Getting my Mechatronic 80 column sidecar working

[Gary from OPA]

Now that I got my main TI99 system working perfectly with my Dijit AVPC card and displaying perfectly on my VGA LCD monitor.

 

It is time for a new battleground, getting my Mechatronic 80 column sidecar working again on my other TI99 system, so I have high resolution v9938 graphics on both systems.

 

Now of course I lost all manuals for the mechatronic sidecar, and the video cable and the power supply for it as well.

 

Plus I noticed on the pins of the video connector they turned all green, so that I have clean somehow or replace it totally.

 

Next step is to somehow open the metal sidecar up and see what condition the board itself is in.

 

Is there anyway I can test it without going through all the modding needed on the ti99 console, trying to read through the one manual I found online it's not very clear either seems like I have to remove all 3 console groms so does that mean this sidecar reproduces both the patched grom 0 and ti basic and simulates the grom read back as well?

 

Where can I find out the pin out for the video connector and the power supply needed, the one manual I found doesn't cover that info at all.

 

Thanks

 

[+retroclouds]

Looking forward seeing the Mechatronic up and running. Please share some video footage if you do, you have some rare hardware there.

[Gary from OPA]

18 minutes ago, retroclouds said:

Looking forward seeing the Mechatronic up and running. Please share some video footage if you do, you have some rare hardware there.

Will do. I always making videos and sharing my work on my Twitter. I have almost every rare card out there, slowly getting everything running again. Need to squeeze in another desk into my office to start building up the 3rd ti99 system now.

 

For some reason I can no longer upload videos to AtariAge they upload fine and display ok but after a few hours they switch to mime type not supported, so been linking to my twitter posts now when I have a new video to share. Strange as few months ago I had no issues directly uploading videos here.

Edited March 15 by Gary from OPA

[+OLD CS1]

6 minutes ago, Gary from OPA said:

For some reason I can no longer upload videos to AtariAge they upload fine and display ok but after a few hours they switch to mime type not supported

I have found the best format for longevity is h.264 with aac (44kHz, 2ch) in an mp4. ffmpeg will do this handily with -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -ac 2 -ar 44100 as your codec options.

[WhataKowinkydink]

2 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

I have found the best format for longevity is h.264 with aac (44kHz, 2ch) in an mp4.

Interesting.  I'd settled on .webm a while back for "longevity" as I figured the open format was safer.

[Gary from OPA]

My Mechatronic 80 col sidecar looks in good shape. Just color bus mouse connector is all green the pins and on the backside of console connector it seems the 3rd pin from the top is loose I need to find a way to remove the 4 metal bolts holding the PCboard in place to the metal case to know better the shape of it, but it moves when I try to plug it into a console.

 

 

[Gary from OPA]

The first big problem I have is i searched all my junk drawers, and I don't have the 8volt DC power supply it wants, I guess 9volt or 12volt should work there is 5volt regulator inside.

 

Second, and bigger problem is of course the 9918 jumper cable is missing. You totally removing the 9918 chip, and then run a cable from 40pin socket to the 40pin socket on the sidecar.

 

Do you think I could source that cable some where? -- Or somehow just build a special one with only the wires that are needed, I doubt you need all 40 wires from 9918 to the board.

 

Anyone have any suggestions or hints on what I should do for the missing flat ribbon shielded 40pin jumper cable with idc connector on one end and 40 pin dip socket on the other end?

 

What if i just leave the vdp in the socket like how avpc does it, removing the one pin and adding the two 1.1k resistors, and then just running the needed VDPRD/VDPRW lines?

 

Going to have to study the schematics and the manual, anyone have any better copies then what I found on WHT and attached here?

 

Looking at the cable schematic, seems only 16 wires are used, so I should be able to just run a 16 wire cable with it split up and soldered to the right pins on a 40 pin socket, and again on the sidecar idc side, that would be easier to run a shielded all 40 wires. i think i even have some 16 wire ribbon cables around as that is what the pio printer uses right?

 

 

A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P1.pdf A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P2.pdf mechatronics 80 column peripheral manual.pdf

[Gary from OPA]

Last final question, has anyone made new patched eproms that allow for a different CRU address, they added dip switches to change it from >1000 but don't support it.

 

in the history of the ti99 i think the crazy >1000 has been the most over used cru in all of the history of addons, almost everyone decided hey lets use it, and very few devices ever used the >18 to >1F range. oh'well. i have to figure out how to move my corcomp ramdisk off >1000 instead I guess, it has option to change cru if it the second card in box, i wonder if it will work as second card without the first. haha.

[JasonACT]

8 minutes ago, Gary from OPA said:

What if i just leave the vdp in the socket like how avpc does it, removing the one pin and adding the two 1.1k resistors, and then just running the needed VDPRD/VDPRW lines?

You may have issues with the interrupt and grom-clock, if you try that.  Perhaps just not using those two sidecar signals would work?

 

That was my question about the other VDP PEB card - I didn't think it sync'd to the TMS9901 from the hardware int of the card, but continued to use the disabled TMS9918A as an approx. but out of sync signal?  Also, I guess it's using the grom-clock, from the disabled chip.  This side car device, in its original state, should run the latest demos that use the TMS9901 for timing, so I would go for that in preference.

[+Ksarul]

Here is a set of complete schematics for the board--to include the connections for the ribbon cable to the 9918A socket. . .I did these in Visio, so they should be nice and clear, no matter how much you blow them up. The A3 size is close to the North American 11x17 size. . .so it is already a useful size without blowing it up.

A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P1.pdf A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P2.pdf

[Gary from OPA]

10 minutes ago, Ksarul said:

Here is a set of complete schematics for the board--to include the connections for the ribbon cable to the 9918A socket. . .I did these in Visio, so they should be nice and clear, no matter how much you blow them up. The A3 size is close to the North American 11x17 size. . .so it is already a useful size without blowing it up.

A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P1.pdf 242.52 kB · 0 downloads A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P2.pdf 75.63 kB · 0 downloads

yes, I printed them already I had them in my list, they are cleaner to read.

 

I think I just run a 16 wire cable that seems the easy way as that all the lines that are needed instead of doing all 40 or building a interface mod to make it like avpc setup, you still have to run some wires or add address decode logic.

Edited March 16 by Gary from OPA

[Artoj]

Hi Gary, I went through a lot looking at the Mechatronics card, my MiniPEB Graphics Card (V1.0) design might help, it duplicates much of the same card, regards Arto.

 

Schematic_TI99-Graphic-Card-V1_2024-03-16.pdf

Edited March 16 by Artoj