31 Dec
2005
31 Dec
'05
11 a.m.
this is just way too groovy. As soon as I get the kit
from BGMicro to iron out my own circuit boards (and
they're currently out of stock), I'm going to try my
hand at etching the board for the 80188 robot brain
board. The only foreseeable kink is the need to drill
the holes before etching but after developing or
whatever. Standard drill bits have a tendency to tear
up the lans if you do it afterwards (although I
believe you can lessen this by grinding the bits at a
different angle, like I'm going to do that anytime
soon. Maybe you can buy drill bits ready for this sort
of app?). I actually have a small CNC milling machine,
but it's not yet ready for prime time. Problems
problems...
Vesta freely gave me the rom images for the FORTH
interpreter and the BASIC/BIOS (the picture of the
finished board shows a BASIC and a BIOS chip - will
have to make further inquiries about that). Doesn't
mean they won't mind if it's distributed, but they
thought I was inquiring because I wanted to use the
thing for some constructive purpose. And recommended
some of their newer products. I'll have to shoot them
a note myself...
And I guess it was dopey to ask if there was a fdc.
You had already said it was primarily ttl. okey dokey
:D
I haven't bought anything from BG in a long time.
"That" woman who often comes to the phone - ain't she
just the sweetest l'il ol' thang LOL LOL. You'd figure
after being in business for as long as they have,
you'd get barked at once in a while.
--- Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net> wrote:
On Mon, 5 Dec 2005 18:55:58 -0800 (PST)
Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
__________________________________
Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.
http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/
Nice acquisition. Vesta also designed the 80188
based
robot brain from Radio Electronics circa 1987. I
was
successful in obtaining the FORTH and BASIC/BIOS
rom
images (theyre still around). It took 2 tries. It
pays
to be persistent. I dont imagine your kit came
with
the circuit board artwork? And is there a floppy
interface (if so, which chip?).
No, it is a very plain SBC. It has I/O ports made
with standard
20-pin TTL gates and a National Semicondutor A/D
converter
(ADC0809). It has no storage or 'advanced' IO. It
has four open
ROM sockets, though, and you can burn EPROMs right
on the board.
The console for the BASIC interpreter is a serial
port.
With it's all off-the-shelf parts, I plan to use it
as a launching
pad for further development (and yes, I _am_ slowly
clearing the
piles of equipment and making my way to the
electronics bench over
thar across the room)
The only 'key' component in it is the on-ROM BASIC
firmware. I
will need to communicate with Vesta before giving
that out. If I
do and they are agreeable I can and will share the
ROM image and
schematics. It's a simple two-layer design and
there's no reason
in the world why it couldn't be reproduced. If I
get serious I'll
want to clone an augmented/expandable version of it
anyway.