FujiNet on the 1090XL Expansion System?

[reifsnyderb]

Ok.  I meant PLDs.  I guess I get the acronyms screwed up every now and then.  Going forward, I'll just use the chip names as that's what I remember them as.

 

I had a set of boards made, for a 1090 FujiNet, then realized I screwed up the level shifting as I was thinking I could do it directly via the ATF22V10s.  However, the datasheet isn't very clear about what happens electrically when an ATF22V10 is used to "emulate" an open-collector situation.  (To contrast, the datasheet for the ATF16V8 is clear that an ATF16V8 has high resistance hold-up resistors.)  So, I didn't get another set of boards made yet.  I think it may be safer to put open collector buffers in place just like the normal Fujinet design....which will require yet another board re-design. 

 

If there is enough interest, I'll prioritize this. 

 

Edited January 22 by reifsnyderb

[reifsnyderb]

1 hour ago, Geister said:

I used to program Allen-Bradley PLCs, so that throws me as well.  I used to do Lab and Plant Automation. Good times!

 

And yes, the 1090 Expansion system is quite amazing.  I could see one of your XEP 80 II boards providing a pass through 80 column video card for the 1090.  Run the composite video into the XEP 80 II and have HDMI video to a cheap LCD TV/monitor and be able to switch between 40 and 80 column mode without having to swap cables or use a joystick port.  Yeah I've already got the RP2040 based 80 column card (not really an XEP clone), but the more the merrier!

 

Man, I've really got to squeeze these videos.

 

 

Video is looking good!

 

Just to clear up a couple inaccuracies as I don't feel I deserve all the credit here.  (Maybe I should mention this more and am at fault here.)  @kenames99 deserves credit for the majority of the 1090XL board itself and re-creating the original 1090 80 column card.  I expanded upon his 1090XL board re-creation to improve it's compatibility with a 130XE and improve the memory handling while maintaining full compatibility with existing, known, board schematics.  Also, the Raspberry Pi Pico based 80 column 1090 card is really my conversion of the Raspberry Pi Pico XEP-80 project to a 1090 card.  I had to create the 1090 card and modify the XEP-80 handler to work with the Raspberry Pi Pico configured to emulate an XEP-80.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 22 by reifsnyderb

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, reifsnyderb said:

I had a set of boards made, for a 1090 FujiNet, then realized I screwed up the level shifting as I was thinking I could do it directly via the ATF22V10s.  However, the datasheet isn't very clear about what happens electrically when an ATF22V10 is used to "emulate" an open-collector situation.  (To contrast, the datasheet for the ATF16V8 is clear that an ATF16V8 has high resistance hold-up resistors.)

Good thing to know, since pretty soon I'll be doing some more PLD design in one of my projects

 

2 minutes ago, reifsnyderb said:

Just to clear up a couple inaccuracies as I don't feel I deserve all the credit here.  (Maybe I should mention this more and am at fault here.)  @kenames99 deserves credit for the majority of the 1090XL board itself and re-creating the original 1090 80 column card.  I expanded upon his 1090XL board re-creation to improve it's compatibility with a 130XE and improve the memory handling while maintaining full compatibility with existing, known, board schematics.  Also, the Raspberry Pi Pico based 80 column 1090 card is really my conversion of the Raspberry Pi Pico XEP-80 project to a 1090 card.  I had to create the 1090 card and modify the XEP-80 handler to work with the Raspberry Pi Pico configured to emulate an XEP-80.

It's good to give credit to these originators, and they certainly do deserve it. But you like myself recycle and improve upon these ideas, so you too deserve credit for that. Many times innovation is born upon the works of others, piggybacking on their creativity, while adding a new twist along the way. And of course we should give thanks and acknowledgement to Atari for the original PBI concept.

[Geister]

HI Brian,

 

I've exchanged a post or 2 with Ken, and I've seen his contributions along with Curt and DropChek in the original 1090 thread.  Sometimes it takes a village...

 

I'm just delighted that it's finally here.

[jeffpiep]

@reifsnyderb I think we have common interests. (@tschak909 suggested I reach out.) I want to get a parallel bus FujiNet going (my thought is cartridge because of broad usability). I've had my head down the last couple years developing the Apple ][ and Mac-68k FujiNets, but am having serious Atari withdrawls. For Mac-68k, I ended up putting a Pico between the ESP32 and the MCI/DCD port because of critical timing requirements. I've learned enough of the Pico hardware, including PIO and DMA, that I'm ready to tackle a parallel bus. My initial thoughts are to use @mozzwald's A8 PicoCart variant as a development hardware prototype interfacing it over USB to an ESP32-S3. 

 

Have you thoughts about where to go with the firmware?

 

In one way, I can see doing what you did with the Pico XEP 80 and writing a Pico adaptor between the Atari parallel bus and the ESP serial port (although it'd be a tinyUSB CDC device because the cartridge port uses up almost all the pins on the Pico - not sure if it's possible to access a UART.) Another place to start is simply adapting the PicoCart firmware to communicate with the ESP (the Fuji device) to enable CONFIG and loading cart ROMs over TNFS. But that isn't necessarily a straight path to leveraging the existing FujiNet firmware and the more powerful N: device features. 

 

Anyway, I'm completely open to other ideas on where initially to head. 

Edited January 29 by jeffpiep

[reifsnyderb]

1 hour ago, jeffpiep said:

@reifsnyderb I think we have common interests. (@tschak909 suggested I reach out.) I want to get a parallel bus FujiNet going (my thought is cartridge because of broad usability). I've had my head down the last couple years developing the Apple ][ and Mac-68k FujiNets, but am having serious Atari withdrawls. For Mac-68k, I ended up putting a Pico between the ESP32 and the MCI/DCD port because of critical timing requirements. I've learned enough of the Pico hardware, including PIO and DMA, that I'm ready to tackle a parallel bus. My initial thoughts are to use @mozzwald's A8 PicoCart variant as a development hardware prototype interfacing it over USB to an ESP32-S3. 

 

Have you thoughts about where to go with the firmware?

 

In one way, I can see doing what you did with the Pico XEP 80 and writing a Pico adaptor between the Atari parallel bus and the ESP serial port (although it'd be a tinyUSB CDC device because the cartridge port uses up almost all the pins on the Pico - not sure if it's possible to access a UART.) Another place to start is simply adapting the PicoCart firmware to communicate with the ESP (the Fuji device) to enable CONFIG and loading cart ROMs over TNFS. But that isn't necessarily a straight path to leveraging the existing FujiNet firmware and the more powerful N: device features. 

 

Anyway, I'm completely open to other ideas on where initially to head. 

PM Sent.

[+David_P]

The Cart port is probably less than optimal.  There is no interrupt line; the PBI does have one.  That's a significant limitation that creates a lot of polling overhead.

[reifsnyderb]

1 hour ago, David_P said:

The Cart port is probably less than optimal.  There is no interrupt line; the PBI does have one.  That's a significant limitation that creates a lot of polling overhead.

Good point.  My card design will allow the ESP-32 to set an IRQ on the Atari.

[jeffpiep]

9 hours ago, reifsnyderb said:

Good point.  My card design will allow the ESP-32 to set an IRQ on the Atari.

@David_P and @reifsnyderb - you're right about the IRQ. I suspect having the IRQ will make it easier to port over the SIO FujiNet libraries to PBI. @tschak909 made good use of the IRQ on the SIO interface. And the Apple ][ lack of IRQ resulted in lots of polling. OK, will think about PBI. 

[rkindig]

So, bought a 1090xL with 320K RAM board and can’t figure out how to use the extra memory 

 

if I use DOS 2.5 with Ramdisk.com it says “setting up 130XE Ramdisk” but there’s no accessible RAMDISK

 

anyone know the best way to take advantage of this?  Thanks in advance 

[_The Doctor__]

Drive D8: appears non existent?

[reifsnyderb]

 

 

29 minutes ago, rkindig said:

So, bought a 1090xL with 320K RAM board and can’t figure out how to use the extra memory 

 

if I use DOS 2.5 with Ramdisk.com it says “setting up 130XE Ramdisk” but there’s no accessible RAMDISK

 

anyone know the best way to take advantage of this?  Thanks in advance 

 

Hello!

 

SimCheck will quickly verify the memory.  Also, I usually test the memory by running Prince Of Persia as it requires 128k.

 

SimCheck is here:  https://forums.atariage.com/topic/333084-swutils-simcheck-simtest-osdump/#comment-5028425

 

With Does 2.5, you should have a D8: setup.

 

Best Regards,

 

Brian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rkindig]

16 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Drive D8: appears non existent?

D8: does indeed exist.  Thanks.

[rkindig]

15 hours ago, reifsnyderb said:

 

 

 

Hello!

 

SimCheck will quickly verify the memory.  Also, I usually test the memory by running Prince Of Persia as it requires 128k.

 

SimCheck is here:  https://forums.atariage.com/topic/333084-swutils-simcheck-simtest-osdump/#comment-5028425

 

With Does 2.5, you should have a D8: setup.

 

Best Regards,

 

Brian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi, SimCheck does indeed show 256K of RAMBO-compatible extended RAM.

 

FYI, I showed your 1090XL and the 320K RAM card at VCF SoCal this past weekend (Feb. 17-18).  There was a lot of interest in the board!

 

thanks!

 

Edited February 19 by rkindig

[Overange]

On 1/29/2024 at 3:34 AM, jeffpiep said:

@reifsnyderb I think we have common interests. (@tschak909 suggested I reach out.) I want to get a parallel bus FujiNet going (my thought is cartridge because of broad usability). I've had my head down the last couple years developing the Apple ][ and Mac-68k FujiNets, but am having serious Atari withdrawls. For Mac-68k, I ended up putting a Pico between the ESP32 and the MCI/DCD port because of critical timing requirements. I've learned enough of the Pico hardware, including PIO and DMA, that I'm ready to tackle a parallel bus. My initial thoughts are to use @mozzwald's A8 PicoCart variant as a development hardware prototype interfacing it over USB to an ESP32-S3. 

 

A PBI based FUJINET in the same style as @reifsnyderb 1065 plug in module would be really sweet  

[reifsnyderb]

4 minutes ago, Overange said:

A PBI based FUJINET in the same style as @reifsnyderb 1065 plug in module would be really sweet  

Assuming I can get it working, there will be a 1090XL FujiNet first.   🙂

 

[Overange]

14 minutes ago, reifsnyderb said:

Assuming I can get it working, there will be a 1090XL FujiNet first.   🙂

 

Make it classic retro looking with a hint of 1030 modem styling with some 5mm red LEDs  

 

Assuming it works, and as I have not scrolled back through the posts, technically it should download far quicker than SIO??

[reifsnyderb]

3 minutes ago, Overange said:

Make it classic retro looking with a hint of 1030 modem styling with some 5mm red LEDs  

 

Assuming it works, and as I have not scrolled back through the posts, technically it should download far quicker than SIO??

I believe it will be well over 100 k bits per second.  Basically, as fast as the 6502 can bit bang the data.

 

It will be a card that will fit in the 1090XL.  🙂