Happy 1050 ROM Dumps

[TGB1718]

I currently have a Happy 1050 by HCI, HE1050F Rev F c1986

 

When this board is in the drive it is unreliable and often hangs, turning the drive on and off will not recover it.

If I leave the drive for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, it will operate again, but usually not for long.

 

I have tested the 8464A RAM chip and it's fine, removed the ROM and put an original TANDON ROM on the main drive board and

the drive boots and passes all tests using the Diag Disk, formatted disk, copied files, all ok, so the 6502 on the Happy board is ok too.

 

At the moment I have converted the drive to US Doubler and everything is working fine.

 

I have checked the Happy board for poor joints, track shorts etc. and all appears ok too, so the last thing I can check is the ROM, what I need

is a reference ROM dump to compare with mine and maybe re-burn the ROM, I'm assumine that all Happy clones don't use the same ROM as from

pictures I've seen, the circuits/board/chips are different from model to model, is there somewhere where I can find ROM dumps ?

 

thanks

[xrbrevin]

i think @Nezgar has been gathering data about the various Happy ROMs

use the search function in the forum, it may just flag up what you need

[blacka013]

Hi,

 

try this.

 

 

Happy1050.bin

 

Regards

 

Edited May 13, 2020 by blacka013

[blacka013]

Hi TGB1718,

 

how are you getting on with  Happy 1050?

 

Regards

[TGB1718]

Having a bit of trouble with my programmer, will compare ROM's when I get it going

[Wilheim]

Thanks for sharing the ROM image for Happy. I tried to use it on Altirra 3.20, but for some reason it doesn't boot at the first time. I had to press reset to make it work. Moreover, it doesn't detect the 3X speed. Does anyone know what should I do to fix it?

[phaeron]

16 hours ago, Wilheim said:

Thanks for sharing the ROM image for Happy. I tried to use it on Altirra 3.20, but for some reason it doesn't boot at the first time. I had to press reset to make it work. Moreover, it doesn't detect the 3X speed. Does anyone know what should I do to fix it?

You may have to disable fast boot or adjust the power-on delay setting. The Happy 1050 takes time to boot and complete its power-on recalibration, and depending on your configuration the computer may try to boot before the drive is ready. The power-on delay setting turns on the drives before the computer to give the drives more time to get ready.

 

[+Nezgar]

On 5/13/2020 at 10:27 AM, TGB1718 said:

I have tested the 8464A RAM chip and it's fine

I wouldn't discount the SRAM this fast... I had very similar symptoms and would still try replacing that chip to see if it helps. If you were only testing using the TL866, the usage characteristics while in the happy may be very different and cause a fringe issue to be more likely...

 

I'll dig up what I consider a 'genuine' ROM in a bit - most dumps floating around technically corrupt the bytes under the bank switching addresses. Not important for use, but important to me in a preservation sense.

[Wilheim]

5 hours ago, phaeron said:

You may have to disable fast boot or adjust the power-on delay setting. The Happy 1050 takes time to boot and complete its power-on recalibration, and depending on your configuration the computer may try to boot before the drive is ready. The power-on delay setting turns on the drives before the computer to give the drives more time to get ready.

 

I removed the fast boot option and it worked! Thank you!

[+Nezgar]

Most happy 1050 dumps have mangled bytes at $0FF8-0FF9 (should be "HC") and $1FF8-1FF9 (should be "19") since in the AUTHENTIC mask rom, those two bytes control internal ROM bank switching between the two 4K banks when accessed, and dumping by software means can't read those 4 bytes properly. Again, won't make a difference in operation, but it's interesting forensically, as you can tell derivative 'hacks' of the original ROM contain corrupted bytes at these addressing, showing that they dumped the original rom by software means as well.

 

Attached is what I would consider the most "Authentic" dump of a Rev 2 Happy 1050. Save for those 4 bytes, I got the same dump from an Authentic 8K Happy board, authentic 6K happy board, a recent AtariMax happy board, and a "clone" happy board I had since BITD. This retains the 'authentic' single density write corruption bug with unbuffered writes in ultraspeed that I've seen corrected in some later hacked/derivative ROMs...

 

I've corrected the 4 aforementioned bytes in those in this dump.

Happy1050-Rev2-Nezgar F76EAE16.bin

[_The Doctor__]

do you have the rom just as above with but with the write corruption bug corrected only?

[+Nezgar]

46 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

do you have the rom just as above with but with the write corruption bug corrected only?

Rev 1 (aka smirk) does not exhibit the corruption bug

 

One or more of the hacked ROM's in this post I think "fix" that bug by defaulting to fast writes, along with a lot of other injected code to support track number displays, etc. I'm not sure how trustworthy they are otherwise:

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/213804-1050-happy-warp-with-led-display-v3/?do=findComment&comment=4286826

 

[Mclaneinc]

Just incase its requested..

Smirk-1050.rom

[_The Doctor__]

okay, if I understand then... the ROM(s) sprinkled all about are just fine with the exception that the changeable parameters such as bank switching and possibly drive id being munged... the idea was improvements but mistakes like this were made.

has anyone forensically gone over these and repaired the munged roms so that they are the best possible. A simple R or F to notate it's fixed in the name would be fine if folks worry about changing the full revision # or if there is no room between revs sort of thing.

while perusing the threads it looks like a rundown of they were going for this or that and we found this was ok but that is a mess or broken...

 

A more useful list as I see it would simply have the damaged or messed up stuff noted as something not to use and a fixed up version posted that a person should use instead or... a don't use this because it's so badly munged, use this instead help list.

 

then for purists simply the best ROMs listed and posted.

 

Having tried to follow bunches of the threads and just looking at it all and the endless way some threads go- it has become apparent I've forgotten too much and all I get is a headache after reading pages and pages only to find that at the end is oops we discovered this is wrong try some other version type thing.

 

A synopsis of what the best of the best is and fixed up ROMs might be in order after all these years. If functionality were reduced on any of them for some reason to add status lights or displays... I'd find those not very useful.

 

I don't want to have remember all the idiosyncrasies from drive to drive/rev to rev anymore, wouldn't be nice to just have things work as they should.

 

I know it's a bit of a rant and all... Just not a great remembery day and have got the 'why don't we just fix it all so we can just use/enjoy the thing without buggering stuff up.' vibe going on.

Edited May 28, 2020 by _The Doctor__

[+Nezgar]

Yes that's what I tried to do in my linked post by observation through emulation. But I am not a good disassembler to see what's really going on under the hood with each, or why certain functions on hacked ROMs cause the drive to crash. Some were intended to be matched with hacked software, and not the original Happy software. There are mentions of hacked Happy disks that account for a modified ROM checksum from in at least one case, coming back from the drive for the test routines.

 

My personal desire would be the above "clean" rom with 2 simple changes. These changes would still likely cause the diagnostics ROM checksum to fail, but should otherwise function normally...

- Enable fast-writes by default

- Faster stepper speed - use Speedy 1050 timings for reference. Maybe a timing version specific to WST mechs borrowing reference from the stock 1050 WST ROM similar to what has been done for the US Doubler already.

[sideburn]

He all,

 

I have an original rev c 1984 Happy with the 3 ram chips and although it works it’s hot or miss of the drive will spin up. If not I have to power down, wait a minute and power up again and there’s about a 30% chance it will spin up and init and then I’m good to go. After that a power cycle usually spins up again without issue unless it decides not to and then I’m back in the same boat. 
 

I’ve got replacement RAMs coming to try but if it’s not that, I suspect the only other thing it could be (I’ve tried another 6502) would be the ROM. 
 

I have no idea what type of ROM/EPROM I need in order to burn a new one. I do have a TL866 II Plus EEPROM Programmer that I assume would work for burning the ROM?

 

But is the ROM dump for this version of the happy available for download?

and if so what type of EPROM would I need? Total n00b with burning roms. It’s been 30 years since I burned one 😆 

 

 

[guus.assmann]

This Eprom is usually a 2764. This is 8k

 

BR/

Guus

[sideburn]

37 minutes ago, guus.assmann said:

This Eprom is usually a 2764. This is 8k

 

BR/

Guus

Ah ok and the rom link above is the correct one? When I ram the diagnostics it had the lowercase “Pass”. 
 

So a TI TMS2764-20JL EPROM 8K x 8 200nS 28 Pin would work?

Edited March 2, 2023 by sideburn

[+kheller2]

The issue at hand doesn't sound like it would be fixed with a new ROM... something intermittent feels like a failing component or heat related.

[sideburn]

31 minutes ago, kheller2 said:

The issue at hand doesn't sound like it would be fixed with a new ROM... something intermittent feels like a failing component or heat related.

Well, I tried heating the chips with hot air gun and freezing them with freeze spray and no change. I’ll try new RAM first. It’s isolated to the happy board for sure. Drive works fine without it. 

[+kheller2]

1 hour ago, sideburn said:

Well, I tried heating the chips with hot air gun and freezing them with freeze spray and no change. I’ll try new RAM first. It’s isolated to the happy board for sure. Drive works fine without it. 

how are the connections from the happy to the 1050 socket?    The RAM on the happy is the same as onboard the 1050, you could burn a stock 1050 ROM (move jumpers if necessary) and test the drive using the 1050 diags.

[sideburn]

I have stock 1050 chips. I can pull the happy off and make it stick and it works flawlessly. 

Edited March 3, 2023 by sideburn

[_The Doctor__]

You might not be quite hearing, so maybe you might try pulling the happy RAM off the Happy Board and use the 1050 ROM and the RAM with the diagnostics, if it fails you can use your original 1050 RAM to fix your happy.

Just another way to get it done.

Edited March 3, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[TGB1718]

10 hours ago, kheller2 said:

The issue at hand doesn't sound like it would be fixed with a new ROM... something intermittent feels like a failing component or heat related.

Mine had exactly the same symptoms, the Happy RAM tested ok and it worked fine with USD fitted, so it had to be something

to do with the Happy, I also decided it was something to do with the ROM, but I had issues with my programmer and never got

to burn a newer version to see if it would fix the problem. As I said before, it's now a very "happy" USD drive (excuse the pun  )

 

[ijor]

On 3/2/2023 at 6:06 AM, sideburn said:

I have an original rev c 1984 Happy with the 3 ram chips and although it works it’s hot or miss of the drive will spin up. If not I have to power down, wait a minute and power up again and there’s about a 30% chance it will spin up and init and then I’m good to go. After that a power cycle usually spins up again without issue unless it decides not to and then I’m back in the same boat. 

That is pretty common in original Happy drives. I had more than one original Happy with this symptom.

 

And to be honest, I'm not sure why this happens, never investigated the issue.  At the time I thought it could be that sometimes it "wakes up" at the wrong ROM bank. But now that we know the ROM well enough, it is ready to power up in either bank without problems. May be it only happens in older models with 6K ram chips, I'm not sure. It is certainly not an issue of old or corrupt rom.