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Ultimate 1MB in 1200XL?


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Turn off 'SIDE Hardware'. If carts still don't work after that, it's an installation issue.

 

Thanks, that did the trick. Out of the five I tested, only Delta Space Arena from Video61 won't boot that way.

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For information, here are the VIAs I used when installing the Ultimate 1MB:

 

attachicon.gif1200XL_Ultimate1MB_Hookup_Points.jpg

 

Sorry the picture isn't better.

 

Except for the RST, which is partly covered by a capacitor, this worked fine. I used patch cables as used on Arduino breadboards, which nicely poke through the solder when heated and have a ready-made connector on the other side.

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Except for the RST, which is partly covered by a capacitor, this worked fine. I used patch cables as used on Arduino breadboards, which nicely poke through the solder when heated and have a ready-made connector on the other side.

 

When I installed a U1MB into my “Ugly Duckling” 1200XL a couple years ago, I simply heated the leg of that cap and did a tiny lift/bend maneuver on one end to gain a tiny bit of clearance to the via adjacent to the component. Alternately, I supposed one could easily grab that signal off socket leg under the board and run it around the edge of the board if they prefer.

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When I installed a U1MB into my “Ugly Duckling” 1200XL a couple years ago, I simply heated the leg of that cap and did a tiny lift/bend maneuver on one end to gain a tiny bit of clearance to the via adjacent to the component.

Exactly: same here. The wire sneaks underneath the cap quite nicely.

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When I installed a U1MB into my “Ugly Duckling” 1200XL a couple years ago, I simply heated the leg of that cap and did a tiny lift/bend maneuver on one end to gain a tiny bit of clearance to the via adjacent to the component. Alternately, I supposed one could easily grab that signal off socket leg under the board and run it around the edge of the board if they prefer.

 

I tried the "lift/bend" but wasn't gentle enough which caused the cap to break. Luckily I found a fitting cap which I could bend around the breadboard plug (which is nicely insulated when pushed all the way in).

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Please post a binary so I can test... ah. Not to worry. Who knows why that doesn't work. :)

LOL. Yeah, the author is piracy paranoid and his carts will not work in more than basic situations. My Secretum Labrynth and Amokbots carts won't work through the pass-thru on my SDX cart for example. I also tried dumping an image of them with my Atarimax programmer cart and the resulting rom, when loaded has a "error-splash screen" when you try to run it that says something like "nice try, no game for you!." I could probably make them work once I get better at programming and look at it through a hex-editor. I just wanted to put it on my MyIDE II or The!Cart...

Edited by Gunstar
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For anyone contemplating such an installation in the future, I would also think solid-core 24 gauge wire would work well without taking up quite so much space as a breadboard pin.

I just get the solder out of the via, twist and tin some 26AWG IDC cable wire, hold it in place with the old Blu-Tac, then solder it from the back. Insulation is dead flush with the PCB.

 

LOL. Yeah, the author is piracy paranoid and his carts will not work in more than basic situations. My Secretum Labrynth cart won't work through the pass-thru on my SDX cart for example. I also tried dumping an image of it with my Atarimax programmer cart and the resulting rom, when loaded has a "error-splash screen" when you try to run it that says something like "nice try, no game for you!." I could probably make it work once I get better at programming and look at it through a hex-editor. I just wanted to put it on my MyIDE II or The!Cart...

I imagine the binary is sufficiently well booby-trapped to know when it's being inspected with a hex editor and infest your PC with Malware. :) Unfortunate that the same amount of time and effort spent on anti-piracy measures was not invested in beta testing on real hardware or cooperating with third-parties who offered to assist with known bugs discovered after the fact out in the field.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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I imagine the binary is sufficiently well booby-trapped to know when it's being inspected with a hex editor and infest your PC with Malware. :)

Good point. Though I've been of the mindset from the bugs in these games that he's a mediocre programmer that I'll surpass in a year or two and probably easily crack some old by-the-book protection schemes. ;) But honestly, I'm not sure the games are worth the effort anyway. Most of them are decent games, but there has been far more better games released for free and his are lost in the crowd of better quality games. I haven't touched them, except to try and dump them, since I wrote the reviews for them in Excel #4 a couple years ago...

Edited by Gunstar
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Good point. Though I've been of the mindset from the bugs in these games that he's a mediocre programmer that I'll surpass in a year or two and probably easily crack some old by-the-book protection schemes. ;) But honestly, I'm not sure the games are worth the effort anyway. Most of them are decent games, but there has been far more better games released for free and his are lost in the crowd of better quality games. I haven't touched them, except to try and dump them, since I wrote the reviews for them in Excel #4 a couple years ago...

 

As posted elsewhere I appreciate that he still programs for the Ataris and if he chooses to sell them and I choose to buy them, that's fine with me. You're right in that Delta Space Arena isn't overwhelming but then it's a (as far as I can tell) rather faithful port of a game that wasn't overwhelming either but which I was curious to see. Tempest Elite is quite an achievement.

 

I'll see if I can find out what crashes them and if I can't I'll just play them on a stock machine.

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LOL. Yeah, the author is piracy paranoid and his carts will not work in more than basic situations. My Secretum Labrynth and Amokbots carts won't work through the pass-thru on my SDX cart for example. I also tried dumping an image of them with my Atarimax programmer cart and the resulting rom, when loaded has a "error-splash screen" when you try to run it that says something like "nice try, no game for you!." I could probably make them work once I get better at programming and look at it through a hex-editor. I just wanted to put it on my MyIDE II or The!Cart...

Delta Space Arena has a CO060053 Atari board with 2 hand-labeled 8K EPROMs inside, dumped nicely and plays on Altirra as well (at least to level 2). Couldn't try it using Altirra with U1MB as I don't have a working U1MB setup in Altirra yet (it says "recovery BIOS" and asks to be flashed).

 

post-4219-0-34911400-1558387913_thumb.jpg

 

Techically speaking I don't have a working 1200XL either as it's still open waiting for me to decide whether to wire the stereo pokey to the channel switch or the U-switch and how to get out those stereo channels and the video from a UAV without too much hacking of the case.

 

Just printed a case for Dropcheck's cart extender as SIDE2 won't fit into my 1200XL without sanding off the cart which I try to avoid.

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Delta Space Arena has a CO060053 Atari board with 2 hand-labeled 8K EPROMs inside, dumped nicely and plays on Altirra as well (at least to level 2). Couldn't try it using Altirra with U1MB as I don't have a working U1MB setup in Altirra yet (it says "recovery BIOS" and asks to be flashed).

 

attachicon.gifIMG_0492.jpg

 

Techically speaking I don't have a working 1200XL either as it's still open waiting for me to decide whether to wire the stereo pokey to the channel switch or the U-switch and how to get out those stereo channels and the video from a UAV without too much hacking of the case.

 

Just printed a case for Dropcheck's cart extender as SIDE2 won't fit into my 1200XL without sanding off the cart which I try to avoid.

It's better just to use a dremel with a sanding stone attachment and sand the sides of the cartridge port, The white side case part in where the tapering ends and the black part surrounding the cartridge connector. Just the side walls on both sand to half original thickness and all Atari cartridges fit great then and you never have to sand a cart and the parts of the computer you sanded are never seen.

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It's better just to use a dremel with a sanding stone attachment and sand the sides of the cartridge port, The white side case part in where the tapering ends and the black part surrounding the cartridge connector. Just the side walls on both sand to half original thickness and all Atari cartridges fit great then and you never have to sand a cart and the parts of the computer you sanded are never seen.

 

Mechanically and visibility-wise you're probably right, but emotionally it's hard to dremel away on a part that seems to be no longer available anywhere, so I'll try with the cartridge extension first. That should also make it easier to use the buttons. Maybe Dropcheck will make an extension with a vertical cart slot some day to save space, or even a combination of the extension and the dual cart board.

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Yeah: in hindsight, I'd rather file down a $5 generic cart shell than an irreplaceable part of a $250 Atari. I filed down one cart tunnel and it works just fine, but it was fiddly as hell. A move away from 1200XL-unfriendly cart shells would be preferable going forward. :)

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  • 6 months later...

Reading these discussions on here were a huge help prepping me for a U1MB install on my 1200XL. Just finished up, and it fired right up on the first try! Based on this forum I was able to perform all of the following things in one smooth session:

 

 - Filed the SiDE2 cart down to fit the 1200XL. There are already two millings at the bottom of the cart - I just extended these to approximately halfway up the cart. I clamped it in my vise with the millings flush with the top of the jaws, which leaves the material I need to remove sticking above the jaws. Then just file away until flush with the jaws, clean up file marks with sandpaper afterwards. The result looks as though it were precision milled all the way up in the first place. I wish Lotharek would be doing this, since he's already milling them partway - all that needs to be done is just to run the milling up 3 more cm or so.

 

 - Replaced U12 ROM 24-pin socket with 28-pin dual-wipe socket. (A "machine" socket is not really needed, because the Lotharek-provided adapters are flat-profile pins.) I looked at the MMU socket, but it was already a dual-wipe so I didn't replace it.

 

 - Set jumpers as advised in this forum: I had to remove W7,W8,W9, and add W11, which should be the only jumper set in that group on the board. Confirmed working!

 

 - Replaced U17, 74LS08 with a 74F08. Lotharek's instructions read that the LS part can sometimes cause a timing problem with U1MB, so I wanted to make sure I wouldn't have that problem.

 

 - Added a 1nF capacitor between RST pin header and GND (pin 16 of the flash memory) on the U1MB, as recommended by U1MB firmware manual 14th edition to filter noisy RST on 1200XL, just to avoid problems.

 

 - Dropped CPU wires into vias on board. I read here the RST via is hidden under a capacitor. Well.. if you flip the board and follow the trace 1 inch further, you will find an unobstructed via to the right of this capacitor, with a via for R/W right next to it. Use mutimeter to confirm.

 

 - Fitting: Seen recommendations to leave off shield, remove RF box, remove audio tunable inductor, etc.. well, I don't like to do any of those things, so I discovered that if I flipped the U1MB board over, I could fit it under the shield and clear the audio tuner with plenty of room to spare.

    - I put some kapton tape to protect the U1MB just in case someone happens to screw the audio tuning slug all the way up to touch the U1MB. Ferrite slugs are not actually very conductive anyway.

    - I could have shortened the ribbon cables, but I was able to stow the slack away. The end result is perhaps not so orderly looking, but it all fits in the shield and I avoided routing cables across any chips which might have made them run warmer, which were my primary concerns here.

    - Standoffs are high-temp hot glue sticks. No drilling, and a few drops of isopropanol will remove them without a trace if I ever want to go back to stock.

    - I also put on some foam bumpers to prevent the board from springing up and grounding against the top of the shield just in case the standoffs let go for some reason. Some kapton over the battery too.

 

Here are some pics (I already washed the board thoroughly when I did Super Video 2.1 a few weeks back.)

 

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20191129_214010.thumb.png.1d6d05ecb7c46adc378dc9e370b3d436.png

 

 

Edited by rmzalbar
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If you always wanted to get the book, lulu grants an additional 30% rebate for Cyber Monday if you use CYBERMONDAY30 on checkout, making it yours for less than 15 bucks.

 

Even with European shipping it's less than 20 Euros.

 

Hope the rebate doesn't hurt Jason too much. So get yourself a copy to show your wife that "it says here to do this" ?

 

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Looks like I've got a number of issues similar to the ones found here. Including issues with the simple stereo rev2 not playing nice with the control signal. I'm going to add the 100uf, move a line and Replace U17, 74LS08 with a 74F08 and see where that get's me. I've also got a UAV and Sophia DVI installed. Those work fine and all of the normal ICs seem solid. I have a side2 cart for this. My current CF card was not compatible. Sandisk Ultra II 2GB was one I had on hand, and it's not viable. So I've ordered a black and gray 4gb. 

 

I've got about 18 hrs into this so far, so I'm kinda bummed that It's not working yet. But I know when I'm done, this baby is going to kick some ass.

No photo description available.

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Notably, I'm photographing the crap out of my installation, including some video capture from the system. I installed the 2nd u1mb into my system to upgrade to see what would happen. It gave me a totally different issue. I was recording the firmware update too. So I'll need to review it, then share it later.

 

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Here's a failure video from a 1st step upgrade from the older firmware. Note a delay due to the lag from video cap. The black screens are either a boot to nothing screen or a power cycle. The Bios menu is available at all time to press help to access. This is the 2nd one of two that I have. Each exhibited different results in the process or problems that happened.  

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D1hbdp17HBXwBheTJ7eRhJ2IB3H1-BMK/view?usp=sharing

 

I plan to add a 100ohm cap to the board to see what it does next.

 

Edited by Brian W.
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So I dropped back to the first U1MB I'm working on, and had an idea that worked out just fine so far. More tests are yet to be performed. Here's what I did for a Sparta dos failure.  I pulled up a copy of the Sparta dos upgrade (Obtained here http://sdx.atari8.info/index.php?show=en_download_special ) for the Ultimate1MB option of course. I used it in conjunction with the latest update files from flashjazzcat's site   https://atari8.co.uk/ . The combination of .atr files used with my SIO2SD allowed me to correct a corrupt Sparta dos on the U1MB. I documented this via video to show what was happening, and how I corrected it. There's no sound to the video due to the daisy chain of the svideo to my video capture device so I could perform less delayed functions. It's not super exciting, but it's worth seeing 1st hand what some of my kludging about with this idea for the first time. It's still all new to me, so bear with me. 

 

Precursor here, I made a change to the physical lines of 35 - 39 on the u1mb board per an earlier recommendation in this post. I have to order the 100nf cap, since I had none on hand. So the adventure continues until then. I'm going to see tomorrow if I can get the other one going, that goes straight to black screen. It seems bricked for now without any rational reason why. The boards are the same rev and it's on the same 1200XL. :(  ??? 

 

Here's the video for the above. I can probably make a simple step by step if you're not following what's happening here. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1g-oGdB-jRFw7IzGLNSlOUdlg-Sy4J7Mc

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9 hours ago, Brian W. said:

So I dropped back to the first U1MB I'm working on, and had an idea that worked out just fine so far. More tests are yet to be performed. Here's what I did for a Sparta dos failure.  I pulled up a copy of the Sparta dos upgrade (Obtained here http://sdx.atari8.info/index.php?show=en_download_special ) for the Ultimate1MB option of course. I used it in conjunction with the latest update files from flashjazzcat's site   https://atari8.co.uk/ . The combination of .atr files used with my SIO2SD allowed me to correct a corrupt Sparta dos on the U1MB. I documented this via video.......... {{Read above this comment for the full details..}}

Process that took place in the video..

- Showing SDX load off in the bio, and turning SDX load on in the bios.

-- Sparta failed on load, returned it to an off state to load from SIO2SD.

(Kludging about with the wrong file to load from SIO2SD - I selected the rom instead of the SDX XEX file. - Took me a couple of times to realize I copied both to the SIO2SD. Whoops!)

- Attempted a flash with just the SDX upgrade - No viable solution, from this.

(Time passing thought some of this process is me making some changes to the load files on the SIO2SD)

-- Using the correct SDX update file

-- Switched to FJC's Rom upgrade file

--- Processed the upgrade slowly. (Skip though it)

--- Process completed

- Rom success on reflash

 

What caused the corruption? There seemed to be some issues with the control line for a stereo pokey to the U1MB. Screen corruptions on the bios menu and lockup happened with it connected. Disconnected it functioned fairly normal. I'll have to read it's voltage later to see if it's jumpy. I've replaced the PIA in a process that I thought was causing it, so when I reconnected the Simple Stereo Mod rev2, the issue happened all over. This was a repeated issue 3x. The 1st two I was able to load SDX and re-flash.

 

I'm ordering two new chips as recommend in a previous post before digging for more assistance on this issue. :)

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On 12/11/2019 at 8:29 AM, Brian W. said:

Process that took place in the video..

- Showing SDX load off in the bio, and turning SDX load on in the bios.

-- Sparta failed on load, returned it to an off state to load from SIO2SD.

(Kludging....

I've been reviewing and checking over things while waiting on parts. I'm determined to get this working 100%. I did manage to get my Side2 Cart flashed with some minor tweaks and used the SIO2SD to load up the software. I'm still without a proper SD card, I have another one on the way that's a dead match for the one Lotharek sells. Which I should have just simply purchased from him.

 

Currently both of my U1MB boards are acting nearly the same way. So I'm hopeful that adding the 100nf cap and swapping to the 74LS138 corrects the very unpredictable behavior. Nobody likes looking at a screen that won't load the clock or OS. -_-

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