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PET 4016 Upgrade options?

The machine is back together and seems to work fine.. so far. ;-)

As was suggested earlier, I left out the metal shield pan that encloses the rear of the keyboard. It really does seem to be dead weight, added to meet some FCC ruling while serving no other purpose. It can always be replaced at a later date.

The original #6-32 1/2" screws that held the keyboard were too long for the case threads to begin with. This is why they were initially so difficult to remove, having been forced in beyond the thread depth at the factory. Prior to reassembly, I ran a #6-32 tap into all of the mounting holes, which removed some material from each of them. As noted, there were no brass inserts as I'd first believed.

Having lost the material thickness of the metal shield, I reassembled using #6-32 3/8" screws which now fit much better than the originals and did not need to be forced for the last couple of turns.

So I guess that's it until I have some way to get some software onto it, which for now means waiting for my Petdisk Max kit to arrive. Not sure where we are with that process as the vendor hasn't yet acknowledged my purchase..
 
Unless WimWalther can bit-bang space invaders into the machine using a Morse key I can see a slight problem with that ambition.

Fellow forum member ScottishColin mentioned what I think must be a datasette substitute based on a Raspberry Pi, (which WW may already have), in this thread here:-


-it seems to need minimal hardware between the Pi and the datasette port. You can see the circuit diagram, such as it is, if you scroll a few pages down the article Colin linked to.
 
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Fellow forum member ScottishColin mentioned what I think must be a datasette substitute based on a Raspberry Pi, (which WW may already have), in this thread here:-
Thanks much for this.. were I in the UK I'd be asking the OP to send me a board. And you're right, I do have spare PiZeros around here - so I may go ahead and have JLC run a batch of 5pcs. in either case.

Thing is, unless I want to pop $20+ for shipping, the boards will be several weeks on the slow boat. So, I'm kinda stuck waiting on the kit.


That.. and if you'd noticed my post in the other thread, it seems the cassette port #1 is dead on my machine. So that will have me occupied for a bit.
 
As I mentioned there as well, anecdotally, problems with the cassette port on a 'new' PET (new to the owner, that is) are often purely down to a heavy 'skin' of oxidisation on the contact fingers of the cassette port edge connector, and it is quite common for the initial report to be a 'dead' cassette port. I noticed Traindriver69's cassette port which initially wasn't working at all (see his recent thread) eventually burst into life. If you have a 'proper' PCB cleaning rubber, give those contacts a going over before looking for anything more complicated.

If by 'boards' you meant the ones for the tape-pi interface, to be honest it hardly needs a board, you could build that interface on a piece of stripboard or an experimenter breadboard in an hour or so - to have the finished article on a PCB would be nicer in the long run of course, but by no means necessary in the short term.
 
As I mentioned there as well, anecdotally, problems with the cassette port on a 'new' PET (new to the owner, that is) are often purely down to a heavy 'skin' of oxidisation on the contact fingers of the cassette port edge connector, and it is quite common for the initial report to be a 'dead' cassette port.

Oxidisation is PET-bane across the board, from the keyboard, cassette interface, the IEEE-488 port, everything. It took a lot of swearing to get anything reliably connected to my PETs.
 
Oxidisation is PET-bane across the board, from the keyboard, cassette interface, the IEEE-488 port, everything. It took a lot of swearing to get anything reliably connected to my PETs.
I've had some so badly oxidized that a pencil eraser wouldn't work and fine grain sandpaper was needed. The pads are not gold plated.
I even had one that someone had coated in some kind of clear varnish, presumably to prevent someone from connecting a cassette drive. Maybe a school, to prevent damage from students connecting a drive while powered on.
 
I've had some so badly oxidized that a pencil eraser wouldn't work and fine grain sandpaper was needed. The pads are not gold plated.
I even had one that someone had coated in some kind of clear varnish, presumably to prevent someone from connecting a cassette drive. Maybe a school, to prevent damage from students connecting a drive while powered on.

I finally have all the ports working on my 3016, including a pass through IEEE port for my disk drives. The second cassette port is silver and the other three are gold-coloured; don't really know if it's gold, but they'e most definitely a different colour to the internal cassette port.

Colin.
 
I've had some so badly oxidized that a pencil eraser wouldn't work

You can buy PCB track cleaning 'rubbers' which are specifically designed for the job - as such they are more abrasive than a normal pencil rubber but not as bad as sandpaper.

Such as:

 
Thanks, that is a better pic, or at least a more-drilled board.

As noted above, it really doesnt seem too challenging to handwire around the drillings. If my board has been so abused, that's very likely the route I will take. Don't think I have any Kynar, though.. but the 28ga stuff from old Bell System 25-pair cable should be fine.

ETA: Frustration! There aren't any unpopulated patterns on the board, drilled or not. So it looks like I'm limited to a piggyback hack (ugly, I agree) unless I want to buy a 3rd party upgrade board. So that kinda sucks.. and is likely why I've never done anything with it previously.
Still waiting for a picture of the mainboard, especially showing the RAM chip numbers, and the opening screen. What does the label on the back call it?
 
which for now means waiting for my Petdisk Max kit to arrive. Not sure where we are with that process as the vendor hasn't yet acknowledged my purchase..
Mike from bitfixer.com is a full time professional programmer who does the PET gadgets as a service to the PET community and builds them in small batches. But generally he will let the customers know when the next batch is getting close. I think there is a contact form page. Drop him a line.
 
Mike from bitfixer.com is a full time professional programmer who does the PET gadgets as a service to the PET community and builds them in small batches. But generally he will let the customers know when the next batch is getting close. I think there is a contact form page. Drop him a line.
I've done so, twice in fact.

First time, I'd asked if he might be interested in a partial swap for one of my KIM-1 emulation (KIM Uno) kits. Never heard back either way. After a few days, I went ahead with an order - at the time, he showed kits in-stock.

Still haven't been acknowledged.

Fyi, KIM Uno kits are eBay item #165461996362 - if anyone is interested, contact me for VCFED pricing. ;-)
 
Good News, Everyone.

Mike from bitfixer contacted me today, I guess he was just behind on dealing with orders. Either way, he was very pleasant and also took me up on a partial swap for one of the KIM Uno kits, which is just great. I'm waiting on his shipping details to get that going.
 
Mike is scheduled to be at VCF-West this year with his Romulator and PetPix. I'll be there too with my PET collection. If you'll be in the silicon valley area Aug 6 & 7 stop by and say hi.
 
Mike is scheduled to be at VCF-West this year with his Romulator and PetPix. I'll be there too with my PET collection. If you'll be in the silicon valley area Aug 6 & 7 stop by and say hi.
Thanks for the thought Hutch, but travelling is a huge issue for me. Not only do I require a wheelchair to cover more than a couple dozen steps, I'm on kidney dialysis along with the requisite strict diet. I'm also right on the edge of heart failure.. so I'm effectively homebound these days. This is also why I had to wait on a neighbor to get the PET moved to somewhere I could work on it.
 
On the right is my 3d printed PET which has my Pi in which is used as a network device for the PET Disk MAX. I bought the PET Disk MAX as it has the pass through IEEE port so I can connect my 4040. If I configure the PET Disk MAX as device 9, everything works fine. Happy customer.

 

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