Jump to content
IGNORED

Mega Speedy, the ultimate 1050 upgrade. Intrest assesment.


guus.assmann

Recommended Posts

Probably stupid question: The headers to u9 are the right way up?

I get the feeling (from recent experience) that these thirty year old drives can be a bit on the unforgiving side. Have you replaced any of the crappy sockets with precision counterparts?

Headers for U9 are tight in both the Mega Speedy, and the main board of the 1050. I removed the original socket and replaced it with a precision socket.

 

I cleaned every last bit of residual flux from the board, verified all connections and solder joints. The drive (as it did yesterday) initially powered up fine. I was able to set it to 51, and load the copy software on the 800. But when the drive sits there idle for no more than 30 seconds, the display goes nuts, it starts beeping.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Yes completely serious. I love the project, but I realized I really don't need. When it comes to hi-speed SIO, I use my Sio2SD. When it comes to bigger storage (Double Density) I use my MyIDE 2. The reason I use my 1050's is for booting games from original disk, that do not require an upgraded disk drive.

 

So please take my slot ;)

 

Greetz

M.

 

I am surprised!... I thought you would get at least one for sure, even I do... and I stopped using real drives long time ago, but the prospect of having all those upgrades in one unit is just too hard to resist....lol

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Ray

 

The small PCB is 2.5 by 5 cm. It took some doing to get the PCB and the ruler at a zero degree angle, which is why the PCB seems to be smaller on the first two pictures.

 

post-8917-0-58922700-1425777000_thumb.jpg

 

post-8917-0-47305900-1425777221_thumb.jpg

 

Three out of four pictures are upside down BTW. The two below show the size of the 7 segment displays.

 

post-8917-0-80756000-1425777087_thumb.jpg

 

post-8917-0-07733200-1425777089_thumb.jpg

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

Edited by Mathy
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks a lot Mathy, this will help me plan in advance, I may have an idea to get this fitted nicely, but i will only know after i take my measurements on the drive.

 

Edit: Took my measurements and the visible part looks like only 1.5 x 3.5 cm (excluding the rotary switch), which is just the right size for what i am planning.

 

Best Regards

Ray

Edited by atari8warez
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I am surprised!... I thought you would get at least one for sure, even I do... and I stopped using real drives long time ago, but the prospect of having all those upgrades in one unit is just too hard to resist....lol

 

I have a few 1050's with original Happy boards, and some with imitation Happy boards, I have 1 1050 with US DOUBLER, and a nice stack of XF551 with Hyper XF Rom.

 

And from all these upgraded drives, none is in use!!!

 

The only 1050 connected is a stock 1050.

 

Why didn't I come to this decision earlier? Well... I received the game Dungeon Hunt from Jacobus, and I started playing this game... and I realized how much I appreciate my stock 1050. I realized that even with around 15 upgraded diskdrives around, I still use a non-upgraded drive. There must be a reason for that... right?

 

Since other people were waiting for this upgrade too, I thought... hmm let me skip this time.

 

I don't think I'm going to regret that, since I have already so many upgraded diskdrives here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This technical masterpiece works very well. I only need the one drive now.

 

post-35042-0-23631500-1425814859_thumb.jpg

I thought photo is required to clearly show where the wires go.

 

post-35042-0-12327600-1425815229_thumb.jpg

And this to show the position of the plug on the main board.

 

post-35042-0-35047300-1425815265_thumb.jpg

I did not cut the facia plate, the ribbon fits through the slot. I used 3M VHB tape on the back of the ribbon cable plug to hold the PCB firmly on the front. It could do with a small 3D printed bezel that attaches to the front plate screws for perfection.

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Stephen!

 

Headers for U9 are tight in both the Mega Speedy, and the main board of the 1050. I removed the original socket and replaced it with a precision socket.

 

I cleaned every last bit of residual flux from the board, verified all connections and solder joints. The drive (as it did yesterday) initially powered up fine. I was able to set it to 51, and load the copy software on the 800. But when the drive sits there idle for no more than 30 seconds, the display goes nuts, it starts beeping.

Do you have a second 1050 to do a quick test? That would narrow it down whether it's the 1050 or the Mega Speedy acting up.

 

No need to do a full install with all the wire soldering etc, just remove RAM+ROM+CPU from the 1050 and plug the Mega Speedy board into the CPU socket. This'll work fine for the (Mega-) Speedy and Happy modes.

 

so long,

 

Hias

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Funny what you find when installing things - didn't know I had a US doubler installed in this drive...

 

That is so true. Now I have a P-touch labeler that makes beautiful labels (and they peel off nicely with no residue or other issues). So I label everything. Especially since I'm older now. ;)

 

-Larry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Stephen!

 

Do you have a second 1050 to do a quick test? That would narrow it down whether it's the 1050 or the Mega Speedy acting up.

 

No need to do a full install with all the wire soldering etc, just remove RAM+ROM+CPU from the 1050 and plug the Mega Speedy board into the CPU socket. This'll work fine for the (Mega-) Speedy and Happy modes.

 

so long,

 

Hias

Thanks - I'll give that a try

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there any documentation for the Speedy in English? I found this but don't know any German. http://atariwiki.strotmann.de/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=CompyShop%20Speedy%20Upgrades

 

Love the drive copy program - fast! Need to get some blank disks...

 

Feature I'd like is a way to choose my favourite roms and just have the front switch select from them.

 

So if I have Hias' divisor 0 os rom patch can the drive burst that quick? With that huge amount of ram it seems to only take a few seconds to read the whole disk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

attachicon.gifIMG_1837.jpg

I did not cut the facia plate, the ribbon fits through the slot. I used 3M VHB tape on the back of the ribbon cable plug to hold the PCB firmly on the front. It could do with a small 3D printed bezel that attaches to the front plate screws for perfection.

 

 

Great, this photo gives me a better visualization about the proportions. Locating the ribbon connector below, instead of above the LEDs would have made integration into the faceplate easier, but it is still doable. In fact mounting the LEDS into a separate small board and the rotary switch through cables instead of a direct connection to the board would have made the whole process a lot easier in general.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello atari8warez,

 

Please be advised that due to delivery problems there may be 2 different display sizes on the display board.

But the board is always the same size.

 

My intention was to have the display board sit below the floppy slot.

It will fit in a "copy" of the switch and power led, like on the left hand side.

That way, the drive get's kind of a "balanced look"

But it will always be a discussion. What's estheatically pleasing to my eyes, can be an abomination in the eyes of someone else.

It's all a matter of taste in my opinion.

 

And the size of the board was also dictated by the posibillities of the board house (iTead Studios) and the price I wanted to pay.

Now the display boards are made on their 5 x 5 size panels and 2 will fit exactly.

 

The board is also designed such that you can cut of the part holding the rotary-encoder. That way it can be placed somewhere also.

I could have choosen smaller displays. But than I could only find SMD ones. And after the main board with the 100 pin CPLD, I had my fill of those parts.

Trough hole components are often easier to install.

 

BR/

Guus

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Guus, I understand the PCB design constraints. As for being aesthetically pleasing, in this particular case, at least for me, the fitment is more important because there isn't a lot of choice using the face plate. In any case i will need to do some modifications for sure, both to the drive faceplate, the board and maybe more :) . But that's OK, i enjoy hacking around so I am not complaining, but for a person who doesn't want to get into the nitty gritty detail of modifying hardware, there really is no aesthetically pleasing solution as it is.

Edited by atari8warez
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems as if I am going to need and pin row.. Are this available on some Website that I could order with a decent delivery time.. Or should I Put everything back in the box and wait for delivery..

In addition to the previous reply, you might also consider using a single 28 pin connector. These look exactly like a 28 pin precision socket, but have pins on both the top and bottom side. Using this kind of connector has the added advantage that the 2 pin rows cannot move sideways. This makes fitting it in the 6507 socket somewhat easier.

Then again, if fitted correctly, the 2 separate pin headers Guus supplied with the Mega Speedy board should work fine. As with any speeder, fitting the connector in the 6507 socket is a bit finicky. It just takes a little 'Fingerspitzengefuehl' (or in English: precaution).

 

re-atari

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there any documentation for the Speedy in English? I found this but don't know any German. http://atariwiki.strotmann.de/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=CompyShop%20Speedy%20Upgrades

Not that I know of. Some technical info is available on that page under "Das Speedy-SYSTEM", you should get some readable text with google translate.

 

There are also 2 (OCRed) PDFs that should work with google translate: this one has the infos from "Das Speedy-SYSTEM" plus source code and this one is an overview of the different Speedy versions back then in the old days, with some background info, too.

 

Feature I'd like is a way to choose my favourite roms and just have the front switch select from them.

If 3 or 4 ROMs are enough install the preset switch(es). I like SPDT switches with a neutral center position quite a lot, you can install one directly on the pads between the reset button and encoder on the display PCB and quickly switch between 3 presets.

 

If that's not enough or if you want to use the encoder you'll have to modify the CONFIG ROM:

Grab the latest software ZIP from my website http://www.horus.com/~hias/megaspeedy/ and edit the config ROM source (src/config.src).

 

At the end of this file just change the MODETAB. Each entry in this table is 4 bytes: mode, flash block address, first and second character to show on the display. MODE_ENTRY is a simple macro that generates 4 entries for a single mode and calculated flash address (using base address and size of each slot).

 

You'll need ATasm to assemble the config ROM, on a Linux box you can just use "make config.rom" if you have ATasm installed, otherwise check out the Makefile for assembly options. Currently that's

atasm -Ihisio -dFLASHBIN -r -oconfig.rom speedy-config.src
The config ROM slot uses the Mega Speedy mode so you can test your new config ROM by flashing it to one of the Mega Speedy slots or to drive RAM (choose Mega Speedy mode here as well).

 

So if I have Hias' divisor 0 os rom patch can the drive burst that quick? With that huge amount of ram it seems to only take a few seconds to read the whole disk.

By default the Speedy will only use pokey divisor 9. HSS copy uploads some special code to the drive and then achieves some 90-100kbit/sec - no need for highspeed code in the OS here, HSS copy has it built in.

 

1050 Turbo mode uses divisor 6, but doesn't have a track buffer and needs the disks to be formatted with optimized sector skew, so it isn't really faster than the Speedy.

 

so long,

 

Hias

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi!

 

Is it possible that for each OS that is installed the bootable disk software is available as drive door open boot?

 

For example on Happy, the Happy software boots, on Archive the archiver tools boot etc.

No, that's not possible - at least there is no easy way to do it.

 

The Happy, Archiver etc ROMs don't support booting some software with the drive door open. You'd have to modify the ROMs. But then there's the next problem: there's no space left in the ROMs to store bootable software. All drive modes implemented in the Mega Speedy are designed to work 100% as the original and that also means no more ROM space...

 

Is it easy to change/customise the bootable software?

For the (Mega-) Speedy modes that's not too complicated. Download the software ZIP from my website http://www.horus.com/~hias/megaspeedy/ and checkout the README.txt. There you'll find a section with the info you need. If that's not enough, have a look at src/speedy-flash.src or just ask here.

 

so long,

 

Hias

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there any documentation for the Speedy in English? I found this but don't know any German. http://atariwiki.strotmann.de/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=CompyShop%20Speedy%20Upgrades

 

Love the drive copy program - fast! Need to get some blank disks...

 

Feature I'd like is a way to choose my favourite roms and just have the front switch select from them.

 

So if I have Hias' divisor 0 os rom patch can the drive burst that quick? With that huge amount of ram it seems to only take a few seconds to read the whole disk.

 

Contrary to what HiasSoft says, yes there is some doc for the Speedy 1050 in english, it also contains the special commands for the Speedy 1050. I once translated it for Nir Dary (in the mid 90s) when I was studying at the university. But errm, my translation was not very good then (we call it "denglish" here, a mix of deutsch+english). I did not have a dictionary with me then and online dictionaries were not available at that time. So, here you go:

 

http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/nir_dary_cds/Hardware%20Info/1050%20Speedy/speedy.trans.txt

or as a DOC file: http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/nir_dary_cds/Hardware%20Info/1050%20Speedy/speedy.doc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

post-10165-0-52677500-1425949025_thumb.jpgpost-10165-0-40101000-1425949050_thumb.jpg

I did the tape thing that john.lawson did with the display... and for the broken pins noted in a previous post I cut a safety pin to length and stuck the pieces into the Mega Speedy to U9.. I had to break the pin strip and moved all over to leave the two empty pins on the outside #13 and #14 so the (baby) Safety pin pieces are now connected. All seem to be working normally.

 

I am still quite confused about the need to flash anything... My sio pass through doesn't like anything else except another drive. I can't get it to work with any kind of emulated Floppy .. like Aspeqt or my Ultimate with SDX ... drive doesn't respond..

Edited by rdea6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...