Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[Mikerochip]

I haven't looked at it, really, but, Wiretap has an IRF7319 in his power switch.

https://github.com/wiretap-retro/Simple ... wer-Switch

[agranlund]

I haven't looked at it, really, but, Wiretap has an IRF7319 in his power switch.

Nice find! That's a pretty small solution in terms of component count and board space!

[Mikerochip]

Yeah!
It's pretty neat. Wiretap is good people! 8-)

Now, all our cases need the 3 digit displays, for the raven boards:
https://github.com/wiretap-retro/3-digit-Turbo-Display

That's a specific external solution, for AT style cases, mostly.
But! Be nice to have a Raven one, too! :twisted:
Onboard? I dunno.
Dynamically set by the jumpers we already use ... maybe!!
:D

[agranlund]

Now, all our cases need the 3 digit displays, for the raven boards:
https://github.com/wiretap-retro/3-digit-Turbo-Display

Just don't try to buy that MAX7219 from Mouser :lol:

[Mikerochip]

I saw that!!
By the time I came back here to say it, you'd already seen it :mrgreen:

[redpixel]

So apparently Analog Devices has told all distributors that their products can no longer be sold to private individuals, only B2B sales.

Darn, sorry that happened to you Anders. Don't know if you remember but same thing happened to me, also from Mouser (only DS1818 and MAX3245 though). And just like your experience, buying the same parts from Digikey was fine. Really strange. Mouser were really "secretive" about it too, and it took many chats with their support agents to get to hear the B2B explanation. It is super annoying when you have to pay the shipping fee for just one or two parts!


Good luck with the A2 build :) The soldering was tough, I think I'll wait for a little while before building another one :D

Actually I think I have an undiagnosed problem with my A1. Most things seem to work fine, but I bought an MK1869 Xtreme card and I haven't been able to get it to show up in the ISA BIOS log in any way shape or form. It appears to be completely "dead" (both GUS and ESS). It's strange, because my graphics card (Mach32) appears to work fine, so I guess the ISA subsystem can't be too broken, and the card itself appears to be OK also (I actually bought an older PC just to test it). Haven't debugged much yet except I measured that voltages and clocks/oscillators were OK, and they seemed to be. Also checked pull-ups/pull-downs on IRQ/DACK etc. and they also seem to be OK (I'd expect them to be, since all SMD parts were mounted at JLCPCB). Also tried different ISA slots but it's dead everywhere. If anyone's experienced anything similar, I'd love to hear about it :D

[agranlund]

Good luck with the A2 build :) The soldering was tough, I think I'll wait for a little while before building another one :D

Thanks, yes it's a bit of a project.. some assembly required.
Throw in the pcb, a roll of solder, shake it around and put in microwave? :lol:

IMG_5810.jpg

but I bought an MK1869 Xtreme card and I haven't been able to get it to show up in the ISA BIOS log in any way shape or form.

I don't have anything particularly clever to add other than I have the same card showing up in ISA_BIOS and working.
That's not saying there couldn't be some kind of incompatibility from Raven or ISA_BIOS but at least a data point showing it working in one machine.
We could probably make an ISA_BIOS with extra debug logging, and maybe a new Nessi firmware with a few more ISA waitstates if that's the issue.

[agranlund]

So much nostalgia!
All thanks to @mikro 's relentless and awesome work on Atari ScummVM.

Rise of the Dragon was the very first game I bought for the 386SX back in the days, and probably the first 256 color game I played.
Incredibly cool seeing it running on Raven.

And as a neat side effect, this exposed and prompted me to fix a pretty nasty crash bug in RVSND midi xbios.

rotd.jpg

Probably what needs to happen now for a more polished experience is:

- detach mouse cursor redraw from main loop.
some gfxcards has support hardware cursor but for best compatibility I think a software solution like in ScummST would be first priority.
(just redraw the cursor at every VBL if changed, essentially)

- detach music from main loop.
avoid midi/adlib timing jitter as well as stalls if mainloop is busy for a length of time (loading etc)

[kodak80]

So much nostalgia!
All thanks to @mikro 's relentless and awesome work on Atari ScummVM.

Rise of the Dragon was the very first game I bought for the 386SX back in the days, and probably the first 256 color game I played.
Incredibly cool seeing it running on Raven.

Looking good. Opens the door to playing a host of new "old" games on the Raven. :D

[redpixel]

I don't have anything particularly clever to add other than I have the same card showing up in ISA_BIOS and working.
That's not saying there couldn't be some kind of incompatibility from Raven or ISA_BIOS but at least a data point showing it working in one machine.
We could probably make an ISA_BIOS with extra debug logging, and maybe a new Nessi firmware with a few more ISA waitstates if that's the issue.

Thanks for the good suggestions! I bought the card just because I saw that you also had it so I was sure that you would do magical things with it :D

I tried to add 2 extra wait states in Nessi, just slapping them onto the "end", i.e. counting up to ISADTACK22 instead of ISADTACK20. That did not make any difference. I also tried to replace the 68150 with another one (the one I normally use is FN40 and I tried to replace it with another FN33 that I have). Also no difference.

Then I tried to use different bus/CPU oscillators, and boom, it showed up! So I guess it is somehow timing related, but it doesn't seem to help adding wait states at the end. My testing looked like this:

Osc	Nessi 251029	Nessi +2 waitstates
25 MHz	Detected	Detected
32 MHz	No boot	No boot
40 MHz	Detected	Detected
48 MHz	Not detected	Not detected

CPU was at X2 in all cases. I have normally used the 48 MHz oscillator. In the No boot case it hangs on InitVga (I'm using an ATI Mach32 2 MB, I believe exact same model as you have also... :P That was by chance though!)

Not sure if you have any ideas what could be wrong, otherwise I can see if I can hook up my logic analyzer and try to measure a bit and see if I can make any sense of it. I think I might have to order one of those ISA extender PCB's for that though, to be able to have some accessible probe points.