Impressive work. How much does the FTV need to be modded to get the PCB connected up?
I've got an FTV (there was a period where they used to be piled up at the ZX Microfairs, and sold off for pennies) - and keep hoping I can find a modern battery to fit it.
(*) No microcontrollers here, but the charge chips are pretty smart. The Z80 bit-bangs I2C to find out what's plugged in and what the current battery status is.
It's pretty cool to see an old chip learn new tricks.
Testing the charge circuit with NanoBeast - running off USB power and charging in the background. I need to add the maths in to turn that charge rate into a "time left to full/empty" estimate.
Testing battery charging circuits is boring. There, I've said it.
OTOH - MicroBeast and NanoBeast can now run off batteries (and for a decent amount of time - somewhere around 8 hours depending on usage), and tell you charge levels and time to charge/discharge - with just an 8-bit CPU(*)
I'm going to fully back both approaches as fundamentally sound and needing no further justification.
Obviously not with any ulterior motive or personal experience in mind.
Obviously.
I think we've pretty well established that Starmer doesn't like reading anything that might conflict with the course he was going to take anyway.
I was looking forward to seeing what you did... this is madness.
Good madness.
Still madness.
Keep on.
Played extra loud through my youth via a Goodmans Powermaster - the largest ghetto blaster I could lay my hands on.
In this case I've only myself to blame!
I had to completely redesign the LCD interface (pesky 3v logic!) so the green PCB is a test board, most of which is not needed in the final design.
However, that resistor definitely is needed (oops), and I had to fix an address mix-up (the fine copper wire between U1 and U6).
A NanoBeast Z80 computer driving a 14 segment LCD display with a rather shiny backlight.
I've just spent four hours tracking down a software bug...
...that turned out to be a dry solder joint.
On the one hand, I'm quite annoyed. On the other hand I'm very happy - it works!!! It's taken a while to get here, but I've got a properly working LCD screen. (Spot the bodges!)
Credit to Gosling for fully committing to the project
So glad to see Project Hail Mary on a huge screen.
Beautiful visuals, and a great adaptation of the book.
The UK should be in a uniquely good position to jump in whilst the US heads off in the wrong direction - except Streeting appears to take all of his instructions from American lobbyists, and is otherwise devoid of his own thoughts.
We have a media class who are well practiced in post-hoc, vaguely academic sounding justification for their own (and other people's) prejudices.
Arguably a hangover from the big shift in politically correct expression (not meant in a demeaning way here) in the 80's.
That's 'just' the backlight (I'm testing a dimming chip for it).
The display itself is a 24 character, 14 segment LCD - completely unique to this machine.
Unfortunately I can't make it to the Bring and Byte :(
True.
That's why I got into making kits - it's very satisfying to work on these machines.
Always!!
The bottom card is a NanoBeast - my Z80 computer.
The top card is a test board for a bunch of stuff, including a new LCD display.
It turns out I swapped two address lines, so it was clashing with a port I already use - I couldn't read I2C status.
Currently bodging it to continue the testing...
I once charged $10 for a piece of software that used an online license server... and watched someone in the US spend an entire day trying to 'hack' the server to get it for free.
They could have just emailed me and asked for a free copy.
A prototype PCB for a few expansions for MicroBeast and NanoBeast.
Yeah, I'm debugging.
Grue notwithstanding, that's a start - the Mac retina displays confuse SDL's idea of zoom factors - hence the very weird keyboard and display. I'll need to look at the code and figure out what's going wrong there...!
Something for the weekend: The second release candidate for BeastEm 1.3 is now available as a binary. Lots of improvements for debugging and exploring code on the Beast!
github.com/atoone/Beast...
But then Retro Games Ltd have made a perfectly good business out of doing pretty much that.
It's just not what they're selling "New Commodore" as.
I suspect the point is they couldn't make that decision explicit, since it exposes that there is very little that they're actually adding to the process (benefit of the doubt: at this stage).
If your sole product is someone else's recreation of a forty year old computer...
Agreed. But Commodore (the new ownership) has clearly been more of a marketing exercise focussed on nostalgia for a handful of long-gone products, than a serious technical plan to build a new company.
It was clear they'd bump into this sort of problem fairly quickly.
That last one is a killer because essentially it asks that a company provide all potential competitors and users with the means to get their products cheaper elsewhere.
The "community will provide" mantra really struggles when a section of the community actively works to take value away from others
The community (or different parts of it) want a bunch of conflicting "rights"
To have a 'consumer product' that just works and is supported and guaranteed.
To have something that is continually upgraded.
To be able to use the hardware as they see fit.
To use 'free' firmware elsewhere..
Are people buying something they expect to treat like a MiSTer, and hack and expand as stuff becomes available? Commodore have sort of encouraged that expectation..
Or are they buying a Commodore 64+++ strictly to stay within Commodore's own ecosystem?