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Petsd

ngtwolf

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2018
Messages
991
Location
Los Angeles, CA
I'm trying to build out the PET SD. One thing though, the Attiny chip doesn't appear to have the hex file up on their site that I can find, they only have the compiled files for the Atmega chip. They do have the source for the Attiny chip but I don't really have an easy way to compile that. Does anyone maybe have the hex file for the attiny45/85 chip or maybe can read in the one from their petsd?

Thanks!
 
The source contains the project :

lcd-i2c-pwm-io

I²C-LCD-PWM-I/O
===============


The petSD+ rev. 2.x boards come with a further Atmel ATtiny slave MCU to support the main MCU.
It serves three purposes:

- output a PWM signal to adjust the LCD contrast
- output a PWM signal to adjust the background display's brightness
- output a digital signal to switch between IEEE-488 and IEC bus

I can probably compile this for you later tonight with Atmel Studio 7, but there are no guarantees it will be the same binary that it is usually compiled to. It looks quite simple though so I'm sure it would work.
 
I can probably compile this for you later tonight with Atmel Studio 7, but there are no guarantees it will be the same binary that it is usually compiled to. It looks quite simple though so I'm sure it would work.

Yeah, that was the problem I had (I think i mentioned in my post), that the site only includes the source and I have no easy way to compile it (and don't really want to set up a compile environment for one attiny chip :) ). But, if someone had a PetSD and a Minipro they could read the chip and save the hex file, or maybe they already had it? It's funny they have the binaries compiled for the main chip but not the LCD attiny.
 
If you don't get anyone to provide a HEX they read from it let me know and I'll compile you one. It will probably work fine.
 
Enclosing the compiled project. When you flash it to the tiny25 make sure you also set the fuses correctly according to the original makefile:

# AVR fuses settings
LFUSE = e2
HFUSE = d4
EFUSE = ff

There is a HEX and ELF file in the release directory:

View attachment lcd-i2c-pwm-io.zip
 
Great, thanks! I'm having some other problems with my build that I need to figure out (not recognizing my sd card for some reason), so once I'm sure everything is working and that I flashed this correctly I'll update this thread.

Thanks again!
 
Want to share your shopping list? That's one of the things keeping me from trying one of these.

If you have a mouser or digikey part list, that would rock.
 
Want to share your shopping list? That's one of the things keeping me from trying one of these.

If you have a mouser or digikey part list, that would rock.

Most of my ordering was parts I either had and the stuff I didn't have, i ordered from aliexpress because I wasn't in a rush for any of the parts. I don't really have a 'parts list' per se, other than whats on the petsd.net site:

http://petsd.net/psdp24-BOM.txt

Basically just had the board made via pcbway, the bought the parts I didn't have. The few more difficult things to get would be:

SD Card: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33007764892.html
24 pin edge connector (a8 or a9): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000600379941.html
rtc: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32900267627.html
mcp 1702: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33026766626.html

the edge connector is just the route i chose to go because the IEEE method is a bit overkill and pretty expensive. Also, I had these built with a friend so we went in together on a few things and then split some orders up. I'm going the whole route with lcd and everything, but he was able to build it with a lot less parts as a bare minimum, but he knows better what he's doing than I do. :) Even then, i'm not really sure theres much savings to be had vs the cost and time to build it. If you do build it, Chuck Hutchens has a video on youtube of building it, so that is helpful as well.

Either way, work has been to busy to diagnose what's up with mine yet, so hopefully i can return to it soon. too many half completed projects..haha.
 
Thank you alank2 for the .zip file for the attiny!

I also had been trying with no luck to find this last few months as I was building my petSD+ v2.4.

I have not yet (if ever) been able to understand using the sourcecode/compiling / makefile stuff.

Someone is currently selling the bare curcuit boards on e-bay
here in the US that matches the petSD+ v2.4 schematic,
and I already had most all of the parts needed, so thought I would give one a try.

The firmware for the attiny was the last piece I needed.
I had figured out that the attiny really does not do much at all,
I really do not want/need the adjustable brightness or contrast,
I assume and a simple switch on the /IEC line can be used to change between IEC/IEEE if needed,
(after also switching it in the menus obviously)

I used the .hex file in the "release" directory of your .zip file ,
wrote it to an attiny(85) with your fuse settings , using a TL-866 mini pro programmer,
and it seems to work fine.
and the petSD+ is not complaining anymore that no PWM controller is present.

Thank you again. ---Kyle
 
So 6 months later I finally got around to mostly completing this. I dont' know if the Attiny chip works because after a ton of troubleshooting, it turns out that I have the mcu fluke that is described in the url below. So, I can only use up to 10-05-2017 firmware because later firmware won't work. I might try getting another Atmega 1284 chip and hope it likes that one. But yeah, the older firmware doesn't support the clock chip or have a few other nice things like proper brightness on the lcd.

http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/pet/projects/pet_petsd_fwq.htm

It appears the PetSD is mostly abandoned as well so whatever this weird bug is with some MCU's won't ever get fixed.
 
It appears the PetSD is mostly abandoned as well so whatever this weird bug is with some MCU's won't ever get fixed.

Could you not use a Tapduino? I thought the tape drive on a PET was the same interface as a Vic20?
 
Could you not use a Tapduino? I thought the tape drive on a PET was the same interface as a Vic20?

Absolutely, though I actually modded a commodore tape deck with a 3.5mm jack so I can use that to load tape based games.

This is for loading disk based games.
 
I'm currently helping test one of these..

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?76963-PETdisk-V2-(PETdisk-MAX)-with-WiFi-support-now-ready-for-testing

So hopefully they should be available soon. Tiny, host files off the sd card or a web server.

That does look interesting, curious what the costs would be. If it's less than the PetSD+, it would be the way to go since the PetSD+ is basically abandonware and a bit buggy.

That said, I basically have my PetSD working so that's good enough for me.. I already put enough money into this computer which has a pretty limited use case over other 8 bit machines of the era so no plans to invest any more in accessories for it. It's no doubt one of the best looking 8 bit machines, but software is definitely lacking.
 
It appears the PetSD is mostly abandoned as well so whatever this weird bug is with some MCU's won't ever get fixed.

Well, the software / firmware is open source, so if interested people would, they could update it and fix any errors. There are already 4 forks of the software on github, and at least one of them have newer commits than the original. As with any other open source project, if nobody is interested, then it dies / goes stagnant.
 
Well, the software / firmware is open source, so if interested people would, they could update it and fix any errors. There are already 4 forks of the software on github, and at least one of them have newer commits than the original. As with any other open source project, if nobody is interested, then it dies / goes stagnant.

Yup, absolutely. Though, not everyone is a programmer so not everyone can fix the errors. In fact, the guy who seems to sell PetSD's has an extensive blog on what the issue is but similarly, has no programming ability to fix it.

I remember for the TRS-IO, they kinda relied on you to compile the source and no matter what I did, I couldn't get the dang thing compiled because I didn't have the full compiler environment or the knowledge to track down all the libraries needed (plus only worked with certain compiler environments). Eventually I found the bin file that someone had compiled and was able to flash it an easier way (with a minipro).

In any case, it's working for me just relies on some janky multiple reset approach to get it to work which isn't the end of the world, i guess, since the pet isn't a daily driver for me anyway.
 
I'm currently helping test one of these..

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?76963-PETdisk-V2-(PETdisk-MAX)-with-WiFi-support-now-ready-for-testing

So hopefully they should be available soon. Tiny, host files off the sd card or a web server.

I'm curious, does this new version support the BASIC 4.0 disk access commands (and relative files), or is it still mostly program-loading only using the BASIC 2.0 syntax?

With some luck (fingers crossed) I might be looking for options for PET-compatible storage dingusi that maybe I could integrate directly onto a new-build motherboard soon.
 
Right now only SAVE and LOAD commands, but he is looking into adding DOS Wedge shortcut commands. He is also looking into a wifi interface where one can download (LOAD) program files from an internet site. It works in beta testing.

Why would anyone want relative file support? Are there any legacy programs that use them? The biggest name database program is 'Data file Handler' and its only uses .seq files albeit with assembly routines.
 
Currently it supports the sd card and up to 4 web server drives. I've got my webserver running on a synology with php installed.
Any webserver that supports php should work.
 
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