Enhanced 600XL PCB by kveldulfur

[venom4728a]

1 hour ago, olix said:

@venom4728a 

Well done. It's a good idea to order 10 PCBs at once, because the price per board is much cheaper that way.

 

And one more tip: you should set the "Remove order number" function to YES.

It's not so nice to see a big number somewhere on the board.

Thank you and MYTEK for the tips on where and how to order.  I have asked for the order# to be removed, they said the order is confirmed, they will have to ask an engineer to remove it and would email back if it was/wasn't possible.
 

[Level42]

This is awesome. I have one question: is it compatible with U1MB?

[olix]

Janko, the designer of the board, has provided the connections for the U1MB via pin headers. But I haven't tested it yet.

[Overange]

In blue it looks really nice.

😊 

[+kheller2]

13 hours ago, venom4728a said:

I will have about 6 extra sets of boards (Atari 600xl board and Mini Din).  They cost about $14.71 each, plus the cost of tracking, packaging, shipping with signature verified delivery to your address. 

I wish someone state side would put together an order for all the parts and crack bags.

[venom4728a]

11 minutes ago, kheller2 said:

I wish someone state side would put together an order for all the parts and crack bags.

I priced out a 10 orders of Atari 600xl project from mouser it was something $1644.87 with shipping. When I order 1 it was $121.65.  Maybe it gets cheaper if a person orders 1 huge order then sorts it themselves into 10 separate orders?

[+kheller2]

3 minutes ago, venom4728a said:

I priced out a 10 orders of Atari 600xl project from mouser it was something $1644.87 with shipping. When I order 1 it was $121.65.  Maybe it gets cheaper if a person orders 1 huge order then sorts it themselves into 10 separate orders?

Yes that would make sense (hmm maybe)....  think about if you ordered 10 single boards...although you would think they would discount on the total quantity of parts.

[+DjayBee]

@olix ordered 50 sets of parts here in Germany and we are close to half of the price of a single set. 

[olix]

That is correct. We were able to save a lot of money thanks to the large order. 

For example, you need 5x 47nF capacitors. They cost 1.30 euros. With the large collective order, 5 of these capacitors only cost 0.31 euros.

 

But you must not forget that the whole thing is a lot of work. For the 50 kits I had to order 15000 components for over 3000 Euro, count them and distribute them in 1200 bags and label them. And then I had to divide them into 50 packages, address them and send them off. I need 1 to 2 hours per package.
 

[+kheller2]

20 hours ago, Overange said:

In blue it looks really nice.

😊

Blue does look nice but reminds me of Apple Computer boards, red reminds me of experimental power supplies, black is just slick but hard to see traces, white are Atari expansion boards, green is historically pretty.  
 

but that’s just my warped mind. 

[+kheller2]

11 hours ago, olix said:

That is correct. We were able to save a lot of money thanks to the large order. 

For example, you need 5x 47nF capacitors. They cost 1.30 euros. With the large collective order, 5 of these capacitors only cost 0.31 euros.

 

But you must not forget that the whole thing is a lot of work. For the 50 kits I had to order 15000 components for over 3000 Euro, count them and distribute them in 1200 bags and label them. And then I had to divide them into 50 packages, address them and send them off. I need 1 to 2 hours per package.
 

Shame you can't ship to the USA.

 

This is something I would consider doing for the community, buying a bulk amount -- but...

I don't have the time to deal with 200 hours of baggy work (my daughter might, however), and my main concern is that something is wrong with the parts order or components. IE. I would want 100% confirmation that the build works with the parts as purchased before committing money and time.   After build followup care (Where I work, we call that the "warranty period" after a project is complete) is painful. Granted if I ordered the wrong part, that's on me to fix and make right.  If they slightly changed the part and didn't tell me, or it was never the right part to begin with... well.. that's why I don't think I  see a lot of people stepping up.

 

As I've gotten older, I completely understand the "get off my lawn kid" attitude I used to experience. 🤔

 

 

[MEtalGuy66]

For me, the main reason for redesigning a 600XL (or 800XL for that matter) motherboard would be to REVERSE the layout.. Put the main chips (CPU, ANTIC, GTIA) closer to the back wall of the machine where there is plenty of case-headroom, rather than leaving them in the place where ATARI put them (where there is almost not even room for a socket and a chip.) Practically speaking, the custom chip sockets are the internal expansion bus of the machine. The biggest bitch about expanding the 600/800xl is lack of room to stack boards.  A complete reroute of the board layout could fix this problem.  Additionally, this would reduce the length of ALL of the PBI expansion bus traces. This reduces capacitance/load on the bus, which is an advantage/necessity when "PHI2 tuning" a moderately or heavily expanded machine.. 

 

Not to criticize your work, but these mods you added to the layout, anyone could do with very modest hand-wiring on a stock board. If I was to remake the motherboard, I would take the opportunity to vastly improve it by fixing some of the shortcommings and characteristics that we (hardware guys) have always had to deal with on these machines. 

 

Ps. with the cheap prices on quality PCB manufacturing these days, I might also consider improving the ground plane by adding a 3rd layer. 

Edited June 23 by MEtalGuy66

[olix]

But the best thing about this layout is that you don't have to extend it at all, because the most important extensions are already on board, or allow easy extension (VBXE, U1MB)

[flashjazzcat]

All upgrades intended to be compatible with the 600XL and 800XL (and it seems to me that this is most of them, including Sophia, VBXE, 64K SRAM, PokeyMAX, U1MB, AKI, 512K SRAM, Adaptus, Antonia, etc) take the socket clearance issues into account. If there were two different 600XL board layouts (one with ample clearance above the VLSI sockets, one without), it's hard to imagine who is going to produce upgrades which rely on a large amount of headroom above the custom chip sockets when doing so immediately limits the user base to people with a reimaged 600XL motherboard.

[MEtalGuy66]

John for every one of the pre-baked (fairly recently available) upgrades you have listed, I can name 10 over the years that were/are a total PITA to do to the 600/800xl and are not an issue on machines with room above the chips. An no one would have to make any additional "versions" of plug in upgrades to support the "reimaged 600xl".. The whole point is that the existing versions for the non space-critical machines would work. I could go ALOT further into this, too if we want to discuss real estate wasted by the radio shield mounts which has absolutely zero benefit these days (never did on any machine that did not depend on an RF modulated video output).  There is every reason in the world to improve the layout, given the opportunity.  The only valid reason I can see to retain the original layout would be, of course,  to retain the appearance of a "vintage" machine on the inside.

 

 

Edited June 23 by MEtalGuy66

[flashjazzcat]

Well, regardless of the fact that the XLs have had limited clearance above the custom ICs since the day they were designed and that the lack of space should come as no surprise to any hardware designer who produced anything at all during the past forty years which anyone might wish to install in these machines, I don't doubt for a moment that such hardware exists. Discussions regarding 'how things could have been done better' are ten a penny, however, and I think my observation makes complete sense, being based in the reality of the current year in which hardware designers have had four decades to find a way to cope with the physics of custom chip placement in the Atari XL, and - as far as I can discern - they appear to have done exactly that when designing the vast majority of upgrades I encounter in the non-hypothetical realm. Moreover, had the designer of the reimaged 600XL board radically departed from the original layout, we would be sitting here observing people complaining about the fact the changes inadvertently introduced some other show-stopping incompatibilities with upgrades that we actually do use in 2024. So - as ever - you simply can't win.

 

Edited June 23 by flashjazzcat

[+mytek]

On 6/19/2024 at 10:25 AM, venom4728a said:

I will probably make an order for at least 5 boards, that price is way better the pcbway!

On 6/20/2024 at 12:24 AM, venom4728a said:

Thank you and MYTEK for the tips on where and how to order.  I have asked for the order# to be removed, they said the order is confirmed, they will have to ask an engineer to remove it and would email back if it was/wasn't possible.

 

You're very welcome, and I'm glad I helped save you a few $$$. And @olix was integral to customizing the selections to get the best possible outcome

 

In this same line of reasoning, last year I started a topic all about the savings that are possible by choosing the right PCB vendor, which can be accessed here...

 

I know, I know, this seems to be a bit off topic. But since we're talking about a lot people independently having @Kveldulfur's very nice 600XL alternative motherboard manufactured, I figured it would be good to have it be at the best price point possible. And with my background in creating a few alternative Atari motherboards under my belt, I figured my 2 cents would be useful in this regard.

[olix]

The ABBUC store will soon have some boards in stock. But only for ABBUC members.

This would be interesting for people in Europe who don't want to order from China.

[Kveldulfur]

Hello!

I have not posted anything so far because my English is not good unfortunately.
But I would like to thank you for your interest in the 600 XL remake board.
As I already mentioned in the ABBUC forum and on my website, most of the extensions of the 600XL board were taken from the NUC576 by @mytek. Unfortunately, I am not able to create extensions myself. I would therefore like to thank @mytek very much.
I also received a lot of support from @tf_hh . Without him the project would not have been realized successfully.

In the ABBUC forum, @olix not only organized the collective order, but also provided optimized component lists and instruction. The documents are in German, but it may be worth translating them with "deepl". 😃

In the end, the 600XL board is the result of a successful cooperation.

 

Kveldulfur

Edited June 28 by Kveldulfur

[+mytek]

8 hours ago, Kveldulfur said:

As I already mentioned in the ABBUC forum and on my website, most of the extensions of the 600XL board were taken from the NUC576 by @mytek. Unfortunately, I am not able to create extensions myself. I would therefore like to thank @mytek very much.

 

You are one of the main reasons I release my designs for free.

 

Just like you, I often times incorporate aspects of other people's work into my own creations, and have always greatly appreciated that they too did public open source release's that I was able to build upon.

[Overange]

 

Built and so far it works

 

Only things to note so far is -

 

If you are building one, make sure you do not get you resistor R and capacitor C locations mixed up, as they share the same silk screen outlines, its easy to miss read them.

 

To get the colour correct, the colour adjustment pot on this board is wound fully to its maximum, I will need to do some more investigation as to why, but so far the colour does look ok.

Could be related to the above, but I am seeing some artifacts and slight jail bars, again could be something to do with the above item or even my set up.

I do know the Vgate PIC is not installed, I need to program it and cannot find my programming adapter....

 

I have a great looking case to put it in, so that's part of the next step.

 

Build Time = apx 4 hours

 

 

Big thanks for including a connection to plug in my mini keyboard  

 

 

[Overange]

 

 

This is the ACP display

 

 

 

Edited June 29 by Overange

[+mytek]

3 hours ago, Overange said:

I do know the Vgate PIC is not installed, I need to program it and cannot find my programming adapter....

If it's based upon the same circuit as used in the 576NUC+ the PIC has to be in place & programmed, otherwise the AND Gate Luma Buffer and the Color Analog Switch select bits are floating. If you want to leave it out, then it requires a jumper between pin 1 and pin 3 where the PIC would plug-in. This turns those devices fully ON which will allow the Luma and the Color to pass thru properly.

[olix]

4 hours ago, Overange said:

Built and so far it works

...

To get the colour correct, the colour adjustment pot on this board is wound fully to its maximum, I will need to do some more investigation as to why, but so far the colour does look ok.

 

 

 

Congratulations! It's great that everything works.
4 hours building time is really very sporty. It took me almost twice as long.

I compared the original XL circuit with the remake schematic. (Sorry, but I don't have permission from kveldulfur to post the remake schematics). But it is identical to the original at this point:

 

Have you measured the voltage at pin 17 of the GTIA when the potentiometer is fully turned up? It should then be approx. 8.5 volts.

One way to increase the output voltage of this circuit might be to use diodes as CR2 and CR3 with a lower forward voltage (~0.75 V) like a Shottky diode (BAT48 ~0.25 V). The output voltage should then be about 1 V higher.

I'm not an electronics expert, but could this work?

Perhaps Mytec, who knows more about this, can confirm this.

 

The two diodes on the remake circuit are CR401 (=CR2)  and CR402 (=CR3).

Or to decrease R37 (=R403 on the remake) would be also a possibility?

 

[Kveldulfur]

Hello!

Yes, the image generation is based on the same circuit as the NUC576+.

I'm surprised that you can omit the PIC, but we also had a similar effect with the Pokey when J701 was accidentally not set. Sometimes everything worked, but then again it didn't.

 

The circuit for the color setting is identical to the one on the original board.

 

Kveldulfur