SenorRossie Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) Hi, I found several topics on disk drive modifications, alternative roms, etc. and the Atari 8-bit FAQ mentions several mods for the 1050, but nothing in one place. Here's an attempt to gather that info in one thread. I have several 1050s in my possession, of which some have been modded by their previous owners. Previous attempts at consolidating information regarding 1050 drives I could find are: Let me start with a mod I found in two 1050 drives in my collection. It seems to be a happy clone, which probably originated in Germany, judging by the text on the board. The happy companion disk 7.1 recognizes the modded drive as 'happy'. ROM: rom.d2 I dumped the ROM using @E474's DUMP1050 tool, which can be found here: https://github.com/e474/DUMP1050/ ctab.d2 Edited July 11, 2020 by SenorRossie 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenorRossie Posted July 11, 2020 Author Share Posted July 11, 2020 A second modded drive I found has 2 leds, a switch and a d-sub connector on the rear of the drive: I have not been able to find much info about this mod. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 Just by the looks of it, there are a few more chips on the board than in a normal Happy, my guess is it's a parallel printer port (maybe) which would allow you to connect to any Centronics printer of the day. You could test this by booting the drive, going into BASIC and type OPEN #1,4,0,"P:" if you don't get an error, then the drive is acting a a printer 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 (edited) The enhancement in post #1 looks like a Irata speeder. The enhancement in post #2 is definitely a Copy Card 7 clone, a Happy compatible speeder. A hardware hacker enhanced it with a track display, which the original CC7 did not have. The header with Amphenol connector provides all pins to connect 3 led's indicating density and a 2 digit trackdisplay. This display could either be a common cathode or common anode type. You'd select the type through a wire jumper on the PCB. Apparently the 1050's previous owner thought it useful to connect the track display via the sub-D connector at the back. Didn't you receive the trackdisplay together with the 1050? The CC7 clone has a 27128 eprom, which has 16K devided in 2 8K blocks. One block contains the Happy compatible firmware, the other 'oldrunner' firmware to make the drive behave like a standard 1050 (sometimes needed for running copyprotected software). Eprom pin 26 is connected via a 10K resistor to +5V and a wire or switch to GND. You'd choose the standard firmware or the 'oldrunner' firmware by closing or opening this switch. It would be interesting to see the eprom's contents, but you'd need to make a dump of the 2 blocks of the firmware to have the entire contents. Groeten, re-atari Edited July 16, 2020 by re-atari typo 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenorRossie Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share Posted July 13, 2020 Thanks for the information. 3 hours ago, re-atari said: It would be interesting to see the eprom's contents, but you'd need to make a dump of the 2 blocks of the firmware to have the entire contents. Looking at the state of the board, I am a bit reluctant to desolder the eprom. I can give the DUMP1050 another go, will post the dump once I get home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenorRossie Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share Posted July 13, 2020 I connected the drive in an attempt to dump the ROM. Of course moving the drive around had loosened the board, so the drive did not respond to any command. After opening up the drive and re-seating the board it came back to life. I dumped the ROM using the DUMP1050 tool as promised, once with Happy mode on... rom_happy.cc7 ctab_happy.cc7 And once with switch in the unhappy position. Which seems to be a a dump of (a part of) DOS. rom_unhappy.cc7 ctab_unhappy.cc7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
E474 Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 Hi @SenorRossie, Thanks for uploading the rom dump - I will have a look at it, but I am really busy at the moment, and probably will be for several more weeks, so it will have to go on the back burner, so to speak. @Nezgarmight be able to tell you more about the dump - I believe he has identified several enhancement roms in the past. DUMP1050 will dump the ROM of a Happy, Happy compatible, or similar, but if the drive is in unhappy mode, it's unlikely that it can be programmed, so DUMP1050 probably couldn't upload any dumping code to the drive. My bad for not including any error detection code for this situation, I've added this as a to-do for this project. I think the reason the unhappy rom dump contained DOS data is that DUMP1050 uploads a new SIO command to the drive, but if the drive can't be programmed, the new command won't be recognised, so no data will be transferred. What's written out by DUMP1050 will be the contents of the Atari's memory when you loaded DUMP1050, and it sounds like that was DOS data - maybe DUP.SYS? I think the ROM that can't be dumped (when the drive is in unhappy mode) is probably just the standard 1050 firmware, but the only way to be sure would be to desolder the rom and dump the whole EPROM. Did you have any luck dumping the Irata rom - I have no idea if this would work or not, it would depend on how close it was to the Happy design? Hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenorRossie Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share Posted July 13, 2020 1 minute ago, E474 said: Did you have any luck dumping the Irata rom - I have no idea if this would work or not, it would depend on how close it was to the Happy design? The irata dump is attached to the first posting. As far as I could tell the ROMs from both drives were identical, but I only had a quick glance over the hex dumps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
E474 Posted July 13, 2020 Share Posted July 13, 2020 Hi @SenorRossie, Sorry, I missed that - tired and in a hurry. I used the Linux cmp command to compare them (cmp -l), and there are some differences between the dumps, but not many. The output I got from "cmp -l rom.d2 rom_happy.cc7 " was: 235 362 252 236 160 175 500 362 252 501 160 175 687 145 350 688 363 377 690 44 40 750 145 350 751 363 377 1474 210 202 1711 250 242 1840 210 202 3980 210 202 4018 210 202 4100 40 114 4101 0 274 4102 226 375 4103 100 352 4104 360 352 4619 210 200 5067 210 200 7790 250 240 7919 210 200 Hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenorRossie Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share Posted July 13, 2020 Thanks again. I meant to say that the two irata rom dumps I created looked identical. I did not compare them with the last rom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted July 14, 2020 Share Posted July 14, 2020 I can confirm the speeder in the 1st post is an Irata speeder. I found a few photos of an original one in my archive. They seem to be identical in both components and layout. See the attached photos. I think yours is a homebrew or (more likely) a preproduction one, as the (c) and (m) text notices are missing from the solder side and component side and it's missing the typical green solder mask. As the through holes are metallised, it looks like a professionally built PCB, though. Strange to find this on a homebrew one, as PCB's with metallised through holes were quite expensive to produce back then. For homebrew purposes soldering a piece of wire on both sides of the PCB sufficed just as well. Sadly I don't have a romdump of the original Irata speeder in my archive, it'd be interesting to see if and to what extend your rom differs with the rom of the original. re-atari 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted July 14, 2020 Share Posted July 14, 2020 10 hours ago, SenorRossie said: I connected the drive in an attempt to dump the ROM. Of course moving the drive around had loosened the board, so the drive did not respond to any command. After opening up the drive and re-seating the board it came back to life. I dumped the ROM using the DUMP1050 tool as promised, once with Happy mode on... rom_happy.cc7 8 kB · 2 downloads ctab_happy.cc7 204 B · 2 downloads And once with switch in the unhappy position. Which seems to be a a dump of (a part of) DOS. rom_unhappy.cc7 8 kB · 1 download ctab_unhappy.cc7 204 B · 2 downloads Ach ja, had het kunnen weten dat de drive in 'oldrunner' mode de commando's om de firmware te dumpen niet kan uitvoeren... I'd like to see a photo of the solder side of your CC7. It will resemble the speeder on the atached photos. I should have the pinout of the track display pinheader on the left side of the PCB in my archive somewhere, will take a look. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted July 14, 2020 Share Posted July 14, 2020 (edited) BTW: I made a typo in post 4. I incorrectly wrote that pin 27 of the 27128 eprom is connected to +5V via a 10K resistor and to GND via a wire or switch, but should have written pin 26 (A13 on 27128, NC on 2764). Sadly I can't correct this typo in post 4. re-atari Edited July 14, 2020 by re-atari typo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenorRossie Posted July 14, 2020 Author Share Posted July 14, 2020 1 hour ago, re-atari said: I'd like to see a photo of the solder side of your CC7. It will resemble the speeder on the atached photos. I added new photos of the pcb. Getting the EPROM off the board without damaging it seems to be a challenge. Without a means to dump the EPROM, it seems not worth the effort. As soon as this COVID-19 thing is behind us and the retro meetings can take place again, I will attempt to take the eprom off the board and have it dumped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted July 14, 2020 Share Posted July 14, 2020 (edited) I fully understand your reluctance to desolder the eprom, seeing the 'quality' of the traces I would be anxious about damaging it too. De hele print is nogal een amateuristisch 'bak- en braadwerk', verbazingwekkend dat de speeder werkt! re-atari Edited July 14, 2020 by re-atari typo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 Just recently I've managed to obtain original "1050 Turbo" board by Bernhard Engl, which I happily mounted in my Atari 1050. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 @re-atari: I've granted edit permissions to Post #4 as you requested. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted July 16, 2020 Share Posted July 16, 2020 Thanx, the error in post 4 is corrected now! re-atari 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted July 16, 2020 Share Posted July 16, 2020 As for "1050 Turbo" by Bernhard Engl, I've found a place where there's virtually everything about it: manuals, documentation, schemas, EPROM/GAL files, etc. https://www.strotmann.de/~cas/Infothek/1050Turbo/ Maybe it's widely known link, but I was stunned to find it 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted July 16, 2020 Share Posted July 16, 2020 23 minutes ago, Jacques said: As for "1050 Turbo" by Bernhard Engl, I've found a place where there's virtually everything about it: manuals, documentation, schemas, EPROM/GAL files, etc. https://www.strotmann.de/~cas/Infothek/1050Turbo/ Maybe it's widely known link, but I was stunned to find it Abbuc got all rights and documents for the Turbo 1050 from B.Engl himself. You can get Turbo 1050 enhancements nowadays from tf_hh... Back in the day the Turbo 1050 was much cheaper and smaller than the large Speedy 1050 enhancement and also offered a printer cable option - but later there was the mini Speedy 1050 and so both enhancements had almost the same price. The Speedy works with track buffer and ultraspeed, so only a driver in software (DOS, gamedos, bootloader, etc.) or hardware (e.g. alt. OS-ROM) is required to gain the much faster speed, while the Turbo 1050 has no track buffer and therefore requires a driver (in software or hardware), as well as the special sector interleave format to gain full speed. Since there is a Turbo 1050 emulator for the Speedy 1050 available (and I have several Speedy upgrades), I do not need a real Turbo 1050 enhancement anymore... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted July 16, 2020 Share Posted July 16, 2020 Thanks @CharlieChaplin I know the background a little, though I actually considered buying mini-speedy for a while and know it's better than 1050 Turbo, but in the end got to buy original 1050 Turbo from the era for a real bargain price and was very happy to find that original documentation and files Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
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.