Xebec's Demise Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 (edited) Remaking the boards would cost me somewhere around $600.00US and would avert a TON of potential assembly errors. I already have made all the necessary changes to the cad files to produce a zero-wire assembly-spec board.. At the moment, Im a little short on cash though.. To all that paid for MIOs, My math says that $600 for one person would only be about $27 per unit at 22 units. It might be worth it if a new time frame could be set and these could be produced faster. It would require compromise on both sides; a schedule and new payments. But if the boards are bad, what choice does everyone have? (Other than to see a great Atari project finished, my only other interest is that I'm waiting on a computer upgrade from Ken, so please don't take my post the wrong way.) Edited January 30, 2008 by Xebec's Demise Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Defender II Posted February 7, 2008 Share Posted February 7, 2008 I could do that.. But youd be pissed off when you realized the amount of work involved in assembling one to functional spec.. The level of functionality we have right now is exactly the same as the original MIO.. The problem Id have with that is that some of these boards have been found to have vias that did not get through plated. heh. So I am having to check every single hole.. I think theres like 1500 or so holes.. I am seriously considering having the boards remade at this point (at my own cost) just to see the project completed in a manner that I would be comfortable with. To be honest, I cant even build one of these things and get it RIGHT on the first try.. I have had to track down problems on just about every board so far. And I have some pretty advanced equipment here to do that kind of thing. Id really prefer not to start HUGE, long-distance, indepth diagnostic sessions with everyone when they assembled the units and have problems.. Remaking the boards would cost me somewhere around $600.00US and would avert a TON of potential assembly errors. I already have made all the necessary changes to the cad files to produce a zero-wire assembly-spec board.. At the moment, Im a little short on cash though.. I would hope you have found a more reliable source for the new boards. If you do get a new run, I would like to buy a couple bare boards and maybe even some of the bad first run to cut your losses. I'm high reliability soldering certified and have the equipment; too bad you're not down the road or I'd assemble a few of them for you. I know how hard producing a one-off board is, so producing a line has got to be a nightmare when your supplier messes up like that. Thanks for putting your best foot forward. If anyone wants to sell their financial interest in the MIO's he is producing, PM me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted February 7, 2008 Author Share Posted February 7, 2008 Remaking the boards would cost me somewhere around $600.00US and would avert a TON of potential assembly errors. I already have made all the necessary changes to the cad files to produce a zero-wire assembly-spec board.. At the moment, Im a little short on cash though.. To all that paid for MIOs, My math says that $600 for one person would only be about $27 per unit at 22 units. It might be worth it if a new time frame could be set and these could be produced faster. It would require compromise on both sides; a schedule and new payments. But if the boards are bad, what choice does everyone have? (Other than to see a great Atari project finished, my only other interest is that I'm waiting on a computer upgrade from Ken, so please don't take my post the wrong way.) Welp, the boards are not "bad" to the point where they are completey useless, its just that they are in the 20-30 hour range as far as the time it takes to go from "bare-board" to "tested functional".. Noone is paying any more money for this. When I get my tax return, I am going to have the boards remade.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 Ok. I have remade the MIO PCBs. This is now a "zero-wire" board. In otherwords, it doesnt require any "post production" mods to make it work. This should aid asembly, and hopefully, this batch doesnt have any manufacturing defects (bad vias) either. If all goes well, I should be able to assemble MIOs to a functional state in about 8-hours each. This board is REV 2.0 I have removed everyone's name from the board who did not actually work on it. Instead, this time, I gave credit to everyone in this forum. (see picture above). Any of the people whos name was on the old board, who want their MIO built with that PCB, let me know. It is electrically equivelant to the new one, just takes a little longer to assemble because of the "blue-wires" on the back side of the board. I Hope to have these shipping out soon. -MEtalguy66 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 5, 2008 Share Posted April 5, 2008 Are there any boards left over or are you ever going to do another run? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjb Posted April 5, 2008 Share Posted April 5, 2008 Very cool. Thanks for all the money, time, and effort you have put into these. tjb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Guitarman Posted April 5, 2008 Share Posted April 5, 2008 Ok. I have remade the MIO PCBs. This is now a "zero-wire" board. In otherwords, it doesnt require any "post production" mods to make it work. This should aid asembly, and hopefully, this batch doesnt have any manufacturing defects (bad vias) either. If all goes well, I should be able to assemble MIOs to a functional state in about 8-hours each. This board is REV 2.0 I have removed everyone's name from the board who did not actually work on it. Instead, this time, I gave credit to everyone in this forum. (see picture above). Any of the people whos name was on the old board, who want their MIO built with that PCB, let me know. It is electrically equivelant to the new one, just takes a little longer to assemble because of the "blue-wires" on the back side of the board. I Hope to have these shipping out soon. -MEtalguy66 Can I have one of the old boards blank so I can stare at my name??? LOLOL and again, I second the thanks. I know this has taken longer than you figured but at least you are still plugging away at it. Kudos!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 I'd like to be brief and clear about this: I will have at least 30 extra PCBs left over. I will almost definitely produce more MIOs in the future and would like to do so at a fair price. In order to protect the interests of those who have already invested their money and been waiting an enormously long time already, I will ABSOLUTELY NOT negotiate the sales/orders of any further MIOs until the original preorders have been filled to everyone's satisfaction. This is final and not open for discussion. If you can't understand this, then please accept my apology and when I'm done with the first 26 orders, Ill be more than happy to examine the possibility of building more. I also will not sell any "blank" PCBs at this time. I may choose to do so in the future, but I am not taking another cent of anyone's money until my original preorder obligations have been fulfilled. Thanks for your understanding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 5, 2008 Share Posted April 5, 2008 I'd like to be brief and clear about this: I will have at least 30 extra PCBs left over. I will almost definitely produce more MIOs in the future and would like to do so at a fair price. In order to protect the interests of those who have already invested their money and been waiting an enormously long time already, I will ABSOLUTELY NOT negotiate the sales/orders of any further MIOs until the original preorders have been filled to everyone's satisfaction. This is final and not open for discussion. If you can't understand this, then please accept my apology and when I'm done with the first 26 orders, Ill be more than happy to examine the possibility of building more. I also will not sell any "blank" PCBs at this time. I may choose to do so in the future, but I am not taking another cent of anyone's money until my original preorder obligations have been fulfilled. Thanks for your understanding. Sounds fair. You're a good man for wanting to make sure everyone is satisfied first before making any more. I assume there will be an announcement of some sort when more are available? I'll have to wait until then. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 7, 2008 Author Share Posted April 7, 2008 I assume there will be an announcement of some sort when more are available? I'll have to wait until then. Yeah. I'll be sure and keep this forum updated as far as the progress goes. While I was waiting for the PCBs to be remade, I have been working on a Service Manual for the MIO. It is about 90% complete at this point. 51 pages so far. This includes the following: * Actual schematics of the MIO, incuding the changes made to the DRAM circuits. * Parts placement diagram * Parts list, including Mouser/Digikey part numbers. * Logic diagrams for all ICs. * Signal/Programming DATA for the 6551 ACIA (UART) * Timing diagrams and waveforms for various diagnostic purposes. When this is complete, I'll make it available to whoever wants it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjb Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 Geez man you went all out on this one! Thanks! tjb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 Wow. Thanks for all the blood, sweat and tears put into this, I appreciate the dedication. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bumzyman Posted April 8, 2008 Share Posted April 8, 2008 To say you have been busy lately would be a gross understatement! Thanks for all of your hard work!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 14, 2008 Author Share Posted April 14, 2008 Welp, I really have no significant news to report this week. I have not had a chance to assemble any of the new MIO boards becasue I am buried in research projects for my wife's school. She has promised that after these are done, I will be free to devote all of my free time back to the MIO project. She may even help me solder together a few boards. I am almost finished with the MIO service manual. All that is left is a section I plan to write about phase 2 clock signal quality. I need to get "back in the lab" to finish that one because I need to capture some more example wave-forms to include. I have been kicking around the idea of offereing a small plug-in upgrade and a special ROM that enables all 12 adress lines on the SIMM socket and increases the ramdisk capability to 16megs. The special rom would of course only be necessary to provide firmware menu support for the additional RAM. 16 meg 30-pin simms can be had on various memory retailers on the web for about $10.00 each. I already have the additional logic worked out to do this. I think this would be worthwhile, especially for BBS sysops. Currently there is no such thing as a "defrag" program for ATARI 8-bit hard disks. The machine just lacks the resources to defragment a sizeable partition in any reasonable time-frame. The only way to "defrag" your drive right now is to 1)copy it to another location (either another hardisk or an ATR image via SIO2PC), re-format/wipe the original drive, and then DOS-COPY (not sector copy) the entire directory structure and all of the files back onto the drive. This still does not result in a truly "optimized" defragmentation, but since you are starting with a totally blank partition and copying the files back one at a time, you end up with a relatively contiguously written filesystem overall. This method takes a LONG ASSED TIME to fo a full (or nearly full) 16meg partition, especially if its done at SIO speed over SIO2PC. Using another MIO connected hardisk cuts the time by 2/3, but this is assuming you just happen to have a second MIO-compatable drive laying around thats empty, just for this purpose. A 16 meg ramdisk would allow you to "defrag" your disk in the fastest possible way. In addition, once the initial orders and production of the MIO have been taken care of, we would like to produce an expansion board to enable the video port. Warerat and I have discussed a few ideas regarding this. This would most likeley take the form of a rudimentary VGA display adapter in the form of an FPGA/CPLD, with built in 80 column text-mode/character generation capability. This would include a small adaptor to convert the db-9 video port to a standard d-sub-15 VGA port. This board could also include a realtime clock and possibly even a simple IDE controller. This is purely in the "what if" stage at the moment, but it gives you an idea of the direction we would like to go with the MIO project eventually... Feedback is welcome. Post it here.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted April 16, 2008 Share Posted April 16, 2008 These are some very exciting ideas, Ken, and I'm very impressed with all the work you've already done. I'm anxious to see my completed MIO first, of course, but I would also love to have the kinds of expansion options that you've mentioned. Here's an idea that I've been wondering about for the (potential) video add-on ... instead of going to the trouble of implementing a new video circuit on a FPGA/CPLD, what about designing the add-on module around the NS405 (the video chip Atari used in the XEP80) instead? I know you're probably not anxious to deal with another obsolete chip (I'm sure the 6551 was enough of a pain), but I think it would be great to be able to pull the chip out of the XEP80, plug it into the MIO, and have all the XEP80's text and graphics capabilities without the hassle of using the joystick port. I've heard that the NS405 can even be made to output color, although I have no idea if it can generate a VGA-compatible signal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 16, 2008 Author Share Posted April 16, 2008 Well, that would definitely be kewl.. And dont think we havent talked about it.. But here are the problems: 1) Expense. The NS405 is not exactly cheap/common now adayze. 2) It needs its own bank of RAM, plus ROM, plus an extra ROM for character generation. It also uses a single multiplexed bus for adress and data... 3) Its output options are limited to composite, S-video, or mono TTL RGB (unless you want to built quite a bit MORE external circuitry) 4) The chip is pretty much hard-wired for serial I/O.. It does have a provision to halt it's process during vblank and allow memory writes to it's video ram, but this is timing dependant and would require some serious design considerations, to say the least. Yeah..we could do it.. It'd take a long time to prototype, require some really custom firmware tricks, and end up costing as much as the MIO, itself to produce... With "VGA" we can do a prestine clear 80 columns in color, a pixel graphics mode as well without too much trouble, and support the most commonly available/cheap/best quality display devices, all with basically a single chip, that is MUCH cheaper and less assembly-intensive than building a big assed NS405 based project. Also, current draw from a modern prorammable device would be negligible versus probably having to upgrade the regulator and heatsink on the MIO to run all the old-technology stuff to build an NS405 based expansion. Dont get me worng. Ive alwayse thought the XEP 80 was a neat little box, and wondered why in the HELL atari didnt make it a paralell device... so Id love to see it done.. But in the interest of seeing something happen a)this decade and b)cheap... Weve pretty much steered away from the NS405... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 21, 2008 Author Share Posted April 21, 2008 Got the 16meg add-on board cadded up and ready for production. Got the firmware "fixed" to auto-detect any 30pin SIMM you wanna stick in it from 256k to 16megs. Warerat has at least some of the parts ordered for the first "development" of an MIO (VGA 80 column, etc.) expansion board. I'm still plugging away at this stupid school work. Hope to be done in a week or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 24, 2008 Author Share Posted April 24, 2008 (edited) Ok. Got one of the new Boards assembled.. Heres what it looks like.. Only took 7 hours to assemble. This is a huge improvement over the last board revision. Oh, and just in case you are wondering, the 2 huge LEDs are not an actual production feature. I just stuck them on to see what it'd look like. The production units will still have the normal sized transparent red & green LEDs.. Edited April 24, 2008 by MEtalGuy66 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Thanks for the nod to AtariAge on the board--the pictures look great! I'm curious, what is the writing in the upper-right corner of the board above the "MIO-B REV 2" text? It looks like Arabic. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Wow, those DO look great! I'm glad I got in on the first batch; I can't wait to see mine in person! I don't remember if you've already talked about this, so forgive me if this is old news, but will these include the revised firmware (with the updated SCSI hard drive support), or will we still need an MFM hard drive and an MFM-to-SCSI bridge board as with the original MIOs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 24, 2008 Author Share Posted April 24, 2008 Thanks for the nod to AtariAge on the board--the pictures look great! I'm curious, what is the writing in the upper-right corner of the board above the "MIO-B REV 2" text? It looks like Arabic. ..Al It says "Bismillahi rahmani raheem." Its the first line of the quran. It means "In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful." In the Islamic faith, we believe that if you do something in God's name, and with good intentions, it can not fail. I alwayse get paranoid before I submit a board layout for manufacturing. The MIO board has over 1600 thru-holes, and a net-list of over 700 circuits. So basically, I did that in the hopes that there would be no mistakes at all on the board layout this time. And it appears to have been successful. Also, I think God deserves credit because without him, literally NOTHING is possible.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 24, 2008 Author Share Posted April 24, 2008 (edited) Wow, those DO look great! I'm glad I got in on the first batch; I can't wait to see mine in person! I don't remember if you've already talked about this, so forgive me if this is old news, but will these include the revised firmware (with the updated SCSI hard drive support), or will we still need an MFM hard drive and an MFM-to-SCSI bridge board as with the original MIOs? The firmware is a "work in progress"... The current priority list goes as follows: A) Get the MIOs into the hands of their owners. B) Get the 16meg firmware compiled and bug-tested. C) Get the 80 column board and it's firmware done and tested. D) Make a complete firmware revision that covers EVERYTHING, including the SCSI code. This way we dont end up releasing 10 different firmware versions. As far as the compatability of the existing firmware goes, I dont reccomend an MFM setup unless you already own one. I reccomend using a Seagate ST-225N or RODIME RO650 or RO652. These drives connect directly to the MIO and work fine. Edited April 24, 2008 by MEtalGuy66 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Awesome! That assembled board is a beauty! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Guitarman Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Also, I think God deserves credit because without him, literally NOTHING is possible.. Now THAT is the comment of the day!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 24, 2008 Share Posted April 24, 2008 Also, I think God deserves credit because without him, literally NOTHING is possible.. Now THAT is the comment of the day!! Moving this thread to the P&R forum... Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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