Mike's PCjr Page

Another thought - I know the various RAM sidecars had addressing DIP switches on them, and, at least on my PCjr Booster, I know where the access hole is. It's big enough for three switches. If we used three switches, we'd get access to 300h, 320h, 340h, 360h, 380h, 3A0h, 3C0h, and 3E0h, and I'd be able to position them so that they're accessible from the outside of the Booster shell.

Alright, here's an attachment so you guys can actually see what I've done to the schematic so far. Let me know if there's anything you're unhappy with, or if I've screwed anything up.

Also, if it's not obvious from the file name, I think we should call this the JR-IDE rather than the XT-IDEjr.

Have you got an actual board layout that you can post?

jmetal88 wrote:Another thought - I know the various RAM sidecars had addressing DIP switches on them, and, at least on my PCjr Booster, I know where the access hole is. It's big enough for three switches. If we used three switches, we'd get access to 300h, 320h, 340h, 360h, 380h, 3A0h, 3C0h, and 3E0h, and I'd be able to position them so that they're accessible from the outside of the Booster shell.

Neat. I like that indeed. I will have to take a look and see if my sidecar has anything externally accessible like that. If not, I have a dremel and I'm not afraid to use it.

Could we do this though:
Of the 3 switches, 2 of them for this "Use the lower four available (300h, 320h, 340h, 360h). A7 wired to match low."
and 1 of them to flip between C0000 and C8000? I think that covers a lot of the bases and just in cases.

Next up, how about the internals between the PATA header to the drive? Are we all thinking CF inside the device, or microdrive? Is there room on the PCB to mount an IDE->CF adapter, with maybe a 2" IDE cable? I was thinking a CF-IDE device like this:
http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/public ... aacK4pBBgL
could actually be bolted down to our PCB as a small daughterboard. Heck, having it accessible off the back of the car would be dreamy, but would require dremel work again... I do not know anything about microdrive mounting/cabling/space requirements.

Good idea, regarding the third switch to select the ROM base address!

I've updated the schematic to reflect that.

As for internal CF, I'll have to do some messing around with the board design to see if that will work. I know with the Booster case, I wouldn't have any trouble accessing it from the rear, as the case is already open at the rear so that the mouse port can be accessed.

Lutiana wrote:Have you got an actual board layout that you can post?

I did, but it's not up to date with today's changes yet. I'll get back to you when I have it more current.

Hargle wrote: Next up, how about the internals between the PATA header to the drive? Are we all thinking CF inside the device, or microdrive? Is there room on the PCB to mount an IDE->CF adapter, with maybe a 2" IDE cable? I was thinking a CF-IDE device like this:
http://lh4.googleusercontent.com/public ... aacK4pBBgL
could actually be bolted down to our PCB as a small daughterboard. Heck, having it accessible off the back of the car would be dreamy, but would require dremel work again... I do not know anything about microdrive mounting/cabling/space requirements.

I will most likely want to use a 2Gb CF or SD adapter in my Jr, simply because the limited space in the sidecar. so an optional daughter board would be great.

Well, if we all want a CF connector, we could put something like this on the board:

http://www.arrow.com/1/1/417420-connect ... be-2a.html

Or we could do the 44-pin laptop IDE connector and use a right-angle-mount flash disk-on-module inside the sidecar.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about regarding the disk module:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... 53&CatId=8

You could just plug that directly onto the board if we put a 44-pin connector inside.