towmater

Kazool! The software works, but unfortunately expects the sprite board to be in slot #7 (where the CFFA lives in my system) so I just temporarily relocated the F18A for this test. Keep in mind this shot is of the VGA output from the F18A, the way I connected it was the main //gs video was on VGA from a GBS thingy, and the F18A was connected to the DVI input with a DVI-VGA converter, so I just switch inputs on the monitor to see the second screen.

CC65 might be the way to go, as it seems to be a higher-level C language compiler, but for assy for the time being I'm looking into Wudsn.

I don't understand, Lynxman's last post says his are still available.

And Engadget, though it mentions McWill's replacement LCD yet does not mention his name nor link to him.

Up and running. And working! I'm playing with software, but I'm quickly finding a need for a good cross-dev environment for 6502 assembly, any recommendations? Also, it would be fun to run Terrapin logo to get the ball rolling, but I need a "terrapin logo sprite procedures disk" which is nowhere archived on the Internet. Does anyone have a copy? Using the board as a 9918A is simple enough, but it looks like I'll have to check with Matt H. to see if there are some docs on hidden capabilities in the F18A version.

Thank you Osgeld, but I just discovered that the F18A comes with one!

Hold off until we see one working. The boards are in the mail back from OSH Park, so maybe next week we'll know more. I do need to order a 40-pin socket, or cross fingers and see if Fry's has one.

Wow, it's all 74 logic stuff, on first glance, ripe for simplification with an fpga, although that's an expensive proposition, I will look into using one of the larger micro controllers to see if it can be shoe horned into a chip or two. That said, it looks like the ide still needs a floppy to load drivers.

Rereading Schmitzi's post, SCSI controllers are unavailable, but you say that one can solder an ide controller yourself, indicating a pc board design is out there somewhere? I'm not nearly informed enough with TI's internals, but I am intrigued by the possibility of making a smaller ide board, unless it too requires a PEB. If so, what is the magic in the PEB that can't be emulated easily? I was under the impression it was a simple backplane. Thierry's design seemed to take up a lot of board space, probably because he didn't need to care inside a PEB, and there are a couple of unused chips routed. I think it could be simplified greatly, but there's that issue of what exactly the PEB is doing.

Looks like Thierry was studying at Stanford, and of course student web space always vanishes when they graduate. So that info is lost. It looks like Thierry's device was a PEB expansion card, which is intriguing, it occurs to me that the missing link is to have a PEB interface without the giant box, assuming floppies can be omitted now, and the rs232 is superfluous IMHO, and ram is not really needed thanks to Tursi, is there much other use for a PEB besides a SCSI or IDE card? And if so couldn't just that be connected to the expansion port and SCSI2SD be added?

Mizapf, I apologize. I've been working late nights in a foreign country, and was a little gun-shy about asking without doing hours of research. The rest, this is great info and I think I have my answer, which is... buy the PEB. However, if you look back at our quarterly project thread and how it seems to have come to a conclusion we have shown that ordering circuit boards, thanks to Osh Park, is a simple few clicks, ordering chips from digi-key is a click-and-wait a few days process, so we know that a little community effort can accomplish cool things. We also have Matt and Tursi to lean on for technical advice. The only missing link, I would imagine, would be the fpga code. It would be a bit sweeter if we could use an fpga like the Mojo that programs easily with the Arduino on-board.

I just searched for cf7+ in the forums. No results. I can't win. The CF7+/NanoPEB website consists entirely of the phrase: "CF7+ and nanoPEB are no longer available" Is there something else out there?

I've never been a fan of that conceit. "Excuse me sir, do you have the time?" "DID YOU CHECK TO SEE IF ANYONE ELSE ALREADY ASKED FOR THE TIME?" Bytes are cheap, and conversation should be free, IMHO. Kidding aside, I've been through several reams of the old forum entries. You might find something fast because you already know the answer and can search for it, but if you have no clue what a CF7+ is, then going through an asteroid field of forum entries is not a reasonable prerequisite to asking a question.

So I'd need a PEB for that, right? And once the PEB has taken over my desk, I'd need a SCSI board, or does the PEB have SCSI built in?

I have an itchy mouse trigger about clicking "buy it" on a PEB, but the thing is obscenely large. Are there any SD options readily available, or SCSI-to-SD, etc. available for the TI? I have seen the NanoPEB, but also understand it is no longer produced? BTW, F18A fans might find it fun to step next door to the Apple II forum to see what's going on with it over there.

Dude you rock! I haven't listened to the podcast yet (I'm at TDS). Did you tell the story of the Pizza Robots?

I bought one of those 1970VX lcd monitors that the AtariST group is raving about, and that with the $20ish Amigakit VGA connector ended up giving me a much better picture than GBS.

I thought NanoPEB's were no longer made?

The 9918 doesn't need any address decoding. It's deriving RW and device select from the 7400. Perhaps the Arcade Board was meant to be in a certain slot to work?

Discoveries thus far: There was a version of MIT logo supporting the board. There was a paint program (I guess) from Micromint called E-Z Color Graphics Editor. This 1984 paper describes using one: http://paperity.org/p/18975381/the-tms-9918a-vdp-a-new-device-for-generating-moving-displays-on-a-microcomputer

We are, of course, using bulk-power. It's actually hard to tell what this thing will do, as the board it is emulating was marketed variously as the "E-Z Color Graphics Interface", the "EZ - Color", the E/Z Color", "Micro Mint Sprite Board", all by "Micromint", "Micro Mint" and "Micro-Mint". That's part of the fun, and if enough is uncovered to make it worth your while, that would be awesome. Anybody who has any lead on the manual for the original board, please chime in. To clarify, this is a second display output for the A2, so DHGR will be fine, it just won't be coming from this thingy. It's not a VGA adapter for your Apple, it is an enhanced graphics add-on that outputs TMS9918A graphics modes to VGA, plus some wild new SNES style modes that weren't available on the original. The PR#3 command may not matter as you'll have dual display capability with the F18A in 80-column mode. Since the beast doesn't exist for a few more weeks, we'll need to figure some things out before sharing the board, for example the reset line is currently designed to be software trigger-able, that might be a bad idea for compatibility with old stuff if that's not the way Micro Mint's card worked. As for II+ support, the original 1982 design by Steve Ciarcia for the card we're emulating here was said to be compatible with every A2 that existed at the time, so the iigs is the one we're not so sure about because of its variable clock rate. All testing will be done in a iigs however, so that should be straightened out quickly.

I think you might be better served with an i7 imac, as more software will be available for that stolid platform. But seriously, there is existing software that is theoretically compatible with this, and I'll be happy to let you know what once we have one running.

It's a 74LS00. Let's see if we can find enough info to emulate the audio as well, any leads on schematics, or a source for a loaner board that we can reverse engineer will be helpful. I'd bet the mockingboard is compatible as it used a similar sound chip, but we can't test yet, the initial board is a few weeks from delivery (OshPark) The F18A is code compatible with the 9918 chip, but also hides far greater capabilties that we could utilize.

I received a few pointers from Matthew on the F18A's requirements, so I'm fairly sure it will work, and no, no fights, it leads us to the Undiscovered Country.