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coolio

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Posts posted by coolio

  4. Posted

    No, I just double checked what I sent, and one of you didn't get 113. ;)

     

    Giving you numbers is how you're anonymized when I send orders, so in the sake of fairness, I won't say here who it was. ;)

     

     

    It was me. I fat fingered it while responding on my phone. I am not #113. Sorry for the confusion.

  9. Posted

    Hi all, again.

     

    I am assembling my parts to put together my Geneve as a working system, and will start my refurbishment of the board soon. I picked up a cheap PEB on eBay with the disk. disk controller card, RS232, and 32K installed for $100, all working too. I got an XT keyboard, and the SCART Genie with an HDMI upscaler.

     

    I do have a few questions for the Geneve gurus:

    • Can I use the TI disk controller as is? Can/should I do the 80 track upgrade to the card? Will that work with the original TI disk drive?
    • What kind of mouse does the Geneve use?
    • I understand that I can't use the 32K card with the Geneve. However, what PEB cards can I use with the Geneve? What ones should I seek out for a good Geneve system?
    • Should I do the 2 amp upgrade to the PEB, or will the stock power levels for the PEB work fine for the Geneve? I do plan on getting rid of the noisy fan and replacing it with a quieter one.
    • Any Geneve modifications I should consider a "must have"?

     

    Thanks!

  12. Posted

    Congratulations Coolio :-)

     

    It's always a pleasure to see pictures of the Geneve9640, yours is in good condition. That said, I would throw away all the modifications made (wires and caps) to redo this messy job. The Geneve deserve better.

    You can also add 384Kb CPU RAM, here is a page (in english) to do the modifications on my webside dedicated to the lovely Genny: http://www.ti99.com/geneve/index.php?en/article27/sram-512

     

     

    I do plan on refurbishing this board some, if only to get rid of those awful 450V capacitors (I'm still confused as to why someone would do that). It's just a matter of finding time IRL.

     

    Thanks for the pointer to your website.

  14. Posted · Edited by coolio

     

    The 32K select line is usually routed through a free through-hole to the underside of the board. This ensures the wire is not bent or broken. It is a low risk issue, and to some degree more of an aesthetic problem. I think my original instructions for the mod routed the wire toward the underside of the board to steer people away from damaging a core hole. See next paragraph.

     

    I was afraid of the "D" word. I've come across a few Geneve cards where the owner drilled the regulator holes. Unfortunately for them, the Geneve has an internal layer, and drilling the holes removes not only the pads on either side of the board, but the core sleeve and the interconnection with the middle layer. That was the point when the card came in for repair. :skull: I can just barely make out the short white jumper wires in your picture now that you call out the drilling. The white wire with the tape near the midpoint is a curiosity; I suspect a resistor or capacitor inline with that wire; if it is two pieces of wire soldered together, it should be replaced with a single wire.

     

    Swim and I typically use the 35v caps for the 22uF, 10uF, and 330uF replacements. Yes, we would both recommend re-capping the board at some point.

     

    The card looks good and clean (heat damage aside), seems to be socketed (fully?) and from the pictures looks like one of the good boards. By this, I mean it does not look like one of the brittle Geneve cards that were made, where solder work can too easily remove pads and traces. You can usually determine this only by applying solder/heat to the card.

     

    Keep pulling the parts together and you'll eventually have a nice Geneve system. The Geneve, a disk controller of some sort, and RS232 for outside communication are a good starting point.

     

     

     

    Here are some up close images of the modifications on the backside:

     

    Geneve 9640 Original Modifications - Back side, upper left

    Geneve 9640 Original Modifications - Back side, lower left

    Geneve 9640 Original Modifications - Back side, lower right

    Yes, the wire with the tape in the middle was simply two wires soldered together and the tape covered the solder joint. And yes, it is mostly socketed. Two of the ICs are not socketed (just the 74LS04s).
    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    Just when you think you've seen it all.

     

    The double stacked SRAM chip and its single wire constitute the 32K SRAM upgrade (from 32K to 64K). It is routed poorly but looks to be connected to the proper pin on the underside of the board.

     

     

    What would have been a better routing for the address (?) line?

     

     

     

    The capacitors? Definitely not right. Are they 22uF?

     

    Yes, they are 450V 22uF capacitors. It looks like the person who changed them had to drill new holes or wider holes to allow the fatter leads of these capacitors to fit.

     

     

     

    Have you placed this into a PEB? If not, I strong urge you to check the resistance between ground and each input/output regulator lead. First, to verify there are no shorts and second, to at least confirm that the values are within normal range. If you do this and post the values, I can compare to a similar Geneve board.

     

    I have not tried using it yet. I was kind of expecting I needed to clean things up some. Would you recommend re-capping the whole board and using lower voltage 22 uF capacitors where these 450V ones are used?

     

    Also, I can give a knotted picture of all the mods I see on the board. With exception of the memory expansion, they all look to be power related.

  16. Posted · Edited by coolio

    OK, sorry for the slow follow up here. IRL has been a bit busy. Here are the photos of the Geneve 9640 I got. One thing you will quickly note is that a previous owner changed out some capacitors with 450V versions. What would they do that? Seems excessive to me. This capacitor mod looks kind of hacky (look at the back of the board). There is another mod in place. It looks like they stacked a second RAM chip onto of the previous one, and adjusted some address lines to go with it. This mode looks a little better executed.

     

    Geneve 9640 card front

    Geneve 9640 cad back

     

     

    I am slowly assembling everything I need: I have the SCART Genie, I got a cheap PEB on eBay ($100!), looking for a SCART monitor and the right kind of keyboard. Next I need to look into what sort of disk drive I need. The PEB I got has a TI controller and a TI drive. Is that good enough to start? Should I do the TI controller mod?

     

    Advice welcome.

     

    Thanks!

    • Like 3

  18. Posted

     

    You will need of course at least a floppy drive, you will need MDOS 6.50. Also, do you have an RGB monitor like a Samsun 910mp, 711mp, 510mp, there are quite a few out there you can use a SCART connector on.

     

     

    I do not have such a monitor, but it looks like these monitors are fairly easy to pick up cheaply. It it worth it?

     

     

    I have an easy solution getting ready to do a pre-buy called the SCART-Genie that I have been developing and it works well.

     

    Just curious, is there a way to use a VGA monitor or one with a composite in? Would I want to?

  20. Posted

    So this Geneve 9640 came up for sale on eBay at the same tolime I got a bonus at work, and so I thought, Why not? And I got it. I remeber wanting one badly as a teenager. Im looking forward to delivery, but now I am looking for tips on how to get started with the Geneve 9640. I really dont know how to get it set up and use it.

     

    Thanks for any help!

     

    Coolio

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    I actually wrote a game like this back in the mid-80s. Even got collisions with the edges worked out. Never released the game, as I never really finished it. As I recall, I never was really happy with how the game locked. The scrolling wasn't smooth like Parsec, and I wondered how they did it on Parsec.

  25. Posted

    I have been creating some LED matrix projects being driven by an Arduino ( example project ), but I was wondering if I could drive the LED matrix with my TI instead. What I am seeking is advice on is where would be a good point to get a controllable +5V digital signal? I am using 74HC595 shift registers to control my LED matrices, so I would just need 3 digital line: the serial signal, a clock signal, and a latch signal.

     

    Can this be done via the side port? The cartridge port? I remember from the 80's there was a project to create an RS232 device through the joystick port, is that another option? Is there an design for a GPIO-like card for the PEB?

     

    Thanks for any pointers to help me get started with this project!

    • Like 1
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