Merci ! Cette espèce est plutôt robuste mine de rien
Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Old French Oric Atmos Nerd
- ibisum
- Wing Commander
- Posts: 1652
- Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:56 am
- Location: Vienna, Austria
- Contact:
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
This was a great journey to follow and you provided us all with quite some gems! Congrats on the working Atmos and for bringing the joy of that era to this generation too .. something a lot of us old-timers like to see, over and over (at least in my case) ..
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Thanks for this kind comment
Refurbishing this magical toy of our teen years and playing these old games is like a time travel.
Old French Oric Atmos Nerd
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Great story! Thanks for sharing
- ibisum
- Wing Commander
- Posts: 1652
- Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:56 am
- Location: Vienna, Austria
- Contact:
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Now that you've gotten things booted up, you must surely enjoy the fact that there is a plethora of TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Oric titles to explore. Your daughter will *certainly* have something more to think about when you introduce her to some of the, frankly amazing, stuff that has been done since we flipped the century bit.
Seriously, its important to note: the Oric didn't just survive. Its thrived, actually, for decades. Some of the new-school releases are astonishing!
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Nice repair. Thanks for sharing
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
You’re completely right. I have only recently discovered the incredible extent of work that has been done here to develop new software for this old machine. This gave me the feeling that I stepped in just after the main party. I can't wait to receive my Cumana reborn to play some of the new games available. Thanks to this community for keeping this machine alive. Long live the Oric!ibisum wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 7:59 pmNow that you've gotten things booted up, you must surely enjoy the fact that there is a plethora of TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Oric titles to explore. Your daughter will *certainly* have something more to think about when you introduce her to some of the, frankly amazing, stuff that has been done since we flipped the century bit.
Seriously, its important to note: the Oric didn't just survive. Its thrived, actually, for decades. Some of the new-school releases are astonishing!
Old French Oric Atmos Nerd
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
The disk drive will really give you an much expended experience
6522 issue fixed
Hi !
This last post to tell you that my VIA issue has been finally fixed. For those of you who did not read this whole lengthy thread, I had a remaining issue with the diagnostic program (https://oric.signal11.org.uk/html/diagrom.htm) failing at the STROBE ACK test. I finally desoldered the 6522 and replaced it with a brand new W65C22N6TPG-14 (https://www.mouser.fr/ProductDetail/955-W65C22N6TPG-14) which should be 100% compatible. And indeed it solved the issue.
It was not a straightforward path though. I stumbled over some fake 6522 chips I bought on eBay. They were branded « MEXIC » instead of « MEXICO », this should have raised a red flag before buying. Furthermore at the back, they were labeled « 6502 » instead of « 6522 ». As pointed out by someone in another thread of this forum, the diagnostic program gives an error with the new W65C22N6TPG-14 chip at the cassette input test as shown below: In fact this chip counts more interrupts in average than the original one yielding a failure. I modified the diagnostic program by increasing the upper threshold to 09F9 instead of 0999 as in the 108j version. To do this I simply used an hex editor.
By the way, I tried to compile the ROM from the sources provided by Mike Brown using OSDK, but I did not find a tutorial explaining how to build a ROM. It is probably a simple procedure, but I would be interested by some help.
After inserting the new EPROM in my diagnostic board, all the tests passed. I did some endurance tests using the erebus and the cumana reborn with no issues so far. I think I can call this a success, this Oric is now 100% functional again.
This last post to tell you that my VIA issue has been finally fixed. For those of you who did not read this whole lengthy thread, I had a remaining issue with the diagnostic program (https://oric.signal11.org.uk/html/diagrom.htm) failing at the STROBE ACK test. I finally desoldered the 6522 and replaced it with a brand new W65C22N6TPG-14 (https://www.mouser.fr/ProductDetail/955-W65C22N6TPG-14) which should be 100% compatible. And indeed it solved the issue.
It was not a straightforward path though. I stumbled over some fake 6522 chips I bought on eBay. They were branded « MEXIC » instead of « MEXICO », this should have raised a red flag before buying. Furthermore at the back, they were labeled « 6502 » instead of « 6522 ». As pointed out by someone in another thread of this forum, the diagnostic program gives an error with the new W65C22N6TPG-14 chip at the cassette input test as shown below: In fact this chip counts more interrupts in average than the original one yielding a failure. I modified the diagnostic program by increasing the upper threshold to 09F9 instead of 0999 as in the 108j version. To do this I simply used an hex editor.
By the way, I tried to compile the ROM from the sources provided by Mike Brown using OSDK, but I did not find a tutorial explaining how to build a ROM. It is probably a simple procedure, but I would be interested by some help.
After inserting the new EPROM in my diagnostic board, all the tests passed. I did some endurance tests using the erebus and the cumana reborn with no issues so far. I think I can call this a success, this Oric is now 100% functional again.
Old French Oric Atmos Nerd
Re: 6522 issue fixed
Do you have the link somewhere?
There's no direct support for generating a ROM file, but you can technically just call XA.EXE with the source code and the proper parameters to generate the binary file (I assume it does not need a header) at the fixed address you want.
Assuming the source code is XA compatible, you can probably compile it with something like that:
Code: Select all
%OSDK%\BIN\XA.EXE -C -bt $C000 -o diagnostic.rom diagnostic.s
Re: 6522 issue fixed
The modified diagnostic ROM that is compatible with a modern 6522 is attached below if you are interested. It has only been tested on one machine, so maybe the modified threshold needs some additional tuning. Feedbacks are welcome.Do you have the link somewhere?
Mike, thanks for the advice about ROM compilation, I will give it a try.
Old French Oric Atmos Nerd
Re: 6522 issue fixed
Mike Brown does not check for an exact value, but for an interval (see via.asm):
Code: Select all
; Check count is about right
LDA Z_IRQH
CMP #$09
BNE vci_f ; High byte is off, fail
LDA Z_IRQL
CMP #$8A ; < 0x98A? Fail
BMI vci_f
CMP #$99 ; >= 0x999? Fail
BPL vci_f
; else PASS
Old French Oric Atmos Nerd
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Indeed, $98A <= X < $999 vs. yours $98A <= X < $9E9 i.e. threshold $0E vs. $5E or interesting is why difference is so big.
Re: Sharing my experience of an Atmos resurrection (thread)
Yes, this is the big question mark. The diag program generates a 800Hz square signal fed to the cassette input thanks to the loopback plug during 3 seconds. In theory, this would yield 2400 or hex 960 interrupts. Note that the theoretical number of interrupts is not within the interval, but this may be due to an approximate 3s duration. I observed that most of the time, the counting is very deterministic, yielding almost the same value. But sometimes, rarely, it differs a lot from the average value, and when it happens it is always higher than the average. This needs obviously more investigations on other machines before we can draw a conclusion.
I found the thread from @HigashiJun mentioning a failure of the diag program when using newer 65C22 chips:
https://forum.defence-force.org/viewtop ... 494#p23494
It is not exactly the same test that fails here, since in my case it is the cassette input test which comes after the two timer tests and shares the same protocol and textual format. Though, I suspect that the « timer test » mentioned by @HigashiJun may refer to the whole section of the diagnostic program dedicated to VIA checking. Not sure, if he reads this, maybe he may give us some clarifications.Another weird thing is when I launch the excellent DIAGROM (without any add-on cards): with the original VIA fitted, the "timer test" passes but when a 65C22N is inserted, timer test fails.
Old French Oric Atmos Nerd