New project: An ACT Apricot F1 "barn find"

[stephen_usher]

New PCBs to play with!

IMG_2368.jpg

[stephen_usher]

Phew! The new power supply for the monitor works.

I'll have to solder the wires properly over the weekend.

[stephen_usher]

OK, it's too hot up in the room upstairs to do proper soldering but I couldn't help doing the monitor PSU properly.

All happy.

IMG_2370.jpg

IMG_2369.jpg

Oh, and I added a knob onto the stalk of the brightness control. From pictures it looks like the original always breaks up and falls of and none have the original knob fitted.

[stephen_usher]

Jolly retro-brighting weather...
Do do do do do-do.

:-)

IMG_2372.jpg

[stephen_usher]

The Mk.II boards are now made up.

IMG_2373.jpg

I'll probably have a look at testing them after lunch. I can by-pass the ATTiny85 socket with a jumper for the first test.

[stephen_usher]

You know, I dispute those who say retrobrightening is merely a bleaching chemical reaction as I can always tell when the brightening has finished for the day when the plastic suddenly lightens (within 10 minutes) and the cream starts to take on the colour of the browned plastic, almost as if it's a leaching effect.

IMG_2374.jpg

[stephen_usher]

And the retro-brightening result?...

IMG_2375.jpg

Not quite the original colour (the rear shell hadn't discoloured) but close enough. It was originally slightly darker orange than the base.

It doesn't look too bad now. At least you can see the logo easily!

IMG_2376.jpg

(It looks less yellow in person.)

[stephen_usher]

The new boards work, though I gave myself a bit of a scare when I didn't ground the output going to the OR gate for STEP as that was floating high and causing the machine to sort of crash.

Anyway, it reads floppies at the standard rate now.

IMG_2377.jpg

IMG_2378.jpg

Having said that, I should have made the daughter board a bit shorter, I was paranoid about having chips underneath the power supply. So, instead the floppy cable connector now fowls the top of the controller chip. Well, it's good enough.

The next part of the development entails learning how to program the ATTiny85 correctly (and creating a two core wire between the daughter board and cable converter board so as to be able to monitor Motor-On and which drive is selected).

[stephen_usher]

Well, well. It seems that I won't need the ATTiny85 after all and all my previous failures with a second drive were all due to the floating ground pins on the previous cable adapter.

Lookie here... Booting off drive B: which is a real floppy drive!

IMG_2379.jpg

[stephen_usher]

Bother! It's unreliable.

If the machine correctly detects two drives at boot then everything works flawlessly. However, if it doesn't then it ignores the second drive even over resets (warm) as it never checks again.

OK, ATTiny85 definitely needed then.