This is the right place to discuss on how to implement hardware vsync, adding a VIA or AY chipset, puting multiple roms, or how to design a new flash expansion card.
- A pre-order phase when everybody who is interested say how many cards they would buy, collect of emails/names/addresses, etc... just to make sure people are serious.
- Say one month after that (so we have time to advertise), we know the number of interested people so from that you can announce the actual cost, and provide something like a paypal address or equivalent.
- Then people pay, but they have to know that they are not built yet so it may take some time (as long as they know that they should be fine).
Hi Boris,
Welcome !
Your product is too good.
I'm sure to buy two of them, may be three.
coco.oric as DidierV, CEO Member
Historic owner of Oric, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga
I've ordered today more EEPROMS from China. It is the cheapest way. But they need about 2-3 weeks to find there way to germany. I only order about 15 pieces at once so i don't get any problem with the german customs. I also ordered more LCDs direct from a german reseller... so no problems with the customs
Next i order more Xlilinx an PIC chips and all the other parts also from germany. So no problem at all.
Also a have to order more of the CumulusBus PCBs. I only have 3 left. The Cumulus PCBs i have 39 left so no problem with that.
Hi!
I've build a few new Cumulusboards and i like to give it to someone who could help me with the bootloader. Maybe someone here have a PIC-burner hat a little experience with PIC-chips and the C18 Compiler.
First things first... the Cumulus works fine. But... only without the bootloader. So my boards are not updateable per sd-card at the moment. You can only update the firmware with a PIC-burner if someone will write a new firmwareversion.
So here's the problem:
If i burn the bootloader on the PIC and boot it up everything is fine. With the too buttons pressed i can bring it in the updatemode and it search on the sd-card for the firmware.bin file. Than it starts the update process and shows a statusbar on the screen. After a few seconds it stops an the screen freeze. And than you can't boot the board anymore. So it looks like that the firmware is written in the same memory where the bootloader is.
I hope someone could help me with that problem.
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I would love to help! I have one of the original cumulus boards which might be of some service, and I am well-versed in embedded (20 yrs experience at the OS level). If you just want to sell me the working hardware, I would love to contribute, and then we can work together through a common repository, no? I have local resources available for hardware assembly/testing (I'm active around the metalab.at orbit hackerspace) and lots of lab/bench equipment should it be necessary (logic probe, bus pirate, etc).
I'm sure there are many other Oric'ians to boot, who would love to help push this forward. I'm not just vouching for myself here - surely the more eyes/hands on it, the better? Well, I raise my hand sir, anyway! Lets get the Cumulus debugged and out there working!
Well, I would like to help, but as Dbug I have no real experience with PIC programming. However, I can ask around. Some colleagues of mine do work with PICs and may be willing to answer a few questions
Anyway ibisum and surely others are more adequate to help you.
Hello,
I will buy one/two/three . If you need some help with soldering I'll be happy to do
Until then I'll use http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW92sb5xMN8
There is floppy drive too, because I love the sound of engines
i ordered more stuff for the Boards. So that we can start with the production very soon. I also send two boards to ibisum. I hope we can figure out why the bootloader is not working correct. Meanwhile i work on the hardware and solder more boards.
Btw: I'm at the northcon lanparty in north germany from 5.12 to 8.12. So if someone whant to see the Cumulus in action and is nearby i can show you there.
I'm going to do everything I can to help get this debugged! Imagine if we all had working cumulus', how much easier it'd be to maintain our Oric systems!
So, first signed in will be first to receive it, I started the list with the names of people who posted on this current thread, but please for new people write on the other thread, I will update the sticky message over time when we get news.
Thanks for organizing this guys.
Stupid question but I read about PIC... Could you point me to some explanation of the difference between "PIC" (no idea what it is) and, say, EPROMs ?
I have an Eprom burner, but I'm a total newbie, just used it to burn some modified Oric ROMs. Not sure I can be helpful...
the PIC is a microcontroller from Microchip. So it is like a CPU+RAM+ROM. This chip on the Cumulus and controlls the LCD and the SD-Card.
A EEPROM is only a ROM (Read Only Memory).
Here is a little "how-to" connect the Cumulus to the Oric.
The blue side of the IDE-Cable goes to the Cumulus and the black one to the CumulusBus-Controller. The cable will only fit in one direction because of a missing pin in the IDE-Cable. Also the 4-Pin Power/Resetcable fits only in one direction.
The CumulusBus goes in the Expansion-Port of the Oric with the 3 Chips at the top!!!
The Cumulus is powered direkt from the Oric. So you need a powersupply with a little bit more power than the original one. I use a cheap one with 1000mA.
