and another CD32 Riser!

[kolla]

Originally Posted by Bprepared

As a bit of an update, RGB ports, and keyboard schematics are drawn, and serial just needs a bit of polishing so routing will start shortly.

How's it going?

[Bprepared]

Originally Posted by kolla

How's it going?

Damn, I just wrote chapter and verse to answer this fully, but the internet went down mid transmit and lost it all

I'll keep it simple for the moment and say that the first FB-32R's were shipped by Dirty' last Saturday, so there is a small chance they might arrive this week.

Life has been getting in the way the last couple of weeks in general, but since my last post I've revised the '32G schematics a couple of times to add things like the Clock Select Switch and ICSP port for the SMD PIC16F628A I've spec'd. The board will be 10cm x 5cm in order to keep PCB manufacturing cost as low as possible on this one, but it is going to be quite crowded, as I've laid the components out, but not done too much routing yet. Hopefully I can spend a couple of evenings this week doing so.

I'll give a full update later this week when I have the stamina to type it all out for a second time

[solidcore]

Bprepared, you got a way to flash the smd? I'm assuming you've got a breakout board so to speak from smd to through-hole , and if so do you bluetack her down or hold her with your finger or do you plan on soldering each corner temporarily? I'd like to hear more about the process behind flashing that smd pic as I'd be doing the same later to save space and i prefer SMD over through-hole.

My cheap chinese clone k150 programmer can handle through-hole PIC16F628A, so I'd be able to populate boards for you if you need to lighten the load fella

Chris

[kolla]

Sounds good, thanks for the update!

[Bprepared]

Originally Posted by solidcore

Bprepared, you got a way to flash the smd? I'm assuming you've got a breakout board so to speak from smd to through-hole , and if so do you bluetack her down or hold her with your finger or do you plan on soldering each corner temporarily? I'd like to hear more about the process behind flashing that smd pic as I'd be doing the same later to save space and i prefer SMD over through-hole.

My cheap chinese clone k150 programmer can handle through-hole PIC16F628A, so I'd be able to populate boards for you if you need to lighten the load fella

Chris

The idea is that the chip can be programmed after being soldered onto the board.
My K150 (can be found for £10 off fleabay) has a header for ICSP (In-Circuit Serial Programming), but like Xilinx, there is a open source Raspi option for programming if people want to do it that way, I'll be verifying that option on bring up. Thanks for the offer though

[xArtx]

Didn’t even notice the breakout headers the first time I looked .. Doh!

[solidcore]

@bprepared nice let's see how it turns out

@xartx nice mate looks like something out of a sci if movie

[Bprepared]

@xArtx - Lol, love the 'wiggly wire' interpretation I wanted something to do exactly what you have there, but in a package that would allow a TF328 to be installed so that we can verify that it all plays nice together.

[solidcore]

Originally Posted by Bprepared

@xArtx - Lol, love the 'wiggly wire' interpretation I wanted something to do exactly what you have there, but in a package that would allow a TF328 to be installed so that we can verify that it all plays nice together.

aye compatibility is a b---h aint it , that's exactly what I was thinking, soldering required wires onto the back of a passive riser into a breadboard and have a play lol - I've yet to have time to do that , hmmm time is hard to come by these days :P

[Bprepared]

Well, the '32R's finally arrived.......



and they look pretty good, even if I do say so myself.




Work's keeping me busy tonight so haven't managed to get round to soldering one just yet but I couldn't resist seating the connectors and taking a couple of snaps.
I'm really happy with the footprint I did for the AMP MCA's as they fit perfectly.

I've got about 50% of the routing on the '32G left to do so I'm hoping to get that finished this week and off to Dirty.

[kolla]

Awesome!

[solidcore]

Nice looking good can't wait to test .

[RiotRetroGaming]

Nice nice!

[Bprepared]

2 built, and tested without any cards, but the first is a Dud
I'm guessing there's a short somewhere, but nothing came up on my initial inspection, or spending 20 mins with a multimeter, but it has quite a bit of flux residue I need to clean before I write it off.
The second I dry soldered and thus far not showing any faults.
I have a TF328 waiting at home, kindly supplied by Superdupa due to my recent failed attempt of the 64 pin CPLD that has delayed my own '328 build.
Assuming it lights a TerribleFire tomorrow night, I'll post the sources to Github

[RiotRetroGaming]

What's the long sockets for? Addons

[Bprepared]

In a word...Yes!
Check out the first post for general lowdown

[RiotRetroGaming]

Originally Posted by bprepared

well this one is a little left field, so i want to take a moment to explain the reasoning and theory behind it.

The fb-32 was conceived the day after stedy decided to permanently shelf the hermes project.
I first read his blog shortly after i brought my cd32 out of its 20 year slumber in a garaged crate 6 months ago, and was excited at the thought of being able to acquire something resembling a sx-32...i really wanted one of these when amiga's were my main stay computer systems back in the day.
Needless to say i was gutted at the news of the projects death, but with the birth of the tf328, the major functionality had been met, and i completely understand the "too many spinning plates" analogy, as being a design engineer myself i have so many projects of different disciplines on the go.
That said, i still wanted to squeeze as much functionality out of the sadly mis-understood console, and although kippers riser would enable me to use the tf328, and give me rgb/keyboard, i wanted something that would allow me to eventually have a floppy interface, serial and parallel ports, a clockport etc.
The trouble was that i didn't (and still don't really yet) have the vhdl/verilog skills to be able to implement the necessary logic, and with the limited real-estate on a riser, standard logic chips are not really an option unless i wanted something that was the size of the cd32 debug board.
So i pondered how i would go about learning the language (i have previous in c, c++ and 68k assembler from my days in uni where i studied avionic systems engineering), and figured that if i took a leaf out of stephen's (aka plasmab, aka terriblefire) book and only bite off small chunks at a time i would eventually get there.
But i wanted a riser now, so i started thinking about how to do a breakout such that i could develop my skills while still having a usable board. The result was the firebird fb-32r below:



named as such for several reasons; first that is born from the ashes of hermes...stedy i hope you don't mind, second is that provides for the rising of a terriblefire, and finally my avatar logo (which is also associated with my company) was phoenix inspired...but that's another story.

Fundamentally, it starts as a passive board, with 2off 2x40 2mm female pin headers giving 160 of the 182 signals from the cd32's edge connector. I choose to pull as many signals as i could, but drop those that were probably never going to be used i.e. The _ext video signals associated with the fmv module, and a few vcc/gnds.
The female headers were selected as they allowed me to piggy back a second board on the back which will contain the magic, while not exposing pins to potential shorting. They can take 1a of current nicely, and the height of 2mm header male and female together are the same as standard pcb stand offs, so i don't have to rely on the connectors taking all the mechanical strain and abuse loads from plugging/unplugging cables, and i can develop different riser configurations with only needing to solder 160 through-hole pins (worst case) instead of 364!

The fb-32r was sent to the dirty pcbs earlier this week for production, but like kipper said yesterday china has a week long holiday starting sunday so i don't expect to have the prototype until the end of october at least.

I have 3 planned modules at the moment, the first of which is in kicad cooking and will be sent to dirty for when they get back from holiday:

Fb-32g - basic gamer module
- 23 pin std amiga rgb port with genlock
- 15 pin minimig rgb port as per stedy's design published in the main cd32 expansion thread
- ps/2 keyboard port
- basic rs232 non-handshaking null modem port - thanks for the suggestion 'kolla'

note:- this is just to get the ball rolling beyond being a passive riser, while also adding a feature that i don't think has actually made it onto a anyone else's riser yet.

Fb-32g+ - full gamer module
- everything from the 'g'
- floppy drive port - based on the venerable aminet design from bruce abbott
- clockport

note:- this module will be my first hdl project so i need to manage expectations on this. I'm personally not expecting to have it running until at least christmas this year, but i may need to revise this timeline based on the time i can actually spend learning hdl.

Fb-32pro - final planned module
- all of the above, although i may drop one of the rgb ports if i run out of real estate.
- clockport based full parallel and serial
- built-in rtc
- usb mass storage device port - based on ferix's design

other features may be added if space allows, that said i have other ideas on how to combat that problem.

Finally, i will be making everything open source, that is once i have verified each development, so the day the fb-32r is built i will post the kicad schematic and board files on github, and anyone is welcome to develop their own modules as well in the meantime. Attached is the scd i've whipped up for the critical dimensions.

Oh..and thanks should also go to 'solidcore' (chris) for egging me on to get this finished and published.

Ok, i've said my piece, let the trolling commence.

awesome!

[kolla]

I want to make an expansion on which I can plug on a pi zero W, of course, connect serial console to Amiga serial port, and take it from there

[Bprepared]

The FB-32R is officially TF328 Friendly!!!



Chris, could you please update the Wiki accordingly, yours and Marks boards will be in the post tomorrow?

I'll sell bare boards £5, full kits £15, and a limited number of pre-built units £30, PM me if you're interested.

[Bprepared]

Originally Posted by kolla

I want to make an expansion on which I can plug on a pi zero W, of course, connect serial console to Amiga serial port, and take it from there

Now that sounds like a really cool project to me