Sporniket's log on hardware stuff

[sporniket]

Before continuing with posting the installation of the mod, it turns out that the wiring to P100 was a wrongly documented, here is the correct wiring :

2023-11-17--01-fixed-wiring-P100.jpg

Now, the continuation :

Intercepting the FDD led signal. On my motherboard, the recommanded via is covered with solder mask, and I did not felt like scraping this location. Instead, I carefully cut the pin 18 of U307 at mid height, lifted the upper part, and soldered the wires there. Of course verifying that there was no bridge.

2023-11-12--04-cutting-U307-pin-18.jpg

2023-11-12--05-soldering-hdd-led-minus-to-U307-pin-18-bottom-part.jpg

2023-11-12--06-soldering-fdd-led-in-to-U307-pin-18-top-part.jpg

[sporniket]

Installing a connector to IKBD Tx (pressing both shift keys and then a key among F1 to F4 select the ROM image to use)

2023-11-12--07-easy-connect-to-ikbd-Tx.jpg

Soldering a wire to the DMA interrupt line

2023-11-12--08-hdint.jpg

Sourcing the 16MHz clock, I take advantage of the soldered Shifter. Once again, the recommended via is covered by solder mask on my motherboard, so I preferred that setup instead :

2023-11-12--11-wire-fixed.jpg

The 12V power supply for the LED module :

2023-11-12--12-12V-rail-on-C108.jpg

Preparation of the LED module (that is also sniffing the IKBD Tx for ROM selection) :

2023-11-12--13-led-module-ready.jpg

[sporniket]

Time to finish...
Isolating the metallic cans of the various oscillators of the area

2023-11-12--14-isolating-the-oscillators.jpg

Removing the ROMS and setting the jumbers

2023-11-12--15-removing-roms-configure-jumpers.jpg

Plug the board

2023-11-12--16-plug-the-smartboard.jpg

Connect 16MHz

2023-11-12--17-solder-16MHz.jpg

Connect the 3-wires connectors (FDD led + DMA int, the red wire is not used, isolated and fixed.)

2023-11-12--18-3-wires-connector.jpg

[sporniket]

Connect the 6-wires connector

2023-11-12--19-6-wires-connector.jpg

Connect the 10-wires connector

2023-11-12--20-10-wires-connector.jpg

Notice the orientation of the flat ribbon cable, the recommanded orientation is so that the flat cable is going up starting from the main board.

2023-11-12--21-beware-orientation-ribbon-cable.jpg

Plug the LED module to the ribbon cable, the power supply and to IKBD Tx

2023-11-12--22-led-module-plugged.jpg

Preparing the RTC battery

2023-11-12--23-preparing-coin-battery-holder.jpg

[sporniket]

Ready to go

2023-11-12--24-ready-to-test.jpg

And... after having fixed P100 as mentionned...

2023-11-17--02-success-slot1.jpg

I get to the desktop. The IDE is detected but no driver loaded, I have to check my card.

The boot screen of the other ROMs pre-installed. Arne provided a patched 1.06 and 1.62 ROMS to be able to boot from IDE, as soon as my card is correctly setup I presume.

2023-11-17--03-success-slot2.jpg

2023-11-17--04-success-slot3.jpg

2023-11-17--05-success-slot4.jpg

Also, I will have to setup and check the RTC clock.

If I have time this week-end. But anyway, after about one man-day of work, the installation is done.

[Darklord]

Nice! Congratulations. :)

[sporniket]

Thanks, I've yet to have a working CF cards, the one I had is not working, my linux computer cannot do anything with it.

[Darklord]

I've never used CF cards, although I've heard good things about them.

Always went the SD card route with Ultrasatan's and card reader adapters
for use with my Kubuntu Linux laptop and Win10 box. Great, super easy
way to exchange files between machines...

[sporniket]

CF cards are pluggable into PATA/IDE bus, thus it was an easy conversion for Falcon, if I don't make a mistake. Exchange with modern computer may or may not be easy, depending of how partitionning is done and how the driver works.

[sporniket]

Waiting payday for buying a new CF cards.

Meanwhile, I finally got something sensible with regard to the modulator part of the ST motherboards. I had too much of discrepencies between schematics and the scanned pcb of the service manual that I was using.

Fortunately, the real motherboard I own had this part unpopulated, so I redid this part with my motherboard on my laps, a glass magnifier with flickering led lights (flimsy push-button), and I improvised something for Q11/R140/R141 that my motheboard had not (but there was footprints for designators that do not exists -anymore-)

Anyway, I got progress on that front too. I also migrated to Kicad 7, that finally allow to attach an image to a layer, so now I can use the scan directly instead of a vectorized version that is full of holes (and takes a lot of places : together with the pair of background image, github started to advise me to try "large file" github...)

Capture d’écran du 2023-11-27 23-22-21.png