Caribeno

March 17

Hi!

I imagine like many (all?) of you, I tried to make this card, but the IP Dragon II is not available anymore. So, I made a hybrid between the ethernet card for the CS/A65 computer (http://www.6502.org/users/andre/csa/etholi/index.html , that uses a Olimex CS8900A-H card with the same chip as the Dragon, but running at 3.3V) and the Dragon:

and it works! Of course, it is a little bit messy, and I just found out that there is a problem accessing the Contiki webserver over the wireless (but I have a feeling it is a TCP issue, to it should not be directly linked to the card).

I just wanted to share my development.

Take care,

Andres.

September 27, 2021

Here it is my homemade Holt screwdriver. ? And it worked!

September 21, 2021

On 9/17/2021 at 3:27 PM, chas10e said:

I think it's called a "Holt security screw" , I had make my own:

https://imgur.com/a/ngmNH

Yes! That's it, thank you so much!

And I love the idea in the article, I will try that instead of buying the tool. ?

September 14, 2021

Hi,

I'm trying to disassemble an Atari Pong C-100, and the screws that connect the base to the unit (under the battery pack) are some weird, 3 wing reversed (in the screw, the depth at the center is less than in near the border). I tried using pliers, but the screw is too round and the pliers just slip.

Has anyone had this problem around here? Any solutions?

Thanks!

Andres.

March 30, 2021

On 3/9/2021 at 10:35 PM, AtariGeezer said:

Haven't found the original yet, still working on a new one.

Do you have one?

No, I saw one on eBay and I was wondering if I should get it or not... ?

March 9, 2021

Hi!

Did you ever find/wrote a software for it?

Andres.

October 27, 2020

44 minutes ago, snarkdluG said:

He got answered on other forum that it is a nemesis bus speeder. Just to let you know.

Yes, thanks @snarkdluG . Both boards are part of the Nemesis upgrade.

October 27, 2020

Hello!

I'm finally the owner of a Falcon, and I'm very happy. The first impression is that the machine is working, so that's nice. But when I opened it, I found 2 upgrades that I cannot identify:

First one, I think, it is a buffer patch. It has wires going to the floppy controller (pin 14) and to the motherboard.

Second one, has wires connected to both EF68B50P ICs (pins 3, 4 and 5) and other places in the motherboard. It has some oscillators, so... It is some kind of overclocking? The strange thing is that there are other cables coming from the little board, but they are cut. And, of course, there is the fact the fan was removed to put this little board.

Any clues?

Thanks,

Andres.

September 11, 2020

6 hours ago, mdivancic said:

Lone screw left over. Damn.

She is less than stable. I may need to cut away more of the shield?

Oh, that sucks... I hate when I have extra screws left. ?

Mmmhhh... It could be the shield but my cut, although similar, it is even smaller than yours (it is basically only for the memory; the shield around it was left intact). Maybe it is touching something? What if you remove the shield?

September 11, 2020

7 hours ago, mdivancic said:

All right shield cut...

Yeah, I did something similar... I think it is better to leave the shield in place.

September 9, 2020

Hi!

Sorry that I'm just replying; had too many things happening.

The upgrades look great! Unfortunately, I don't have a second STE adapter for the UltraSatan. ?

Question: Did you have to cut the metal shield above the memory/TOS/keyboard card, so it could fit the 4 Mb expansion? I did have to do that...

Andres.

P.S.: The tray looks amazing!

June 20, 2020

2 hours ago, mdivancic said:

I’m working on a 3D printed tray and faceplate for the US that will allow it to slide out for easy battery replacement.

Ah! That's neat; I was wondering about that and that's the reason I connected some cables to the original RTC battery.

Can you share the plans of the tray and faceplate when you are done? ?

June 20, 2020

21 minutes ago, DarkLord said:

Oh, don't know if they are still doing it or not but

in my case they wanted my old board as a trade

in. Reckon, they are getting in short supply and

they are re-doing the old boards, upgrading them,

'n stuff.

They do it if you have a Stacy 2. For a Stacy 1, you have to buy the new board and keep the 1 MB one.

June 19, 2020

On 6/17/2020 at 10:51 AM, mdivancic said:

Any updates? Just picked up a STacy 1 myself and am thinking about up grades. The screen is in good shape. Case and keyboard in good shape. Hard drive gone to goo. Only want to open it once. Currently just considering a US internal. I which there was a video upgrade available like there is for the 8-bit series.

Oh, RTC battery? Soldered to the MB? Is it OK leaving it where it is and just using the US RTC?

Sorry I'm late answering. But +1 to everything @DarkLord said. ?

I desoldered the internal battery, just in case, and put a couple of cables to the battery compartment (mine can be opened), just in case I want to connect a battery there in the future.

Also, if you want, consider upgrading the Stacy to 4 MB. You can buy the upgrade from Best Electronics (that's what I did):

http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/addendum.htm

(look for item CB102144 . FYI, on my Stacy, I had to cut a little bit of the internal metal shield to fit it)

And last, but not least, take a look at my blog, where I show how to disassemble the Stacy:

https://vintagecomputers.code.blog/

A couple of days ago I finally put it all back together, so I will be posting about that soon.

Andres

May 25, 2020

1 hour ago, drac030 said:

I do not know if this could be the case, but one (and often being forgotten) source of problems with PBI devices may be a conflict of the IDs. Now Rapidus (even in the Classic mode) is a PBI device occupying ID #0. So any HDD or such should be relocated to higher IDs when the board is present.

That was it!!! ? I did not know that Rapidus was also a PBI device (seems obvious now). After changing PBI Device ID to 2 in the U1MB everything works.

Thank you so much!

Andres.

May 25, 2020

7 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

SDX should have no impact whatsoever on functionality of the PBI HDD, since the HDD works independently of DOS in these circumstances. Is this behaviour also exhibited when Rapidus is removed from the machine? Honestly: I see so much crazy behaviour when Rapidus and U1MB are present in the same computer, until hardware instability is eliminated, I am disinclined to start troubleshooting the situation (since the reasons for the issues may be beyond anyone's control). Spontaneous disappearance of the hard disk is not exactly unprecedented behaviour on such setups.

No: with the PBI HDD enabled, the partitions will auto-mount when the computer is powered on. If the APT partitions are greyed out, it means the PBI HDD is disabled (and the computer therefore has no access to the HDD other than via the SDX SIDE driver).

Exactly as you said: as soon as I removed Rapidus, the SDX from U1MB loaded the PBI BIOS and all the partitions in the SIDE2 are ready available. Thank you so much!

Now: Do you know where I can start to look at what's the problem with Rapidus?

Take care, and thank you again.

Andres.

P.S.: I will watch your video about stability of those two after lunch.

May 25, 2020

3 hours ago, Caribeno said:

Have another question: you mentioned in your previous response that the ideal setting to use SIDE2 + U1MB is to enable the PBI BIOS. turn on the PBI HDD, put the side switch up and enable SDX in the U1MB. But after I created the partitions and formatted them, and verified they are working, if I boot the SDX from U1MB it does not recognize the CF card. If I load the SIDE.SYS driver, then I can see the partitions and use them. What am I missing?

OK, I think I'm closer, but still confused: I guess I need to mount the APT partitions in the SIDE LOADER. If I go to the APT tab (the one with the rocket ship), I can see both partitions I created, but neither of them can be selected.

May 25, 2020

1 hour ago, flashjazzcat said:

I'm told some newer CF cards dropped 8-bit PIO mode entirely. If this is true, they would indeed be rendered useless with SIDE2.

Ah! Unfortunately, it is not that easy to know, beforehand which ones have the 8-bit PIO removed. ?

Have another question: you mentioned in your previous response that the ideal setting to use SIDE2 + U1MB is to enable the PBI BIOS. turn on the PBI HDD, put the side switch up and enable SDX in the U1MB. But after I created the partitions and formatted them, and verified they are working, if I boot the SDX from U1MB it does not recognize the CF card. If I load the SIDE.SYS driver, then I can see the partitions and use them. What am I missing?

May 24, 2020

Problem solved! I got a 1GB SanDisk card, and that worked fine... I guess those new SanDisk 16GB with silver label are not good for the SIDE2.

May 24, 2020

1 minute ago, flashjazzcat said:

Apparently it is not. Things appear to be all kinds of messed up.

16GB is absolutely fine - no problems there. On an U1MB machine, there is absolutely no need to use the SIDE driver to run the hard disk, though. You should ENABLE the PBI BIOS and turn on the PBI HDD (enable the HSIO driver as well if you wish). Put the SIDE switch in the UP position and enable SDX in the U1MB setup. Neither SDX nor the loader on the SIDE cart itself need to be used when the cart is plugged into an U1MB machine.

Not that this may make much difference to the reliability of the system. My pat diagnosis would be 'Rapidus: take it out', but - as mytek suggested - there could be more subtle reasons for such highly disruptive IO errors.

Thank you very much for that! I will correct the configuration. ?

I'm trying to get a different CF card (somewhat difficult on a Sunday afternoon on quarantine), and will see how it goes. If it does not work, I will remove Rapidus.

Thanks again!

May 24, 2020

2 minutes ago, mytek said:

16GB is not too big, but the speed rating of it might be too fast for the SIDE2, or it just doesn't like that particular card (some manufacturers are not supported). Can you take a picture of the CF card and post it here?

Thanks! This is the one:

May 24, 2020

Hi,

I'm very new in this Side2 + Ultimate 1MB world (literally, I just got it 2 days ago and installed it yesterday), so this may be a stupid question, but I cannot figure it out:

My setup: 65XE (no ECI), Sophia rev.C, Rapidus, Ultimate 1MB, Side2

Configuration:

Rapidus: 6502C
Ultimate 1MB: 1088K, XL OS 1.3, SpartaDOS X disabled, Boot to Loader disabled, PBI BIOS disabled
Side2: switch down, CF SanDisk Ultra 16 GB

When I boot the computer, I get this screen:

that seems to imply it is detecting some CF media. Because this is the first time using this CF, I ran FDISK, go to Initialize and I get:

I After choosing that device, I get this screen:

I enter some values in FAT and APT, it goes to a confirmation screen, press Save and get a message saying that the disk requires initialization. If I go to the Properties option, I get:

Any ideas on what could be happening? Is the CF card not being recognized properly? Is there are a limit in the size of the CF, and 16GB is too big?

The same CF, in Linux, works fine. In fact, I created a FAT32 partition, copied some ROMs and ATRs but, when I start the computer with the same configuration, but the SIDE2 switch in the up position, the Side Loader says "No media".

Thanks for any tips and info!

Andres.

P.S.: I just tried the LSDEV command, and I get:

Device: 2.0.1

Media:

Controller: SIDE Driver v.4.0

Size: 0KB 512bps

the LSDSK command says "No devices found"

February 25, 2020

On 2/12/2020 at 7:08 AM, DarkLord said:

The only thing I noticed is that

you might want to give a small warning about the hinge springs on the screen. I've

been told that when you remove the screws they can "snap" with no tension on

them.

BTW, what interface did you decide to use with your internal US and your STacy?

Ah, thanks for that! Added to the post. ?

So, I bought the adapter for Mega STE (https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=49) and it worked perfect.

February 10, 2020

On 2/4/2020 at 2:13 AM, DarkLord said:

Please do keep us updated on your STacy projects - we just love this stuff!

Thanks for all the info, DarkLord! Another question for you: do you use the RTC of the UltraSatan or the internal one? If it is the latter one, what software do you use to set it/read it/display it? And how does it handle dates beyond Y2K?

Oh, and I just posted the disassembly of the main body:

https://vintagecomputers.code.blog/2020/02/10/stacy-part-3/

Any suggestions are welcome!

February 4, 2020

6 hours ago, DarkLord said:

This is good stuff. I did a bunch of upgrades including the internal US like Klund1 as well as

installing a Pak 68/3 accelerator board and other things. Great project, great machine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FNuHNzOd1o

Also, here is a pic with the cover off:

Oh! I have seen your posts, they are super helpful! Also, completely unrelated to your posts, I found your videos. Good looking machine in black. ?

Also very jealous about the Pak 68/3. I don't think I will do that mod (I don't think you can find that card anymore, right?). But have a few questions for you:

* I'm planning to keep the original color of the Stacy. Did you find what color matches it?

* How did you hold the UltraSatan in the HDD place? What kind of bracket did you use? (but it seems that the internal UltraSatan that Lotharek sells now had 2 SD slots, so it may be different size than yours)

* How was your experience replacing the EL sheet of the screen? It seems cheaper than buying a new screen ;-) Does it use the same 12V (I think it is 12V) of the original screen?

Take care,

Andres.

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