Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

Not a bug, a feature! ;-) https://sourceforge.net/p/mxplay/code/H ... gs.txt#l16 ...

I will learn to embrace the blinking as the feature it is! :)


mxPlay plugins, for anyone that may be interested:
https://github.com/agranlund/atarisound

(there are precompiled binaries in the bin/mxplugins folder)

midi.mxp
Plays Midi files using the bios so should work on any Atari or clone that has Midi support in bios.

opl_isa.mxp
Plays Adlib songs in vgm or vgz format on ISA cards.
So far only tested with a Resound2 OPL3 card but I have a couple of others in the pile of things-to-test whenever I get around to it.

For any Atari that has ISA slots and runs ISA_BIOS or provides a compatible _ISA cookie in some other way.
The ISA_BIOS located in Raven Github *should* work on Hades, Milan and Panther/2 too.
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... a/isa_bios


An mxplay plugin for Gravis Ultrasound mod playback is next in line on the list.

[agranlund]

A big blue box of fun arrived in the post

IMG_2554.jpeg

[stephen_usher]

Oooooooo! :-)

[PhilC]

A big blue box of fun arrived in the post

IMG_2554.jpeg

Now that looks like my kinda fun.

Good luck with the build

[atari030]

Fantastic, can't wait to see the results.

3os3md[1].jpg

[agranlund]

Uh oh, and now there's two of them..

Life got in the way of doing any kind of Atari stuff until now.
Assuming the new revision works that old one will be demoted to wall-art in the hobby room.

revA1_small.jpg

[Cyprian]

looks cool

[LarryL]

Beautiful :P

[agranlund]

Assuming the new revision works that old one will be demoted to wall-art in the hobby room.

And it's up and running and working as intended! Very happy :)

There's a silkscreen mistake on one of the fan connectors but I'm not going to make a new revision for that, and I'm reluctant to fix it in the A1 repo since that technically makes the status "untested" again even if it's just a cosmetic change.
There's value in knowing that the exact gerbers files on Github has been used to produce a working board.

So I think that's it for revision A for now.
Now time to try and make an I/O shield, I got myself a handful of blank ones.

revA1_cased_small.jpg

I'm extremely happy with how the machine turned out and it has exceeded my initial expectations by quite some margin.
There's now a bunch of fun stuff to keep occupied for quite some time - both in terms of bios, drivers and software but also on the cpld side, and as a platform to make some of my own expansion cards. An Ethernet + USB + Cartridge combo perhaps.
A combo RAM + ROM Simm would make sense too as to not 'waste' an entire Simm slot just for ROM.
There's a small custom expansion header on the board now too with i2c and some GPO so that could be taken advantage of for something interesting maybe.

It would be interesting to play with expansion bus alternatives at some point for a revision.B but not anytime soon.
VLB perhaps but the gfx driver situation would need to be investigated but regardless, it could be fun with a fast 32bit slot for homemade expansions too.
With PCI one could take advantage of existing software sources but would be a much bigger (too big?) challenge in completely new territory for me. Perhaps resulting in nothing but no doubt fun and interesting.

[frank.lukas]

There is a MACH64 PCI Nova driver from Idek for the Hades ...

https://silicon-heaven.org/atari/nova/Hades/