reifsnyderb Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 Just now, Larry said: 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. I converted the driver to run off of the card ROM. As long as the software uses the Atari OS for input, the handler seems to work. I have the entire handler as an example in my parallel port guide. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 3 hours ago, atari-passion said: Hello everyone, Will there be a website to offer all these new cards for sale ? I'll start populating my Tindie site today. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 8 hours ago, reifsnyderb said: I'll start populating my Tindie site today. Ok, I just found out I need better pictures. So, I'll take the pictures tomorrow and get what I have available up for sale. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 Starting to release 1090XL related items on Tindie. May be a little while as Tindie admin needs to approve them. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 @reifsnyderb Do you have plans to make any other cards for this? Or at least some ideas that others could make? And do you have some plan/strategy that would allow a larger number of the 1090s and cards to be made would not take all/most of your time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkindig Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 1 hour ago, reifsnyderb said: Starting to release 1090XL related items on Tindie. May be a little while as Tindie admin needs to approve them. I got mine ordered!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 2 minutes ago, Allan said: @reifsnyderb Do you have plans to make any other cards for this? Or at least some ideas that others could make? And do you have some plan/strategy that would allow a larger number of the 1090s and cards to be made would not take all/most of your time? I can get the prototyping board made. I think the firmware board is about ready to be used to upgrade the OS and BASIC. (There is a caveat that software that messes with PORTB will crash such an upgrade.) A FujiNet board is in development. Also, I have a RAM Disk board, with non-volatile RAM, that needs debugged. Oh, there is also a COVOX board that is possible and for which development has been started. Others could make any sort of interface board they would like and I've released a document that, while not being a step-by-step "how-to", contains everything I've been able to compile on the parallel bus in one place. I've also put notes and corrected information in the document. It is posted earlier in this thread. Some ideas: Printer interface with built-in printer buffer, A RTC and configuration board (sort of like a BIOS configuration that could be used by other PBI cards, improved sound card, VBXE type video card, a board to add more features to the OS (the firmware board could be used for this), a hard drive interface, an SD card board, and the list goes on. I recently put a thread out asking about making a prototype board that already has most interface logic already part of the board...the response was rather light. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 8 minutes ago, reifsnyderb said: I can get the prototyping board made. I think the firmware board is about ready to be used to upgrade the OS and BASIC. (There is a caveat that software that messes with PORTB will crash such an upgrade.) A FujiNet board is in development. Also, I have a RAM Disk board, with non-volatile RAM, that needs debugged. Oh, there is also a COVOX board that is possible and for which development has been started. Others could make any sort of interface board they would like and I've released a document that, while not being a step-by-step "how-to", contains everything I've been able to compile on the parallel bus in one place. I've also put notes and corrected information in the document. It is posted earlier in this thread. Some ideas: Printer interface with built-in printer buffer, A RTC and configuration board (sort of like a BIOS configuration that could be used by other PBI cards, improved sound card, VBXE type video card, a board to add more features to the OS (the firmware board could be used for this), a hard drive interface, an SD card board, and the list goes on. I recently put a thread out asking about making a prototype board that already has most interface logic already part of the board...the response was rather light. Thanks, @reifsnyderb for your comments. There is a parallel device called the IDE Plus 2.0 (for using IDE hard drives) that can work on XE as well as XLs. The XL interface on it is obviously female and is on a 90 degree angle but the XE interface is just an extension of the board on one of the four sides. Do you think that a board like Simius made (attached picture) but with a female XE end allow them to work with the 1090s? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 8 minutes ago, Allan said: Thanks, @reifsnyderb for your comments. There is a parallel device called the IDE Plus 2.0 (for using IDE hard drives) that can work on XE as well as XLs. The XL interface on it is obviously female and is on a 90 degree angle but the XE interface is just an extension of the board on one of the four sides. Do you think that a board like Simius made (attached picture) but with a female XE end allow them to work with the 1090s? Hello! I've already done this and included a cartridge slot. 🙂 I'll have to release it soon! The 130XE does have an issue with adding memory cards to a 1090XL, however. Atari didn't include an important signal line to the ECI. However, it's possible to add this line by soldering a wire internally. As an option, I've developed a card that will plug into the 1090XL to re-create this signal line as well. (Adding the extra wire, inside the XE, is the cheaper option of course.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 Hello Brian How hard would it be to emulate ATARI's AMY sound chip? Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 Hello Brian A "Turbo Freezer" card? That can even manipulate the other cards inside the 1090XL/1091XL? Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 6 minutes ago, Mathy said: Hello Brian How hard would it be to emulate ATARI's AMY sound chip? Sincerely Mathy Hello, It would be quite a project. According to the documents I have, Amy would be a 40 pin chip with around 37k transistors. It would have to be done with an FPGA. I suspect enough documentation is available to emulate such a chip, however, it would be a full-time-job for many months to make it happen. Then you'd need the software to run it. Best Regards, Brian 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 7 minutes ago, Mathy said: Hello Brian A "Turbo Freezer" card? That can even manipulate the other cards inside the 1090XL/1091XL? Sincerely Mathy Hello, That would be another lengthy project. How did the red button stop the CPU? Did it hold Ready low or something else? Best Regards, Brian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 (edited) I just finished this and am shipping it out to a customer tomorrow... 1090XL Modern Remake R10 with 320k of RAM, CX-85 Numeric Keypad Card, and 80 Column Raspberry Pi Pico Card. This is all hand soldered, assembled, and tested. More testing will be done tonight. 🙂 The 320k card provides 64k of main memory, 256k of RAM, and 512 bytes of PBI RAM. The CX-85 Numeric Keypad card interfaces to the CX-85 Numeric Keypad and works via Atari's OS. Any software that uses Atari's OS for input will work fine with this card. The 80 Column Raspberry Pi Pico Card provides an 80 column display and also works via Atari's OS. This 1090XL is a modernized version that includes support for the Atari 130XE (with an adapter and expansion card or internal jumper) and better memory management than the original. This 1090XL has the +12v and -12v supplies installed and is 100% compatible with all known Atari 1090XL cards. Edited February 8 by reifsnyderb 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 Sweet. That looks amazing. Question on the CX-85 card. So the advantage to the card is that you don't have to load a driver from disk? Does that mean you can, for example, use the CX85 to enter numbers in BASIC, LOGO, PILOT, without loading the CX8139 disk? http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-atari-cx85-numerical-keypad-handler-diskette-_30033.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 1 hour ago, Allan said: Sweet. That looks amazing. Question on the CX-85 card. So the advantage to the card is that you don't have to load a driver from disk? Does that mean you can, for example, use the CX85 to enter numbers in BASIC, LOGO, PILOT, without loading the CX8139 disk? http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-atari-cx85-numerical-keypad-handler-diskette-_30033.html There's two advantages. You don't have to load drivers, as the drivers are on the ROM, nor do you have to use a joystick port. I can confirm that it works fine in BASIC. I don't have LOGO or PILOT to test. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 Just now, reifsnyderb said: There's two advantages. You don't have to load drivers, as the drivers are on the ROM, nor do you have to use a joystick port. I can confirm that it works fine in BASIC. I don't have LOGO or PILOT to test. Wow. Cool. Thanks for the answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark2008 Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 @reifsnyderb on the 320k ram card, creating a Ramdisk under SpartaDos X. Does this take anything special? Driver or patch? Google took me to a thread about Ramdisk spartados x and an os patch, but I wasn't sure if that was the latest or related to this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 7 minutes ago, Mark2008 said: @reifsnyderb on the 320k ram card, creating a Ramdisk under SpartaDos X. Does this take anything special? Driver or patch? Google took me to a thread about Ramdisk spartados x and an os patch, but I wasn't sure if that was the latest or related to this. No special driver or anything is required. The board responds to PORTB bits 2 through 6 and sets the banks accordingly as per RAMBO banking specifications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark2008 Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 6 minutes ago, reifsnyderb said: No special driver or anything is required. The board responds to PORTB bits 2 through 6 and sets the banks accordingly as per RAMBO banking specifications. Perfect. I forgot that I used to have d1: hooked up just so my setup would read a config.sys from d1: instead of the car device. I don't have a u1mb. anyway working now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pancio Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 Hi, I prepared KiCAD's footprint and symbol for empty 1090 breadboard - if someone need to work with own prototype based on blank PCB. BR, 1090_expander_sym_mod_kicad.zip 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 (edited) Further exploration of the legacy 64k RAM card for the 1090XL: The new versions of KiCAD allow for the importation of pictures that can be placed "under" the PCB while you are working on it. So, I decided to give it a try. The existing pictures of the legacy 64k card are not the best. Even so, I was curious as to how close the 64k RAM board remake could be modified to look like the pictures. While the fonts aren't identical, this is what I've come up with. The pictures are slightly skewed, so the tracks may be slightly off. While I have not found an example, I estimate that the worst case is an inaccuracy of 2mm. Most of the measured inaccuracies are well under 1mm. (I came to this conclusion by comparing how well the vias, on both pictures, line up.) The exact position of traces under the chips had to be "guestimated" as there was no way to tell. Here's the pictures I had to work with: Here's what I was able to come up with: Only after I re-laid out the board did I start looking carefully at the schematic and comparing it to the instruction manual. The instruction manual states that a 600XL could be used with 3 of these cards. One card would function in 1064 Mode and the other two cards would function in Bank Switched Mode. The problem is that the schematic doesn't appear to support this. If a card is configured as a 1064 card it's logic appears to be completely unable to handle the condition of the bank switched cards. This would result in bus contention. @kenames99 and I are investigating this issue. Oddly enough, Atari's picture of the 1090XL, and four cards, appear to show two 64k RAM cards that have different chips on them. This leaves me wondering if there was really a newer version of the 64k RAM card that would function as per the manual. If we can confirm that the current legacy card doesn't work as per the manual, I am thinking that if two chips were to be changed out with a single PLD that the cards could be enhanced so as to function as per the manual. However, this would result in the 64k RAM card no longer being a re-make as per the original pictures. Even so, being able to use a 1090XL to upgrade a 600XL to 64k or add 128k to an 800XL in 1984 would have been cool. Also shown in the 1090XL picture are two Z-80 cards. Sadly enough, those cards don't match the existing schematics. Edited February 27 by reifsnyderb 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 also take note of the connector differences on the top cable bus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geister Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 Where are the existing schematics for the Z-80 cards? Also, could the connectors at the top of the Z-80 cards and the memory cards be used to provide local ram for the Z-80? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reifsnyderb Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 54 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said: also take note of the connector differences on the top cable bus. The connectors are a little different but the pinouts are the same....at least according to the schematics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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