• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

IOB6120 questions

D

dfnr2

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2011
Messages
466
Location
Dallas, TX
Hi all,

Somewhere around 2010 there was a group buy of IOB6120 PCBs and parts. I got all my parts from the gentleman who arranged the buy and built up the board without really critically reviewing the parts, and when I attached it to my (working) sbc6120, the whole system was unresponsive. I had planned to get back to this, but never did and rediscovered the board last week when cleaning up in the lab.

The first thing I notice is that the flash chip is a 29LV400, not a 29F400, which I gather from Vince's IOB6120 page, can be made to work with updated ROMS. The 29LV400 has a VCC_max of 3.6V, which means the protection diodes likely pulled the whole system voltage down below the working range. So that is probably an issue. I also had not realized at the time that new ROM and GAL images were necessary.

From poking around the web I see some references to some ECO's and errata that I am unable to hunt down. Does anyone have a pointer to the latest ROM and GAL images to support the 29F400 and any other bugfixes?

Also, the IOB6120 schematics from Jim Kearney's site seem to be from a very old version of Eagle. Does anyone happen to have imported this to Kicad? I saw a reference to an updated version of the board on the sparetimegizmos yahoo group, but that's gone and there are only a few posts in the groups.io group. Has there been any newer activity with respect to this board?

Thanks for any info and pointers,

Dave
 
I still have a big box of IOB6120 stuff downstairs, and the "new" code should still be somewhere in my SVN.

Vince
 
Thanks Vince!

Also, I see that I can get the intel TE28F400 parts on ebay. Would that be better than a 29F400 from Mouser (Alliance Memory)?
 
I see that the new code apparently *isn't* in the SVN; only in my Windows 7 backups. I better clean that up and check it in!

The 28F400 part is probably a better choice if you can get it. That should work regardless of which firmware is in your SBC6120.
 
I found some TE28F400CEB120 parts on ebay, which can handle a 5V supply. They ship from California and have the textured appearance, so I suspect they are genuine.
 
OK, I think I have sufficient stuff checked in here:
to get you to the latest SBC6120 and IOB6120 stuff that I have.

I've copied the various tools to the "tools" directory, and made most of them run on Linux. I also tweaked "palx" so that the output files (listing and binary) contain the modification date of the input source code, not the current date and time. (Including current date and time in the binary just makes everything fail to match.)

Is v321 firmware the latest, or was there an update for the RBC?

Per the README, the actual FLASH.DL file hasn't changed since Jim first created it.
 
vrs42 said:
Is v321 firmware the latest, or was there an update for the RBC?
Click to expand...
According to https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:sbc:sbc6120-rbc-edition:start there were some modifications made. See section "E. BST6120 Enhancements": https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/...6120-rbc-edition:start#e_bst6120_enhancements

Files in: https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/...ion:sbc6120-rbc-edition-archive-10may2018.zip

However the hex files are named 320l and 320h (consistent with the first photo on that page). I wonder if there was a fork here?
 
pbirkel@gmail.com said:
However the hex files are named 320l and 320h (consistent with the first photo on that page). I wonder if there was a fork here?
Click to expand...
Interesting. I was looking for a valid vintage copy of 320[HL].HEX. I had the source code, but not the release binaries. I'll check the dates on those and assuming they are plausible, we may well have the v320 distribution as well.

The source appears identical to the v320 that I started with, so I think we are OK there. It's possible (even likely) that the assembler was re-run later, though. This would make the v320 image look "newer" than the v321 that I built years ago.
 
pbirkel@gmail.com said:
AFAIK the RBC folks didn't touch the IOB and it's been out-of-production for many years.
Click to expand...
As far as I know, all the FLASH.DL images are identical, and all my IOB hardware changes are minor and backward compatible. (By which I mean the stuff that the FPGA cares about.)

You'd still need v321 for the SBC6120 firmware to load that flash image into a 29F400.
 
vrs42 said:
As far as I know, all the FLASH.DL images are identical, and all my IOB hardware changes are minor and backward compatible. (By which I mean the stuff that the FPGA cares about.)

You'd still need v321 for the SBC6120 firmware to load that flash image into a 29F400.
Click to expand...
I need to check, but looking at the FPGA stuff it may be Fix 111 is what I need. I need to check the versions I have but can do this for a while
 
vrs42 said:
It's possible (even likely) that the assembler was re-run later, though.
Click to expand...
Looks like the date stamp in the v320 binary is "09-APR-10 21:15:39".
The date stamp for the v321 binary is "07-MAR-11 14:04:47", so I've added the v320 files.
 
vrs42 said:
OK, I think I have sufficient stuff checked in here:
to get you to the latest SBC6120 and IOB6120 stuff that I have.

I've copied the various tools to the "tools" directory, and made most of them run on Linux. I also tweaked "palx" so that the output files (listing and binary) contain the modification date of the input source code, not the current date and time. (Including current date and time in the binary just makes everything fail to match.)

Is v321 firmware the latest, or was there an update for the RBC?

Per the README, the actual FLASH.DL file hasn't changed since Jim first created it.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for sharing this. There's a lot there, and it will be fun to look through it all.
Dave
 
Last edited:
dfnr2 said:
Thank you so much for sharing this. There's a lot there, and it will be fun to look through it all.
Dave
Click to expand...
You're welcome. Mostly it is Bob and Jim's original stuff collected up, but I also tried to collect the tools and the versions for BTS6120.PLX, the fastest changing part. The stuff that didn't change much, like the flash image and other PLD content you still have to find in the directories from Bob and Jim.

Also, my later board layouts for the IOB6120 are over in the CAD directories. The RBC files are also not replicated, so you have to find those out on the web.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top