exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Thanks Icky,
I have mine in small cardboard box at the moment.. and I worried about heat (Though I just have an Et4000)

SO I will look into this.. but rather than putting my lighting into a box I was thinking of a bracket like this

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3105501 and then just put a couple of notches out of bottom of it to allow the NOVA cables to exit to the enclosure. Maybe the Lighting header wont fit there now with the nova card in the VME slot?

Anyone looked at that?

James

Bikerbob wrote: 20 Sep 2019 21:34 Thanks Icky,
I have mine in small cardboard box at the moment.. and I worried about heat (Though I just have an Et4000)

SO I will look into this.. but rather than putting my lighting into a box I was thinking of a bracket like this

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3105501 and then just put a couple of notches out of bottom of it to allow the NOVA cables to exit to the enclosure. Maybe the Lighting header wont fit there now with the nova card in the VME slot?

Anyone looked at that?

James

HI James. The current Lightning header won't fit with the Nova card in the VME slot as the Nova headers are right near the slot (see pics). It might be possible to find some thin socket blocks to get these above the Nova headers.

I have been mulling the Nova fit within the TT and MegaSTE for sometime now and the Nova VME board with the ISA board is quite a lot of overkill in space. I have a side project idea on the go to recreate the Nova VME and ISA board as one inside the TT / Mega STE with the metal shielding removed so that the ISA graphics card can be placed inside the computer case. I have been think how the USB Sockets could also be place at the VME case slot so its a nice USB / VGA out. This is not something that is going to happen soon but the idea has started.

Icky wrote: 22 Sep 2019 20:00 I have been mulling the Nova fit within the TT and MegaSTE for sometime now and the Nova VME board with the ISA board is quite a lot of overkill in space. I have a side project idea on the go to recreate the Nova VME and ISA board as one inside the TT / Mega STE with the metal shielding removed so that the ISA graphics card can be placed inside the computer case. I have been think how the USB Sockets could also be place at the VME case slot so its a nice USB / VGA out. This is not something that is going to happen soon but the idea has started.

I've been thinking about doing the same thing, but to be honest, the amount of heat produced by the Mach64 cards have made me wonder if it's really that great of an idea, but I just hate having it outside. It ruins the amazing look of the TT.

dhedberg wrote: 22 Sep 2019 20:28

Icky wrote: 22 Sep 2019 20:00 I have been mulling the Nova fit within the TT and MegaSTE for sometime now and the Nova VME board with the ISA board is quite a lot of overkill in space. I have a side project idea on the go to recreate the Nova VME and ISA board as one inside the TT / Mega STE with the metal shielding removed so that the ISA graphics card can be placed inside the computer case. I have been think how the USB Sockets could also be place at the VME case slot so its a nice USB / VGA out. This is not something that is going to happen soon but the idea has started.

I've been thinking about doing the same thing, but to be honest, the amount of heat produced by the Mach64 cards have made me wonder if it's really that great of an idea, but I just hate having it outside. It ruins the amazing look of the TT.

Agreed, heat is a big problem with the Mach64's. Might not be possible due to heat even if using a centrifugal fan to pump the heat out.

Surely there's a better use of engineering effort than trying to shoe-horn a very rare ISA graphics card into the half height VME card slot?

I wonder if all the great hardware/software talent here couldn't create a new graphics card? Possibly base it on a Raspberry Pi Zero using the GPIO as a 16 bit data bus and having the Pi interpret VDI commands directly and outputting to HDMI natively. It would only need a shim driver on the TT/MegaSTE then. The relatively low bandwidth of the bus would only be a bottleneck for uploading bitmap/pixmap images.

Surely that would be even faster than a 1992 graphics chip and generate less heat? It would also be more popular potentially amongst TT/MegaSTE owners as the Pi Zero is a darned sight easier to come by than any of the ISA cards the NOVA can support, and a heck of a lot cheaper too.

It was just a thought.

Hi,

I have troubles downloading the STL files for the updated design of the slim Nova case - any chance you can share them here? Does anyone know the place I could order the case for the Nova VME or ask for it to be printed?

Best regards
Michal

Downloading it without problems ...

https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=at ... t=relevant

I can download the first one with no problem but on the second one I have 404 error

Seems to be a Thingiverse issue. I am seeing it too @mgi.

Please find the files attached, although I am currently respining a slightly improved version.

Thanks a lot!
Not planning to print one extra? :)

Cheers
Michal