LarryL - another Raven060 Adventure

[LarryL]

Ah, cool…
Now I understand things a bit better - always good
I have a WD90C31A laying around - next in line for a test

[LarryL]

I have a WD90C31A laying around - next in line for a test

my WD90C31A is not working well…
Strange artifacts while moving the mouse and color is fading after a few seconds - picture and colors are getting brighter over time and then saturated again. Happens in different resolutions, b/w and with 8bit colors
But it is fast
Maybe needs some rework on the electrolytic… back to the drawer, next year maybe…

[agranlund]

Now I have also tried Master + Slave IDE configuration and it works here too
Apparently I didn't have any old IDE CDROM laying around so it's off the auctions and see if there's any cheap finds to be had.

I found this Startech IDE to CF adapter which has both 44 and 40 pin connectors.
So I configured it as master, and connected it to the motherboard with the 44pin cable.
Then hooked up a second slave CF adapter to it with a 40pin cable and that seems to work fine.

Came with both 3.5" drive bay and PCI bracket mounting option. Pretty nice!

Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 19.11.29.png (1.47 MiB) Viewed 1869 times

[LarryL]

Cool
I think I am using the same CF Adapter.
But with the 40p connector

[bbisi]

I have the same startech adapter 40pin
On the second IDE 40pol I put the CD/DVD Writer as slave from LG
That's very good reading with extendos.prg driver in AUTO folder and the extendos folder in root.

Yesterday I want two cf-cards install on the raven side. I have to copy some things to install easymint.
I make it with one cfcard adapter on master and the other one as slave. The same with CD-ROM . But the Raven don't find any cf-card. Only with one cfcard it is running
Here is a picture of the adapter

s-l500.jpg (43.34 KiB) Viewed 1835 times

Then I use cfcard adapter with two slots to insert micro sd_cards
The same error. With two cards inserted the raven don't find any micro sd_card. With one sd_card it is running.
Here is a picture of the adapter

s-l500-2.jpg (69.56 KiB) Viewed 1835 times

[agranlund]

That dual sd -> cf adapter looked interesting but when I googled I found a lot of posts saying they only got it working with a single sd card and never two. To be fair all the complaints were on an iPod reddit don't know if it's known to work or not in a PC.


The dual cf scenario that worked for me was:

Startech (44pin) -> Motherboard
Startech (40pin) -> Cheap CF adapter

Startech adapter jumpered as master (which grounds CSEL pin CF)
Cheap adapter jumpered as slave (which leaves CSEL pin on CF floating)

Both adapters had "Kingston Canvas Focus 128GB" cards in them.


This was the cheaper adapter:

cheap_cf_pcibracket.jpg (27.83 KiB) Viewed 1799 times

It's worth knowing that some CF cards have bad True-IDE implementations, not supporting master/slave properly among other things.

IDE->CF adapters generally leave the CF CSEL pin floating to tell the card to be slave. This is fine and according to spec.

But I've heard some cards don't have internal pullups on their CSEL pin, which is required for True-IDE mode slave to work.
However, it is not required for PC-card mode(s) to work, nor is it for True-IDE master.
It's easy to imagine it could be an honest oversight when making a CF card, or as a way to save a tiny amount of money, if you just want to get cheap stuff out there.


From Vogons, on the same issue but on a PC:

"From my personal experience fighting this exact scenario, of trying to get a CF card to behave in master/slave config, it was 100% the cards I was trying at fault, not the adapters or cables. You have to get a card that *truly* supports master/slave, most industrial cards do."


and

"My thanks to everyone who tried to help me! It finally works now, turned out the problem was the cheap chinese CF card"

[Bugging]

Hi Folks,

Starting my Raven060 Adventure soon and like to document my built here

As written elsewhere, this will be one (out of 5) new Raven060 given birth in Germany.
OK, one set of PCBs will relocate pretty soon to Sweden and will be handled by @redpixel but 4 of them will be built during next weeks (or months) by me and some German fellows.

During last two months we were preparing, i.e. ordering components and PCBs - but now, finally, all seems to be ready and we can start.

The PCBs are all black (of course) and the Mainboard is pre-assembled with most of the SMD stuff by JLCPCB in China.
Only a few components they did not have on stock (and couldn’t order for some reason) like the 16245, the Max3245, the XR68M and the 24MHz OSC, we have to add manually. And all the THT stuff, of course.

Attached some first „unboxing“ pictures of the Mainboard, which just arrived yesterday (together with a big box of components from Mouser)

IMG_4600.jpeg

IMG_1667.jpeg

IMG_1668.jpeg

I am pretty excited and looking forward to starting my build.

Cheers
Michael

Hi this looks like a interesting build I've just finished a Denise itx build and a GBA1000 are the PCB still available to buy

[LarryL]

Hi this looks like a interesting build I've just finished a Denise itx build and a GBA1000 are the PCB still available to buy

Hi
Yes - and it is still very exciting
PCBs are all built and gone, sorry

[LarryL]

Hi,
Time for an update.

Before I will progress on the SW side (MINT & MagiC), I fine-tuned the system a bit on the HW side:
* Fiddled two little switches to the back of my case, to have reset and NMI switches. The case has a lot of „holes“ for ventilation. Filed two of them a bit bigger and mounted the switches

IMG_5023.jpeg (520.38 KiB) Viewed 1617 times

* Managed to source a W32i card (ET4W32-5, only 1MB and interleave is not working). But this card is pretty fast compared to the non-accelerated cards (like AX).

IMG_5025.jpeg (318.26 KiB) Viewed 1617 times

* Had to tune the BIB files, so that my modern 16:9 Philips screen likes the signal. 1280x720x8 looks pretty good and fits well to the 16:9 monitor. Although I see some artefacts from time to time: few black pixels occurring around the mouse pointer while moving or resizing windows - need to look into this a bit more later…

* I am actually working on a Pine GD5434 card. Made 5 of them at JLCPCB with most of the SMD parts already mounted. Had to add a diode, the OSC and one of the logic chips by hand - and of course the GD5434 and the RAM chips. The GD got soldered this morning, the RAMs will follow during the week. Kinda curious if the card will finally work…

IMG_5026.jpeg (811.17 KiB) Viewed 1617 times

* If it works, I will complete the other 4 cards - and then I might have 2 or 3 for sale. The RAMs I had already at hand and the GD I sourced from the US (approx. EUR 160,- for 5 chips including shipment&taxes…). The 5 PCBs wer costing another EUR 250,- plus another EUR 50,- for the EPROM, socket and VGA jack. In total not really cheap - but cheaper than the hilarious prices of GD5434 ISA cards at eBay…

* @PhilC sold me a blank PCB for the Excelgraph - so, this will be the next project. Sourced a w32i Chip from China. Then I can compare the Pine with the Excelgraph. Sadly only one can work inside the Raven at the end of the day…

* Still making up my mind, if I will switch to HDDRIVER (using the new efix101.prg) or stick with the EmuTOS IDE driver. But I think I will find out when I install MagiC

* And: still wondering, if I can mix FAT16 and Atari partitions on one CF when installing MagiC. Do not want to loose the convenience of simply copying files to the CF on the PC…

* Got my Ethernet card working - at least with the UIP tool and copied files from my Mac using FTP? So, even if I loose FAT16 partitions on the CF, at least this can be used for copying files easily

* Changed the PicoPSU I used so far to a beQuiet ATX PSU. Somehow the PicoPSU acted strangely on power-down. The 5V was switched of (so the Raven got powered down) but somehow the RBG lighting of the fans did not switch off. Seems this is driven from 12V which did not got switched off. Didn’t like that…

* Ah yes - soundcard(s)… still need to configure the PicoGUS and the ESS1868F. The ESS card has a Dreamblaster S2 Wavetable board attached… lets see…

IMG_5024.jpeg (194.34 KiB) Viewed 1617 times

* What games or sound programms do you recommend to install to take advantage of the soundcards?

Cheers
Michael

[LarryL]

Hi

Received the Excelgraph PCB from @PhilC some time ago and a w32i chip from China
Started soldering the SMD components (RAM and w32i) today

But: the w32i is missing one pin
It is pin 160 - one of the 5V pins - hope it will work anyhow, since there are a few more 5V pins, e.g. pin 1 right in the other side of the chip corner…

Really annoying these Chinese chip resellers…