Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

@agranlund I should be able to build rvbios. I'll have to convert the image to a bmp, I had it as PNG or raw file.

The Raven is being troublesome at the mo, crashing under doom or Tyrian with my new graphics card and the old GD5429 2mb. The 1mb version I have seems to work fine but occasionally the screen goes black but music still plays with Tyrian.

Doesn't sound like this is the problem, but do you have sta_vdi.inf in the auto folder?
(it should say SLEEP = OFF on one of the early lines in that files)

And also NOVA_COL.ACC in the root and being active (and the accompanying NOVA_COL.INF) ?

Without these I get issues with NOVA blanking the screen "randomly" and never being able to exit the screensaver.
I have the exact same screensaver issue on my Atari ST with ET4000 and only got rid of it by disabling both the mouse-position and timer based screensaver triggers.

The release zip has these files in the correct places and already configured to kill the screensaver so I doubt that't the problem.
I only mentioned it just in case since you mentioned screen going black but music kept playing.

Otherwise, I'll suspect the rvnova driver since it's my code
Does it work ok with your W32i card and its driver?

[PhilC]

@agranlund I've just reinstalled all the software from the latest released fingers crossed its working so far.

I might remake my boot disk as this isn't the first time it's got corrupted.

[agranlund]

@agranlund I've just reinstalled all the software from the latest released fingers crossed its working so far.

I might remake my boot disk as this isn't the first time it's got corrupted.

I'll leave mine running doom in attract mode now while heading out for a walk with the dogs

[agranlund]

Can’t wait, to start my own build

We are actually 4 fellows from Germany, sourcing boards and components together.
I think we will start building the Raven during next 4 weeks
I will then create my own „build blog“ here

Cheers
Michael

Wow! Looking forward to following the adventure

[PhilC]

Works great with my Speedstar 64 card and has so far fixed the non booting with the overclocked 5429. Sometimes the Raven would refuse to boot as it hadn't detected the VGA Bios rom.

@agranlund What size is that boot pic btw? I've got one id like to use in its place......

Screenshot 2025-06-26 at 15.16.27.png

Nice!
Are you able to build sw/rvbios ?

If you are, you could replace sw/rvbios/rvlogo_1bpp.bmp with your image
1) Run "make logo" to (re)generate logo.c from your updated image
2) Run "make" to build rvbios.prg
(tested on Mac, I assume it'll work on Linux too)

The current image has a size of 320x320 but your replacement image could have any size up to 640x420(*) as long as you keep the width a multiple of 8. It should be a standard 256 colour indexed windows bmp, using colour index 0 and 1 only.
(The boot resolution is technically 4bpp so I'm planning on supporting more colours for the boot screen but for now it needs to be a mono image)

Right now the image, whatever its size, will display in the center but slightly offset upward (centering around location 320,210 of the total 640x480 screen area)
As I'm typing this I realise I should put on my todo to have it always take a full 640x480 image instead.. the final data in logo.c is RLE compressed anyway so large blank areas add very little to the data size.

If you're not able to build the thing I can do it here if you want.

Hi @agranlund any chance you could build it for me, I've reattached the file.

Getting everything else sorted for Cyberlegends now and think this will look really good as I show it off.

[agranlund]

@PhilC , yep, here's an rvbios.prg built with your boot image.

phil_rvbios.zip

(96.15 KiB) Downloaded 25 times

How to go about downsampling to 1bpp is a bit subjective and I'm certainly no photoshop-pro
So the 1bpp conversion of the bitmap used to generate the logo is also in the zip.
(latest code takes 640x480 image as input)

Normally, bios prints some text on the boot screen.
"[Del] Setup" in the bottom left and "RAVEN060" in bottom right of the screen.
Don't know if you want that or not so you've got a standard version with and a custom without.

[PhilC]

@agranlund thank you ever so much. I'm going to enjoy showing off the Raven at CL4 this weekend.

Any other secret, special things we could surprise everyone with? just kidding.

[agranlund]

Any other secret, special things we could surprise everyone with? just kidding.

Darnit. I should have thought about that earlier
Could have made some kind of CL related simple demo-thing using the blitter.

While not as cool as that would have been, I PM'ed you something else..

[redpixel]

Can’t wait, to start my own build

We are actually 4 fellows from Germany, sourcing boards and components together.
I think we will start building the Raven during next 4 weeks
I will then create my own „build blog“ here

Cheers
Michael

Good luck with the build! Let me know if you have any PCB's (or for that matter components) left over, I'd be interested in buying them. I'm also very tempted to build a Raven! But it feels stupid to buy all PCB's by myself when there's often a minimum quantity when ordering.

[LarryL]

Good luck with the build! Let me know if you have any PCB's (or for that matter components) left over, I'd be interested in buying them. I'm also very tempted to build a Raven! But it feels stupid to buy all PCB's by myself when there's often a minimum quantity when ordering.

Thanks!

I might have exactly one set available - most probably.
Waiting for another colleague who’s still thinking about it - but he might say no.

Just started the Mainboard production at JLCPCB with most of the SMD parts pre-assembled (only the MAX3245, the XR68, the 16245, the 24MHz OSC and the 1N914 have to be added - and of course all the THT parts). The CKBDs are already fully assembled. the other PCBs (SIMM, PLCC-ROM, programmer, IDEswap) are blank.
All PCB are black, of course

I am traveling the rest of the week, so let’s catch up next week - then I should know if the set will be available

Cheers
Michael