Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[danboid]

Anyone keeping an eye on PicoMEM?

And, then, by extension, this!
https://github.com/ianhan/picograph

Pico based ISA video card!
The last update emulates a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429

That is so cool! Be good if it had VGA output too.

@agranlund

Could you kindly add a changelog for A2 to the Raven's github README or docs dir please? I found a (partial) changelog on p155 of this topic, for anyone else wondering whats new since A1.

Amazing work, congrats on the new board.

Thanks

EDIT

Uzebox forum Atari topic update:

https://uzebox.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=43353#p43353

[redpixel]

@agranlund

Could you kindly add a changelog for A2 to the Raven's github README or docs dir please? I found a (partial) changelog on p155 of this topic, for anyone else wondering whats new since A1.

Changelog is here: https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... w/raven/a2

Excited to hear more about the A2 bringup, hope everything works as expected!

[danboid]

@agranlund

Could you kindly add a changelog for A2 to the Raven's github README or docs dir please? I found a (partial) changelog on p155 of this topic, for anyone else wondering whats new since A1.

Changelog is here: https://github.com/agranlund/raven/tree ... w/raven/a2

Thanks! Obviously I missed that.

I want to build one of these but not until Anders has verified it.

[agranlund]

Excited to hear more about the A2 bringup, hope everything works as expected!

Me too! With some luck I hope it'll show signs of life this weekend.
It's starting to resemble a computer now, or a murder scene with all that sticky flux all over the place

Only a few connectors left, a pass in the cleaner, then soldering the few remaining parts that i dont want exposed to the ultrasonic cleaner.

a2_building_03.jpg (355.75 KiB) Viewed 954 times

[redpixel]

Me too! With some luck I hope it'll show signs of life this weekend.
It's starting to resemble a computer now, or a murder scene with all that sticky flux all over the place

Only a few connectors left, a pass in the cleaner, then soldering the few remaining parts that i dont want exposed to the ultrasonic cleaner.

Wow, great progress! You are quick. And I know what you mean with the sticky flux, almost impossible to get rid of just scrubbing with IPA. Haven't bought an ultrasonic cleaner yet but maybe I should

[agranlund]

And I know what you mean with the sticky flux, almost impossible to get rid of just scrubbing with IPA. Haven't bought an ultrasonic cleaner yet but maybe I should

Very likely my technique isn't all that good but I really have a difficult time getting large boards clean with manual scrubbing and IPA.
This will be the first time trying the ultrasonic on a board this size so I'm quite excited to see what the result of that is.

[agranlund]

Reminds me, 3M have discontinued their THT sockets. Time to buy a bunch, before they disappear.

I used some no-brand sockets in my Rev.A1 build, and now the 3M ones for Rev.A2.
Was surprised how much force is required to seat chips in the 3M version - I take that as a good sign and may also pick up a few more before they disappear

[agranlund]

It lives!
Incredibly satisfying, after hand soldering all these individual components.

Fingers crossed all the old and new features are working as they should.
Especially excited about verifying DSP and related stuff.

a2_bringup_log.png (351.56 KiB) Viewed 803 times

a2_bringup.jpg (519.89 KiB) Viewed 803 times

[PhilC]

That's great news. I'm slowly putting together a lot of parts for when I build another Raven

[agranlund]

And the DSP sprung to life and said hello world
Just a simple program that sets the HF2 bit then toggles HF3 in an infinite loop, but proves I can upload and run code through the HI08 interface.

I'm very happy this worked!

Code: Select all

	org p:$0
start:	bset	#3,x:$ffffc2
loop:	bchg	#4,x:$ffffc2
	rep	#$fff
	nop
	jmp	loop

Screenshot 2026-06-29 at 22.59.01.png (260.51 KiB) Viewed 696 times

Apart from this, I am booting to my usual desktop ok.
Not everything has been tested in detail but it's looking good so far.
Next interesting test would be the DAC and ADC sound paths to the DSP.

One minor mishap is I made the internal speaker on/off control reverse compared to Falcon.
It's the same register and bit as Falcon but ON for Falcon means OFF for Raven when using the control panel accessory.
This is easily fixable by a workaround in Ravens xbios so I'm not really too bothered other than being annoyed by myself for not double checking this beforehand.