Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[DrZiplok]

Had a few adventures; mis-labelled Narnia so the smoke test was actually smoky, and some challenges with my first attempts at using solder paste & hot air have meant reworking a few things, but it's up to the point where there's serial output from the monitor.

IMG_6641.png

[peters]

Another plus is that should anything bad happen to a Hades or Milan there is an alternative that is available.

[agranlund]

It'll never be fully compatible.. this is why Agranlund has made an ST emulator that runs transparently. It'll be compatible with clean coded GEM apps, but nothing that uses hardware / chipset exploits. It's like a Milan in that respect.

This is true. The hardware is intentionally kept simple where I knew I could throw software at the same problem instead.

Here's my take on the Raven, and I'm super excited about it.
I am 100% confident that the Raven can be the best Atari clone ever simply because @agranlund's superhero hardware skills are matched, if not exceeded, by his software skills.

Very kind, thank you! I'm fairly comfortable around software that speaks to hardware, but when it comes to making the hardware side I'm just a happy amateur.
A bit like building a shed from nothing but a bunch of planks and very little experience, I don't really know what I'm doing and professionals will surely scoff at it but I'm having a great time learning-by-doing which is the whole point of the endeavour.

We must all remember that these new machines/boards are hobbyist projects and the people involved are doing it for fun and hence won't have the energy long-term to "support" it. I know that this is the case with my projects, which is why I open source them so they can have a life of their own if others find them useful.

I've been following this project and it's awesome. Not the sort of thing I'm interested in but it is awesome. Just don't put any pressure on @agranlund to make it anything other than his fun project.

We are exactly on the same page @stephen_usher!
This is absolutely not a product and things like end-user polish, support and guarantees are extremely limited.
I'm happy to share all the things as open source in case someone finds any of it useful, either as-is or by improving and modifying or simply just using parts of the sources for something else.
The fun part for me is the process of making and I'm 100% sure Raven will cease to be fun when it starts to feel "completed", however you define that. Being open source can allow it to have a life of its own and potentially get improvements from anyone.


There's certainly no lack of shaky / wip / fix-later stuff that should be dealt with at some point and it's not impossible that some things are maybe only working by luck or happy accident. I tend to find and fix bugs as I'm trying new things.
I'm mostly doing the stuff I find most enjoyable, and it's a little bit all over the place since Raven has opened up so many possibilities for things to tinker with :)


Perhaps as some people are building the board knowledge could be shared in a dedicated thread where we could support each other.

[artik-wroc]

I'll add that both plugins (OPL and MIDI) work nicely on Hades and Panther/2. Checked personally.

[Oldskool]

Probably stupid question but how does this programmer work.

putty.png

So p is program. :

Schermafbeelding 2024-07-28 003605.png

But how do I upload the rom file.

[Atarian Computing]

Did you try [h]elp?

[Oldskool]

Help is the menu.
Tried putting the bin file on the pico pi.
Tried X modem but transfer does not start.

Update
With Teraterm 5:
Press P
Then send file send (as binary in option) in teraterm
Then the light start blinking on the picopi and after pushing the button on the programmer transfer starts.
With dump I see something is written.

Not sure if this is the correct procedure.

[agranlund]

Probably stupid question but how does this programmer work.

Update
With Teraterm 5:
Press P
Then send file send (as binary in option) in teraterm
Then the light start blinking on the picopi and after pushing the button on the programmer transfer starts.
With dump I see something is written.

Not sure if this is the correct procedure.

Not a stupid question at all, it was rather quickly put together and the user-friendliness leaves a lot to be desired :)
Connect with some high baud rate so the programming is not bottlenecked by transfer speed, I use 750000.

1. Type E to erase
2. Type P to program, it should now display some text saying that it is waiting for a file.
3. Send file somehow using your terminal program.
(with CoolTerm it is: Menu -> Connection -> "Send Text/Binary File...")
4. The light on the programmer will blink as it is programming. When complete it will stop blinking and you'll get some text output in your terminal.
(CoolTerm displays a nice progress bar too while programming)

The program option does not automatically erase so you need to do E for erase first every time you program the rom.
Yes, this sucks and every time I reprogram roms I get reminded I should make it auto erase before program, but since I'm always in the middle of things it ends up a case of "I'll do it later sometime..." :lol:

Programming just the monitor binary is pretty quick. The entire thing including TOS takes a while.
It's not impossible that the programming waitstates may be too defensive and that it's possible to speed the thing up if someone is interested in experimenting with that.

The button on the programmer is a reset button and should not be pressed as part of the programming procedure.
In fact, you're probably never going to need to press it.

[agranlund]

I'll add that both plugins (OPL and MIDI) work nicely on Hades and Panther/2. Checked personally.

Awesome! And thanks for testing

[Oldskool]

Not a stupid question at all, it was rather quickly put together and the user-friendliness leaves a lot to be desired :)
Connect with some high baud rate so the programming is not bottlenecked by transfer speed, I use 750000.

1. Type E to erase
2. Type P to program, it should now display some text saying that it is waiting for a file.
3. Send file somehow using your terminal program.
(with CoolTerm it is: Menu -> Connection -> "Send Text/Binary File...")
4. The light on the programmer will blink as it is programming. When complete it will stop blinking and you'll get some text output in your terminal.
(CoolTerm displays a nice progress bar too while programming)

The program option does not automatically erase so you need to do E for erase first every time you program the rom.
Yes, this sucks and every time I reprogram roms I get reminded I should make it auto erase before program, but since I'm always in the middle of things it ends up a case of "I'll do it later sometime..." :lol:

Programming just the monitor binary is pretty quick. The entire thing including TOS takes a while.
It's not impossible that the programming waitstates may be too defensive and that it's possible to speed the thing up if someone is interested in experimenting with that.

The button on the programmer is a reset button and should not be pressed as part of the programming procedure.
In fact, you're probably never going to need to press it.

Thanks so I almost got it :)
Coolterm does not really work stable on my Windows 11 machine. With Teraterm it looks like this:

So press P then select the file and binary somehow also need to select the teraterm 4 box:

Schermafbeelding 2024-07-28 155415.png

There it goes:

Schermafbeelding 2024-07-28 154858.png

And it says:

Schermafbeelding 2024-07-28 155233.png