Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

Ym test performed successfully. Is there such a test for graphics card? Is there anything I can put in the CF for an IDE port test?

Nope there aren't any more built-in user friendly tests, though it would be nice to have more if someone wants to implement them.
Put the graphics card in and give it a try. If all is well you should get to the desktop with EmuTOS's built in graphics drivers and even with no CF card attached.

roms.zip

(420.41 KiB) Downloaded 7 times

(I changed the baud rate for boot messages / debug monitor to 115200 baud)

rom_mon.bin is the stripped down bootrom with debug monitor only.
rom_tos.bin is the full thing with EmuTOS.
rom_con.bin same thing but EmuTOS is built as console-only which you interact with over the second serial port @9600 baud.
That last build is more of a curiosity but perhaps it's of benefit to verify emutos boots, and maybe also if cf card works, even if you have no graphics.
CoolTerm might be unhappy with the EmuTOS's ANSI output, I used some other terminal for this purpose.

Screenshot 2024-11-07 at 20.37.22.png (76.98 KiB) Viewed 272 times

[agranlund]

I am wondering if it'll be better if other peoples build and bring-up progress are in separate threads?
Kind of like how it was for the Phoenix boards (though this is on a super tiny scale in comparison).

I'm not minding so much but I'm thinking it could be easy for general Raven updates things to get lost with everything in the one big thread?

Or perhaps even, if @exxos thinks it's a sensible idea, a subchannel somewhere on the forum for general knowledge to become more organised and easier to find for the next guy? Or maybe I'm overthinking it with so few users anyway

[retrotronic]

Your design reminds me of 'The Boxer' was an Amiga clone that was made by Mick Tinker many years ago

Congrats on your new ST build

[luciodra]

rom_mon.bin is the stripped down bootrom with debug monitor only.
rom_tos.bin is the full thing with EmuTOS.
rom_con.bin same thing but EmuTOS is built as console-only which you interact with over the second serial port @9600 baud.

Ok, the ET4000 card gives me a black screen. It could be many things, but my doubt is about Narnia and Nessi, especially the first...

[redpixel]

What exactly are you referring to? I used another psu with no benefits. The usb-serial cable is connected to another female-female serial cable to connect to the Raven's serial. The clock battery is not positioned.
Again thanks to everyone for the help!

I meant the ground connection between the Raven and the USB-serial. Not sure exactly how it's connected in this case, but at work we use a lot of UART cables with wires individually soldered to a DSUB9 connector. If the ground wire comes loose or becomes damaged it usually looks like your screenshot. Of course if you're only using factory made cables etc. the risk for that should be small, unless it's a poor connection in the connector on the Raven side I guess.

Anyway I saw you got it working at 9600 bps now, congratulations

[luciodra]

I meant the ground connection between the Raven and the USB-serial. Not sure exactly how it's connected in this case, but at work we use a lot of UART cables with wires individually soldered to a DSUB9 connector. If the ground wire comes loose or becomes damaged it usually looks like your screenshot. Of course if you're only using factory made cables etc. the risk for that should be small, unless it's a poor connection in the connector on the Raven side I guess.

Anyway I saw you got it working at 9600 bps now, congratulations

Thank you. Yes, the problem is in the 9600 baud, now solved.
Now I'm dealing with the fact that I have black screen video output.
I tried to:
- change monitor and vga cable
- use the 4 isa slots
- the ET4000AX 1Mb video card worked until it was used some time ago.
I suspect I've planned badly either Narnia or Nessi...

[alexh]

Your design reminds me of 'The Boxer' was an Amiga clone that was made by Mick Tinker many years ago

The big difference being that "The BoXer" retained the Amiga chipset (in one form or another) and was supposed to have full backwards compatibility. Raven is not backwards compatible. Not that it matters. In the new world of "software defined hardware" (MiSTer etc.) Raven is a nice oldskool change.

[agranlund]

Now I'm dealing with the fact that I have black screen video output.

Does "rom_con.bin" work in the sense that you get emutos booting to commandline?
(put the serial cable in the second, ST compatible, port and use 9600 baud)

[luciodra]

Does "rom_con.bin" work in the sense that you get emutos booting to commandline?
(put the serial cable in the second, ST compatible, port and use 9600 baud)

Maybe I don't quite understand how to use it, but I don't have the Emutos window that you have.
Could we have a debug rom like rom_tos_dbg2 that runs at 9600 baud?

Thank you so much !

[agranlund]

Maybe I don't quite understand how to use it, but I don't have the Emutos window that you have.

- Program rom simm with "rom_con.bin"
- Connect the serial cable to the second serial port instead of the one you had it in before for those first boot messages.
- Set baud rate to 9600 baud
- Start raven

Does anything come up in the terminal?
(You're not going to get nicely formatted and colored EmuTOS output with CoolTerm like in my screenshot but that doesn't really matter, you still get text - I used another Mac terminal simply called "Serial" which supported such features)


What you are trying to work out is if EmuTOS is able to boot at all.
The black screen you had with the normal rom can mean anything. It is probable that it is related to ISA/gfx access but you wouldn't be able to know for sure at this point, for all we know it could be locking up or crashing even before trying to init graphics.
Testing if EmuTOS runs over serial connection, with graphics taken of the equation, would be one way of gaining a bit more knowledge on the matter.

The next step would be to run the old debug roms that you suggested from way back in the thread covering oldskool's bringup, and look at the output from that. EmuTOS communicates at 9600 baud on the second serial port already so you don't need new builds of those.


Btw, would you mind make a separate thread for the luciodra build of the Raven? I think general things, questions and help fits well in this thread but build troubleshooting and especially bring-up can easily generate many pages and I'm not sure it's the best idea to have everyones of that in the same thread.