6809-upgrade for Atari

[+MrFish]

He sells them: Liber809

 

[+davidcalgary29]

Has anyone now installed this mod? Reviews?

[777ismyname]

On 1/20/2019 at 3:49 PM, davidcalgary29 said:

Has anyone now installed this mod? Reviews?

Bumpity bump. Having played around and owned a CoCo around the same time as getting an Atari 8 bit machine, this has really interested me since seeing this thread years ago.

 

Regardless, I see this in an 800XL of mine in about 3 or 4 months. I’m not an assembly language programmer but do want to finally learn. I have brought a CoCo 3 back to life within the last month, so it would be a win-win for me.

[+davidcalgary29]

I actually snagged one of these months ago on eBay. It’s  waiting quietly for a project...

[elmer]

Dang, excellent necrobump, I never knew that this existed ... thanks! ?

 

I find this strangely appealing, especially with a 6309 that I've wanted to program on for years.

 

I'm just trying to figure out whether I find it appealing enough to sacrifice either my 1200XL or 800XL (with U1MB) for.

 

The 6809, together with a MyIDE2 (to provide 512KB of banked RAM and a CF card) would be awesome!

[gozar]

Add me to the list people of owning one but haven't installed it yet.

[mephistopheles]

Having found the 6809 rom for the Synertek SYM1 I bought a liber809 to try to adapt it for the SYM1

but the way it is built, it can only works on an atari,

the liber809 is build with delai line calculated to be compatible with the frequency of the atari clock 1.75Mhz

 

I installed the kit on an atari 800xl, this operation was easy, but I discovered that it was not supporting atari peripheral

and needed drivewire to boot OS9....

 

the installation of drivewire 4 was a nightmare, the product crashing at each connection attempt from the atari

with the help of the coco mailing list I finally succeded but I had to downgrade my machine to JDK 7

 

once booted, there is very little you can do, I've not found any real resources for atari NitroOS9

I checked the defs files and found that the free space is really small

 

if I find the performance interesting, I don't see any interest in this product as it is

it would be nice if the author could give more information, and some links on what we can do once the machine is modified

perhaps that he could also add the support for real atari peripherals...

why drivewire and not APE or RespeQt ?

[as it is I find more interesting to use a coco2 or a coco3 instead of a modified atari]

 

Interested by this kind of modifications I made one myself for the Synertek SYM1

 

 

[+davidcalgary29]

7 hours ago, mephistopheles said:

Having found the 6809 rom for the Synertek SYM1 I bought a liber809 to try to adapt it for the SYM1

but the way it is built, it can only works on an atari,

the liber809 is build with delai line calculated to be compatible with the frequency of the atari clock 1.75Mhz

 

I installed the kit on an atari 800xl, this operation was easy, but I discovered that it was not supporting atari peripheral

and needed drivewire to boot OS9....

 

the installation of drivewire 4 was a nightmare, the product crashing at each connection attempt from the atari

with the help of the coco mailing list I finally succeded but I had to downgrade my machine to JDK 7

 

once booted, there is very little you can do, I've not found any real resources for atari NitroOS9

I checked the defs files and found that the free space is really small

 

if I find the performance interesting, I don't see any interest in this product as it is

it would be nice if the author could give more information, and some links on what we can do once the machine is modified

perhaps that he could also add the support for real atari peripherals...

why drivewire and not APE or RespeQt ?

[as it is I find more interesting to use a coco2 or a coco3 instead of a modified atari]

 

Interested by this kind of modifications I made one myself for the Synertek SYM1

 

 

Can you provide instructions on what you had to do in order to get the installation to work properly? I'm sure it would be a great help to anyone who wants to do this in the future.

[Gunstar]

Definitely an interesting mod/upgrade. I'm not sure if I'd ever do it or not, but I have the page bookmarked for future reference. Once I learn 6502 assembly, I might decide to learn 6809. I've already settled on plans for one of my 2 1200XL's to have Rapidus and maybe VBXE or Sopia 2 with it's new graphic modes. Time will tell if Sofia 2 graphics will be supported any better than VBXE has I suppose. But one day I may figure out how I can install this 6809 board in my other 1200XL but mod it further myself so I can flick a switch or change some dip-switches to change between a 6809 and a 6502 both on-board. Or, maybe by then some other Atari fan will make a board than can do just that.

 

It looks like a lot more progress still needs to be done to turn this upgrade into something useful for the everyday user though, it seems only a useful system to a programmer that wants to program 6809's in an Atari machine, who can create proper support for NitroOS9 on an Atari.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Gunstar

[mephistopheles]

for the installation (mine was a bit chaotic simply because I bought liber809 for another machine and when I saw that it could not work, I recycled the eprom,

discarded the manual, recovered the 6809 and drop the rest in a drawer with useless electronic parts)

 

if you have just received the parcel with liber809 you should have:

- a small install manual  (a few pages)

- the 6809 adaptor itself

- an eprom

 

1/ open the atari you want to modify and follow the instructions from the manual (it's quite clear and has some photo)

2/ you need an SIO2PC cable  [you can either buy one or build one]

3/ you need drivewire 4 installed

4/ start the atari, with the SIO2PC cable connected and if you have followed the manual the Atari should boot OS9

 

 

Recovery of the missing part of my liber809 package

if you have some part of the liber809 package missing you can retrieve the install manual and rebuild an eprom

from this web site: https://github.com/boisy/liber809

for the rom you need toolshed to reassemble the files into the binary images  (everything is done by the makefile but you get a message

telling you that mamou is obsolete)

once the binary was built with a TL866 I burnt 2 copies of liber809_rammode.rom into a at28c256 a copy a  $0000 and the other at $4000 in the rom

(I used this eeprom as indicated in the manual)

for the 6809 for liber809 I used a mc68B09

 

SIO2PC

you can either buy one or make one, to  make one it's quite easy, you need a half of a SIO cable and a FTDI breakout

connect pin 3  "data input"   to   TXD on the FTDI breakout

connect pin 4  "GND"           to   GND  on the FTDI breakout

connect pin 5 "data output" to   RXD on the FTDI breakout

connect pin 7  "command"   to  CTS  on the FTDI breakout

this cable will only work as direct connection between a PC and an Atari  (no way to use atari peripheral as it is)

this cable works with AspeQt /  RespeQt, DriveWire 4  (does not work with APE)

if you follow a tutorial on youtube or on the web, pay attention that all SIO cables does not have the same color for the wires

 

DRIVEWIRE 4

sorry this is rather messy...

you can download drivewire from here:  https://sourceforge.net/projects/drivewireserver/

on my machine I had Java 8 installed but it failed with a security exception on rxtxSerial.dll

I posted ton the coco mailing list and got some informations...

drivewire 4 works with Java 7 so I removed java 8 and installed java 7

you can get java 7 from this web site:  https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/javase7-archive-downloads.html

BEWARE that by removing Java 8 for a previous version you may break the compatibility with something else on your machine

 

once JDK 7 was installed, I unzipped drivewire4 and copied the 2 files from the nitros9 folder on git

started drivewire and attached the .dsk as drive 0

 

I started the atari and it immediately booted....

 

I have another information recently received from the coco mailing list but I have not yet tested  (From: Bill Pierce)

The "Developer's Edition" of DriveWire4 (4.3.4e) seems to work fine with Win 10 64 bit. It was a "never officially released" version Aaron sent to a few of us back when it was still being developed. It's available on my website.
It is a little different, mainly the GUI, but has all the same functionality.

https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/drivewire-4-3-4e

 

Mr Boisy Pitre has done a great job with his liber809 but it would be really could if he could upgrade the manual

and give more information about the system and some links on the application that can be really used with NitrOS9 Atari

 

 

 

initially my goal was to replace this board: (this board replace the 6502 on a SYM1 motherboard)

finally I made my own board