Incognito - Now's your chance!

[+DrVenkman]

6 minutes ago, toddtmw said:

It’s funny that you’re calling a spartados from 2012 old.

Well, the word I used was “obsolete,” not “old.” ? The rest of my usual machines are running version 4.49c from 2017, so relatively speaking, 4.45b is a pretty outdated. 

[flashjazzcat]

11 minutes ago, toddtmw said:

It’s funny that you’re calling a spartados from 2012 old

Last release version is dated 2016, but that's still four years younger than what's on the ROM. The thing is that SDX is (ostensibly) still actively developed, and newer versions fix bugs and provide functionality not present in versions dating from 2012. There are other problems as well: those wishing to use the original Incognito firmware will find that the partition editor 'FDISK' is nowhere to be found on the SDX ROM, because a version which can be hosted on CAR: did not exist in 2012, IIRC, and even if it did, DLT did not supply it pre-installed on the SDX ROMs.

 

In the case of the SIDE2 cartridge, I cannot even guarantee that the version of the SIDE driver I found on the SDX ROM is compatible with the current boot sector padding scheme for double density APT partitions, so it's entirely possible the ancient driver will not even read volumes prepared elsewhere. Other than that, such an aged driver will certainly contain bugs not present in more recent iterations.

Edited November 2, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[Faicuai]

1 hour ago, Gunstar said:

I understand and appreciate your hatred. That's why I recently picked up a few sets of these peel-away-ribbon single Dupont connectors and be done with it.

Bingo!

 

Not only they are perfect for this application, but they also come in 2.0mm to 2.54mm pitch-adapting, which I actively use to connect Incognito's CPLD 2.0mm pin-header to external programmer's 2.54mm pin-header (purchased from Amazon):

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FM72VBF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Not just easy as pie, and multicolor, but also clean and elegant (no soldering mess, no need to manufacture anything).

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by Faicuai

[Faicuai]

7 hours ago, Gunstar said:

(...) and zip-tie the door power mechanism together (...)

Just right there... among the top-three most useful (and thoughtful) suggestions on this whole thread.

 

If you refer to tie-wrapping the interlock switch (to keep it press), well... that's just pure genius, in my opinion. With a tiny tie-wrap, you could control the compression-force to keep the switch closed without inducing fatigue, plus it is non-conductive and, most importantly, fully reversible, without any soldering kludge or mess...

 

Kudos, sir!

[Gunstar]

32 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

Just right there... among the top-three most useful (and thoughtful) suggestions on this whole thread.

 

If you refer to tie-wrapping the interlock switch (to keep it press), well... that's just pure genius, in my opinion. With a tiny tie-wrap, you could control the compression-force to keep the switch closed without inducing fatigue, plus it is non-conductive and, most importantly, fully reversible, without any soldering kludge or mess...

 

Kudos, sir!

Yep, I didn't realize (or remember from the FSM) until @DrVenkman called it an interlock switch, so I just called it a mechanism. The zip-tie just needs to be placed where it won't get in the way of the door's "arm" so the door can close.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Gunstar

[Jeffrey Worley]

4 hours ago, Faicuai said:

 

Best, overall, location for the .ATR-swap switch. either for a permanent or fully-reversible install.

 

The .ATR switch is (in reality) an integral component of the system and, after 6+ years using Incognito (as my primary go-to platform), not installing it would be a no-no on my book. Quite a good deal of titles will just not run (even the latest FLOP-64 release, a couple of days ago!)

 

All-in-all, plenty of surface-space and accessibility underneath the machine to install it nicely, so it does not end up with another dumb-ass looking protruding switch somewhere else.  

I Never use the thing.  I mostly use the machine as a computer, or as a toy computer.  I run a bbs no one has ever called.  It is bare-bones Carina with a couple of mods to Waitcall and Gateway to make it work properly with an ethernet tcp/ip telnet 'Modem' like my Lantronix UDS 2100.

 

Every once in a while I play a game, most always Gauntletak, which is a file I sometimes call from dos, sometimes from the Loader.

 

The ONE thing that makes me want the swap button is the 1meg 3d demo.  That is pretty cool and worth lining up all the atr's and round-robin-ing a load of it.

 

That one thing is enough I'm gonna put the switch on.  I would like to get some of those flat mylar reed switches I used on some PLC's years ago.  They were like a mylar keyboard, but only one key.  Those would just tape to the outside of the machine, removable in seconds.  I also thought about some hall-effect thingy that would trigger the swap whenever you brought a magnet over a certain point on the case....

 

Jeff

 

 

[Jeffrey Worley]

I have an 800 with a weird fault I've not been able to track down.  It worked well.  Had CTIA, so I swapped for GTIA, tested it, it worked well still.

 

I installed Incognito.  It won't see the keyboard, well, most keys.  It prints an F, for example, but just one.  If you want to type another character, hit BREAK, and then you can enter another F, or T, or other key that works.  I tried another keyboard from a known-good machine, andthis keyboard on that machine. The keyboards are fine.  I've removed the upgrade and downgraded back to stock.  It does the same thing.  I swapped Pokey, GTIA, ANTIC, the keyboard decoder chips, all with the same weird problem.

 

Best,

 

Jeff

[Gunstar]

Since you swapped keyboards, and swapped POKEY, and it is still a problem without Incognito, the first place I would look, next, is at the keyboard connector on the motherboard for some cold solder points or cracked, open-circuit traces by the solder points, bent pins or a foreign object in the connector slot, etc. Maybe even just giving the mobo keyboard connector a good cleaning out, it could be dust or tarnish on the receptor pins. Use an old credit-card or similar wrapped in a t-shirt with some alcohol and an up/down motion for a while.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Gunstar

[Jeffrey Worley]

1 minute ago, Gunstar said:

Since you swapped keyboards, and swapped POKEY, and it is still a problem without Incognito, the first place I would look is at the keyboard connector on the motherboard for some cold solder points or cracked, open traces by the solder points, etc.

I'm thinking it is in the row of capacitors between the keyboard controller and the keyboard itself.  I think I may have a bad motherboard.  I'm so sure of it, I ordered one.  I've tested the ic's, for the most part, and all check out ok, so I think it is a discrete that has failed, and tracking that down is hell on wheels.  This way, I get an extra Pokey in the deal, as the new board comes fully populated.

 

[Gunstar]

that's also a possibility. I edited my post and added more possibilities surrounding the connector too, but you replied before I finished.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Gunstar

[Gunstar]

11 minutes ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

I'm thinking it is in the row of capacitors between the keyboard controller and the keyboard itself.  I think I may have a bad motherboard.  I'm so sure of it, I ordered one.  I've tested the ic's, for the most part, and all check out ok, so I think it is a discrete that has failed, and tracking that down is hell on wheels.  This way, I get an extra Pokey in the deal, as the new board comes fully populated.

 

If you don't intend to repair the original motherboard or use it for salvage yourself, I'll buy it off of you, I don't care if it's missing the POKEY and PIA , or whatever.

[toddtmw]

6 hours ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

I Never use the thing.  I mostly use the machine as a computer, or as a toy computer.  I run a bbs no one has ever called.  It is bare-bones Carina with a couple of mods to Waitcall and Gateway to make it work properly with an ethernet tcp/ip telnet 'Modem' like my Lantronix UDS 2100.

 

Every once in a while I play a game, most always Gauntletak, which is a file I sometimes call from dos, sometimes from the Loader.

 

The ONE thing that makes me want the swap button is the 1meg 3d demo.  That is pretty cool and worth lining up all the atr's and round-robin-ing a load of it.

 

That one thing is enough I'm gonna put the switch on.  I would like to get some of those flat mylar reed switches I used on some PLC's years ago.  They were like a mylar keyboard, but only one key.  Those would just tape to the outside of the machine, removable in seconds.  I also thought about some hall-effect thingy that would trigger the swap whenever you brought a magnet over a certain point on the case....

 

Jeff

 

 

I bought this at Microcenter. I'm going to try to find a place to mount it so that the metal part sticks out a vent or something.

[+DrVenkman]

Question for @flashjazzcat regarding part 2 of the install video series ...

 

Jon, in your video you mention you drilled the second hole out of place. Do you mean you should have drilled it closer to the edge of the board or closer to the console keys? Candle’s original photos look like the holes are lined up equidistant from the edge of the board. Apologies for misunderstanding what you meant there.

 

 

[toddtmw]

Okay. I have some questions. 
 

on the incognito, plug 5. Pin 1 is the one with the square around it, correct?

 

my cpu board looks different than the one in the video. My Antic chip appears to be on the left edge. 
 

when you are looking at the socket the antic chip plugs into, are pins 1-20 on the left or right. Or, here is a picture. Where are pins 9 and 15?

 

 

I assumed the notch was on the bottom. And I asssumed the diagram on Wikipedia was relative to the socket looking down on the chip from above as it was placed and I soldered to the pins in this picture and when I turn my 800 on, the screen goes black and the power leds just barely light. (I am pressing the interlock switch.) did I do this backward? I used black as pin 1 and green and pin 6 on p5

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by toddtmw
Added which wires went to which pin

[Gunstar]

17 minutes ago, toddtmw said:

Okay. I have some questions. 
 

on the incognito, plug 5. Pin 1 is the one with the square around it, correct?

 

my cpu board looks different than the one in the video. My Antic chip appears to be on the left edge. 
 

when you are looking at the socket the antic chip plugs into, are pins 1-20 on the left or right. Or, here is a picture. Where are pins 9 and 15?

 

 

I assumed the notch was on the bottom. And I asssumed the diagram on Wikipedia was relative to the socket looking down on the chip from above as it was placed and I soldered to the pins in this picture and when I turn my 800 on, the screen goes black and the power leds just barely light. (I am pressing the interlock switch.) did I do this backward? I used black as pin 1 and green and pin 6 on p5

 

yeah, you have it connected wrong. When looking at the chip from the chip side, with the NOTCHED end of the chip facing the bottom, bottom right, is pin 1 (look at the bottom right of the chip next to the notch, see the number 1 there? That is pin 1). So when you turn the board over, the bottom pin on the LEFT side (near the edge connector) is pin 1, so you would count up from there to pin 6 (green wire). So the green wire you currently have attached to pin 15 instead of pin 6 and the black wire you currently have attached to pin 9 instead of pin 12.

 

Edited November 3, 2019 by Gunstar

[toddtmw]

4 minutes ago, Gunstar said:

yeah, you have it connected wrong. When looking at the chip from the chip side, with the NOTCHED end of the chip facing the bottom, bottom right, is pin 1 (look at the bottom right of the chip next to the notch, see the number 1 there? That is pin 1). So when you turn the board over, the bottom pin on the LEFT side is pin 1, so you would count up from there to pin 6 (green wire). So the green wire you currently have attached to pin 26 instead of pin 6 and the black wire you currently have attached to pin 32 instead of pin 12.

 

I’m not sure I’m following you. 
 

jons video says to connect to pin 9 and 15. 
 

also, I did count from the bottom left as pin 1. Your description makes it sound like pin 1 is on the lower right (at The edge of the card). 
 

sorry, this has always been confusing to me. Pin out diagrams always seem counterintuitive and I always get them wrong. 

[Faicuai]

18 minutes ago, toddtmw said:

Okay. I have some questions. 
 

on the incognito, plug 5. Pin 1 is the one with the square around it, correct?

 

my cpu board looks different than the one in the video. My Antic chip appears to be on the left edge. 
 

when you are looking at the socket the antic chip plugs into, are pins 1-20 on the left or right. Or, here is a picture. Where are pins 9 and 15?

 

 

I assumed the notch was on the bottom. And I asssumed the diagram on Wikipedia was relative to the socket looking down on the chip from above as it was placed and I soldered to the pins in this picture and when I turn my 800 on, the screen goes black and the power leds just barely light. (I am pressing the interlock switch.) did I do this backward? I used black as pin 1 and green and pin 6 on p5

 

 

FYI, that is precisely one of the reason you should ALWAYS avoid, if possible, soldering directly on "hot" pins (e.g. attached directly to an active component), not just to protect it, but to avoid solder-cludges / blobs on active pins.

 

Instead, look at the routing by unmounted the chip from its socket-side (remember position of pin #1 as marked on chip, itself) and find the nearest proxy-pads / points (just follow their paths from their designated sampling location and light-up the board with a flash-light from behind, as you will see everything). Clearly, a more convenient approach for undoing mistakes (I made plenty of those...)

 

I am already seeing alternate solder-points for samples those two signals, right on that board...

[Gunstar]

23 minutes ago, toddtmw said:

I’m not sure I’m following you. 
 

jons video says to connect to pin 9 and 15. 
 

also, I did count from the bottom left as pin 1. Your description makes it sound like pin 1 is on the lower right (at The edge of the card). 
 

sorry, this has always been confusing to me. Pin out diagrams always seem counterintuitive and I always get them wrong. 

Well, I am not going by Jon's video, just by your pictures and what you said, so I must be completely confused as to what your problem was with the pins then if you are supposed to connect those to pin 9 and 15, then they are connected right.

 

I see now, I got confused because you mentioned pin 1 and pin 6 and I thought you were referring to the CPU board for those pins, not p5 on the Incognito. So I thought you were attempting to connect pin 6 on the CPU board, and had connected pin 15 instead by accident, thinking pin 1 was at the top left instead of bottom left. I haven't started mine yet, so I didn't know about pin 9 and 15, I was just going by what you said (which I misunderstood) and thought you were looking to connect to pin 6 and 12 and connected 9 and 15 by mistake. But I also was disoriented at first, looking at the board wrong myself and I edited my post,once I realized, but you read and replied to before I was finished editing which lead to even more confusion!  No wonder you didn't understand what I was saying! But just forget everything I said!

Edited November 3, 2019 by Gunstar

[Gunstar]

23 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

 

FYI, that is precisely one of the reason you should ALWAYS avoid, if possible, soldering directly on "hot" pins (e.g. attached directly to an active component), not just to protect it, but to avoid solder-cludges / blobs on active pins.

 

Instead, look at the routing by unmounted the chip from its socket-side (remember position of pin #1 as marked on chip, itself) and find the nearest proxy-pads / points (just follow their paths from their designated sampling location and light-up the board with a flash-light from behind, as you will see everything). Clearly, a more convenient approach for undoing mistakes (I made plenty of those...)

 

I am already seeing alternate solder-points for samples those two signals, right on that board...

That is wise, yes, and something I should have thought of myself, when it comes to solder-cludges/blobs, for sure. But I always remove the chip from the socket before I do any soldering to the solder pads/socket pins directly, and if the chip doesn't have a socket, then that is the first thing that gets installed before I start soldering wires.

[Faicuai]

1 hour ago, Gunstar said:

That is wise, yes, and something I should have thought of myself, when it comes to solder-cludges/blobs, for sure. But I always remove the chip from the socket before I do any soldering to the solder pads/socket pins directly, and if the chip doesn't have a socket, then that is the first thing that gets installed before I start soldering wires.

 

Dead-on! If only choice is direct-solder on active-pin/s, then removing IC-package FIRST and then proceeding would certainly work (especially if soldering-quality is well controlled).

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

4 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

Jon, in your video you mention you drilled the second hole out of place. Do you mean you should have drilled it closer to the edge of the board or closer to the console keys? Candle’s original photos look like the holes are lined up equidistant from the edge of the board. Apologies for misunderstanding what you meant there.

I meant I should have drilled it further inboard (away from the front edge of the power board). The issue was that the long standoff was hitting the slanted part of the bottom of the case at an oblique angle instead of resting flat on the bottom. I just extended the hole a couple of millimetres further back and all was good.

 

Regarding solder blobs, etc: if you're good at soldering, this isn't an issue and you can attach jumpers wherever you see fit. If you're liable to screw it up and short pins out, by all means take appropriate evasive action.  This is another great advantage of installing SCCC, of course: custom, labelled vias for the two Incognito connections, so that mistakes regarding pin identification, botched soldering, etc, are almost impossible.

[Faicuai]

13 hours ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

I Never use the thing.  I mostly use the machine as a computer, or as a toy computer.  I run a bbs no one has ever called.  It is bare-bones Carina with a couple of mods to Waitcall and Gateway to make it work properly with an ethernet tcp/ip telnet 'Modem' like my Lantronix UDS 2100.

 

Every once in a while I play a game, most always Gauntletak, which is a file I sometimes call from dos, sometimes from the Loader.

 

The ONE thing that makes me want the swap button is the 1meg 3d demo.  That is pretty cool and worth lining up all the atr's and round-robin-ing a load of it.

 

That one thing is enough I'm gonna put the switch on.  I would like to get some of those flat mylar reed switches I used on some PLC's years ago.  They were like a mylar keyboard, but only one key.  Those would just tape to the outside of the machine, removable in seconds.  I also thought about some hall-effect thingy that would trigger the swap whenever you brought a magnet over a certain point on the case....

 

Jeff

 

 

 

Even though I've never been a gamer (plus also developed myself around the IBM/PC platform and inclined to the productivity-side), I've also known that our community's talent has always spread beyond (or even opposite) to productivity and applications.

 

And being able to see that talent in action, is the main reason why I've compiled a full cart-library (with Ultimate/SD cart), as well as a pretty large library of titles on Incognito's on-board. Demos, games, concepts, etc., they all count (even if I don't really play them). I do enjoy being able to see what other people's thoughts and skills have been poured into (plenty of effort and time to make that happen, also)...

 

And for that, you will need to have your gear well up to speed and well configured, so all that work can run as indented (I think that's the essence of the point).

 

So, unless your specific purpose for the upgrade is different from the above (which would be perfectly valid, of course), the .ATR switch button would be strongly recommended (as long as you are not forced to drill holes on PCB or cut traces on them, which is a big NO-NO in all of my books). The 800/Incognito combo is way too special for that.

 

[Jeffrey Worley]

21 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

Well, the word I used was “obsolete,” not “old.” ? The rest of my usual machines are running version 4.49c from 2017, so relatively speaking, 4.45b is a pretty outdated. 

I think you missed the irony.  The machine itself is 40 years old.  The dos is less than 10 years old.  What's old?

 

?

 

Jeff

[+Stephen]

8 minutes ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

I think you missed the irony.  The machine itself is 40 years old.  The dos is less than 10 years old.  What's old?

 

?

 

Jeff

Well, that's what is so funny.  When we weirdos get used to using these machines daily, knowing something is that old when a new version is out, it seems old to us. We're all on the same page here though.

[flashjazzcat]

20 minutes ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

What's old?

The copy of SDX supplied on the non-FJC firmware Incognito, that's what.