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sup8pdct

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Posts posted by sup8pdct

  1. Posted · Edited by sup8pdct

    Hi,

     

    If you want to see some pictures of my Atari 800 XL motherboards in HiRes, just go there,

     

    You'll find my own collection:

    1 NTCS

    1 PAL

    5 SECAM (with different Freddie chips)

     

    Can someone tell me what are the 2 small wires on the 2nd one used for ?

     

    Feel free to add your own pictures below...

     

    (It was easier for me to quickly make a web site rather than putting it there because the pictures are too big).

     

    If you want to see the different 800XL boxes, see this post.

     

    And don't forget to add your serial number to this post.

     

    Those wires are for power supply.

    Mystery is, why?

    Just looked at the secam one. Very different to what I am used to. What does the switch do that is between the powersupply and monintor jacks?

     

    James

  2. Posted

    Anyone know how to fit the Atarimax APE Warp+ 32-in-1 to a PAL 600XL?

     

    No Breadboard required

     

    Thanks

     

    Have had a bit of a look and found the following.

    The upgrade will plug straight in, the wires however will need the following refences changed.

    R87 change to R84 right most vertical resistor from the 6520 within the rf shield. top leg. white wire

    r40 change to R45 bottom most horzontal resister directly bellow right end of modulator to the left of U7, 74LS08, right hand leg.red wire

    point S. pin 13 of GTIA. no equilevent resistor on the 600XL. black wire.

     

    But as always, contact steve at atarimax to get confirmation of the above info.

     

    James

  3. Posted

    Wasn't there once a project to do the entire custom chip lineup in a FPGA or something like that? Anyone know if that project has stalled?

    That decaping looks good. If it would help the above project, or a new one along similar lines, I would vote for it 10 times.

     

    James

  4. Posted

    I tried your Atari-on-a-breadboard idea and I couldn't quite get it to work. I figured that maybe I didn't have a high enough quality of wood, as I picked something I use in the kitchen. Well at least we know it's RoHS compliant so we can ship it to the EU. So I went out to http://naturesownbread.com to make sure there weren't any IP patent infringements on using this bread in my design. I picked wheat because it's all I have. There's plenty holes in the bread for all the pins. Problem is, I couldn't get your "Plus" arrangement topology to get the most efficient bus pinouts to work. So I used your "StarBus" recommendation and was able to squeeze it onto a piece of bread, layered on my weathered kitchen board! Rather than call it an "Atari on a breadboard", I'll call it an Atari-ich. This way it keeps true to its lineage of a tasty snack and my favorite 8-bit platform.

     

    Any ideas on how to make this work?

     

    Cannot quite put my finger on it, but I think maybe the MMU is missing, unless of course the breadboard is double sided.

    The 'StarBus' should work well, certenatly keeps a twinkle in my eye :D

     

    James

  5. Posted

    I still have some boards for a 256K upgrade. I haven't built one for 15 years.

    It is a bit of a PITA to fit and to assemble.

     

    James

     

    Can this be done in a 1064 case?

     

    It could, BUT, like all greater then 64K ram upgrades for XL/XE, wires need to be soldered to Port B on the 6520 PIA.

    This requires the case to be pulled apart. Wires need to be routed through the Parallel connector making the 1064 a permanent attatchment.

    My experience with one of those isn't the best. Movement from keyboard use etc causes lockups and lost work.

    Simply not a practical solution.

    Internal all the way when it comes to the 600XL. Best to leave the parallel bus for external devices like BlaclBox, MIO etc

     

    James

  8. Posted

    I have one with a 2 chip version I put together in a neat little box years ago.

    Dos version 118 doesn't support the 2 chip version properly where 116 does.

    An email to steve fixed my problem for the most part except for one small item.

     

    An email with this small problem resulted in him sending me a version that didn't work at all.

    Emailed him back and haven't heard a thing since.

    Draw your own conclusion from that.

    Otherwise, it works very well.

     

    James

  9. Posted

    I was just playing with my 1200XL last night. I tried putting the IMAGIC carts in. They don't "seat" very well and fall out (probably becuase they don't fit I didn't realize this). Aside from the fact they aren't BIOS compatible with the 1200XL anyways

     

    I'll probably put it away and bring out my XEGS. I am very fond of the 1200XL design though.

     

    -Lee

     

    There is a difference in the plastic molding that forms the Cart port on the 1200XL. Where all other 8 bits have 2 little fingers that are raised above the level of the base, the 1200xl has a whole section that is raised. Just look in to the cart port between the 1200 and any other to see this.

    I have read of a fix somewhere in the early 80's where they cut a section of the cart case out. This section is between the 2 small cut outs on the front of the cart case where the 2 fingers line up.

     

    Another method is to use a hammer to get the circuit board out of the offending cart and plug it in ;)

     

    James

  10. Posted

    Atari fixated the large electrolytic caps in the 1050 by dripping large blobs of wax at their feet, so they are quite sturdily mounted. But even if they developed cold solder joints, resoldering these caps will probably not cure the problem. The real problem is ESR, which means the caps have developed Ohms resistance and lost capacitance in the process. This is caused by heat that dried out the electrolyte. In effect it basically disables the cap's primary function, filtering/buffering the power to the rest of the circuit, and it puts extra stress on the transformer as well. If a cap has developed ESR, replacing it is the only viable option.

     

    re-atari

     

    The ESR means Equivalent Series Resistance. All electrolytic capacitors have an ESR.It can range from very low values (.001 or less) through to about 20 or more. Things that affect the ESR of a new capacitor are its max working voltage and it's value.

    I have a device here that measures the ESR of capacitors. It has a table on the front of it for approx worst ESR values for new capacitors and it ranges from 20 for a small high voltage capacitor through to .004 for a large high voltage one. It is a kit available from our local electronics shop here in Australia.

    The readings of the ESR this device gives would need to be way out before a capacitor would need to be looked at.

     

    James

  11. Posted

    83AHA 11592493 made in hongkong different shaped sticker compared to the other 2. Just discovered it has been converted to PAL

     

    Hum...What do you mean exactly by "converted to PAL" ?

     

    It was a different video standard and now it is PAL.

    Judging from the serial numbers I would say it was a NTSC.

    Reason would say that this NTSC machine was converted to PAL.

     

    All the soldering around the Modulator, different style of chip socket for the pal colour clock, solder work around all the colour clock circuit, all points to the conversion being done.

     

    James

  13. Posted · Edited by sup8pdct

    One other way is to pull the bottom case off and disconnect the speaker. of course you will loose key clicks etc.

    Another solution is to find the gtia speaker and use a jumper to send it to where pokey audio goes.

    Not sure if this will work tho.It could kill pokey sound.

     

    My guess is the programmers to closely followed the apple when porting it to the Atari.

    else they wanted to show off.

    James

  14. Posted

    Here is a question for those floppy drive experts.

    When one replaces the FDC, does it need to be set up, ie VCO frequency etc?

     

    I have had a brand new 1050, when the double density upgrade was installed, the drive wouldn't work properly.

    Consulting with the local expert at the time, (early 80's), I had to adjust the VCO via a variable Cap,

    something to do with the data separator i believe.

     

    James

  18. Posted

    I have finally found my Indus GT field service manual.

    I am only going to copy what I feel is relevant information.

    Who want to know how to pull one apart?

    I will do more of the manual over the coming days/months.

    It doesn't have any wave forms of the WART (main) board. only a diagram of the major chips.

    Any faults with the WART board, you are mostly on your own, but this first section I scanned should help somewhat.

    To start with, here is the 2nd part of section 3.

    The internal diagnoses level 1 and and how to invoke level 2.

     

    James

    section3.pdf

  19. Posted

    For those with LDW CA-2001 and ram charger, the CP/M init command won't work.

    The following should fix this little problem.

     

    Disk edit program on PC or directly editing the file:

     

    Find bytes: change from: change to:

    78,CD,F4,07 F4,07 41,08

    80,CD,44,0B 44 05

     

    If you are using a disk edit program on the atari, those bytes will be inverted.

    I cannot test the changes as I don't have a ramcharger (yet) and the LDW drive/rom for my indus.

     

    The indus init command for cpm makes direct calls to the indus rom in 4 places.

    The LDW rom has 2 of the requires routines shifted around. the above changes should correct things.

     

    James

  20. Posted

    Also included comments where the Indus CP/M init command enters the rom to format a disk.

    This occurs in 4 Places.

    There is a web site describing how to set up an Indus CP/M disk from the ATR file and adding extra data

    with a PC with a 360K floppy.

     

    Would you be willing to point us to that site or explain a little more about how this works? I've had an Indus for years and thought that the ability to run CP/M was just one of those planned upgrades that never came to be!

     

    Every thing you need to know is here http://trub.atari8.info/index.php?ref=indus_cpm_en.

    including how to make a clone of the ramcharger. something i am yet to do but i will do it.

     

    James

  21. Posted

    Good work!

     

    Have had a quick look at the LDW CA2001 indus clone rom.

    Functionally, it is exactly the same except for version numbers and copyright notice

    AFAIK, LDW ROM is the same as the newer Indus GT ROM (ver. 1.2). CA-2001 returns version number of 2.01.

    ROMs are available on Jerzy Sobola's site:

    Indus 1.10 (the file name is misleading)

    Indus 1.20 / LDW 2000

    CA-2001

    Take a look at the Synchromesh code (GTSYNC.COM from DOS XL or INDUS.SYS from SDX). It handles both 1.1 and 1.2 by loading different Z80 code chunks to the drive depending on the ROM version (which is determined first).

    It is possible to get the indus to fix sectors 2 and 3. A small program will need to be written for the indus

    for this to happen.

    Such utility is under development :)

     

    I do know all of that. A quick dissembly of the CA-2001 rom shows it is a copy of the indus 1.2 rom but the routines have been moved around a bit.

    Eg: routine No 1,2,3,4,5,6 in the indus would be 1,3,4,5,6,2 in the CA. they also changed the version number returned and the copyright notice at the end of the rom.

    I have only included the ver 1.2 syncro code as the rom was 1.2. sorting out the ver 1.1 from the 1.2 in the syncro code took a little bit of work.

    The indus rom has an error when it comes to the write with read verify. the code checks the 1st byte of the sector by the number of times there are bytes in the sector.

     

    James

  22. Posted

    Have added more comments to what I have worked out.

    There is a segment of code stating at $88B that loads and writes to the ROM.

    Anyone work out what this is for??

    Have looked at the built in high speed routines that don't work.

    It used the clock out line on the sio buss to time getting data.

    not sure speed it was supposed to be but is slower then 38,400.

    Have included T states for the sio and total for sending/receiving 1 bit.

     

    208 t states /19200 $28 pokey divisor 18866-pal

    104 t states 1st version of syncromesh /38400 $10 pokey divisor 38553-pal 38847-ntsc

    76 t states usd version of rom /52631 $A pokey divisor 52160-pal 52558-ntsc

    58 t states 2nd version of syncromesh /68965 $6 pokey divisor 68209-pal 68730-ntsc

     

     

    Also included comments where the Indus CP/M init command enters the rom to format a disk.

    This occurs in 4 Places.

    There is a web site describing how to set up an Indus CP/M disk from the ATR file and adding extra data

    with a PC with a 360K floppy.

    It is possible to get the indus to fix sectors 2 and 3. A small program will need to be written for the indus

    for this to happen.

    Have had a quick look at the LDW CA2001 indus clone rom.

    Functionally, it is exactly the same except for version numbers and copyright notice,

    BUT 3/4 of the routines have been shifted around a bit so many direct calls to rom won't work.

    This breaks syncromesh and the CP/M INIT command but it would be possible to fix these.

     

    The rom also includes commands for the use of a 1770 FDC but no indus has ever shipped with one of these.

    INDUS12a.txt

  23. Posted

    It is rather odd this error. first time it boots up, things appear to be fine, but after a while it will start to play up to a point where doing a directory listing will have the timeout happen. At least with the BlackBox, the timeout is short. without the Blackbox, the timeout is so long, I gave up.

     

    James

     

    I'm not sure... but is this on an atari XE which has the ceramic capacitors on the SIO bus? I have had same issues with other sio devices on that XE. Once I removed those capacitors on the sio lines the problems appeared to be gone. But I'm not sure this is your problem...

     

    Greetz

    M.

     

    Mine is an XL, and just to make sure it wasn't that machine, I connected a 2nd xl and the same thing happened.

    So there is still an issue. tracking this one down will take some time.

     

    James

  24. Posted

    @james

     

    No I did not try it with SpartaDos 3.2D, but if you like I could do that. I had trouble with Sio2USB in combination with BlackBox... and that appears to be fixed very well now.

     

    I have to look up a copy of 3.2D... I know there were some troubles/bugs with older versions of SpartaDos ... (has nothing to do with sio2usb, bugs in the dos itself...) but I agree with you: 3.2D should boot properly.

     

    Greetz

    M.

     

    It is rather odd this error. first time it boots up, things appear to be fine, but after a while it will start to play up to a point where doing a directory listing will have the timeout happen. At least with the BlackBox, the timeout is short. without the Blackbox, the timeout is so long, I gave up.

     

    James

  25. Posted

    For anyone else who may be attempting to follow this, the following may be relevant:

     

    If your black box had a 16k ROM in it, its possible that the A14 and A15 ROM adress lines are tied "hi"..

     

    What you should do is bend up pin 27 of the ROM, and solder a wire from that pin to pin 15 of the 74LS175.

     

    Then, bend up pin 1 of the ROM, and solder a wire from that pin to pin 12 of the 6821 chip.

     

    Finally, turn off DIP switch number 2.

     

    While digging through the rom, I found 1 2K block to have a little message in it,

    It says: Please turn Dipswitch #2 off. Thanks.

    So no harm is done if Dipswitch 2 is on but the BB will always boot up with that message till it is Off :)

     

    James

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