officer960's H5 C1 build

[officer960]

Flashyclock and Trudie, I've just never got time to finish them off. They were made during lockdown. But. Never enough hours in the day to do everything... My time went into server attacks, DFB1X, H5 run, STE536, new PSU run, I've got the next batch of DFB1X coming soon.. needs assembly finishing off, CPU,FPUs testing etc plus multiple other little projects like the 206 decoders... It just all ends up pushing H5 add-ons back. Only a few prototypes exist currently. Plus life in general keeps "bullying me".. mix in my day job, RSI... I'm only one person at the end of the day.

I'm hoping to get back to them this year. Problem is, the final design hasn't been tested and I don't know if there are any bugs which need fixing etc yet. The alt-ram driver and clock driver haven't even been done yet. It's likely Trudie will appear first...but also I have no solution for mounting the CF card yet. Likely people will have to figure that out themselves.

Understood. These passion projects aren't money makers and they aren't profitable especially when considering the time it takes to develop the hardware (troubleshooting, etc) and software, drivers and whatnot. I can't speak for everyone but I do certainly appreciate the H5 and all the things you and other developers make for us and your patience/willingness to answer my dumb questions.

Interesting. You built an H5 with a full IMP chipset. Be aware, that you might very well be the first. At least I asked some time if anybody tried the IMP chipset on an H4 or H5 board and nobody replied.

Do you have a scope? If you do and you have some time, I would be interested in the 16 MHZ clock signal produced by Shifter. If you can, zoom the horizontal range to just a couple of cycles, enough to be able to estimate the duty cycle. Or if you scope can, include the relevant signal stats.

@ijor I guess I won the IMP lottery. I got the donor 1040ST that I used to populate this H5 25 years ago given to me for spare parts. It never worked - booted to a white screen with a bunch of weird multi-color bombs. I did try to "diagnose" it with my rudimentary knowledge by putting the socketed chips from the non-working machine one by one into a known working machine and vice versa - but the chips from the non-working machine worked fine and I determined that it was likely a soldered chip or RAM or broken trace on the board. When the H4/5 boards were available I figured I'd try to bring that machine back to life - and luckily did.

I don't have a scope and don't know how to use one. If there is a relatively inexpensive scope that is "good" it would probably be a good thing to have provided they're intuitive enough for my dumb ass to figure out how to use it.

Does anyone know if Alan H's MonSTer board (be nice to get the ALT RAM in addition to the flash TOS) or Storm ST would work with the H5?

[DoG]

Does anyone know if Alan H's MonSTer board (be nice to get the ALT RAM in addition to the flash TOS) or Storm ST would work with the H5?

H5 is an STfm in it's core. MonSTer is for the STe so it will not work on H5. STorm would work in H5 but you will need EmuTOS or TOS v2.06 to use it. Cloudy and Lightning ST will work on H5.

[officer960]

Does anyone know if Alan H's MonSTer board (be nice to get the ALT RAM in addition to the flash TOS) or Storm ST would work with the H5?

H5 is an STfm in it's core. MonSTer is for the STe so it will not work on H5. STorm would work in H5 but you will need EmuTOS or TOS v2.06 to use it. Cloudy and Lightning ST will work on H5.

Hi @DoG thanks for your comment. I'm not referring to the MonSTerbo (I have one of those in my STe). I'm asking about the MonSTer for the Atari ST/Mega ST. Based on the H5 being an STfm at it's core I would assume the MonSTer will work - I just wondered if anyone had tried it before I try to acquire one for this project?

[DoG]

My bad. MonSTer should work fine. I'm unsure if Alan is doing any more of those though. It totally slipped my mind that he have an older board with a similar name. And I have one of those boards.

But now that I think about it, the orientation is 180 degrees to fit the MonSTerbo in the H5 plcc socket. It might actually work. The fit is questionable though since it on the top left corner it might hit the cartridge port and it's under the PSU bracket as well. The MonSTerbo doesn't take any advantage of the STe in any way I think. But you could try it with the H5 outside of the case and a PSU on the side for science. :lol:

EDIT: Thought of the placement wrong at first. It will hang over the Shifter so it will fit inside the case but it's still under the PSU.

[exxos]

There is the DSTB1 if you want to get your hands dirty. It's a booster with alt-ram. It's compact and fits in the H5 just fine.

[DoG]

There is the DSTB1 if you want to get your hands dirty. It's a booster with alt-ram. It's compact and fits in the H5 just fine.

David advise against building any of those. viewtopic.php?t=7096

[JezC]

I've got one of those part built, about ready to mod as per his latest work...but time seems to be everyone's enemy at the moment :roll:

[officer960]

@exxos have a question:

EDIT TO ADD: I only had Sysinfo on a Gotek which is showing 8mhz. I loaded GEMBench (608B31) and am getting 148% CPU against STFM1048.GB6 profile - so maybe it is working at 16mhz!

I purchased ATARI 16MHz BOOSTER & TOS206 DECODER item #0212 and NEW MC68000 DIP CPU item #0043 and installed per instructions on your install page.

It is running on the new CPU but only at 8mhz.

1. the CE wire is connected to the "right pin of JP13"
* can switch and use TOS 1.04/2.06 - no problem
2. the 16mhz input wire is connected to pin 39 of shifter (C070713-002)
* if this pin is not connected I get no boot and junk on the screen
* if this pin is connected to pin #39 the computer boots and runs software but only at 8mhz
3. the 8mhz ON wire is not connected
* If I disconnect the 16mhz input wire from the Shifter and ground the 8mhz ON wire it boots and runs at 8mhz

This computer works perfectly with ICD AdSpeed and HBS240 16mhz accelerators. My soldering is double checked and I'm fresh out of ideas.

If you can assist I'd really appreciate it!

[exxos]

Expected benchmark is on the install page
viewtopic.php?f=104&t=3825

SYSinfo was written like 40 years ago, it doesn't know anything about the booster and can't reliably detect CPU speed anyway. You need to use proper tools like GB6 to show the results.

[officer960]

Expected benchmark is on the install page
viewtopic.php?f=104&t=3825

@exxos my apologies for bothering you... I'm an idiot. Sysinfo reported 8mhz regardless of 8mhz ON wire connected or not (it gives correct mhz information with AdSpeed and HBS240). I was running bare bones from installing this booster and only had a Gotek with Sysinfo at hand after. Once I got an Ultrasatan plugged in and ran GEMBench it became obvious Sysinfo and my assumptions were erroneous.

IMG_1966.jpeg

With 8mhz ON wire disconnected

IMG_1967.jpeg

With 8mhz wire connected to ground

Out of curiosity does anyone know why Sysinfo does show (mostly) correct speed info on other accelerators and not this one?