exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Apr 2022 12:40 Crikey, I remember using these things somewhere. Where though, is another matter!!

I remember using them quite a bit at the library back in the 1980s, when looking up old newspaper articles. The fancier ones even had photocopier hardware built in and could print off paper copies of whatever was on the screen, but this one is just the basic model. There's not much to it.

I worked in a car repair place, it may have been there for parts lookup, or possibly the library.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Apr 2022 13:29 I worked in a car repair place, it may have been there for parts lookup

I bet you're right, because when I looked on eBay for microfiche to use with it, almost everything is car and motorcycle parts. :lol:

Oh cool, must have been that then 😁

I took it all apart and cleaned up everything, and it looks great now. The only parts that will need replacement are the rubber feet, which have disintegrated pretty badly.

I ordered a couple of lightbulbs from UK and also a cheap microfiche of Honda motorcycle parts. Will update when the bits arrive. :D

Looking very tidy now.

Now that I got the Portfolio 2 off my desk, I finally had space to finish up my Speedy TT (daughterboard version) installation.


As advised in the installation instructions, I had to stick an extra VG96 connector into the TT-RAM stack in order to make the Thunder and Storm clear the new Speedy TT board. Not mentioned in the instructions, I had to trim about 4 mm off all the pins on the extra connector in order to get it to sit as low as possible into the TT-RAM port on the motherboard, otherwise my 3 cm SIMMs wouldn't fit with the case closed. Could probably replace those with 2 cm SIMMs, but clipping legs is a cheaper option. :lol:


Nice! That's with the CPU, FPU, and TT-RAM clocked at 48 MHz (thank you @exxos for a better FPU than the one Atari gave me!).

derkom wrote: 13 Jul 2022 13:00 Now that I got the Portfolio 2 off my desk, I finally had space to finish up my Speedy TT (daughterboard version) installation.

Looks very nice indeed.

BW

Very nice. I think I will likely grab one of these at some point.

@derkom was there ANY soldering to be done for this daughterboard CPU version?

mrbombermillzy wrote: 13 Jul 2022 13:18 was there ANY soldering to be done for this daughterboard CPU version?

Yes, it does require* a bit of soldering, even for the daughterboard version. On daughterboard TTs, there's a factory bodge on the bottom of the board, providing the FPU with a 32 MHz clock from the shifter. This needs to be disconnected and a new wire must be soldered between the Speedy and the clock pin on the FPU on the underside of the board.

* You might be able to get away without actually soldering here. The shifter end of the factory bodge does need to be desoldered from the shifter, but as the wire at least on mine is long enough to reach around to the Speedy, and the connection on the Speedy end is a dupont style connector which can just crimp on, you might manage to reuse the factory bodge wire here and only need to desolder, not solder.

However, changing the speed of the FPU away from 32 MHz does require some soldering skills, because there are solder blob jumpers on the Speedy board. The default Speedy setup is 32 MHz FPU, so if you're satisfied with that, you don't need to solder anything. But if you want the 48 MHz FPU, you would need to change these jumpers. This raises the question of what would happen if you simply left the FPU connected to the shifter's 32 MHz clock, rather than rerouting it to the Speedy board's variable FPU clock output, and the answer is "I don't know".