1050 Happy Controller Board Pics

[+Nezgar]

Hey all,

With a keen eye I spotted this 'untested' 'Modded???' drive on eBay. Sure enough it had a genuine Happy board, later 8KB SRAM revision, and Controller, but the mechanism needed some TLC. It was definitely stored for a long time in a humid environment because there was a bit of rust, and Aluminum oxidization that cleaned up nicely with an IPA wipe-down. The stepper motor and the top clamp spinner were totally seized. The stepper released with a little force and seems to be behaving now, and the top spinner and rails received a healthy dose of 3-in-1 oil.

 

Now onto the testing! As you can see in the 'before' pictures the lower switch was busted off. This switch selects the write protect mode, which operates a little differently than the standard DIY mods in that the LED is an indicator of Write enable, even when in the lower position - It will actually turn off and on live depending on what the optical sensors see. The middle and top positions function as usual (always read only / always allow write) so I spent this evening replacing the broken switch with a spare On-Off-On switch. I didn't have one with the side-mount pins, so I fabricated it by soldering the bendy leads from the old switch onto mine, and then onto the PCB. It was a little tricky, because too much heat and the graft would let go. It's also not the same 'flat paddle' style switch, but it's not too practical to search & wait for a custom order for that... But I might still replace it I come across one in the future... so it matches that little paper printout

 

The board has 4 wires that connect to a pin-header on the Happy board itself, and to the write-protect sensor & emitter pin header at the back of the drive. The removed sensor/emitter header then plugs directly into the controller board so it can monitor, and intercept or pass-through the real write-protect status.

 

Anyhow, I believe there's been some interest in the 'Happy Controller' companion board for Genuine Happy 1050 upgrades, and maybe some detailed pictures may help someone someday in reproducing these. I've used Happy since forever, but its my first time with my hands on this little add-on. The upper track-buffer toggle switch is interesting, as it will actually still operate in Ultraspeed SIO, but with long gaps between each sector on a regular skew disk similar to USDoubler on a standard skew disk. I haven't yet tried a disk formatted with Ultraspeed skew. If you'd like to see any other views, let me know!

Edited March 15, 2018 by Nezgar

[+slx]

Thanks for sharing!

 

 

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[+kheller2]

Is there a listing of the genuine 1050 boards somewhere? I just cracked open a 1050 that has a "HCI HCI1050F REV F c1986" board. Its much smaller that the board shown here from '84 and only has three chips: 6502A, 8464A and "HAPPY 1050 C1986 HCI" eprom.

 

Correction, looks like there are 4 additional chips underneath the three main chips.

 

 

 

 

[+Nezgar]

Can you add a picture of yours? My first thought is if it's one of the clones by AtariMax, which are quite small compared to the originals and clone that I have.

 

The AtariMax board looks like the one here: http://blog.3b2.sk/igi/post/Atari-HAPPY-1050-WARP-SPEED.aspx

 

Edit: and does yours have the 4-pin header for the controller? Never seen a clone with that.

[+kheller2]

I'll pull the chips and dump the EPROM when I get a moment.

[+Nezgar]

Definitely not original if it has an EPROM

[+kheller2]

I'm not sure about that...

 

Definitely not original if it has an EPROM

I'm not sure about that. There is a REV G board here:

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=26858

[ijor]

I'm not sure about that...

 

I'm not sure about that. There is a REV G board here:

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=26858

 

Both yours and that one seems like clones to me. No full explicit "Happy Computers" text, and no connection for a Happy Controller?

[+kheller2]

 

Both yours and that one seems like clones to me. No full explicit "Happy Computers" text, and no connection for a Happy Controller?

 

No connection for controller.

 

Odd that the fake boards actually have revision version to them. I wonder if its an early AtariMax version, since it doesn't look like the more recent ones.

 

Anyway, i dumped the EPROM but can't seem to find Happy ROM's online V1 or V2 to compare it with.

 

MD5 (HAPPY1050-AM2764.BIN) = 85acbb5bcfb3f4cbad765373df5eeb1e

[HiassofT]

Anyway, i dumped the EPROM but can't seem to find Happy ROM's online V1 or V2 to compare it with.

 

MD5 (HAPPY1050-AM2764.BIN) = 85acbb5bcfb3f4cbad765373df5eeb1e

It's a clone. The md5sum is identical to the EPROM dump in the "HAPPYWAR.ZIP" in the usual places.

 

A couple of years ago I compared the various Happy (clone) ROMs, see here for more details: http://www.abbuc.de/community/forum/viewtopic.php?p=23920#p23920(google translate might help).

 

so long,

 

Hias

[1050]

While my opinion is that the first is legit as it gets,

and the second is recent European fakery.

 

One of a kind red ripping tape has no other source

than the labs at Happy. And only back in the day.

 

While the mismarked 4k7 resistor on the fake is not

from the USA as we don't use that shorthand form of

4,700 ohms - we would write it as 4.7K and call it

good. Why they would go to the trouble of fake

copyright marking it in several ways should be a

copyright infraction all on it's own, but I don't

think anybody at Happy could be found for a comment

anyway.

[ijor]

While my opinion is that the first is legit as it gets,

and the second is recent European fakery.

 

One of a kind red ripping tape has no other source

than the labs at Happy. And only back in the day.

 

I don't think anybody claims that one is fake. When I said both, I meant Kheller's one and the other similar one (rev G) referenced by him with a link to a post on atariforum.

[1050]

Thanks for the clarification, I did misunderstand.

All good now.

[+kheller2]

So do we have a real dump of the original ROM.. un modified?

[blacka013]

I bought a REV G board off eBay without the eprom, so I'm looking for a file dump for Ver 2. The only files that works is the Smirk file, or the rom from my other Happy board. The Smirk file does not set the board to high speed by default. You have to go in and enable it from the Happy Warp speed menu.

[+Nezgar]

 

 

I bought a REV G board off eBay without the eprom, so I'm looking for a file dump for Ver 2. The only files that works is the Smirk file, or the rom from my other Happy board. The Smirk file does not set the board to high speed by default. You have to go in and enable it from the Happy Warp speed menu.

 

Rev F... Rev G.. Lol, took these guys took at least 7 tries to clone the happy?

 

Rev 2 is here: http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_forever/ROM/Epromy/HAPPYWAR.EP

 

There are other close dumps, differing only in bytes at offset 0xFF8 to 0xFF9, and 0x1FF8 and 0x1FF9 since these map to the addresses the happy uses to bank switch, so it's impossible to know the true ROM bytes from a software based dump, but they do not matter functionally because even the real drive cannot read those bytes, and won't be used in a checksum / ROM test.

 

Actually, Rev 1 DOES technically work in "Warp Speed" (38400bps) by default, and Hias's highspeed OS patch supports that, as does Happy's "Warp Speed DOS". The happy warp speed menu enables "Ultraspeed" which is supported by much more software though.

[+Nezgar]

Anyway, i dumped the EPROM but can't seem to find Happy ROM's online V1 or V2 to compare it with.

 

MD5 (HAPPY1050-AM2764.BIN) = 85acbb5bcfb3f4cbad765373df5eeb1e

That MD5 matches exactly the "HAPPYWAR.EP" file at pigwa http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/collections/atari_forever/ROM/Epromy/

 

Which (mostly) matches a software dump I made from genuine Rev 2 Happy 1050's using a tool by E474. (only the 4 banking bytes differ)

 

Edit: Woops, I see tf_hh's previous analysis came to the same conclusion.

[+Nezgar]

Speaking of clone happy boards... These PCB's for sale on eBay are intriguing... I can identify 28 pin IC locations for the CPU, SRAM, EPROM and pin header to the 1050 CPU socket... but maybe somone can identify specific locations, and needed LS IC's would be ? Hopefully not custom PAL/GAL type chips needed...

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/223475042734

 

Could be fun to build and bring them to life...