1090XL remake

[reifsnyderb]

1 hour ago, mytek said:

The 1090 really would have been far better executed inside the same enclosure as the computer. This is how the Apple II and the IBM PC approached this. Basically the whole idea of having something attached via a ribbon cable which needs to be kept extremely short, is not a very practical way to go. The whole thing just takes up far too much desk space in my opinion, and seems more akin to a developers system, than a nice compact desktop computer (which is what you'll still have with the internal upgrade path).

 

Personally I'd really like to see this morph into a single enclosure and mimic the idea of the S100 back plane. This would have a spot for the computer to plug in as a card (might be best to redesign and condense the Atari motherboard for this method), A USB Mouse/Keyboard/general purpose USB I/O card, RAM card, VBXE/80 column card (preferably with HDMI output), SIO/RS232/Parallel/FujiNet card, and then have the entire thing powered off of a standard internal ATX PSU (no need for all the independent heat radiating linear regulators). And make this fit into a standard ATX case so that an inexpensive enclosure of the users choice can be utilized.

I was thinking about something like this.  An AT type board could be made that would be a combination of my latest 800XL system board and a 1090XL...all in one and all on a single board.  My hold-up has been a single question of:  How many people would be interested in building such a system?

 

I like the 1090XL because I can take my original 800XL and greatly increase it's power and capability without any modification other than the monitor port chroma fixes.  With the cards I have right now, my original 800XL can instantly become a 320k system with 80 column support and a port for the CX-85 numeric keypad.  I could easily increase it's memory to 4MB if I choose to do so.  Also, when I finally get around to it, I'll be able to upgrade the OS to my latest 6.20 and BASIC to Altirra BASIC 1.58 by just plugging in an additional card.  I don't have to tear apart my first computer to do this.   🙂

 

Edited January 23 by reifsnyderb

[rkindig]

Just now, reifsnyderb said:

I was thinking about something like this.  An AT type board could be made that would be a combination of my latest 800XL system board and a 1090XL...all in one and all on a single board.  My hold-up has been a single question of:  How many people would be interested in building such a system?

I have to say I have no interest in this.  In my mind, that's no longer an Atari computer and what's the point?  I'd rather do all those things as an extension of the real machine.  Obviously, that's just my opinion.

[reifsnyderb]

2 minutes ago, rkindig said:

I have to say I have no interest in this.  In my mind, that's no longer an Atari computer and what's the point?  I'd rather do all those things as an extension of the real machine.  Obviously, that's just my opinion.

I agree as well.  I'd rather keep my Atari as an Atari.  🙂

 

Also, please see my additional response that I must have added while you were typing.  🙂

 

[Mark2008]

46 minutes ago, Geister said:

You make a good point but the time for that would have been when Atari was designing the 1450XLD and had done that instead of the internal disk drive, speech chip and modem.  While I loved the 1450XLD at the time, looking at in the rear-view mirror, it was a train wreck.  At the time, nobody knew what a PC should look like and Atari found itself with the 600XL and the 800XL and the 1090 was supposed to support the entire XL line (excluding the 1200XL).  If Atari had decided to follow your idea we might have got the expansion chassis/computer we deserved, but they were not thinking Apple II, they were thinking multiple computers with a single expansion chassis to serve them all (So more like a TI 99/4A and expansion chassis.).

 

So what can we do now?  

Curious, how did TI get away with the longer flex cable on the PEB?  I mean I assume it works differently, but curious about it.  The guy over at Shift838 came up with replacement flex cable system, that uses twisted pair and goes 5 feet.  

[Geister]

2 minutes ago, Mark2008 said:

Curious, how did TI get away with the longer flex cable on the PEB?  I mean I assume it works differently, but curious about it.  The guy over at Shift838 came up with replacement flex cable system, that uses twisted pair and goes 5 feet.  

The TI Ribbon cable had a sheath that was shielded to some extent AFAIK.

[+mytek]

6 minutes ago, rkindig said:

9 minutes ago, reifsnyderb said:

I was thinking about something like this.  An AT type board could be made that would be a combination of my latest 800XL system board and a 1090XL...all in one and all on a single board.  My hold-up has been a single question of:  How many people would be interested in building such a system?

I have to say I have no interest in this.  In my mind, that's no longer an Atari computer and what's the point?  I'd rather do all those things as an extension of the real machine.  Obviously, that's just my opinion.

Well as we know after living on this planet for quite sometime, no two people are truly alike, and everyone has there own idea of what they like. Just to add to this line of thinking... Is a VBXE, U1MB, Sophia, or Rapidus representative of what Atari would have done? I think not, but that's just my opinion. In a nutshell what does make an Atari an Atari? My answer would be anything that runs the Atari OS and has all of the original capabilities. If it can do more than that, its still an Atari, but now simply an enhanced or custom version.

 

BITD there were several people that created PC or otherwise boxed versions of the 8-bit Atari, although it was usually done by shoe-horning stock hardware into one of these alternative enclosures. In a lot of ways it made good sense. Imagine if you will, having an Atari with a Black Box hanging out the back, with a hard drive sitting off to the side connected with a ribbon cable, and if you were lucky enough to have the floppy board for it, a couple of floppy drives also connected with ribbon cables. Then to power it all up there would usually be a PC power supply somewhere in the mix. This as you can imagine was quite the monstrosity and not very practical - but many a BBS were setup like this. So to make it tidy, all of this stuff was often times bolted into a readily available PC case.

 

If the resurrected 1090 keeps going down the inevitable path like the Black Box did, it to has the potential to become a monstrosity that becomes a bit unwieldy, crying out for a common enclosure to contain all the individual pieces in an orderly fashion.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

Why not, at some later stage, create a case for the 1091XL that is a cross over between a docking station and a monitor stand?  Once connected, you'd hardly see that they really are two separate things.  But that could be easily separated when the back part isn't needed, like with the Disco Volante in one of those James Bond movies.  And, as said, where you wouldn't immediately see that both parts can be separated, just like that same yacht.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[Geister]

4 minutes ago, mytek said:

Well as we know after living on this planet for quite sometime, no two people are truly alike, and everyone has there own idea of what they like. Just to add to this line of thinking... Is a VBXE, U1MB, Sophia, or Rapidus representative of what Atari would have done? I think not, but that's just my opinion. In a nutshell what does make an Atari an Atari? My answer would be anything that runs the Atari OS and has all of the original capabilities. If it can do more than that, its still an Atari, but now simply an enhanced or custom version.

 

BITD there were several people that created PC or otherwise boxed versions of the 8-bit Atari, although it was usually done by shoe-horning stock hardware into one of these alternative enclosures. In a lot of ways it made good sense. Imagine if you will, having an Atari with a Black Box hanging out the back, with a hard drive sitting off to the side connected with a ribbon cable, and if you were lucky enough to have the floppy board for it, a couple of floppy drives also connected with ribbon cables. Then to power it all up there would usually be a PC power supply somewhere in the mix. This as you can imagine was quite the monstrosity and not very practical - but many a BBS were setup like this. So to make it tidy, all of this stuff was often times bolted into a readily available PC case.

 

If the resurrected 1090 keeps going down the inevitable path like the Black Box did, it to has the potential to become a monstrosity that becomes a bit unwieldy, crying out for a common enclosure to contain all the individual pieces in an orderly fashion.

I don't know what a black box is because it apparently existed while I was off in Intel-land.  I, to an extent, I agree that a single enclosure would have been good.  There was a time when I had a 130XE attached to an MIO with the XE adaptor and an R-Time 8 cart on it.  I also had a 20 MB hard disk and a ribbon cable attaching it to the MIO and it was a mess.  I could have stripped a lot of that stuff from its shells and enclosed it in a XT case and it would have been a lot neater, but it wouldn't have given me an expansion path like the 1090, it would have simply hidden all the cables.  I really don't think that the 1090 is going to spread all over the way the old MIO did, and I don't think that it's going sprout a lot of external devices like the old Apples and IBMs did for a time.  Most of the cards will be self contained and if somebody insists on spinning rust drives, they can house the mess in a mini-tower case.

 

I also don't think that a 1090 needs to be 2 1050's high in this day and age.  Maybe a pizza box cage or something like the HP Elite case I plan to make my 1090 case out of.  It might need some 3d printed risers to lift the lid enough to clear a card.

[invisible kid]

I'm interested in any variation of this, without too much(any) modern "enhancements."

[+kheller2]

Any of these will do.

 

https://designsojourn.com/awesome-hand-rendered-atari-computer-concepts/

 

[kenames99]

when Curt and I started this, it was to be a reproduction of the 1090XL expansion box, nothing more and nothing less. it is an  open design and others can update it as they like but, when finished (if ever) then this will be a 1090XL expansion box as Atari was going to release (though they never did).

 

as I said though, this is an open design. Schematics and even the board layout gerbers are on github at https://github.com/kenames99 and anyone is free to do their own mods and produce that if they so choose too.

 

reifsnyderb did do a necessary update/modification to the main schematic to fully support the 130XE computers. it is completely compatible with the original design and intent. I just have not put that in the github yet. (sorry reifsnyderb).

 

Ken

 

[Geister]

I have another hobby, British sports cars.  I own a Triumph Spitfire (in sad shape) and am occasionally on the Triumph forums.  Someone once posted concepts for a remake of the Spitfire and I wouldn't have wanted a single one of them because the missed the fact that what I love about British sports cars would be "fixed" by their updates.  I like a Miata, but I still prefer the creaky tech of Triumph's swing spring rear suspension, etc.

[+mytek]

2 minutes ago, kenames99 said:

when Curt and I started this, it was to be a reproduction of the 1090XL expansion box, nothing more and nothing less. it is an  open design and others can update it as they like but, when finished (if ever) then this will be a 1090XL expansion box as Atari was going to release (though they never did).

I fully understand what the intention was behind this project, and sticking to the original concept makes perfect sense as a reproduction. There's also a project that just began recently with a similar intention to make a reproduction of the 1450XLD. Both of these projects are very fascinating and fulfill the "what if Atari had..." concept.

 

However I'm not a reproduction kinda guy, which is pretty obvious from some of the things I've made, so my ideas and suggestions are merely looking at possible variations from what Atari had in mind. But please don't take any of this as a criticism of what you guys have been doing. My mind just goes off on a tangent sometimes 🙃

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

20 minutes ago, mytek said:

But please don't take any of this as a criticism of what you guys have been doing. My mind just goes off on a tangent sometimes 🙃

 

The same goes for my comments/ideas.  Except for that last word.  My mind doesn't go off on a tangent sometimes.  It almost always does.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

 

 

Edited January 24 by Mathy

[kenames99]

hi mytek and Mathy,

  there is no problem with your ideas or comments. they are all welcome. future mods or enhancements come from new and fresh ideas. and I even have done some of mytek's projects. all cool

 

thanks for the comments.

 

Ken

 

[+kheller2]

In one of the 1200XL threads , Curt suggested building a new 1200XL style box with detached keyboard.  I like the fact we can have a 1090 or more modern 1091.  But I would be tossing money at new molded plastics that could house newer designs.  

[Mark2008]

On 1/23/2024 at 5:10 PM, Geister said:

The TI Ribbon cable had a sheath that was shielded to some extent AFAIK.

 

Even though I don't own a 1091 or 1090, I've become somewhat fascinated with building cables, after I saw a YouTube video on building a cable for a Magnavox RGB 80, and I followed the tutorial and it mostly worked except the picture was  noisy - which is mostly a failure I guess, since I will never use it, I hate noise in a picture.   But, it was kind of neat to see the display come up.  I digress.

 

I did some googling on the TI cable,  I think TI just had a flat ribbon cable that was shielded and placed in rubber, although they had some buffering on one end of the cable.

So I'm not sure only a cable is the answer.  But I'm wondering at what length a cable stops working, if someone went with high quality twisted pair, would it make it a longer distance.  

 

Here is what I find from googling others have done

 

1)  https://www.cablesforless.com/custom-dual-50-pin-shielded-ribbon-cable-5/

 

2) The TI-99/4A twisted pair replacement cable flex cable done originally by Shift838, he doesn't make them anymore, but he used this :

 

https://iec.net/product/28-gauge-25-pair-double-shield-scsi-cable/

 

So I've ordered all the parts for a 5 ft cable from digikey, which is 25-pair shielded 28AWG cabling, and also female edge connectors and I already have the rest of the parts such as heat shrink and whatnot. 

 

So, anyway, since I neither own an Atari 800XL or a 1090 expansion box, this is a bit ambitious,     There is a lot of discussion in the TI forums about what is required to replace their cable...not clear from that discussion, but at least it gives me hope.  

Edited January 28 by Mark2008

[+Larry]

Will Atariwriter 80 run on your 80-col board, or will it need patching?

[+kheller2]

1 minute ago, Larry said:

Will Atariwriter 80 run on your 80-col board, or will it need patching?

That is only for the XEP80.  However, this is a good question if the XEP 80 driver isn’t loaded.  AW+ might be easier.  

[Geister]

6 minutes ago, Larry said:

Will Atariwriter 80 run on your 80-col board, or will it need patching?

I don't know as I haven't downloaded a copy of AtariWriter  80 yet.  My understanding is that if the software only uses the E: driver it will work, so if it specifically uses features of the XEP80 driver it may not work.  

I don't have a device that I can load software onto that works in 80 column mode.  The MyIDE II plays with the screen mode and disables the built in driver of the 80 column card.  

 

I might be able to use it in some dual monitor configuration and once AtariWriter 80 is launched it may work on a second monitor.  If the 80 column card worked like the XEP 80 II and it auto switched modes, it might work with the version of AtariWriter 80 that Mytek built for that card.  As it stands, you'd have to have a monitor attached to the composite cable for non 80 column and a monitor for the HDMI cable attached to the 80 column card.  I don't have the room at this time to set up dual monitors but I intend to test this out when I can.

[Geister]

I don't think the MyIDE II disables the 80 column driver, I think it just bypasses it.

[+Larry]

There is also a patched version  of Plus for Omniview that might be easier to work with the new board.

[atari-passion]

Hello everyone,

 

Will there be a website to offer all these new cards for sale ?

[reifsnyderb]

2 hours ago, Larry said:

Will Atariwriter 80 run on your 80-col board, or will it need patching?

If Atariwriter 80 will run with the Raspberry Pi XEP-80, it will need patched to run with my card.

[+Larry]

I'm curious about the CX85, since it plugs into a joystick port, and requires a small driver IIRC.  l don't know about the current situation, but maybe twenty years ago, sellers were almost giving these away -- like for $5.  We did use one of these at work for several years to enter dimensional data.  Worked very well.