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Recreating the Ferguson Big Board

It freakin works !!! (From an 8” single side disk SA800 no less!!!).
IMG_4899.jpeg

I finally found my soldering error and I’ll report it here below so nobody else falls into this trap.

The 100kohm resistor R44 in the picture below was connected to 2 vias. One side was ok to ground, but the other end was supposed to go to C115 and chip U106 74LS123, p15 controlling p4; the HLT on the 1771 floppy controller.

IMG_4897.jpeg
Still need to try my Gotek, and build my flash floppy board.
I used BB1.IMD to create my 8” boot disk. Using IMD 1.20
 
fdiskitup said:
It freakin works !!! (From an 8” single side disk SA800 no less!!!).
View attachment 1295057

I finally found my soldering error and I’ll report it here below so nobody else falls into this trap.

The 100kohm resistor R44 in the picture below was connected to 2 vias. One side was ok to ground, but the other end was supposed to go to C115 and chip U106 74LS123, p15 controlling p4; the HLT on the 1771 floppy controller.

View attachment 1295058
Still need to try my Gotek, and build my flash floppy board.
I used BB1.IMD to create my 8” boot disk. Using IMD 1.20
Click to expand...
Congratulations!
 
fdiskitup said:
Thankyou very much for making the board.
The gotek works now too.
Did you build enclosures for your bigboards ?
Click to expand...

No enclosure yet, just some 3D printed standoffs to keep the board off the bench/table. Not really happy with them since you get a bit of sag given the size of the PCB, so maybe someday I'll buy a laser cutter and do a plexiglass sandwich with cutouts for the various ports on the top. Similar to https://github.com/emilianoarlettaz/arcade-pcb-case
 
after a couple of nights learning "PIP" and messing with 22DISK I found an excellent way to make or read disk images for the fergusson big board 1
works under windows 10/11 (or linux) version CIFE 0.0.9.4
heres the link CPM File Explorer

use image type "IBM3740" and then ou can just drag and drop cpm files into the disk image.

1739631352015.png


Attached heres a disk ADVENT.IMG file I made with "Colossal Cave Adventure" : works on my Gotek - share and enjoy!
 

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And here are all the Micro Cornucopia BIG BOARD USER DISKS that I could find1,5,9,13,14 - reconstructed from Bitsavers, Dave's Old Computers, etc.
Does anyone have any of the other Micro C user disks ?
 

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hideehoo said:
Thanks for sharing, I'll add them to the disk images in my repo.
Click to expand...
I got the Artery microcontroller onto the open flops 1.0 board - tiny little legs. Need to finish the rest of the SMD parts. The 74LS07 is the narrow version.

Anyway it let me program it with my cheapskate USB Artery programmer.

The chips and programmer both from Ali express.

Next challenge would be to make a 2 disk drive version ?
IMG_4997.jpeg
 
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fdiskitup said:
I got the Artery microcontroller onto the open flops 1.0 board - tiny little legs. Need to finish the rest of the SMD parts. The 74LS07 is the narrow version.

Anyway it let me program it with my cheapskate USB Artery programmer.

The chips and programmer both from Ali express.

Next challenge would be to make a 2 disk drive version ?
View attachment 1295683
Click to expand...

That's been an open issue on the Flash Floppy project for years now. Some work was done, but never really merged back in or taken to completion. I figured with the new Artery chips with more memory, dual drive support would get some love again, but I guess not.

github.com

Dual floppy support · Issue #36 · keirf/flashfloppy

I see that in the documentation there is rumbling about being able to emulate two floppy drives at the same time. I am extremely excited at the prospect of this! Would you mind if I open this issue...
github.com github.com

I do find it a bit ironic you can buy a cloned STM programmer for a real STM chip for ~$2 shipped from China, but all the programmers for the Artery STM "clone" chips cost ~$20+ shipped.
 
Big Board User Disk 7 , 15 and 17 - reconstructed into disk IMG files.
Disk 7 = PFM monitor mods, TERM, Checkbook, Disk Utilities
Disk 15 = Word Processing (Editors EDIT, TED, etc.)
Disk 17 = Small C - C programming language - pretty neat

found in the Don Maslin Archive under "CPM_DOSGG" link here
 

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Wow, this brings back old memories.
My first CP/M system was built from a bare Big Board clone that some local guys made. After scrounging parts, I managed to get it up and running. The company I worked for had a spare 19" rack mount box with a power supply and space for two 8" drives. A coworker gave me a couple of Mayflower branded drives and I managed to get CP/M running on it. Everything was done on a shoestring budget.
This was around 1980 or so and I spent untold hours playing and hacking on this machine. Eventually, years later I ended up getting rid of the whole mess to make room for other stuff.

Interestingly my boss at my last job prior to retirement in 2016 was a friend of Jim Ferguson. Small world.

Great job putting together this recreation.

Randy
 
ldkraemer said:
I have no clue where I found these BigBoard Images from MicroCornucopia, but I also have 2, 23, 30-50.


Larry
Click to expand...
Thankyou - this is really nice to have the user disk 2 - I repackaged it in the IMG format we've been using for the flash floppy,
highlights are ;
1, The Crowe Assembler.
2, There are two single-disk copy routines, DKCOPY.* and COPY. very useful for single disk operation.
3, CBIOS and related hex files to make rom's

there is quite a library building up here.

I'm still working on opening the other user disks but microcornucopia started to deal with the Xerox 820, Kaypro and BB2 so there may be fewer BB1 relevant programs in the disks over 30.
 

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