IDE Card Group Buy ?

[Shift838]

I have been thinking for a while to re-order some of these PCB's since we have the files readily available.

 

I know the clock chip was the culprit that there were limited availability and it was not pursued a couple of years ago.  However....I have found a supplier that has quite a bit of backstock for othe RTC-65271, which is the original chip Thierry used to prove out the board and it allows for the batteries to be replaced.  

 

Would anyone be wanting one of these boards?  I'm just talking about the boards + components needed to assemble.  If you want an assembled board that's something that we can discuss as 99% of all the components are surface mount.

[RickyDean]

Good idea.

 

[+arcadeshopper]

I have one ready to go, with a cf card..  make me an offer I can't refuse 

nevermind! its sold

 

Greg

 

 

[+OLD CS1]

47 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

make me an offer I can't refuse

I will be sending over a guy I know.  He is a good, shall we say, family man.

[Tursi]

I know we have Fred's DSR, but it was somewhat limited IIRC, being based on another HD controller. Did Theirry ever manage to recover a buildable source code for his DSR?

 

When I built mine, I was really excited and all set to build an OS around it, but I ran into some issues. I was prepared to help with the DSR but the source code was based on an older version and had binary hacks in it for reversing endianess. The inability to build the otherwise wonderful DSR kind of put me off. Was that ever rectified?

 

For anyone who just wants to use it rather than hack on it - don't let me discourage you. The bug was fixed and AFAIK there were no others, and Fred's DSR works beautifully for everyone who's used it.

 

[+arcadeshopper]

All I have heard is Fred's is the working DSR

[+Vorticon]

I'm interested.

[+OLD CS1]

I have no interest in the board.  My WHT SCSI works just fine for my purposes, but I am willing to entertain an investment in a buy for resale stock.

[+FALCOR4]

4 hours ago, Shift838 said:

I have been thinking for a while to re-order some of these PCB's since we have the files readily available.

 

I know the clock chip was the culprit that there were limited availability and it was not pursued a couple of years ago.  However....I have found a supplier that has quite a bit of backstock for othe RTC-65271, which is the original chip Thierry used to prove out the board and it allows for the batteries to be replaced.  

 

Would anyone be wanting one of these boards?  I'm just talking about the boards + components needed to assemble.  If you want an assembled board that's something that we can discuss as 99% of all the components are surface mount.

Does Fred's DSR have a module that can be assembled for the RTC-65271 chip?

[+Ksarul]

One question: are the GERBERs in the current format or the older one that most fabs no longer support?

[+Schmitzi]

5 hours ago, Shift838 said:

I have been thinking for a while to re-order some of these PCB's since we have the files readily available.

 

I know the clock chip was the culprit that there were limited availability and it was not pursued a couple of years ago.  However....I have found a supplier that has quite a bit of backstock for othe RTC-65271, which is the original chip Thierry used to prove out the board and it allows for the batteries to be replaced.  

 

Would anyone be wanting one of these boards?  I'm just talking about the boards + components needed to assemble.  If you want an assembled board that's something that we can discuss as 99% of all the components are surface mount.

 

Hi, I need 2 of the RTC clock chips to repair my controllers, can you add that to your order for me, if possible ?

 

PS: plus 2 complete sets of components, as I also have 2 new, original, unpopulated boards here

 

 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Schmitzi

[+InsaneMultitasker]

The IDE card works well with the latest DSR revisions.   The Hidden Reef runs (in part) with the IDE card; I was using my IDE card to develop MDOS code (because I could) before I sold it.   Except for the whole "dsr in ram" challenge, if you treat the system well the card does a nice job providing a hard drive environment equivalent to SCSI and HFDC cards. 

[GDMike]

What ever happened to"Thierry" is he still around?

Can this card be just a standalone rtc? With ability to read/write and I understand the rtc doesn't provide year?

But I think there's a workaround.

Edited March 19, 2020 by GDMike

[+arcadeshopper]

1 hour ago, GDMike said:

What ever happened to"Thierry" is he still around?

Can this card be just a standalone rtc? With ability to read/write and I understand the rtc doesn't provide year?

But I think there's a workaround.

 

if you just want a clock, get a TIPI..  its a a hard drive that's compatible with 99% of software, floppy emulation, mouse, clock AND internet access..  The parts are available to make your own or you can wait for me to make one on the weekends I have been working with Matt to build a few at a time..  vs the ide controller where there are none being made, nobody has a current gerber the parts are hard/near impossible to find AND they sell for 2x the price if you can find one. 

[+Lee Stewart]

59 minutes ago, GDMike said:

What ever happened to"Thierry" is he still around?

 

Thierry is very much “around” with little time, I am sure, for our TI-99/4A hobby as evidenced by this excerpt from an email response to me about 5 years ago:

Quote

I'm glad you find my site useful, and that you're still developing software for the TI-99/4A. With my new job, I've had to cut down dramatically on the "hobby" time: I haven't written a line of TI-99/4A-related code in months ? Oh well, I suppose that's life.

 

He is currently a busy research scientist (MD, PhD) at the University of Geneva Hospital’s Genetic Medicine Service’s Molecular and Genomic Diagnostic Laboratory with at least 35 publications since 1989 to his name, the latest published in February of this year.

 

...lee

[FDOS]

Interested, but probably can't afford it.  I keep hoping I will get one of my two, that I assembled myself, back from repair some day.  I believe they were both using Fred's DSR V 8.0, and I still have a few of the IDE hard drives I used with them.

[+FarmerPotato]

23 hours ago, Shift838 said:

I have been thinking for a while to re-order some of these PCB's since we have the files readily available.

 

I know the clock chip was the culprit that there were limited availability and it was not pursued a couple of years ago.  However....I have found a supplier that has quite a bit of backstock for othe RTC-65271, which is the original chip Thierry used to prove out the board and it allows for the batteries to be replaced.  

 

Would anyone be wanting one of these boards?  I'm just talking about the boards + components needed to assemble.  If you want an assembled board that's something that we can discuss as 99% of all the components are surface mount.

I would be interested in one or maybe three kits. 

 

What are those empty pads next to the clock chip? Are they for alternate clock chips?

 

What happens with a dead battery? Is it just the timestamp feature that stops working, or does it lock up?

 

[+arcadeshopper]

16 minutes ago, FarmerPotato said:

I would be interested in one or maybe three kits. 

 

What are those empty pads next to the clock chip? Are they for alternate clock chips?

 

What happens with a dead battery? Is it just the timestamp feature that stops working, or does it lock up?

 

alternate clock chips

the dsr is stored in the clock cmos i think

The RTC-65271 chip serves two functions: it contains a real-time clock (RTC) similar to the standard MC146818 clock found on the PC computers, and it contains 4 Kbytes of battery-backed RAM, accessible as 128 pages of 32 bytes. This is a nice feature because it allows us to store the DSRs in the clock RAM, without the need for a battery-backed SRAM. At power-up time, the DSRs will be copied into the SRAM, since it is not very convenient to switch pages every 32 bytes!

 

[Shift838]

i should have just started a poll.  will start one.

[GDMike]

Great project

Edited March 19, 2020 by GDMike

[Shift838]

this will be easier to track.

 

Google Spreadsheet HERE

[+InsaneMultitasker]

hmmm.. 4k is not sufficient space for the  Fred's DSR.   Must the DSR be loaded from disk each time? I would look into that a bit more before committing to this option.

[+Vorticon]

1 hour ago, Shift838 said:

this will be easier to track.

 

Google Spreadsheet HERE

So this appears to be read-only. Are we supposed to self-populate?

[Shift838]

i killed the link and got a new one.  this one should work.  

 

HERE

[Shift838]

I'm starting to wonder if we need to redesign this card with current supported components.

 

I was looking into replacing the BQ4847 RTC chip and started looking to find something that was compatible and even thought to make a small adapter board to go on the current designed boards that would replace it along with a crystal and battery.

 

One of the key features needed is the ability to control an external SRAM.  I did find a chip by TI that can do it, of course there is no crystal and it would need a 32.768 kHz crystal added to the board and an external battery can be hooked up to it.  I did contact TI to find out if this was a adequate replacement, but no one in the technical support could tell me for sure.  They did say it appears I did find the best one that looks like it would work and it comes in both 3.3v and 5v models.

 

I then thought if we are going to redesign the IDE controller maybe we should increase the SRAM to 1mb to ensure we have enough space to work with.  Thoughts?

 

HERE