BOOSTER 2.2 REVISITED

[PaulJ]

The only slightly annoying thing about all this, as I will have to stock all the ROM's with TOS104/206 as well

Ya, its a new combination but a good one. Once you put the image together its just another rom to burn.

[exxos]

Looking a little bit more complete now..

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[exxos]

Both boards done

Going to wait a few days before ordering though...

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[exxos]

PCBs on order.. be here in a few days time.. not sure when I will have time to build one.. might need to tweak some stuff in the firmware can't remember...

I'm not going to spend much time on this, just trying to get it back on sale as its been out of stock for like 2 years now ?! The SEC booster will take over from this booster once its finished (not anytime soon ).

[Maeke]

yay, was hoping this.

[exxos]

PCB's arrived... need to find some time to start building one up for testing.. but need to get more STE boosters built up before I start on this one...

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[exxos]

This booster now the V2.3 booster which need external ROM board..

To re-cap...

The ROM board was done in order to reduce costs for the booster board itself.. Basically the original V2.2 booster had the on-board ROM, was also a 6 layer PCB, which was very expensive..

So in order to reduce costs, the ROM was removed on this V2.3 booster and is done with a external ROM board instead.

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[exxos]

So now I have my new toy https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =13&t=1423

I hope I can assemble the ROM boards with that hot bed. Mainly because of issues of the SMT sockets melting in my oven

These ROM boards will also replace the previous "black pcb" ROM boards as used on later STFM's. Which holds TOS102/104.

With the booster, the ROM can hold TOS104/206 instead. The booster does the TOS206 decoding as before.

I will try and produce these as cheap as possible, though I do have around £800 "lost" in this project which I need to recover . With about 20 pcbs planned, thats ramped up £40 per pcb before adding up parts etc. The previous V2.2 sold for £65, but this new booster also needs the extra ROM board now. If I can recover some costs at least then I will be happy at that.

I also don't plan to build anymore of these after this batch.. Working on multiple booster projects isn't really a constructive use of time. I really want to wrap this project up as fast as possible so I can concentrate on the STF Remake project after xmas

[exxos]

CPU under soldering

Bed didn't get hot enough to melt the solder even on 400c, not surprised, but with my gas iron it melted easily.

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[exxos]

Soldered up, GAL'a hacked over with wires to make sure the CPU is all wired up.. currently running GB6..

Next to port the 16MHz firmware over and get the speed up working..

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