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Has anyone experience with bringing up the BigBoard II Ferguson ?

P

P9P2P8

Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2022
Messages
17
Location
Netherlands
Hello All...

Finally I was able to get a BigBoard-II. I had to pay a couple of 100 $'s for it, but it was with all IC's in and in good condition. Next step is to start debugging this board.

  • I connected only the +5V on the board and measured a current of approx 2.2 A.
  • I only connected the CRT to Pin9,10 of JB12. I did not connect the ASCII keyboard on the board. I waiting for parts to create this parallel keyboard.
  • After two seconds I hear the bleep: according to the documents that is good news: Z80, DRAM and ROM should work fine..
But nothing on screen...:-((...no blank screen at all. I expected to see a blank screen (?).

So there is something wrong in the IO area:
  • I created two new GAL16V8 from Lattice with the JED files on: http://bitsavers.org/bits/Ferguson/Big_Board_II/firmware/
  • By the way when you open the text file BB2_U23_replacement.txt you see on line 37 unidentified characters. Has anyone experience with new GAL's in BB2 ?
  • I took the two JED files, programmed and verified the GAL's inserted these in the board. Nothing happens: no bleep and even signal like ~cpurd (from GAL) does not work. So I put the original GAL's back in the board.
  • I took a scope and checked the CS line (pin25) of the 6845. Nothing happens ... so no register initialization of the 6845..:-((
  • I only see Vsync on Pin 40 but no Hsync. I guess that is due to the no programming of the 6845.
  • There is Vsync and I see this V sync with Video from 8002A (pin1) on the video connector JB12, pin 10.
  • There is a clock on Pin21 of the 6845, and I see the address lines nicely toggling. There is something moving..
My question is: is the Hsync necessary to create a video image ? Maybe someone is able to measure this signal after power on the board ?

Next mode is to order many LS chips and start replacing these devices...

Many thanks in advance and it would be great to have to remarks or checkpoints for the next step...
 
Update... When I set the 4th switch of SW1 to the right side I see suddenly that the 6845 CS line moving during startup and I have V- and H-Sync..
It looks like a special feature this 4x dip-switches (SW1, in schematic SW1..SW4). Now I have all switches to the right side..

Is there some documentation available about the dip switch ? What is the function of it ? Or is it a undocumented feature programmed somewhere in the Eprom ?

Many thanks in advance
 
Update from my side. In the meantime, I have the BigBoard II almost up and running. Many IC's sockets are in a bad condition so with a desolder machine I inserted new ones. But be careful, sometimes tracks are damaged too. What is done are:
CPU/DMA: OK
DRAM: OK
Serial ports: OK
Floppy control: OK, But I had issues last week with writing on a CP/M disc. A track close to U6 (FDC9216) was broken.
Still to do: Video part.
Still to do: printer port, some input/output latches, SASI port

Serial Port is working. I have a prompt and I can enter the commands. Serial port is connected via FTDI cable to my PC. Be aware about the settings ! Baudrate: 19200, databits: 7-bits, Parity: odd, NumOfStop: 1, Flow control: none.

As floppy drive I'm using the HxC Floppy Emulator with SDcards. One of the issues I still have is that only 77 tracks 1-side .IMD files converted to .HFE files are working fine. It also has to do something with one of the switches on board. I have to dive into the monitor ROM for that.

Next step is also running wordstar as editor on my Machine. Has anyone an image or a link for that ?

Many thanks in advance
 
Hallo,

Is there more progress with regard to this Board?

I have a Big Board II too, which I want to replicate.

Groet,

Edzard
 
Hello Edzard..

Yes, the BBII is working fine.

Still open was the video part:
1) I replaced also all sockets with good one and got something on screen, but still not the hole "welcome message" on screen. On the left side some characters are not visible on screen. I did some small changes in the ROM regarding 6845 settings to have correct video out of it ! After pressing the Keyboard, the complete welcome message on screen.
2) Suddenly I had missing chars on the screen: w,t,z,x and v are replaced by a space. But in Nov 2022 I did not had such issues. At the end it was the CRT8002A chip which was broken. I found a new one (hard too find these days). And now the video part is up and running.

See attachment my board. In the right bottom part I created a USB to ASCII converter with a PIC controller. Now I'm able use USB based Keyboard.
In the bottom part you see my SDcard Floppy emulator. I created 77 tracks SDcards and 40 tracks SDcards with CP/M on it.

Next topic for this winter period will be the: printer Port.

Kind regards
Paul
 

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Hello All...

A update on my side. Recently I started again with the BBII. Topic is to have WordStar running on the machine. Finally I have it running !! Let me share with you where to find a version of WordStar, and I had to do some conversion steps too:

1) First browse to the following link:
http://www.retroarchive.org/maslin/disks/bigboard/index.html
2) There you see a file called: 60kcpm22.td0. Download the file to your PC. This is a bootable disc
3) Use HxCFloppyEmulator to convert the "td0" file into a 60kcpm22.img (raw) file
4) Open again HxCFloppyEmulator and press the button: "Load RAW image"
5) Use the following settings:
Bitrate: 500000
RPM: 360
Number of Tracks: 77
Sector per track: 26
Number of side: 1
Sector size: 128 bytes
and press the button "Load RAW file", and select the above mention: "60kcpm22.img"
6) After selecting the file you will go back to the main window of HxCFloppyEmulator
7) Press "export" to create a "60kcpm22_img.hfe".
8) Leave HxCFloppyEmulator and rename the "60kcpm22_img.hfe" to "DSKA0000.hfe" and insert on SDcard.
9) SDcard in HxCEmulator and boot disc with BBII.

At the end you will have the prompt and type in "ws.com"

Two topics left on my BBII:
- Parallel interface needs to be checked, new IC sockets etc...
- SASI interface is new for me. Would be great to have it running with a HardDisc..


Regards
Paul
 
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