Page 1 of 1
FALCON30 expansion test fixture
Posted: 07 Apr 2020 06:35
by sety
Hi all.
The Falcon service manual makes mention of a FALCON30 expansion test fixture. It apparently has 16K RAM on it and you can load the diag roms onto it amongst other features. Has anyone ever seen one of these? I can't find any reference to it except for the service manual.
Thanks!
Stuart
Re: FALCON30 expansion test fixture
Posted: 07 Apr 2020 07:26
by derkom
sety wrote: 07 Apr 2020 06:35
The Falcon service manual makes mention of a FALCON30 expansion test fixture. It apparently has 16K RAM on it and you can load the diag roms onto it amongst other features. Has anyone ever seen one of these? I can't find any reference to it except for the service manual.
Best Electronics has these. Have a look at
http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/falcon.htm and scroll down to the Diagnostics section near the end of the page. It's not required for testing unless you want to test all the external ports.
The RAM on the test fixture isn't for the diag ROM. I presume it's just used to buffer data when testing the bidrectional ports.
Re: FALCON30 expansion test fixture
Posted: 09 Apr 2020 11:11
by sety
Are you sure about this? I interpreted the manual to believe it plugs into the expansion header on a near dead Falcon and provides some basics to get a minimal boot and give some low level info to get out of the dark. If this is the one from BeST, then I will definitely buy one.
Screen Shot 2020-04-09 at 5.58.07 pm.png
Screen Shot 2020-04-09 at 5.58.28 pm.png
Re: FALCON30 expansion test fixture
Posted: 09 Apr 2020 11:40
by exxos
onboard blitter ? Has anyone seen a image of this kit ?
Re: FALCON30 expansion test fixture
Posted: 09 Apr 2020 12:58
by derkom
sety wrote: 09 Apr 2020 11:11
Are you sure about this? I interpreted the manual to believe it plugs into the expansion header on a near dead Falcon and provides some basics to get a minimal boot and give some low level info to get out of the dark. If this is the one from BeST, then I will definitely buy one.
Oh wow, that does indeed sound like a different device. My bad. Never heard of this one. Very interesting.
Re: FALCON30 expansion test fixture
Posted: 24 Nov 2023 08:24
by mikro
Just an update on this. Asked Bradley about it:
When we got the rights to clear out the Sunnyvale Atari parts department, we cleared out every shelf of Atari parts they had. On top of that we also cleared out the Atari Techs area to. Never saw any other Falcon Test hardware in both areas. It most likely was one of the Falcon test hardware pieces Atari was going to make in the future, but never got around to it.