Atari Portable Project

[+selgus]

The final keyboards I mentioned.. they are interchangeable and both use the same silicone keypad (with or without the carbon pills). I like the carbon pills "membrane-like" keyboard better.. feels more like an XE-style version.. but the tactile one has actual clicking feedback (though takes more time and parts to assemble).

 

[pseudografx]

It's a bit too late now, but wouldn't it be better from ergonomical point of view to have a slight gap between the F4 and Help? So that you could easily find the Help key without looking.

[+selgus]

1 hour ago, pseudografx said:

It's a bit too late now, but wouldn't it be better from ergonomical point of view to have a slight gap between the F4 and Help? So that you could easily find the Help key without looking.

Nah, I think you are missing the scale of this keyboard and the size of the keys.. plus the design language I used was taken from the XE and ST product families, with a row of "function keys".

[+selgus]

Finished doing the latest revision and hopefully the last, of the portable enclosure..

 

[+mytek]

58 minutes ago, selgus said:

Finished doing the latest revision and hopefully the last, of the portable enclosure..

 

Wow

 

That's cool beyond belief !!!

 

Now this is what the Flashback should have looked like, and been like

[vespertillio]

Looks beautiful. Well done indeed.

[+scorpio_ny]

Very nice design there!!

[+selgus]

I wanted to see if I could add a cartridge port to my portable, and it was non-trivial to do. I didn't have all the address lines near the top of the PCB, so I needed to re-layout the top section of the board to get them, plus some other misc signals to the top.

 

Then, I needed to redesign the top of the enclosure to accommodate inserting the cartridge.. and needed to remove all the #ifdef'ed out cartridge support code from my BIOS (since I didn't have one originally and thereby no need to do all those specific checks).

 

One downside is my MULTIJOY4 adaptor will no longer physically connect to the portable, so I will need to redesign that project.. I have some ideas..

 

[Mathy]

Hello Selgus

 

If you're adding a cartridge port, you might consider adding the ECI too.

 

BTW aren't those two tabs that open the cartridge doors on the old style cartridge vulnerable, being this exposed?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[Mr Robot]

Just a bit of blue sky... 

 

The Ultimate cart and Uno cart's are open source, do you have room to incorporate one into your board then just expose a microSD and an on/off switch? no need for the full cart interface that way.

 

 

[+selgus]

2 hours ago, Mathy said:

If you're adding a cartridge port, you might consider adding the ECI too.

 

BTW aren't those two tabs that open the cartridge doors on the old style cartridge vulnerable, being this exposed?

The XEGS doesn't have a ECI port, and that is the basis for my portable.. plus getting really hard to add more to this PCB.. added rs-232 via the usb port and now the cartridge... I've spun too many PCBs at this point, I think I'm done

 

I was thinking I might add a bit of a guard around the cartridge port, for that very reason to protect the tabs. I have 3D printed the cartridge holder and want to do some tests to see how strong/functional it will be, before seeing if I need to do more.

[+selgus]

31 minutes ago, Mr Robot said:

Just a bit of blue sky... 

 

The Ultimate cart and Uno cart's are open source, do you have room to incorporate one into your board then just expose a microSD and an on/off switch? no need for the full cart interface that way.

I already have a MyIDE interface built into the board, so I have compactflash support.. I really don't have room to add too much to the PCB at this point and I think I wish to lock the design.

[+selgus]

The 3D printed cartridge opener worked perfectly. Smoothly opened the door and the tabs seem pretty strong in nylon..

 

Though I have been working on something, a bit of a major revision of the motherboard, that could side-step any need to protect the tabs.. but I have to re-layout the whole board (well needed to move all components out of the center of the PCB, along with grouping other components to make room, while not increasing the board size at all).

 

The problem I am trying to solve is the cartridge sits fully on top of the portable, and that is just weird to me.. you should insert a cartridge into the system.

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, selgus said:

The 3D printed cartridge opener worked perfectly. Smoothly opened the door and the tabs seem pretty strong in nylon.

Yeah the choice of nylon is what I found to be strong enough to work for a good long time without breaking in the Cart Tunnel for the 1088XEL.

 

However my design does have an advantage in that the tunnel doesn't allow a bunch of movement after insertion, and the cart is somewhat shielded by the tunnel from getting bumped.

 

[+selgus]

2 minutes ago, mytek said:

However my design does have an advantage in that the tunnel doesn't allow a bunch of movement after insertion, and the cart is somewhat shielded by the tunnel from getting bumped.

Stay tuned to see how this "experiment" goes.. might have at same advantage

[+selgus]

Still in the beginning phases of routing everything.. have the data bus and much of the i/o and other busses (besides the address bus) completed. Also, merged my audio circuitry with the audio amp (which used to be on opposite sides of the PCB). This should result in a better overall layout, plus an internal cartridge port..

 

[+selgus]

New layout complete and board re-routed to allow the embedded cartridge port inside the portable. Now need to make some of these printed circuit boards..

 

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, selgus said:

New layout complete and board re-routed to allow the embedded cartridge port inside the portable. Now need to make some of these printed circuit boards..

I see you figured out how to incorporate a cart tunnel 👍

[+selgus]

Modified the enclosure and currently printing up the new design, with a additional section between the middle and bottom case section, for the cartridge port..

 

     

[+selgus]

My first attempt at adding a cartridge port onto the portable.. redesigned the PCB to accept a top-mounted cartridge connector, with the leads soldered to pads on both sides of the board, to all the appropriate signals..

 

 

When modifying the enclosure design and finding out it wouldn't be great having the cartridge sitting on top of the whole unit, and feeling there could be a better way.. though one that required me to redesign major sections of the PCB.. here is the results of the redesign.. now to build them up..

 

[+selgus]

So, was assembling the first motherboard with the new cartridge cut-out, and populated all the components on the rear of the board, then placed the right-angled cartridge socket. I printed up the cartridge port section for the enclosure and dry tested the fit with a cartridge.. well, F.

 

     

My socket connector location math was faulty and the cartridge PCB would not make full contact when inserted. Plus, not all cartridges have the chiseled corners (i.e. some are square) so that made it even worse for that cartridge form-factor.

 

So back to the motherboard, moving the cartridge socket up to the top edge of the board, and squaring off the corners of the cut-out. You would think a simple task, but it was not. I needed to rip up all the traces around the socket, as some signals came it from the top, which there is no board copper above the socket, and those corners forced more re-layout, along with moving some components slightly.

 

Here is the results.. now to get some PCBs for my updated layout..

 

[+mytek]

That sucks

 

You might also want to make sure your tunnel fits the wider carts made in Poland (SIDE, SIDE2, SIDE3).

[+selgus]

16 hours ago, mytek said:

You might also want to make sure your tunnel fits the wider carts made in Poland (SIDE, SIDE2, SIDE3).

I used the dimensions from the XEGS cartridge port, to model the tunnel.. so if it fits into an XEGS, it should fit fine. I am playing around with the idea of the cartridge port being lower on the bottom of the enclosure.

 

I also have a custom lipo being manufactured just for this project (I'm crazy like that), so that it fits like a U around the cartridge port section.

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, selgus said:

I used the dimensions from the XEGS cartridge port, to model the tunnel.. so if it fits into an XEGS, it should fit fine.

Fits my XEGS 👍

 

So I think your good.

[+selgus]

Got my PCBs and started assembling the board. Cartridge cutout now works correctly with different types of carts, and more importantly, makes proper contact with the cartridge socket.

 

The rear of the PCB has the lipo charging circuit, along with most of the standard logic and the MyIDE interface. On the front, I am building the different power circuits first, to make sure everything works as designed and how it used to on my previous revisions.

 

        

 

While I had some downtime waiting for my PCBs, I did design a revision that utilizes a USB-C port, instead of the microUSB-B I currently have. Maybe something for the future..