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Atari Portable Project


selgus

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5 minutes ago, StickJock said:

Along with your built-in joystick, you could also add built-in paddles.  Put one on each side.

 

I had decided against doing this early on, as with everything about this project, size matters (in this case, smaller is better). With the keyboard, and the joystick, along with the LCD, it doesn't leave a lot of areas to add additional items and not be awkward. Just some of the design decisions I made to at the start.

 

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Each of the unique key-caps for my mini-keyboard.. which I am going to 3D print, though I don't own a 3D printer, so I use Shapeways. The lettering will be added on afterwards as decals of some sort (haven't figured how I wish to do that yet)..

 

 

atari67xePortable-keys.png

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2 hours ago, selgus said:

Each of the unique key-caps for my mini-keyboard.. which I am going to 3D print, though I don't own a 3D printer, so I use Shapeways. The lettering will be added on afterwards as decals of some sort (haven't figured how I wish to do that yet)..

I know you're well on your way thru the design on this, but I thought I'd toss out this idea... use an off the shelf mini thumb keypad for the Atari portable. The rubber overlay can be removed from the original keyboard and cut to fit a custom case. Your PCB design just needs pads for the snap dome overlay that is removed from the original and placed on your custom PCB. 

 

I had tried making my own rubber overlay and it was not worth the effort. But, reusing a manufactured rubber overlay would probably work great.

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5 minutes ago, mozzwald said:

I know you're well on your way thru the design on this, but I thought I'd toss out this idea... use an off the shelf mini thumb keypad for the Atari portable. The rubber overlay can be removed from the original keyboard and cut to fit a custom case. Your PCB design just needs pads for the snap dome overlay that is removed from the original and placed on your custom PCB. 

I had not thought of this, as one of my design goals was to replicate the XE keyboard (with extra function keys) to be a scaled version for the portable. That mini-keyboard wouldn't have the correct number of keys or placement for an XE-style keyboard, but it is a very interesting concept. Thanks!

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Getting some revision 002 boards made, with my modifications and support for a full SIO port. As soon as I get the blanks, I'm going to build one up while using the revision 001 board for testing and debugging the bios..

 

 

atari67xePortable-cpu-sio.png

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1 minute ago, toddtmw said:

Have you given thought to a case? What are the dimensions of the board? (Thinking of 3-D printer footprint...

Yes I have.. the dimensions to my boards were given on post #34, I believe.

 

The form factor is something like a Nintendo Switch, but with a keyboard on the top and the 5" display on a bit of an angle also on the top of the unit. There is a joystick on one side of the keyboard, and a fire button on the other.

 

I am modeling the case using the ATARI XE computer line as the design language, along with the key caps being scaled representations of a 130XE keyboard.

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Been working on the keyboard, should have some of my 3D printed key-caps soon, and been doing some modeling for the case. These are the layouts of the different circuit boards, inside the portable, and current prototype work on the enclosure. The keys aren't to proportion right now, but more for blocking out where it would be..

 

 

atari67xep-layout-pcbs.png

atari67xep-proto.png

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1 hour ago, mytek said:

Did you ever fire up the first board?

 

I did assemble it enough to do some testing.. I had to do a few mods, which I worked into this new CPU board and was able to bring it up under my scope to see the clock and the different signals working, and the 6502 pulling the reset vector. I still have more work to do on my BIOS, as its a heavily modified version of the XEGS OS, with a lot of additional functionality added.. which I still need to organize to get all the constant vector entry points at their correct org locations..

 

Depending on how long it takes me to make my BIOS bootable, I might take the XEGS OS, as is, and just NOP out some of the hardware differences so I can get it running well understood code. Though I'd rather spend that time on getting my BIOS working properly.

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1 hour ago, selgus said:

I did assemble it enough to do some testing.. I had to do a few mods, which I worked into this new CPU board and was able to bring it up under my scope to see the clock and the different signals working, and the 6502 pulling the reset vector. I still have more work to do on my BIOS, as its a heavily modified version of the XEGS OS, with a lot of additional functionality added.. which I still need to organize to get all the constant vector entry points at their correct org locations..

 

Depending on how long it takes me to make my BIOS bootable, I might take the XEGS OS, as is, and just NOP out some of the hardware differences so I can get it running well understood code. Though I'd rather spend that time on getting my BIOS working properly.

Wow I didn't realize how involved you were with creating an alternative BIOS, as well as creating a new motherboard. Can you go into more detail as to what it will be doing vs. the standard OS? Sounds very intriguing ? .

 

Yeah I still have yet to bring my new board online. Still waiting for a dual inverter chip to arrive which is central to my primary oscillator circuit. I also need to write code to have my board fire up, but in my case it's code for the PIC chip.

 

Good luck :) .

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Sure, first and foremost is support for the CompactFlash. The BIOS has the SIO vector to see if it's dealing with the CF, and if so, handles the R/W, etc. operations. Then there is built-in partitioning of the CF, and a loader that can be enabled from the one of the BIOS menus..

 

That is another addition, a BIOS menu system, that is entered if you RESET while holding down the HELP key. It has a few configuration options, commands, etc. This is one of the menu screens:

 

I am using P/M graphics and DLIs to do a custom display list, and the screen memory used for building all of this, is another feature of my portable (i.e. the RAM under the PBI).

 

I have made multiple changes to the OS ROM, to remove functionality I don't support on my hardware or want, to get more ROM space.

 

There is also a built-in debugging mode, that current has a way of looking through memory and modifying it. I have plans for breakpoints, watched memory locations, etc. but I need to get the rest of the BIOS working and see how much ROM space I have available.

 

Oh, and of course, I have a color scrolling Fuji when you boot the system. :)

 

atari-bios-menu-config.png

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1 hour ago, selgus said:

Sure, first and foremost is support for the CompactFlash. The BIOS has the SIO vector to see if it's dealing with the CF, and if so, handles the R/W, etc. operations. Then there is built-in partitioning of the CF, and a loader that can be enabled from the one of the BIOS menus..

 

That is another addition, a BIOS menu system, that is entered if you RESET while holding down the HELP key. It has a few configuration options, commands, etc. This is one of the menu screens:

 

I am using P/M graphics and DLIs to do a custom display list, and the screen memory used for building all of this, is another feature of my portable (i.e. the RAM under the PBI).

 

I have made multiple changes to the OS ROM, to remove functionality I don't support on my hardware or want, to get more ROM space.

 

There is also a built-in debugging mode, that current has a way of looking through memory and modifying it. I have plans for breakpoints, watched memory locations, etc. but I need to get the rest of the BIOS working and see how much ROM space I have available.

 

Oh, and of course, I have a color scrolling Fuji when you boot the system. :)

 

atari-bios-menu-config.png

 

O_O

 

Most impressive! 

You'll want to squeeze in high speed SIO routines in there, too.  They'll be invaluable once you start playing with FujiNet.

 

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27 minutes ago, jamm said:

 

O_O

 

Most impressive! 

You'll want to squeeze in high speed SIO routines in there, too.  They'll be invaluable once you start playing with FujiNet any SIO connected device like an SDrive-MAX, SIO2PC, SIO2SD, Happy 1050, FujiNet, or any device that is capable of faster speeds than a stock Atari disk drive. 

 

Fixed that for you. ? 

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2 hours ago, selgus said:

atari-bios-menu-config.png

Wow!!! :-o

 

That's going to be sweet!

 

So you are not only a fantastic hardware guy, but also a software genius as well. Will this new BIOS also work in a stock XEGS with the CF card added? If so people are going to want to use it outside of your system as well.

 

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