jrIDE - time for another production run?

[ZiggyTheHamster]

I bought the last one

[channelmaniac]

Holy crap! It already arrived... got it today.

That was FAST

[alanh]

So all the previous kits/boards from the last run are sold/shipped. I've ordered parts for another 10. I'm not selling anymore kits. I'm going to list the 10 new board on eBay next week.

ATM, I am down to 20 side-car connectors - 10 after next week's batch. It's possible State Electronics may have more NOS. However last couple times I bought 100 units each time to get a price break - which is $1250 including the break. So I'm done building JR-IDEs after next week's batch of 10. I have a couple Jr projects way down the pipe I want to hold some connectors for + some spares. So.. unless someone else takes up the torch, these next 10 will be it.

Only 2 people have contacted me so far asking if any are left. I will contact them first when the auction is relisted. After that, I'll post here.

[alanh]

It looks like "Connector People" have them in-stock. I'm guessing they bought the previous NOS back inventory. Minimum order is 6 for the male type. $10.44 for the pair

https://www.connectorpeople.com/Connect ... 5/532773-2
https://www.connectorpeople.com/Connect ... 5/532771-2

I'm still done building boards though. It's been a good run. I am happy to support anyone who picks up the baton.

[channelmaniac]

I have yet to find any connectors at Computer Reset, but I'm looking each time I'm there.

They have a lot of the cartridge shells. I'll probably pick up the rest next time I'm there.

[alanh]

So the boards are selling out within a few hours of posting a new listing of 8 or more. I posted one last night and emailed/messaged a few people that asked be about them in the past. I don't think all of those people had a chance to buy one. I have 10 actual blank PCBs left (+ connectors) and just hit the Digikey order button for the remainder of parts. That's the last of the Rev.B boards from the original 100 order of Bs. The B's had minor changes over the original 100 As - mainly some better silk-screen markings, a CR2032 battery holder rather than the original potted-only DS12887s, and green solder mask vs most of the As coming in OSHPark purple.

So that every hobbyist who still wants one can get one, I'll pre-sell boards from this last lot before the eBay listing - limit one per person. No kits, just assembled and tested boards. I'll PayPal invoice and pre-shipping the same day. Boards should be ready by Thursday. Just email me at jridekit at retrotronics dot org.

I'm personally not doing any more. It's a summation of the little things that have burned me out. Like just this morning going to the post office to send a package to Quebec. I pre-paid and printed a shipping label with custom's declaration off eBay's click-and-print checkout service. Easy-peasy. Followed the instructions with every i dotted and t crossed. It said to not drop it off in a collections bin, but take it to an associate at your local PO. So I did. That associate told me something completely contrary to the eBay instructions. Drove home and back. Another different associate told me something else. Drove home and back. Finally got it sent. Even if I memorized the entire postal code, I can't go quoting it to a 30 year veteran at the post office without getting escorted out by police! No worries though. I'm glad our Canadian friends can share in the fun and I'm happy to help that happen. But after 200 boards, nearly 100,000 solder holes filled, and plugging/re-plugging boards into my very tired system units hundreds of times, I need a break.

It is a completely open-source project and all the design files are linked on my project page (URL printed on the PCB). The license isn't very well defined. However I don't and won't get upset at anyone who wants to take up the effort - even commercially; as long as they properly carry forward full attribution. I do have a Rev.C designed. It changes a few traces related to the RAM so that unused RAM pages (on 16K boundaries) can be remapped into the same window as the unused flash pages. So of the 1MB of RAM behind the full address space, the lower 128K, the 32KB video RAM window, the 128K cartridge window, 16KB option BIOS window, and the 64K BIOS window could be re-used for a RAM disk (368K total). Currently that RAM is inaccessible on Rev.A/B without system board hardware mods. I'll update the project pages if someone wants to hold that torch.

I also haven't abandoned the other two related projects - ROM BIOS rewrite and NetPI-IDE. Both will eventually make the JR-IDE even better for little to no cost. The first is a refactoring of Mike, Tomi, and Jeff's BIOS code to a) optimize it and b) add a few more features like BIOS RTC support (no more separate utility) and a DOS-in-ROM flash disk. The second is a IDE drive emulator from a Raspberry Pi Zero allowing emulation of disks as files on the Pi's SD card and other cool features like WiFi bridging. Both are close to completion but are lagging a little atm behind my sound card project. If someone wanted to collaborate a little, it would definitely re-stoke the fire. More on both soon.

Many thanks to jmetal88 and Mike for the original design and inspiration (and to some extend thanks for the prodding). Who knew there were 200 PCjr owners in the wild so enthusiastic about the machine (hint, I didn't or I would have run screaming for the hills)!

[ZiggyTheHamster]

I've found the easiest thing to do at the post office is to say "Can I get an acceptance scan?" - for some reason, that specific phrase causes them to skip giving you bad/wrong information or otherwise being a pain in your ass. Most of the time. It probably won't come up, but since the tariff stuff changes almost daily nowadays, the eBay label printer was probably correct and the postal employees were probably totally wrong.

When you say sound card, what do you mean? I think a combo card with an OPL2 chip on it would be a pretty cool addition (I'm not sure what else the combo card would have.. maybe copy-paste the Lo-tech EMS card onto it?)

[Brutman]

Hi Alan,

Definitely time to take a break.

I still remember doing the original bring-up of the BIOS on these boards back in 2012. I don't remember the specific problems, but the conversation went something like this:

• Me:It's doing this weird bit pattern now
• Alan: Ok. Here is another file for the CPLD
• Me: Now it's doing this weird bit pattern.
• Alan: Ok. Here is another file for the CPLD

I think we went through three iterations of CPLD programming before we had something that the BIOS could talk to a drive with.

Seriously, thanks for designing the coolest PCjr add-on ever. If you had not come along we'd have this instead:



That is a very hacky XT-IDE for the ISA bus on a bus adapter with a modified BIOS. It worked. It made me very happy. But it's not a terribly well integrated package.

jrIDE made it look good and made it fast; memory mapped I/O is 25% faster compared to the port I/O that the normal XT-IDE does. And then Alan added all of the extras onto it that I still haven't added to my original BIOS.

[alanh]

The sound card project isn't PCjr related atm. More on that next month.

Yeah, I'm not sure why more people didn't adopt a memory mapped approach. Could still be done with 74xx logic. It's just the IDE data register at 512 consecutive addresses so one can do a 'rep movsw' and not have any instruction fetches in-between data movement cycles.

The RTC utility work well. The only real add-on that would be a nice to have is DOS-in-ROM. It would be nice to FDISK/FORMAT new drives without having to boot floppies.

[alanh]

Out of stock.