Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

Better or worse?

In my particular case it was better:

Code: Select all

HDDRIVER: 6760 kb/sec
EmuTOS:   5540 kb/sec

[agranlund]

For no practical reason whatsoever, but having fun needs no other reason :)



(It's just a test application now but may turn into a real floppy disk driver for TOS)

[Mikerochip]

For no practical reason whatsoever, but having fun needs no other reason :)
(It's just a test application now but may turn into a real floppy disk driver for TOS)

Test ... how? :P What hardware is on the other end??? :D

Yes! For fun, is the best reason! Speaking of, I need to get back to mine :P

[agranlund]

Test ... how? :P What hardware is on the other end??? :D
Yes! For fun, is the best reason! Speaking of, I need to get back to mine :P

Yep, for fun is the best reason! I'm not sure there's _that_ much practical reasons to use a slow floppy drive but it's fun getting it working :)

I'm only at the stage of building the lower level code that interacts with the floppy controller at the moment, and testing these bits in isolation as I go.
The step after would be to hook up the higher level TOS interface and turning it into a proper driver TSR.


I've been using this card to test:
https://github.com/skiselev/isa-fdc

ISA_FDC-Assembled_Board-1.0-800px.jpg

In _theory_ the driver should work with just about any ISA card with a floppy controller as they're all supposed to be register-level compatible.
And just because I said that I couldn't resist swapping in a different one for a quick test, and yep it works with an old HM83740 Multi-IO card too :)

(my card was similar but not exactly the same as this picture I stole off the internet)

hm83740.jpg

[kodak80]

Test ... how? :P What hardware is on the other end??? :D
Yes! For fun, is the best reason! Speaking of, I need to get back to mine :P

Yep, for fun is the best reason! I'm not sure there's _that_ much practical reasons to use a slow floppy drive but it's fun getting it working :)

I'm only at the stage of building the lower level code that interacts with the floppy controller at the moment, and testing these bits in isolation as I go.
The step after would be to hook up the higher level TOS interface and turning it into a proper driver TSR.


I've been using this card to test:
https://github.com/skiselev/isa-fdc

ISA_FDC-Assembled_Board-1.0-800px.jpg


In _theory_ the driver should work with just about any ISA card with a floppy controller as they're all supposed to be register-level compatible.
And just because I said that I couldn't resist swapping in a different one for a quick test, and yep it works with an old HM83740 Multi-IO card too :)

(my card was similar but not exactly the same as this picture I stole off the internet)
hm83740.jpg

We are going to need more ISA slots... :D

Nice work and hope to see this to test in the future

[Oldskool]

Test ... how? :P What hardware is on the other end??? :D
Yes! For fun, is the best reason! Speaking of, I need to get back to mine :P

Yep, for fun is the best reason! I'm not sure there's _that_ much practical reasons to use a slow floppy drive but it's fun getting it working :)

I'm only at the stage of building the lower level code that interacts with the floppy controller at the moment, and testing these bits in isolation as I go.
The step after would be to hook up the higher level TOS interface and turning it into a proper driver TSR.


I've been using this card to test:
https://github.com/skiselev/isa-fdc

ISA_FDC-Assembled_Board-1.0-800px.jpg


In _theory_ the driver should work with just about any ISA card with a floppy controller as they're all supposed to be register-level compatible.
And just because I said that I couldn't resist swapping in a different one for a quick test, and yep it works with an old HM83740 Multi-IO card too :)

(my card was similar but not exactly the same as this picture I stole off the internet)
hm83740.jpg

What a coincedence I’m currently soldering that serial floppy card for my dx2. Ofcourse has nothing to do with Raven although in some way it has some things in common.. Probably Raven is the reason I got the mainboard from the big box of old electronics in the attic and started to put some cards in.

IMG_3747.jpeg

[agranlund]

We are going to need more ISA slots... :D

Haha I agree, this is the constant problem!
The fear of wearing out the ISA sockets, or even the edge connectors on some of my cards, is very real :D

What a coincedence I’m currently soldering that serial floppy card for my dx2. Ofcourse has nothing to do with Raven although in some way it has some things in common.. Probably Raven is the reason I got the mainboard from the big box of old electronics in the attic and started to put some cards in.

Nice! Dumb as I was I threw away a bunch of PC stuff many years ago cleaning the attic.
The thing I regret the most was chucking my first 486.. a nice little Compaq all-in-one.
Wish I had more space in my small hobby room, would love to have a dx2 again.

[LarryL]

We are going to need more ISA slots... :D

Haha I agree, this is the constant problem!
The fear of wearing out the ISA sockets, or even the edge connectors on some of my cards, is very real :D

What a coincedence I’m currently soldering that serial floppy card for my dx2. Ofcourse has nothing to do with Raven although in some way it has some things in common.. Probably Raven is the reason I got the mainboard from the big box of old electronics in the attic and started to put some cards in.

Nice! Dumb as I was I threw away a bunch of PC stuff many years ago cleaning the attic.
The thing I regret the most was chucking my first 486.. a nice little Compaq all-in-one.
Wish I had more space in my small hobby room, would love to have a dx2 again.

as far as I know the design of this FDC/Serial-Card from Sergey Kisilev is open, right?
Maybe the FDC part could be integrated into the new "IDE/CF/Network-Card", you have in the works...
just thinking/hoping ;-)

[agranlund]

as far as I know the design of this FDC/Serial-Card from Sergey Kisilev is open, right?
Maybe the FDC part could be integrated into the new "IDE/CF/Network-Card", you have in the works...
just thinking/hoping ;-)

I like it!

Just have to make up my mind about what chip to use based on availability and board space.
Ideally I would want one of the later QFP48 ones. Those PLCC68 variants are quite large.
Though if I ditch one of the CF sockets, or make the board larger, I suppose I could use whatever.

The super-io chips are also an option I suppose but they're usually QFP100 and feels a bit overkill if I only want the floppy part of it.
To my surprise Microchip _still_ makes one of those today for ISA host interface.
And available in places like Mouser and Digikey for less money than some of those old and maybe used floppy-only chips found on ebay. So for that reason it's not completely ruled out.

[LarryL]

Though if I ditch one of the CF sockets, or make the board larger, I suppose I could use whatever.

sounds great!
maybe put one of the CF sockets on the back of the PCB?