1050E and ICD US Doubler

[Nezgar]

5 hours ago, MADRAFi said:

I know this. The problem these upgrades requiring to modify original board (cut capacitors out). I do not want to do that.

Any drive mod that increases the SIO speed past about 54000bps pretty much requires the speed limiting capacitors to be removed. This is the "standard" ultraspeed rate used by the classic US doubler and Happy 1050. 1050E iirc uses a rate like 72000bps? Removing the speed limiting capacitors from the computer is also beneficial.

 

I suspect some of the issues you are having are due to SIO transmission errors at the highspeed rates 1050E uses.

 

Have you tried format operations without highspeed/ultraspeed SIO rates active?

 

Edit: reading back through this thread, 1050E UltraSpeed is 68200bps.

[+tf_hh]

21 hours ago, MADRAFi said:

I have that turbo installed. Tested it and it turned out the firmware need some work.

I love that this turbo does not need any modification of your 1050. You can install or remove it just in few minutes without cutting anything.

 

Do you mean the "1050E" from Lotharek? This one needs also the removal of the four caps, otherwise you get a lot of transmission errors in highspeed mode. I´ve tried with capacitors, doesn´t work flawless. Without caps, works mostly fine (except some firmware issues, as you already mentioned).

 

[MADRAFi]

Yes. Exactly that one.

It was not advertised as the one which requires capacitors removal to operate.

 

http://www.atari.org.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?id=10818&p=2

[+tf_hh]

9 minutes ago, MADRAFi said:

Yes. Exactly that one.

It was not advertised as the one which requires capacitors removal to operate.

 

I didn´t understand polish language and the google translator doesn´t work fine with that forum without login. But, independent - the "manual" from Lotharek is... non existent. Maybe it´s forgotten. But what I can say from years of experience with several speeders is, that with these four capacitors only POKEY divisor 9 or more (higher the divisor, slower the transmission speed) works flawless.

 

The Speedy 1050 is also working at divisor 6 in Highspeed-copy-mode, and this requires the removal of the caps. Also the Happy 1050 Highspeed XFER-test will only pass with removing them. If you have more than one 1050 connected to the SIO buss, the problems gets more worse.

 

Finally: Take a Happy 1050 and you have a not so flawless speeder, but it works mostly with the caps installed. AtariMax offers a solderless version of a Happy 1050 clone. All other speeder requires the removal of these for caps IMHO.

[Kyle22]

Please cut the offending capacitors. It will solve your problem (unless another device connected up still has capacitors).

 

I mean *EVERY* device on the SIO chain should not have SIO caps. The exception is the caps on the +5 / Ready and +12v lines. Those caps are good.

 

 

Edited January 17, 2020 by Kyle22
Clarity

[E474]

Hi,

 

    Just suggested that particular Speedy as it has enough internal memory in the drive to duplicate a double density disk in about 40 seconds, and I assume you are feeding your drive disks every so often when you are duplicating Star Vagrant (in a production run). 

[mikey]

I was offline for a few years (wife and kids happened , so sorry for late reply

 

1050E was thoroughly tested on the drive I developed it on, and never showed any flaws you experienced, the only suspicion was that the write protect diode was malfunctioning.

Also, I had tested it with both 800 XL and 65 XE  with either Q-MEG or Sparta X. (capacitors were not removed)

As for the turbo loader, it was never considered since 99% of my use case was either Sparta Dos X or Q-MEG that support ultraspeed out of the box.

And for the record - I no longer do any work on this firmware. Time will tell how it'll end.

 

[Nezgar]

Thanks for commenting @mikey! Curious if your testing included both PAL and NTSC computers? I remember the original Speedy firmware highspeed timing would not work with NTSC computers, until it was patched around the time of MegaSpeedy development and testing.

 

I will not be able to install and test my new 1050E with an NTSC machine for a couple weeks myself.

 

@MADRAFi are you using a PAL or NTSC system?

[mikey]

5 minutes ago, Nezgar said:

Thanks for commenting @mikey! Curious if your testing included both PAL and NTSC computers? 

PAL Only

[+Larry]

Any updates?  Looks like Lotharek still has these for sale.

[goldy/gmg aka lopez453]

Does anybody have this 1050e installed and test whether formatting single or double under dos 2.5 works with it, please ?

 

I've just installed one but I am unable to format single or double under dos 2.5, it does something and at the end returns error 139.

Under spartados formatting goes fine - even double.

 

My PAL machine is 800xe with ultimate 1MB so I enable HSIO patch and faster booting/loading works fine.

 

I expected basic backwards compatibility, or ability to switch between speedy and stock operation.

LESSON:  do a bigger research before purchase, as on lothareks site there are no tools to download, or any information that it is defacto abandoned product, working well under q-meg or spartados. 

 

2nd problem: The drive freezes occasionally and needs powercycle afterwards.

 

3rd topic: @candle Is there a possibility to have flasher realeased with possibility to flash alternate fw (like patched speedy/usdoubler/whatever you tested before) ?

 

 

[candle]

I'll ask Mikey if he could release 1050E code on github

I have vauge memory of it being on github, but couldn't find it among his repositories

I can release 1050E vhdl if someone would like to take a deeper dive

 

what is not obvious, as a debug facility one can connect 2x20 or similiar LCD display to have some information like tracks or whatnot displayed

 

 

[goldy/gmg aka lopez453]

On 9/5/2024 at 10:14 AM, candle said:

 

what is not obvious, as a debug facility one can connect 2x20 or similiar LCD display to have some information like tracks or whatnot displayed

 

I've read here that display from sio2sd could be used but theese have  8bit datainterface and as I did find this in the 1050e schematic, I probably need a display with rs-232 or i2c interface ???

Can you advise which protocol/controller is integrated in the current firmware so I can purchase one (I mostly use TME.eu store)?  

 

Thanks.

 

 

[candle]

its hd44780 based lcd text display with parallel 8 bit interface

it was done in such way one could easly connect it to the bus in place of SRAM chip

 

in other news i don't have any reply from the turbo firmware author yet