Authentic Reproduction ATR8000 Interest?

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, StartedWith400 said:

Is there a freely available KiCAD symbol for this dual connector?

I don't use KiCAD, so unfortunately I am unable to help you in this regard. Although here are DXF's that you might be able to import.

 

Dual_SIO-DA15_PCB_sym_mm.dxf

Dual_SIO-DA15_PCB_sym_inch.dxf

 

Good luck

 

[Dropcheck]

4 hours ago, StartedWith400 said:

Is there a freely available KiCAD symbol for this dual connector?

I could do a Eagle symbol and footprint export of the standard SIO connector from Diptrace .  Not sure if Kicad has the ability to import Eagle parts though.

[StartedWith400]

On 5/4/2022 at 1:46 PM, mytek said:

I don't use KiCAD, so unfortunately I am unable to help you in this regard. Although here are DXF's that you might be able to import.

 

Dual_SIO-DA15_PCB_sym_mm.dxf 133.28 kB · 6 downloads

Dual_SIO-DA15_PCB_sym_inch.dxf 132.17 kB · 6 downloads

 

Good luck

 

Thank you, Quadrunner.

 

Based on the mm dxf file, I created a KiCAD symbol and footprint.

 

Note that I haven't created a board with it (so beware that it may not be accurate), but it looks like it should work.

AtariSIO_dual.zip

[+mytek]

18 minutes ago, StartedWith400 said:

Thank you, Quadrunner.

It's actually mytek. The name you see below the avatar image is based on how many posts the person has made. You aren't the first one to confuse one for the other, and you certainly won't be the last

 

20 minutes ago, StartedWith400 said:

Based on the mm dxf file, I created a KiCAD symbol and footprint.

Nice ?

 

[+Allan]

55 minutes ago, mytek said:

It's actually mytek. The name you see below the avatar image is based on how many posts the person has made. You aren't the first one to confuse one for the other, and you certainly won't be the last

 

Nice ?

 

This always cracks me up when new people do this. Maybe someday Albert might consider getting rid of it (if he can.) It just causes confusion and doesn't really add to the forum (IMO.)

[+mytek]

2 hours ago, Allan said:

Maybe someday Albert might consider getting rid of it (if he can.)

Agreed (fellow Quadrunner ).

 

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

2 hours ago, Allan said:

Maybe someday Albert might consider getting rid of it (if he can.) It just causes confusion and doesn't really add to the forum (IMO.)

 

37 minutes ago, mytek said:

Agreed (fellow Quadrunner ).

 

 

Or he could put something in front of it, like "Title:" or "Rank:".

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, mytek said:

Agreed (fellow Quadrunner ).

 

Just noticed, I am also in the Quadrunner gang!  Must be a cool club

[_The Doctor__]

It's a test, I never heard or saw people having level title difficulties before... maybe we should do away with all things that require engagement of grey matter... no more tests, labels, critical thinking of any kind. Only happy thoughts, and no typing, the chip in the brain can do the thinking and typing for us!

[joeventura]

On 5/2/2022 at 12:34 PM, cwilbar said:

I have a Z-tec 1000, and I know of at least one other forum member that has one as well.  I've tried two times over the years to make this work, but the one thing I have NOT been able to figure out/find is how to format (low level) the hard drive.  I would think this would be a program within CP/M.  And there are 2 or 3 low level formatting programs on a CP/M disk that I have (that I did get from the same person as the ATR8000 so many years ago).... but none of them seem to recognize the controller.  I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if the Z-tec is bad, etc.  I tried it with my Xebec bridge controller, I tried it with an ACB4000A bridge controller.

 

My next step was to look into using Linux or possibly a Sun workstation to do a low level format (I know that Sun supported ACB4000A in SunOS 4.X for sure).... just don't know if you can make it do 256 byte sectors.  The other idea is using Linux.  I also wanted to try some early SCSI drives which are supposed to be 'compatible' with SASI.  I think you have to do some SCSI commands (hopefully only once) to put this drive in that mode.  Then format it to 256 byte sectors.  I have some early CDC/Imprimis/Seagate (depending on when they were purchased) drives that support this.  Plus I was going to try some older smaller Maxtor, Quantum, and Seagate drives.

 

I haven't gotten back to this though.

 

I haven't found much of any documentation on the Z-tec.  One document someone sent me, and one document I have.  The former appears to have been preparred by someone from a user group, and I don't know who created the other one.  Neither talk about low level formatting the drive.  I have yet to find anyone who knows enough or has docs to cover this part of the magic 'sauce'.

 

 

 

I'm the other forum member who has one btw

[StartedWith400]

On 5/17/2022 at 4:34 PM, mytek said:

It's actually mytek. The name you see below the avatar image is based on how many posts the person has made. You aren't the first one to confuse one for the other, and you certainly won't be the last

 

Nice ?

 

Sorry about that - I was so tired I just didn't pay attention to my cut/paste line.

On 5/17/2022 at 8:19 PM, Mathy said:

Hello guys

 

 

 

Or he could put something in front of it, like "Title:" or "Rank:".

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

This would certainly help.

[StartedWith400]

I just got back my interposer boards for adapting AM27S19JC PLCC to DIP 16. Now I can make many (~40) data separator ROMs of U46.

 

Now on to building the programmer. The AM27S19JC requires a different programmer than the 74S188.

• AM27S19JC uses Platinum-Silicide fuses, they are produced with a fusible link at each memory location storing a logic LOW, links are opened one at a time by passing current through them from a 20 volt supply. One AMD datasheet I have shows programming voltage of 21V at 200ma. Another AMD datasheet shows 21V at 250ma.
• 74S288 uses titanium-tungsten fuses, all PROMS are supplied with a low-logic level output condition stored at each bit location. TI PROMs require a programming voltage of 9.5V at 750 mA current.
• 82S123 uses nickel/chromium (nichrome) alloy fuses. Devices are supplied with all outputs at logical Low. The programming mode is evoked by raising the Vcc pin to +8.76 +/- .25V. Programming is performed one bit at a time, the word address is set up on the address inputs and the fuse to be programmed is selected by raising the output to + 17V +/- 1 V.

There seem to be multiple variants/equivalents of this part: AM27S19, AM27S19A, AM27SA19, AM27LS19, DM74S288, N82S123N, TBP18S030 (these are tri-state parts. Open collector variants are: Am27S18, DM74S188, N82S23, TBP18SA030). 25ns access time. Some require 20v to program, not 21V.

 

Note that in 1976, the part DM7488 was a mask ROM programmed at the factory with customer supplied data - "a sequenced deck of 32 standard 80·column data cards providing the information requested under data card format" - punch cards!!

 

What a mess of confusion. I hope I don't damage too many trying to program.

[+bf2k+]

Didn't SpartaDOS 3 have a low-level formatter?  I know I had to run two format programs on my original setup with the MIO -> Adaptec 4000a hooked to a Seagate ST-251.

 

The first one formatted and identified all the bad sectors on the drive.

 

The second one formatted the directory structure.

 

Maybe this is different from the previous LL Format request...

[_The Doctor__]

Correct, however there is one level lower and that is from the drive manufacturer. We used to have those tools about but over the years who knows where such things have disappeared to, The danger with such tools were to trash the geometry/zero sectors and configuration data on the drives. The reward however was sometimes being able to rescue trashed drives or get the drive to lay down a whole new area of the drive that didn't hit weak/dying/dead sectors that the drive may have encounters or drifted into.

[BillC]

The software for the ICD MIO contains software for formatting drives used with it, I used it to format a Seagate ST251 MFM drive connected to a MIO/Adaptec 4000 bridge controller BITD. This probably isn't much help with drives for the ATR8000, I don't know since I've never had one.

 

The MIO ATR available on the 2021-12-23 preservation release has 3 versions of the formatting software(HDFMTPH(#) for different SCSI drives/controllers), one to create the directory structure(HDFMTDIR), and one to park the head when used with the Adaptec bridge controller.

Edited May 25, 2022 by BillC

[cwilbar]

The docs I've seen (which don't indicate how to low level format the drive to 256 byte sectors), all refer to MyDOS at the high level. 

 

I don't know how many z-tec's were sold, and I am surprised more info hasn't popped up on the internet in the number of years I've been locking.

 

 

[dragos]

Did this project die ?

[somejoe]

On 4/30/2022 at 3:50 AM, StartedWith400 said:

I created a mini ATR-8000 a couple of years ago. One problem I ran into was that the floppy disk controller chips are sometimes fakes. For a while there weren't many FD1797 available. I just looked and there are some in the US on eBay, but many seem to have the same labeling - a typical warning flag that it's a fake.

 

Also, the data separator needs a small ROM that used an old style chip (74S288 - 32x8). They require special programming voltages and timing. There are equivalent components but they all seem to need special programming. My various ROM programmers did not support them. So, that means I need to build another circuit just to program those ROMs.

 

I considered alternative FD controllers, but then I found out that the CP/M code would require changes to support an alternative FD controller.

 

Anyway, I have enough parts to make about 10, assuming all the FD controllers work.

 

Excellent work. Would you mind sharing the newly redrawn KiCAD schematic?

[somejoe]

On 4/30/2022 at 12:45 PM, StartedWith400 said:

It's an (almost) exact duplicate of the original circuit, just in miniature. Probably with all it's quirks too. It's essentially what the O.P. talked about doing.

 

I placed the components in the same relative locations as the original. The RAM chips, Z80, Z80-CTC, FD1797, and 74S288 are the original size parts. The rest are surface mount ICs. Since I couldn't make SIO jacks (and buying them is too expensive), I opted to use right angle DB-15 connectors. Then I will make cables that are SIO plug (that I 3D print) to DB-15. The picture shows the wires just direct soldered for testing. Also I chose to use DB-25 for the printer parallel port and serial port so that common, industry standard cables can be used. I also put a header for the floppy connection so that a industry standard floppy ribbon cable can be used. I also kept the card edge for compatibility with anyone who has older floppy cables and hardware.

 

The power supply is just an off-the-shelf AC to dual output DC (+/-12v and +5v). After I get it working, I could replace the true RS-232 with a TTL level port that could be used with modern FTDI USB to serial cables and then the -12V is not needed (unless you want to use 16K of RAM).

 

This has 64K of RAM on board. 16K x 1 chips are actually harder to find at a good price today than the 64K x 1 chips.

 

It should support all the functions of the original ATR8000 !

 

I would use a standard IBM PC style power supply, that way it can also power the disk drives.

[scitari]

Please! I would love to see this come to fruition and would definitely buy one

[kenp]

11 hours ago, somejoe said:

I would use a standard IBM PC style power supply, that way it can also power the disk drives.

Dang.  Thinking about this, and I realize the goal is to make an exact ATR8000 replacement ( i actually have one ), I cannot help but think that an ATR8000 might make a heck of a reverse sleeper in a regular ATX case.  Well, not a new ATX case since they haven't any slots for the floppy drives but in a vintage case that there are still plenty of available.

 

But then that beggars the idea of just building an 8 bit Atari and the ATR8000 all on a single ATX sized motherboard with a few expansion slots and putting the whole thing in an old LAN party case.   But, well. that would be just getting silly.

Edited April 28 by kenp

[StartedWith400]

Big news! I finally was able to devote some time to this Mini ATR-8000 project and I am seeing signs of life. After finding/fixing a couple of mistakes I made on the PCB, I am now able to communicate with the Mini ATR-8000.

 

I intentionally left off the parts for the WD179X until I was able to get to this point. So, this means clocks are working, dynamic RAM is working, CTC is working, and Z80 is working. Thanks to warerat I am also able to compile the assembler code for the ATR-8000 ROM at U17. That means I could replace the M command with the D command and see what is does differently.

 

Next I have to finish my 82S123 programmer. For the programmer I have the PCBs and I have some working code (PIC18 driving chips that operate MOSFETs that will hopefully properly program the chips). I also have quite a few AM27S19 ICs (an equivalent) that I can use to test the programmer.

 

After that I can finish populating the ICs for the FDC and start testing disk drive functionality. I haven't connected it to an Atari yet, but there should be no issues with that.

 

As I mentioned before, my goal is to get the SASI hard drive working on this thing. _The Doctor_ has some real world experience with this setup and user cwilbar has mentioned access to a Z-tec 1000 so I would like to pursue the path of getting a hard disk working. I have been building SD based SCSI drives recently and I have a lot of SCSI gear (bins full of 5.25" drives, ACB-4000A's, JVC 3.5 inch drives with SCSI controllers, Macs with SCSI drives, cables, terminators, etc., etc. - I've collected WAY too much of this stuff over the years).

 

So, stay tuned to the hopefully swift progress.

 

Back to work....

 

[StartedWith400]

P.S. Based on the document Installing and Using a Hard Disk with the ATR-8000 Hardware Installation, does anyone out there have the files HARDDISK.SYS and SET.BAS? Also there should be files with your initials and the .SET extension (e.g. PC2.SET). These files should be on the "boot disk you received with your Hard Disk Interface".  I'll need these to achieve my goal. Thanks!

[aeberbach]

Amazing - I am interested!

[joeventura]

If you need funding assistance for a production run let me know