displaced

Yeah - that really is a great piece of work! Unfortunately the only bit I need is the little clear plastic cover that goes in the parallelogram-shaped hole in front of the activity LED. Hopefully getting a few bits and pieces to improve my 3D printer over Christmas and will have some free time - so I should be able to do some experiments with translucent PLA to make one!

I think on my travels I saw that STL for the entire HD cover. Nice to know it’s there in case of future accidents! I’ve made the model for the LED cover - was pretty straightforward - am happy Atari chose a regular 45° angle for their parallelograms! I’ve done a few test prints, but my printer’s suffering a bit for having been moved about and gone unused for quite a few months, so I haven’t yet got a clean, accurate print yet. Oddly, the existing cover for the power LED on my MSTE is clear, untinted plastic. I mean, it’s not ‘crystal-clear’, but it’s definitely only slightly opaque, not coloured at all. So a translucent PLA might give a suitable result. I did print the bracket for the power LED and fitted a modern 5mm green LED. It’s a much richer colour than the floppy LED, but I really like how it looks. Seriously considering swapping the LED on the floppy drive so that it matches (sure, it’s not 100% true to how the machine came from the factory, but at least I’m not using blue LEDs!)

Cool! Yeah - it seems the only source I’ve found for them is Best Electronics - and they get them by ripping apart new-old-stock TT drive covers. That’s a) expensive and b) a shame! I’ve got two ideas - the first, as mentioned, is to 3D print a mould to pour resin into. After hardening, it should then be possible to lightly sand it to fit nicely. The other option is to 3D print the cover itself, with a clear plastic filament. The first option will need a more complex 3D model to product the mould, probably with holes to allow the air to escape whilst filling with resin. ...but the second option would also be tricky - clear 3D prints need a really well calibrated printer to be successful, and the filament is tricky to get a decent print with. Either way, I need to get the digital callipers and angle measure out

Just wanted to pop by a say a big thanks for making the bracket STL available! I’d already soldered an LED to some wire, put the DuPont connector on the end and was pondering how to fit it to the case. Then I did a couple of google searches - first, how did the LED usually fit, then second, had someone made a 3D printable model? That took me to your work and, 20 mins later, my Mega STE has its power light back! One quick question - do you know of any source for the clear plastic lens that fits inside the hole in the case? My machine’s missing it from the hard drive cover. If it comes to it, I’ll try 3D printing a mould to pour some clear resin into, but it’d be nice to get the proper part!

I did the same with my XEGS in the UK last year. Took a good couple of weeks but there was a noticeable improvement!

In case it helps, the buzzing/hissing from around the processors is normal - my fully-working Jag does the same - and always has since I bought it on release. In fact, it’s probably a good sign - shows activity!

D’oh! I’d spotted this late last year - thought I’d treat myself for my 40th birthday (end of this month - Jan). Just seen the discontinuation announcement! Oh well - snoozing and losing and all that!

I’ve got the code finished, with pin state changes being properly reflected on each Arduino via Bluetooth LE. Pins 1-4 on the Jag side set pins 1-4 on the controller, with all other pins operating in the other direction. Just soldering up the DB15HD plug and socket, plus the Arduino to some veroboard. Words can’t quite express how much I hate soldering a full DB15! On the subject of powering the Jag-side Arduino. Although they work fine with 5V on the VIN pin, the board’s regulator is indeed lowering the voltage on the digital pins to ~3.5V, which is too low for TTL. The Nano doc’s show that already-regulated power can be fed to the 5V pin, which bypasses the nano’s regulator. If the 5V on the controller port is stable enough for the Jaguar, it should be fine for the Nano, so I’ll switch to using that pin. Gives a stable 5V on the digital pins when running with the bench PSU.

Hi Stephen, Like most of these ideas, it comes from my own desire. My Jaguar’s connected via an OSSC to a big TV that’s about 4 metres from where I sit, and I like to avoid extension cables if possible. On my breadboard right now two idle BLE-Nano boards are taking 20mA according to my bench PSU, so the jag’s port should power the ‘receiver’ Nano fine. The Nano has a VIN pin for power input which is regulated and accepts 6V to 20V. 5V may be a little low for that, but they’re behaving fine on the bench. On the controller side, I’d be happy with the jagpad’s lead shortened and plugged into a box containing the Nano, battery and charge controller. I could even forego the battery and power via Micro USB (my chair on the other side of the room has a USB multi-way charger beside it). Sure, it wouldn’t be wireless, but stowing away a 0.5m micro usb lead is neater than finding somewhere for 4 metres of 15-way cable that would otherwise be draped across the room. As for team-taps, I’m very unlikely to ever want one - pretty much just building this for my own convenience. And it gives me an excuse to play with some Arduinos and, if it all works out, design and 3D print some enclosures.

Thanks, Zerosquare! All that makes sense. Slightly concerned about the team-tap bit, since if the jag and Arduino have differing ideas about pin directions, nastiness could happen. I don’t mind losing team-tap compatibility, so maybe I’ll use some diodes to prevent the jag outputting on pins that are nominally inputs. Im using Bluetooth 4.0 LE which apparently has massively better latency. I’m not expecting my simple approach to work, but I’ll start with it just to see how badly it doesn’t work (if that makes sense!). Then I’ll fiddle with state caching to see what happens. I want to try something similar with the simple CX40 joystick on my XEGS too. Perhaps I should start there to keep things simple!

ure Hi! I have a couple of Arduino Nano boards with bluetooth which I'm eyeing for a project. Thought I'd mention it here in case it's a stupid idea... I was thinking I could connect one Nano to the Jaguar's controller port, and connect another Nano to a controller. Then, via Bluetooth, replicate the controller's signals to the Jag, essentially turning any Jaguar controller wireless. Now, technically there's nothing magic here. The Arduino code's quite straightforward. But I'm assuming that this won't work for reasons I don't yet know I've been researching how the Jag's controller works, since there's clearly more buttons than signal lines on the port. So it would appear that the connection is bidirectional - the Jag sets pins 1-4 to choose what group of buttons it wants to read, then reads their state on other pins. I'm not actually replicating a controller, rather, just trying to reflect the pin states between the two Arduinos over bluetooth -- so I don't really care about the nitty-gritty. So it would seem that the Jag-side Arduino should have pins 1-4 as inputs and the others as outputs, whilst the controller-side Arduino would have 1-4 as outputs and the others as inputs (to read from the controller). All I need to do is watch for changes on the signals and ping BT messages back and forth to reflect those changes on the other end. Has this been tried before? Is there a glaring reason why it won't work? If it does work, would anyone else be interested? (I'm imagining there being a little Arduino dongle that'll connect to and be powered by the Jag. Then, a little box with a DB15 socket for the controller to plug into, and a micro-USB for charging a battery for the controller-side nano. If it does work well, I could see if I could fit the 'duino and a battery pack inside the shell of the controller) [edit: The glaring issue I can foresee is lag. If the Jag sets pin1 and assumes it can scan other pins straight away to get button states, it may well not be happy about the delay introduced by bluetooth. The best way to find out is to try, I suppose!]

Ah, superb -- thanks very much indeed! Didn't realise the ATR support depended on a driver supplied by U1MB - that bit of info makes what I'd been reading make more sense now. Knew I was missing something... At the moment I can't quite justify a U1MB purchase, even though it's objectively a very nifty bit of kit - especially after having just bought the XEGS and VBXE! Perhaps after some future payday. Cheers!

Hi, I've read a load of threads here on this subject - just wanted to coalesce it here to make sure I've got the right end of the stick... The Aim Upgrade my SIDE2 firmware to the latest version on my 64K XEGS with VBXE The Problem SIDE2 firmware is supplied as an .ATR file. SIDELoader or SIDE2's SDX mode cannot work with ATR files/APT partitions because 64K isn't enough. A Solution? The VBXE can be flashed so that it provides 320K additional 'RAMBO' memory. So, my questions are: Is the above even vaguely correct, or utter nonsense? Could I switch the VBXE to provide RAM by upgrading it with an ATR via an SIO2PC cable? After doing that, would the SIDE2/SDX be able to use that RAM and allow ATR support? If so, could I then simply upgrade SIDE2 to the latest firmware using its own ATR support, or would that need loading via SIO2PC as well? Thanks for your help - I'm totally new to A8's beyond having a read through the SpartaDOS X manual and a little fiddling in BASIC (and my brain works on BBC Basic at that, not Atari Basic!)

Partial to a bit of Neil Young too! When smartphones were new, I did stuff like film gigs... but ended up preferring to take a few photos, a minute or two of video, then just enjoy. It’s nice to imperfectly recall seeing everything than just remembering looking through the phone’s lens. There’s not quite room for a couch, instead there’s some IKEA seat with a footstool which is fantastic for falling asleep in whilst playing Elite I think the Lynx stand came from an Etsy shop - nice little clear acrylic display stand thing. It’s meant for the Lynx II but my Mk. I sits there fine! I’ll make sure I get those onto the CF card! the speakers are part of a 7.1 setup - far more than enough for the small room, but it was an absolute eBay bargain, including the amp. Mrs. Displaced and I had a fun road-trip from Kent to Devon to go pick that lot up! I’ve wired the audio out of the XEGS so that the mono signal goes to both L and R channels on the amp. The fact that both channels are identical doesn’t give the amp much to work with for its spatial effects. But setting it to all-speaker stereo sounds pretty good. I love hooking these old machines up to A/V gear that was the stuff of a madman’s dreams back when they were released. Having said that, I know there’s an authenticity to playing these old machines on contemporary CRTs. Especially when game graphics took advantage of interlacing and phosphor decay to produce particular effects. Personally though, I like to make using my old stuff every bit as convenient as playing Elite Dangerous or Battlefront II on my PC. ...and that’s my next project - turn some Arduino Nano boards into Bluetooth-to-Atari Joystick/Keyboard bridges. That’s going to be harder than I thought with the XEGS - might end up running a ribbon out from the motherboard so I can hook the Start/Option/Select/Reset lines up to the Arduino.

Crazy, I know.... ?