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Looking for ALT2480, ALT512 manuals or a scan or just tech info on ports/operations

C

cj7hawk

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Jan 25, 2022
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Perth, Western Australia.
Does anyone have info on the ALT2480 or ALT512 Matrox cards?

Would love to find out how they operate - Someone else pointed out the ALT256 card already - but I'd like to get info on the others, particularly how they work together if possible.

Thanks
David
 
Also I made a Light Pen project which took advantage of the two image plains in the ALT-512, using one as an illumination plane the other as an image plane and turning the illumination plane off when done.

I have no idea if this method was ever used with Light Pens before, or if I "invented" the the method, but it seemed the logical thing to do, to make a high speed Light Pen when two image plains were available on the one card. Other systems involve having to increase the brightness of the CRT beam to acquire a signal , and then turn it down again, or scan a bright image sequentially so that the pen can acquire a signal.

One interesting major difference between the two cards: The binary data representing the image can be extracted from the card's memory on the ALT-512 and saved in RAM or a disk file. On the ALT-256, not, it is "trapped" in there, and only extracted by the shift register and composite video output. If say the ALT-256 was used as a light pen card, it requires saving an additional data file/copy elsewhere in general computer RAM for transfer to disk etc.


Another interesting vintage video card to play with graphics is the Dazzler, page 24 of this article shows a monochrome image I programmed: (I think ScottishColin on the forum was able to copy my pcb foil images into Kicad to create Gerbers for the Dazzler, as the original boards are as rare as rocking horse manure. My boards were made from .jpg images I crafted from the original board and sent to a PCB maker. LD Electronics in AU can make these boards for people)


Another card I tried in my SOL-20 was the CompuPro Spectrum, but I had not got around to writing it up yet.
 
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Hugo Holden said:
Also I made a Light Pen project which took advantage of the two image plains in the ALT-512, using one as an illumination plane the other as an image plane and turning the illumination plane off when done.
Click to expand...

The illumination plane is a clever idea, likewise I don't know if it's unique or not. Seems like light pens were mostly used for selecting between objects/buttons already illuminated on the screen instead of freehand drawing; I remember vaguely seeing a system where people were plotting "dots" (vector points) by poking the pens in dark areas, which flashed the whole screen white to read the position. Which is certainly suboptimal for a few reasons.

On a system with attribute/palette registers I suppose you could just make "black" a gray without needing another plane.
 
Still looking for any hardware information on the ALT2480 - Mapping addresses, I/O ports, etc, anything. Though a manual is preferred.

I now have info on the ALT256 and ALT512 cards, so it's just the character card I need info on.

Thanks
David
 
cj7hawk said:
Still looking for any hardware information on the ALT2480 - Mapping addresses, I/O ports, etc, anything. Though a manual is preferred.

I now have info on the ALT256 and ALT512 cards, so it's just the character card I need info on.

Thanks
David
Click to expand...

A while back there was an ebay seller K-systems store (or something like that) he had the ALT2480 board for sale along with the full paper manual for it. I looked at it, to see if it could be of any use for me, but the only S-100 computer I have is the SOL-20, which already has a character generator, so I did not buy it as I could not find a use for it. I was tempted though because it looked like new old stock and it had the manual. I guess he may have copied the manual before selling it.
 
Hugo Holden said:
A while back there was an ebay seller K-systems store (or something like that) he had the ALT2480 board for sale along with the full paper manual for it. I looked at it, to see if it could be of any use for me, but the only S-100 computer I have is the SOL-20, which already has a character generator, so I did not buy it as I could not find a use for it. I was tempted though because it looked like new old stock and it had the manual. I guess he may have copied the manual before selling it.
Click to expand...
That rings a bell, several years ago I asked and paid that seller to scan his manuals for me, as the S-100 ALT-2480 circuitry is nearly identical (except for the bus interface)
to the Motorola Exorciser versions of the 2480 I have - EXO-2480, and EXO-512.
Here are the PDFs he sent me of the ALT-2480 Hardware manual and Software manual scans which includes config, schematic, and jumpers along with demo software.

Stan
 

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  • ALT-2480 Hardware User's Manual.pdf
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  • ALT-2480 Software User's Manual.pdf
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stanleyruppert said:
That rings a bell, several years ago I asked and paid that seller to scan his manuals for me, as the S-100 ALT-2480 circuitry is nearly identical (except for the bus interface)
to the Motorola Exorciser versions of the 2480 I have - EXO-2480, and EXO-512.
Here are the PDFs he sent me of the ALT-2480 Hardware manual and Software manual scans which includes config, schematic, and jumpers along with demo software.

Stan
Click to expand...
@stanleyruppert - Thank you very much - that rounds out exactly what I need - and it's very closely aligned with the architecture I want to build, so it won't take much for me to make mine Matrox compatible, with both the character and hires graphics compatability.
 
I was just sorting through some S-100 cards and found that I have the ALT2480 S-100 board. I must have collected it and forgotten I had it !
 
It is coming back to me now what happened. I initially bought the ALT-256 board from the K systems store, but the paperwork was jumbled up. Parts of it were missing and there were some sheets that belonged to the ALT2480 mixed in. They had the ALT2480 for sale too with paperwork, and I had also guessed that the missing pages for the ALT256 would be in that pile. It makes even more sense now, because @stanleyruppert mentioned they got the fellow at the K systems store to copy the paperwork for the ALT2480, probably the loose sheets which looked very similar, got jumbled up in the photocopy process. So I bought the ALT2480 from the K systems store, even though I did not have any application for it, to get the original manufacturer pages for the ALT256. One of the big problems I find with vintage computer boards, over the years, they get separated from their paperwork and it is not always online. And if it is, incomplete or a bad copy. As I recall half the schematic of one board was missing (either the ALT256 or 512 board, I cannot recall which one..... checking...it was the central part of the schematic, page 84 of the copy was blank, that sort of thing is really helpful when you are fixing a broken board:

 
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