PFM, SCSI, TIPI and the Geneve

[+9640News]

Curious to the people that have various specific hardware configurations for their Geneve.

[+mizapf]

Umm, I have a Geneve with SCSI, but no PFM and no TIPI, and not planning to get one. So option 1?

[+9640News]

8 minutes ago, mizapf said:

Umm, I have a Geneve with SCSI, but no PFM and no TIPI, and not planning to get one. So option 1?

Guess so.

[+9640News]

9 minutes ago, mizapf said:

Umm, I have a Geneve with SCSI, but no PFM and no TIPI, and not planning to get one. So option 1?

Yes.  Looking at what hardware configurations people have with the Geneve, predominantly with the TIPI or who might get a TIPI, if they had one.

[+arcadeshopper]

Geneve hfdc tipi

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[+9640News]

5 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

Geneve hfdc tipi

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That would have been option 8.

[+arcadeshopper]

That would have been option 8.

Sorry can't see polls on tapacrap

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[Nick99]

Geneve with IDE and TIPI, but what is PFM? If I knew I would probably have one.

[+FarmerPotato]

It seems like we have 23 respondents and 8 Geneve owners so far. That’s making all the percentages low. 
 

what’s a PFM for those who don’t know? I’m sure I don’t have one. 
 

also I have one Geneve with 32K RAM upgrade and one without. 

HFDC and TIPI. 

[RickyDean]

I have 3 Geneves, 1, a PFM Geneve

, 2, 2 Geneves, 32k upgrade only. Have 1 SCSI card, 2 hfdc's, many fdc's, ti and Corcomp. Much of this doesn't work right now, but one day will.

[+mizapf]

PFM is a replacement for the boot EPROM based on a flash memory chip. I emulated it in MAME, but don't have it in my real machine.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

PFM+ and PFM512 are modifications created by Cecure Electronics and J. Schroeder consisting of either 2 x 128K Atmel  or 1 x 512 Atmel.  When Atmel 29c040 chips became scarce, and my chip programmer rendered my stock useless, I stopped installing the mod for people.  The Atmel 29C040A and Winbond equivalent are more easily obtainable and thanks to @atrax27407 I have a back-burner project to adjust programs to support the chip  (the 20c040 and 040a are equivalent except for their internal sector size and chip ID)

 

The mod stores and boots the OS from flash.  The remaining space is dedicated to a 'flashdisk' consisting of whatever files you deem important to load there.  Load time is as fast as the internal ramdisk since it is a memory transfer.

 

All of my important utilities, including GPL, EXEC, GenASM, EDIT, etc. are located on my flash disk and my path statement routes all requests to it first. 

[+9640News]

Yeah, I too have GenASM, GenLINK, and MyWord as my predominant programs on the flash ramdisk with my path command setting the PFM+ as the first device to scan for programs.

 

Beery

[atrax27407]

Remember, "insane one", that the Winbond W29C040 is a direct replacement for the ATMEL 512K chip including sector size.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

1 hour ago, atrax27407 said:

Remember, "insane one", that the Winbond W29C040 is a direct replacement for the ATMEL 512K chip including sector size.

yep    and to clarify my statement and yours, the W29C040 is a direct replacement for the 29c040A when it comes to sector size (256 bytes).  It might be good of us to reference the manufacturer chip ID where there is potential for ambiguity. 

[Shift838]

1 hour ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

yep    and to clarify my statement and yours, the W29C040 is a direct replacement for the 29c040A when it comes to sector size (256 bytes).  It might be good of us to reference the manufacturer chip ID where there is potential for ambiguity. 

Is the W29C040 the chip that was proving difficult to get programmed or am I thinking of a different one you told me about?

 

 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

15 minutes ago, Shift838 said:

Is the W29C040 the chip that was proving difficult to get programmed or am I thinking of a different one you told me about?

 

 

No, the Winbond actually works quite well - both in the Geneve and in standard programmers.  It is the  Atmel 29c040 (not the 29c040A) that is problematic as most programmers seem to think they are 29c040A, which is a different sector size.  Some time ago I went through my stock of the 29c040 and programmed them, only to find out later the process basically ruined them.  Richard had the same experience...     

 

[atrax27407]

Did we ever determine a direct drop-in for the ATMEL AT29C040? I'm having problems even finding a datasheet for the AT29C040. The only return I get is for the 29C040A.

Edited December 10, 2020 by atrax27407

[Nick99]

Are or will the PFM be available to buy anytime soon?

[+mizapf]

The MAME emulation allows for selecting the AT29C040 or AT29C040A variant, which could help with adapting software to the different flash roms.

(OSD -> Machine configuration -> Boot from...)

[+9640News]

Thanks for that info.

[Astharot]

Mhh i vote at 9 point but my Geneve is a bit different.. geneve board had 32k sram upgrade, bios 1.0 and vdp 192k upgrade, horizon 2000 board 1mb, scsi board (snug), memex 2mb expansion ram, myarc fdc, how stock for emergency have hdfc myarc controller, another memex ram board, myarc 512k ram  and another horizon board.. in theory the best old configuration was Geneve with bios 1,0 32k Sram upgrade, vdp 384k ram, horizon 4000, scsi , hdfc controller myarc, rs232 myarc or corcomp fixed for geneve, and rave interface for speech... 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

9 hours ago, Nick99 said:

Are or will the PFM be available to buy anytime soon?

This would be an ok topic to bring back up in 2021

 

I have a situation with the Geneve OS that may require me to update my PFM-related software, which in turn would be an appropriate time to release the steps needed to implement the PFM512K with a Winbond or Atmel chip.  However, keep in mind this requires a few trace cuts, preparing a socket (similar to the 384K upgrade that Fabrice updated from my original process), and burning a chip.  Not overly complicated unless there is a failure with your work or with a chip like the 9901, which is used to control the bank-switching. 

 

@mizapf if you are provided the manufacturer ID for the Winbond equivalent to the Atmel 29C040A, could the former chip be added as a third variant in MAME?  I can confirm it works in real hardware.

[+mizapf]

Is it functionally equivalent to the AT29C040A? (block size, capacity, protocol) If so, there is no need to implement the Winbond chip.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

27 minutes ago, mizapf said:

Is it functionally equivalent to the AT29C040A? (block size, capacity, protocol) If so, there is no need to implement the Winbond chip.

Yes, with exception of the manufacturer ID (which is reported by the chip based on a well-defined algorithm),  all functionality is the same.