the GUI will only have to make up the difference. This make up the difference time could be concealed by the screen item doing something like flashing a menu item or a window rectangle animation. I don't really know how these things work, so maybe I'll finally get some Atari Roots reading under my belt.

     

    +1 for the zoom window rectangle feature whenever an icon is launched, and also the flash menu item selected feature of System 6 on the Macintosh, as seen here.

     

     

    EDIT: Just watched the GUI with wallpaper demo - just scratch that first paragraph I wrote. Jon's GUI is totally as fast as the video I posted. Please still add the window rectangle animation and flash menu item when selected features, and please please PLEASE crank out an XEX soon :)

  7. Posted

    Totally amazing! The speed is so unbelievable! Congratulations on blowing my mind with the fantastic wallpapers!!!

     

    Do you think it's possible to make this run in altirra in a 48K Atari 800 with a 128K Axlon RamDisk without doing to much work?

     

    On a side note, your donation button on the new atari8.co.uk site isn't working :)

  8. Posted

    Will the software, and schematics, just everything to build yourself a corvus be released aswell to the public ?

    Of course it will. Included in this post are:

     

    * multiple versions of Corvus software for the Atari 800

    * Pre-made boot-disk

    * Some old XFormer disk images of the software

    * Article 41 from Frank Seipel about the Corvus interface

    * The long-lost Corvus manual for "Disk System Installation Guide" and the "System Manager's Guide" for the Atari 800

    Atari-Corvus.zip

    • Like 1

  11. Posted · Edited by fibrewire

    Both drives will work with the atari interface.

     

    There are a couple of utility disks that have basic programs on them. When the format switch is flipped on, the basic program can format the drive. After a format, one can check the drive for errors using a CRC program, check the version of firmware on the drive, upgrade the drive firmware, or install an OS on the drive. All the basic programs require the Atari basic cartridge and the utility or sysgen disk in drive 1. From basic a command like RUN"D:DIAG" or RUN"D:SYSGEN" or RUN"D:MIRROR". After a format, all utilities can be installed to virtual drive D1.

     

    I have more time with my fantastic new job, so I'll see if I can post a video how-to

  15. Posted · Edited by fibrewire

    Well, here's how it looked on a 65C02 CPU Apple II with 128K banked ram

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weFF8P6gyCE

    How difficult would it be to locate the text rendering section with only the disassembled binary available? I only have my phone available to me right now, so I'm even more useless at the moment than usual :)

     

    That text render sure is fast on this demo...

     

    Also it looks like the text is rendered simultaneous with graphics, this is apparent when the GUI draws text with icons

  17. Posted

    Get a pot big enough for drive components. Put a box style cheese grater and the pot in the dish washer. Rinse both items with distiller water. Then fill the pot with distiller water and put the cheese grater in the pot to prevent drive items from touching the bottom. Boil PCB in water, then dry with hot air dryer. Practice safe ESD!

     

    I was going to include boiling the drive mechs, but that would require retouching with lithium grease, treatment of delicate foam parts, and the drive head. It should be fine, but I haven't tried an entire drive yet. However I've repaired a few bottom half of laptops with soda spilled on them.

  18. Posted

    I read with open mind until you derided Apollo.

    I apologize ClausB, I didn't mean it like that. The lunar missions are still to this date the greatest accomplishment in the 20th century - but with projects like SpaceX and the ISS, I don't understand why the lack of plans to CONTINUE to go to the moon. I imagine it will cost a lot less that $150 Billion in 2013, with a few trips to the ISS with fuel, then a trip to the moon and back. Like an ISS for the moon, and a SpaceX plane to relay between the two.

     

    For now, lets just tow the entire ISS to the moon and back every 6 months :)

  19. Posted · Edited by fibrewire

    However Please beware. Dave Jones at the EEVblog podcasts looked in to the design of some of the cheaper USB charges you find on eBay. He found them to be "Dangerous". They used really bad designs. So if you are going to use a charger make sure it's from a well known brand; Apple, Samsung…

    Apple is aware of the danger of 3rd party USB chargers as well. Thats why they offer a trade-in program :D

     

    http://www.apple.com/support/usbadapter-takeback/

  21. Posted

    Was the pun intended? LOL, but what about the aliens living on the dark side? you know there is a reason why we haven't returned to the moon. Those aliens might just disagree with humans putting stuff in their backyard :)

    Pun intended, and as long as we're on the topic... It is speculated that some type of advanced civilization existed on earth long ago. Maybe there haven't been repeat trips to the moon because we already got what we went for.

  22. Posted

    I am seriously lost for words.

    Totally understandable. Part of the idea came from looking at a Kantronics interface for the Atari, which pointed me in the direction of bouncing signals off of the moon as a reflection satellite for 2-meter communication. Then I thought about the moon, and how one side always faces earth. Turns out the moon has been facing earth because of tidal lock for the last billion years or so, and won't be changing anytime soon. And then it just clicked - put something on the moon that might benefit the rest of the world.

     

    So, do you guys think I'm some sort of lunatic? Perhaps - but if I had influence in an advanced civilization, I would surely try to protect the accumulation of humanity's knowledge by storing it out of harm's way - and the moon surely sounds like a good place to me. But why not take it one step further and make it accessible to all? To me it sounds like a far better use of resources than the Apollo program's 150 billion in 2010 dollars spent to gather a few rocks from the moon...

  23. Posted

    What in the world could we do with a broadcast station on the moon? First, a little backstory...

     

    A friend of mine sent me a link to something amazing from the mind of Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneur responsible for PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors. The project I am referring to is the HyperLoop - a genius and economical 5 billion dollar transportation system that costs the end user $20 per one-way ticket and a 30 minute ride between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This is an alternate proposal to Californias CalTrans 70 billion dollar bullet train and cost the end user $250+ per one-way ticket and a 3 hour ride between the two cities sometime in the next 20 years.

     

    As I was contemplating the benefits of including existing airports as terminals to the HyperLoop tube transport system, another idea came to mind - that Elon Musk is a very smart guy. While reading Wikipedia of Musks accomplishments, and coping with the fact that I am between jobs at the moment, I realize that I really never applied myself beyond my own short-sighted goals.

     

    Today, that will change.

     

    There is something to be said about the simplicity of an 8-bit computer. With its limited resources and simple expansion system, it has accomplished so much in the home computing revolution. It has afforded the common person a hands-on approach to not only understanding how computers work, but the opportunity to venture out into uncharted territory and change the way the entire world operates. Where else in history has such a definitive short-term project brought us closer together as a people?

     

    There is ONE other discovery that enabled rapid change to the world - the crystal radio. With nothing more than a diode (or equivalent), some wire, and a piezoelectric headphone (or equivalent) one can listen to an AM frequency that corresponds to the length of wire - no power required! Primitive spark-gap transmitters allowed people to communicate all over the world by bouncing radio frequencies off of the ionosphere, and shortwave radio was born.

     

    *** The GOOD STUFF ***

     

    I propose a simple project to not only enable EVERYONE on earth a means to receive education, but also a way to preserve the collective information of humanity. I want to place a solid-state information repository and broadcast station on the moon. Why the moon?

     

    * The moon is tidally locked to the earth, so something placed on the lunar surface facing earth will likely remain pointing at earth for the foreseeable future.

    * The moon is the most noticeable object in the night sky.

    * The moon can be seen from anywhere on earth.

    * The moon is not easily accessible or manipulated by mankind.

     

    The ionosphere has a spectrum of frequency called the radio window which allows radio waves from about one centimeter to 10 meters to pass through to the earth. A set of frequencies utilizing ISM bands could provide voice, video, and data to be transmitted to the earth. The primary goal of this project is to provide anyone with a tuned crystal radio a basic language and technical education. The radio station would use a method similar to how newborn children learn a language, incorporating music and speech to promote pattern recognition. This education could enable people to improve their ability to communicate and quality of life. This system would also be capable of teaching construction of complex equipment to interface with the moon station, and would enable mankind to recover from a global catastrophe quickly. Also, this would currently allow less fortunate areas access to information that would normally be unavailable. If executed properly, a durable MOSFET crystal radio could be mass produced and provided to many.

     

    As far as power for the lunar station, I suppose some type of efficient thermoelectric device would convert radiation from the sun into usable power, and that solid-state capacitors could be used to hold power. There is also the issue of coronal mass ejections radiating the lunar site, so the lunar station would have to be resistant to these types of mass-radiation bursts from the sun.

     

    For delivery of the station to the moon, perhaps Elon wouldnt mind loaning a SpaceX vehicle to launch a private rocket for a lunar mission...

     

    I have put quite a bit of grandiose thought into this project far beyond what is listed here, but I am intentionally leaving out details in hopes to see some great ideas shine through on this open source type project. Let me know what you think!

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