29 Nov
2007
29 Nov
'07
1:34 p.m.
You're right about the PSUs though - plus I think
that for small SMPSUs (i.e.
without lots of protection circuitry on the 'hot' side) there's some trick to
making them work from 110V anyway (i.e. the '110V operation' stuff can be
added after the fact if needed).
Most small SPMSUs start out by rectifying and smoothing the mains to give
about 340V DC (in Eurrope). If you have such a supply, you can replace
the input stage with a voltage doubler circuit and run it off 115V -- the
output of that will be about 340V DC, so the rest of the supply will
neither know nor care.
You run into problems if there's other stuff run directly off the mains
input -- like a small linear supply to provide the startup voltage, or a
cooling fan, or...). You'll need to modify that too.
Tandy CoCo 1
or 2? It's essentially the Motorola application circuit for the
6883 SAM, so it's straightforward. OK, the CPU is a 6809, which is not as
common as the others, but it _is_ a nice, easy, CPU to learn.
Yep, I saw that other post before I saw yours. That's definitely looking like
a good candidate, assuming the hardware doesn't prove to be too rare. I've
never prodded a 6809 myself (just 6502 and Z80), but I
guess I could stand to
learn too :-)
You'll love it. It's waht the 6502 should ahve been. 16 bit index
registers, 16 bit stack pointer -- no make that 2 16 bit stack pointers,
progam counter relative addressign modes and long branches for
position-independant code, 'zero page' in any 256 byte page of memory, 2
accumulators that can be combindd to make a 16 bit one, the most
orthogonal instruction set of any 8-bitter, etc, etc, etc.
I always wish the Beeb had used that as its CPU. Acorn clearly knew about
it (they'd made a 6809-bsed System CPU board), but for some odd reason
they didn't use it in the Beeb.
-tony