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NEW MIO production run.


MEtalGuy66

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I have four 60ns, 9 chip sticks. Not sure if they are 1MB or 4MB, chips are labeled 81C1000A-60

 

I've never heard of a 30-pin SIMM that was officially 50ns.

 

Yeah those will work in your MIO. You should keep them as spares.

 

I think Ill be able to get all the 60ns ones I need off EBAY..

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Ok.. I have 4 more MIOs tested & ready to go.. I'll fit the cases tonight, and hopefully get them packaged & shipped by the weekend or early next week.

 

 

I still need at lest 5 more 30pin 1MB 60ns (8 or 9 chip) SIMMs to finish out everyone's MIO...

 

If someone has some of these, or can help find them somewhere that I can order them, it would be of great help.

 

Thanks..

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Well, I got lucky and found a lot of 8 of them last week on EBAY for $14.00 shipped. And they work great.. They are CENTURY brand.

 

I'm gonna call some of these obsolete ram vendors and see what they can do for me.. Hopefully more will turn up on EBAY cheap too..

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Well, I got lucky and found a lot of 8 of them last week on EBAY for $14.00 shipped. And they work great.. They are CENTURY brand.

 

I'm gonna call some of these obsolete ram vendors and see what they can do for me.. Hopefully more will turn up on EBAY cheap too..

 

Great news on the progress. I've still got some SIPPs, but none of the simms you need, I would have bet I did. I've probly tossed 100 or more in the past couple years.

 

How far down the list are we? I've lost track of whos has shipped.

 

Rob

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Well, I got lucky and found a lot of 8 of them last week on EBAY for $14.00 shipped. And they work great.. They are CENTURY brand.

 

I'm gonna call some of these obsolete ram vendors and see what they can do for me.. Hopefully more will turn up on EBAY cheap too..

 

Actually, we have hundreds of these where I work... how many are you interested in still? I can get them cheap or for free. I can probably even get any specific brand/chip maker...

Edited by MrFish
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Well, I got lucky and found a lot of 8 of them last week on EBAY for $14.00 shipped. And they work great.. They are CENTURY brand.

 

I'm gonna call some of these obsolete ram vendors and see what they can do for me.. Hopefully more will turn up on EBAY cheap too..

 

Actually, we have hundreds of these where I work... how many are you interested in still? I can get them cheap or for free. I can probably even get any specific brand/chip maker...

 

I'm interested in as many as you can aquire, and as cheap as you can get them.

 

they absolutely MUST have 8 or 9 chips and be 60ns (or 50ns) access time..

 

Where do you work that still deals in 1 megabyte 30 pin SIMMs?

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Well, I got lucky and found a lot of 8 of them last week on EBAY for $14.00 shipped. And they work great.. They are CENTURY brand.

 

I'm gonna call some of these obsolete ram vendors and see what they can do for me.. Hopefully more will turn up on EBAY cheap too..

 

Actually, we have hundreds of these where I work... how many are you interested in still? I can get them cheap or for free. I can probably even get any specific brand/chip maker...

 

I'm interested in as many as you can aquire, and as cheap as you can get them.

 

they absolutely MUST have 8 or 9 chips and be 60ns (or 50ns) access time..

 

Where do you work that still deals in 1 megabyte 30 pin SIMMs?

 

We are one of the largest computer/electronics resellers/recyclers in the bay area (Sunnyvale, CA ;)). We don't even have these up for sale because our time is better spent selling all the other items that we get. We usually just save them up, with all the other obsolete ram, and sell them at the best scrap rate. We easily have hundreds available at any given time. I have a huge bin right next to my workbench. I'll go through some this week. I also have a simm tester to check them out with.

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Well, I got lucky and found a lot of 8 of them last week on EBAY for $14.00 shipped. And they work great.. They are CENTURY brand.

 

I'm gonna call some of these obsolete ram vendors and see what they can do for me.. Hopefully more will turn up on EBAY cheap too..

 

Actually, we have hundreds of these where I work... how many are you interested in still? I can get them cheap or for free. I can probably even get any specific brand/chip maker...

 

I'm interested in as many as you can aquire, and as cheap as you can get them.

 

they absolutely MUST have 8 or 9 chips and be 60ns (or 50ns) access time..

 

Where do you work that still deals in 1 megabyte 30 pin SIMMs?

 

We are one of the largest computer/electronics resellers/recyclers in the bay area (Sunnyvale, CA ;)). We don't even have these up for sale because our time is better spent selling all the other items that we get. We usually just save them up, with all the other obsolete ram, and sell them at the best scrap rate. We easily have hundreds available at any given time. I have a huge bin right next to my workbench. I'll go through some this week. I also have a simm tester to check them out with.

 

Wow.. Sounds like a great deal..

 

Ok.. I don't care if they are parity or non parity. as long as they are x1bit chips..

 

If you need help identifying the chip numbers, let me know..

 

thanks..

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  • 3 weeks later...

DRAM COMPATABILTY ISSUE SOLVED!

 

Well, the SIMM compatability problem has been resolved. I wish I could take credit for this, but Warerat came up with it Sunday, after some very close evaluation of the CAS-RAS relationship and refresh characteristics of the DRAM control circuit.

 

This problem has taken the better part of a month to figure out, and we are now pretty confident that this is the best posible solution. It involves the addition of 3 wires to the underside of the MIO board, and the removal of one IC.

 

With this new "Fix" in place, the MIO is extremely stable and error-free with ANY 30 PIN SIMM!

 

I have tested it with 50,60,70, and 80 ns SIMMS of the "3,4,8, and 9 chip" varieties with no errors at all.

 

All new MIO boards will be built with the fix installed. For those who have already recieved their MIO, I suggest performing the fix yourself.

 

here it is:

 

REV 1 MIO BOARD:

 

1)REMOVE AND DISCARD THE U22 CHIP (74LS139)

 

2)REMOVE EXISTING BLUE WIRE THAT GOES FROM [u23 pin 6] TO [u23 pin 10]

 

3)INSTALL THE FOLLOWING 2 "BLUE WIRES" TO THE UNDERSIDE OF THE BOARD:

[u9 pin 1] ----- [u7 pin 1]

[u23 pin 6] ----- [u7 pin 2]

 

4)UNSOLDER THE BLUE (or GREY) WIRE FROM [u22 pin 12], AND REATTATCH IT TO [u22 pin 15].

 

REV 2 MIO BOARD:

 

1)REMOVE AND DISCARD THE U22 CHIP (74LS139)

 

2)REMOVE EXISTING BLUE WIRE THAT GOES FROM [u23 pin 6] TO [u23 pin 10]

 

3)INSTALL THE FOLLOWING 3 "BLUE WIRES" TO THE UNDERSIDE OF THE BOARD:

[u9 pin 1] ----- [u7 pin 1]

[u23 pin 6] ----- [u7 pin 2]

[u22 pin 12] ----- [u22 pin 15]

 

IF you dont feel confident performing this fix yourself, you can ship it back to me and I'll do it free of charge (you pay shipping both ways).

 

That said, I would also mention that all of the MIOs shipped so far work fine with the 60ns SIMMs that they were shipped with.

 

This fix does allow you to remove the U22 IC and use SIMMS with as few as 2 DRAM chips, which represents a power-savings. It also may help with stability on machines with "marginal" Phase 2 clock signals.

 

THIS FIX DOES NOT APPLY TO ORIGINAL ICD BUILT MIO BOARDS!!!

If you try it on an original MIO, your going to merge a CAS enable signal with the RA8 dram adress line, totally screw up bank-specific RAS timing, and god knows what else...

IF I DIDN'T BUILD IT, DONT DO THIS "FIX" TO IT!

I hope I made that clear enough...

 

next item on the agenda....

 

SERVICE MANUAL IS ALMOST READY

 

I have updated the schematics in the MIO SERVICE MANUAL to reflect this design change. I am currently still working on the PHASE2 CLOCK chapter, which has timing comparissons for various ATARI models and CPU part numbers. When I am finished with this, I will release the manual to anyone who wants it.

 

 

Sorry about the "lag" in production/shipping for the past few weeks, but I really wanted to get to the bottom of this DRAM issue if at all possible before too many more were built.. I have 4 boards assembled & ready to go, and I hope to build at least 2 more this weekend.

 

As alwayze, thanks for your patience and support..

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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Is the MIO board big enough to hack a mobile phone/digi cam Mini sd card reader in...just to extend the usefulness of the MIO thing

 

Or if not....An Sio to USB connector...so you can use usb mem sticks to hold your ATRs/xex's collections on (in addition to the MIO's data storage capabilities)

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Is the MIO board big enough to hack a mobile phone/digi cam Mini sd card reader in...just to extend the usefulness of the MIO thing

 

Or if not....An Sio to USB connector...so you can use usb mem sticks to hold your ATRs/xex's collections on (in addition to the MIO's data storage capabilities)

 

Its big enough to hack a commodore reverse engineered atari chipset into...

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Hello Carmel

Is the MIO board big enough to hack a mobile phone/digi cam Mini sd card reader in...just to extend the usefulness of the MIO thing

 

Or if not....An Sio to USB connector...so you can use usb mem sticks to hold your ATRs/xex's collections on (in addition to the MIO's data storage capabilities)

For the card reader thing: Maybe a SCSI to IDE convertor and than a CF card will work.

 

For the SIO to USB thing: You should have ordered a SIO2USB when you had the chance.

 

Greetings

 

Mathy

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Well, I doubt carmel is gonna cough up the $300.00US to buy an MIO anywayze.. Same goes for the SIO2USB...

 

But just to answer your question, Carmel, the MIO has absolutely NOTHING to do with the SIO port. The SIO port is a completely independant expansion path. The MIO uses the PBI bus.

 

And yeah, theres some extra room in the case.. But we are planning on releasing an expansion board thats gonna take up most of that extra room.

 

The expansion board will be a combination of several expansions we have designed for the MIO..

First, it will enable the MIOs video port for VGA 80 column display output.

Second, it will enable the use of SIMMS up to 16megabytes.

Third, it will have the necessary decoder logic to increase the ROM size to 16k, enabling us to improve the SCSI code, and various other firmware/menu enhancements.

Finally, we would like to include a battery-backed Real-time/date clock.

 

The board itself is pure vapor at this point.. (although we do have some prototypes of the individual expansions, in various stages of functionality)

I plan to assemble the first 2 prototype combo-expansion boards for development purposes as soon as I get the last few preordered MIOs built.. This thing will be 90% programmable logic which will save alot on production time/cost..

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  • 3 weeks later...

The following is from the What A8 equipment are you still desperate for? thread:

 

 

The MIOs are going out.. In a month or two, I will be able to start taking more orders...

 

The way Im doing the next batch is as follows..

 

1.) You order it and get added to a list..

 

2.) I Build & test it..

 

3.) When its ready to ship, you pay...

 

 

This way, I dont end up tieing up anyone's money for long periods...

 

 

Q: How much?

 

$300.00. This is based on cost + $10.00/hour for assembly, which I think is completely reasonable, considering the THOUSANDS (as in several thousnad) of dollars of my own money I've sunk into this project, and the HUNDREDS of hours of both mine and Warerat's time that has been invested. This thing has taken years off my life, at this point..

 

I'm determined to honor my obligation to the pre-order customers, but beyond that, I'm not building any more at a huge loss.. I make $22.00 per hour at my crappy day job, so I dont see how anyone can complain about paying $10.00/hour for assembly time.

 

*** I am not making profit or even recouping my previous investments here.. I will simply be BREAKING EVEN... on each unit.***

 

Q: Will they still have the connector for the possible video upgrade?

 

Yeah, the REV. 2 board has all kinds of connectors on it for the expansion board which we hope to release at some point in the not-so-distant future..

 

We should be able to bring the expansion board to people ALOT cheaper than the MIO, and get them built & tested alot faster too. This is because the expansion board is going to be largely based on SMT programmable logic devices, (instead of 1600 thru-holes worth of TTL ICs like the MIO.)

 

Q: Can we get the components from you and assemble them ourselves?

 

No.

 

No MIOs are leaving my hands, that I dont have the opportunity to test to a 100% functional state.. This is a temperamental device, and I am not in any way willing to provide the level of support (and open the "can of worms") that would be necessary to start offering them in various stages of assembly.

 

If you seriously WANT an MIO, shell out the cash.. And youll get one.. ANd it will be tested "rock-solid" end of story..

 

I hope everyone understands... I totally have no interest in selling "kits".. and at this point, Im seriously evaluating ways to reduce the huge percentage of time that the MIO project occupies in my schedule... This frees up time for me to actually move forward with further development of things like the expansion board, and firmware updates..

 

So in the interest of all this, I wont sell "bare boards" or "kits" or anything else.. I will Sell MIOs.... One at a time.. and thats it..

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It's good to know many Atari users are interested,... but until now, I don't understand what is a MIO.

I have the idea is a device that provide SCSI ports to the XL, XE series using the PBI port. So, I see, the useful thing is that I can use SCSI HDs, printers on it.

 

Is there other advantages I am losing? For example, all this memory on the MIO is only for buffer purposes or it works like an memory expansion?

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It's good to know many Atari users are interested,... but until now, I don't understand what is a MIO.

I have the idea is a device that provide SCSI ports to the XL, XE series using the PBI port. So, I see, the useful thing is that I can use SCSI HDs, printers on it.

 

Is there other advantages I am losing? For example, all this memory on the MIO is only for buffer purposes or it works like an memory expansion?

 

As it stands, the MIO provides the following.

1) scsi/sasi interfave used mostly for Hard drives.

2) parallel printer interface compatible with PC printer cables.

3) 64K printer buffer (default) tho that size can be set to any size upto the limit of ram on the mio

4)RS232 serial interface capable of 19200 baud.

5)extra ram used as disk drive. This is the fastest drive on the 8 bit, bar none. depending on the size of ram, a 1 gig drive can be set up.

The ram can be broken in to 8 parts to emulate 8 floppy drives if you want and the ability to boot from them. I have setup bootable games on the MIO and the speed they load at.......

 

From my under standing, future expansion plans include.

ability to address 16 meg of ram. Just think, fastest drive at 16meg. niiiiiiiiiiiice.

Plans for a 80 coloum display board.

Updates to firmware to include support for more scsi devices including cd roms

 

James

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I have the P: R: connection. Using the SIO I have parallel connection with printer PCs. Besides, I have 2 output serials for modems, and of course I can connect other SIO devices in the line.

 

post-6191-1218934437_thumb.jpg

post-6191-1218934455_thumb.jpg

 

With the Atari MyIDE+Flashback cartridge I think I have most of the topics the MIO device covers.

 

It seems the MIO is the fastest device because the buffer memory, but it would be interesting what can do with the extra speed.

Is there any chance that MIO use his internal memory as extended memory for XL or 130XE, like RAMBO extentions?

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Really there is not much call for the MIO in today's Atari world. SIO2PC/APE does pretty much all you'd want the MIO to do. The biggest benefit of the MIO (IMO) is if you are going to be running SpartaDOS and doing development work, or some other productivity work with it. The memory of the MIO can only be accessed via a 256 byte window (someone correct me if I'm wrong) and cannot be used like the extended memory in the 130XE. In fact, the only use I've seen made of the MIO memory is for a RAM disk (and the internal print buffer of the MIO of course.)

 

It's a "cool" piece of Atari equipment though, and the new MIO being produced by Metalguy may turn into something much more useful to the general user however.

 

Just my opinion, of course. :)

 

PS. Oh, and there are those people who want to run a BBS on real equipment. The MIO is very useful in that scenario.

Edited by Shawn Jefferson
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1.) The 6551 UART (used in the MIO and BLACK BOX) is capable of 115kbps serial operation. If you dont believe this, look at the datasheet, and then ask Apple II users who do it all the time (Its implemented the exact same way in both of the apple IIc serial ports, as well as the Super Serial Card for the IIe/II+ as it is in the MIO and Blackbox. even clocked at the same exact frequency, but the Apple hardware doesn't even have the handshaking lines connected!). This amounts to a simple and minor change to the serial handler (ROM).. You totally cant compare a P:R connection, Rverter, 850 interface, or any other SIO connected serial port solution to the MIO or BLACK BOX serial ports..

 

2.) The MIO ram is very easily used in any program.. You just have to get the idea of using bastardized game controller registers to swap 16k banks (which hogs up 1/4 of the 6502 adress space) out of your head... If you can do that, you can easily use the MIO RAM for whatever you wish.

 

Yes.. It uses 256byte banks... Hmm.. This happens to be the exact size of a double density disk sector...

 

It uses 2 full 8-bit registers to detemine which bank is visible, and one bit of a third register to enable/disable the ram expansion.

 

A 1meg MIO has 4096 banks of 256 bytes,,

 

A 16meg MIO has 65536 banks of 256 bytes..

 

So yeah, the MIO RAM is easy as hell to use.. even from BASIC..

 

Also, the MIO RAM is not effected by turning off the ATARI... As long as the MIO is powered up, it continues to refresh it's DRAM, so you can easily boot from MIO configured RAMDISKs.. and you can even sector copy non-dos "trackloading" games into an MIO ramdisk and boot from it..

 

The MIO firmware does the following:

 

1) Has built in serial port handler for full 850/P:R: Connection emulation without ever having to load a handler from disk. This can be turned off from the configuration menu, if you want to use your own custom handler, or program the hardware directly.

 

2) Stores all of the MIO's configuration data into the first 256byte bank for use by the built in firmware configuration menu program. This data is also stored to sector 0 of the hardisk and reloaded into memory on initialization when the MIO is first powered up.

 

3) Has built in configuration program that allows you to divide up the rest of the RAM in any way you see fit:

-a) Up to 256 of the 256byte banks (64k) can be configured as a print-spooler for the built in paralell or serial ports. Additional spooler features include appending linefeeds, multiple copies of print-jobs, etc.

-b) Any number of banks can be set up as any number of RAMDISKS and assigned to any drive designator (D1: - D8:). When you create a RAMDISK, it automatically loads the handler for either Spartados or Mydos (auto-detected), sets up the device tables, and formats each RAMDISK accordingly.

 

4) Allows you to "REMAP" or "SWAP" any of the following from/to any drive designator (D1: - D8:) at any time:

-a) Any SIO connected drive.

-b) Any MIO RAMDISK

-c) Any MIO connected Hardisk/partition.

 

5) Allows you to define hardisk partitions and map them to drive designators.

 

The built in configuration menu is accessed any time by holding [sELECT] and pressing [RESET]... apon exit, you are returned to DOS or BASIC (if present).

 

All of this hardware is fully prorgammable, fully documented, and can be accessed/manipulated by user programs/applications/utilities, completely independant of the firmware as well, if so desired..

 

Any more questions?

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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