Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

Hah, interesting!

I was going to have a bit of experimentation with IDE and PIO modes and because the risk of trashing data is high when fiddling with IDE I decided to use a different card than my normal one.

Turns out four of my CF-cards don't actually work in Raven, as in they are not recognised by EmuTOS nor HDDriver.
By luck I must have picked one that works and I never tried a different one until now

Thought it could be good information to know in case you are struggling with IDE ...


It looks like it's caused by a too short "Address setup before IORD" and that some cards don't like that. I think I should be able to sit down some day and fix this in Nessi firmware only.

(the cards I have are of different brands and sizes and the one I've been using, which I don't know the model of, came with the Vampire V4SA which can also be picky with cards)

[agranlund]

Pushed nessi firmware 250714. Improves compatibility with slower cf-cards.
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... w/a1/Nessi

I'll include this firmware in future release zip after it have had a bit more testing, but my disk-on-module and collection of random cf-cards now appear to work.

Overall logical drive speed is not that much effected. It Looks like the number is in the same ballpark as before.

IMG_5041.jpg (68.28 KiB) Viewed 1576 times

HDDriver appears to be capable of faster logical drive speed, assuming it's a TOS-only partition.
The drawback of that is you can't use the card in a PC then. And you need the byteswap adapter since HDDriver doesn't understand little-endian interfaces.

IMG_5042.jpg (69.66 KiB) Viewed 1576 times

[agranlund]

minor release package update:
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/rele ... .A1.latest

firmware:
- (nessi) improved cf-card compatibility

rom:
- improved IDE transfer rate, now 7.9 MB/s instead of 4.8 MB/s, your mileage may vary.
(I had missed a define in EmuTOS which made the Raven build do 16bit rather than 32bit operations... )

[kodak80]

minor release package update:
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/rele ... .A1.latest

firmware:
- (nessi) improved cf-card compatibility

rom:
- improved IDE transfer rate, now 7.9 MB/s instead of 4.8 MB/s, your mileage may vary.
(I had missed a define in EmuTOS which made the Raven build do 16bit rather than 32bit operations... )

I can confirm that 2 32GB CF cards that did not work before are now working.

[luciodra]

And I can also confirm the increase in speed performance.

Thank you !

[agranlund]

Finally got around to soldering and testing the updated versions of:

CKBD:
Fixes fan control.
Old rev.c version can be patched using a through-hole resistor as per the readme so I wouldn't bother with the new if you already have one.
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... rades/ckbd

ROM Simm (SMD version):
Future proofing by tying pin47 high as some vendors flash chips can use this pin for selecting byte/word operation.
It makes no difference for SST39 devices but could in theory allow a larger variety of chips to be used in the future.
Thus, I wouldn't bother if you already have a rom simm.
https://github.com/agranlund/raven/blob ... mm/rom_SMD

So a bit of a no-news, news really


For these boards I fired up the ultrasonic cleaner for the very first time and wow, that thing is amazing!
I think I can stop dreading to clean PCBs after soldering now

[agranlund]

Work in progress, and "borrowing" liberally from the EmuTOS codebase, but still a while to go until it's a finished driver

IMG_5120.jpg (56.6 KiB) Viewed 997 times

Testing on an ancient super-io card:
Supporting the floppy interface could be a pointless, but fun, exercise too later on.

IMG_5122.jpg (60.6 KiB) Viewed 997 times

These newer homemade ones use non-standard addresses but will be supported too is the plan.

IMG_5121.jpg (101.25 KiB) Viewed 997 times

[PhilC]

I got a multi io card for the same experiments but got sidetracked getting the network stuff and ESS stuff working.

I probably would use the floppy drive as well as I have loads of HD disks.

[agranlund]

I probably would use the floppy drive as well as I have loads of HD disks.

But does your case even have drive bays?
(I have a whole bunch of old Atari disks stashed away too, would be really neat if Raven could read them)

[PhilC]

I probably would use the floppy drive as well as I have loads of HD disks.

But does your case even have drive bays?

And therein lies the problem. I have a cooler master qube500, so I could rig up something externally though.