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Trs-io

ngtwolf

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2018
Messages
991
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Just thought i'd start a thread on the TRS-IO for anyone else using/building one, it might be a good place since I noticed the documentation was not quite complete. I got a few of the boards made from pcbway and a friend and I are making a couple for our systems. Just wondering if anyone else out there has built them and has any tips. The few things i've noticed so far is that the BOM is missing some components, specifically the resistors. My friend was able to track down what we believe are correct, from the schematics. Also noticed the board is slightly different then the one on the github page.

https://github.com/apuder/TRS-IO

This is where I am so far. I'm waiting on an ESP32 to arrive (I thought I had one but it appears it was a 8266 I had instead) as well as the 74LVC245AN which I also thought I had but misread the part (I have LS's).

Missing from the BoM appears to be the following:

R1-R3 - 470ohm ?
R4 - 4.7k ohm ?

Hopefully that's correct for those, if not, let me know. I don't think R4 is needed unless theres a FreHD (which I don't have), but i added it anyway.

IMG_20200201_161755b.jpg

Other than the ESP32 and chips I still haven't populated, do any of the other areas on this board still need to populated? No mention of SW2 that I could find. I also assume this supports both the 30 pin and 38 pin ESP32, which is why there are two different connections on the board?

I already flashed a GAL chip, so will just need to do the ESP32 when it arrives (haven't checked the documentation on that to see if it's all there yet or not). I noticed the GAL image is 9 months old, and predates the v1.1 board.
 
Great to see interest in TRS-IO! Please create pull requests with fixes or where you see deficiencies. It's an open-source community driven project so everyone can participate!
 
Great to see interest in TRS-IO! Please create pull requests with fixes or where you see deficiencies. It's an open-source community driven project so everyone can participate!

Will do, though at the moment i'm not 100% sure in my guesses on things (like those resistors). I'm also not really a github user, so there might be a bit of a learning curve there. :)
 
Pete, how did you program the ESP-32. The documentation doesn't mention that at all. I see a few files in the dist folder, I assume one of them gets flashed to the esp32?

bootloader.bin
partitions_two_ota.bin
trs-io.bin

Thanks,
 
see the steps on the README in my trsnic fork

https://github.com/pski/trsnic/blob/master/README.md

We're having a heck of a time compiling the source files. I also assume that once you compile the source files, it'll just create new bin files that are already on the github site in the dist directory. Is there a way to just flash those bin files instead of creating new ones? I tried doing it with the ESP32 Flash program but it needs the offsets, which i'm assuming you get when whomever compiled the original files on the site.

Is there perhaps an easier way to get these flashed and circumvent the recompiling part?

esp32-flashtool.PNG
 
Okay, made some progress. I'm able to flash the bin's from the site using the following:

esp32.jpg

However, the dist files on the github are old (which, presumably is why you said we need to recompile). That said, I can't manage to recompile. It's missing some libraries and it's not clear which ones. I got a number of them installed, but its still failing out with a 'sys/poll.h: No such file or directory' error. Any chance of either getting new distributables uploaded, or letting me know which libraries are needed?

Thanks!
 
It would be great to get working firmware. I was hoping to make a video showing off this cool project, especially as there doesn't seem to be a lot of TRS-80 videos around, especially not showing off a useful project like this.
 
It would be great to get working firmware. I was hoping to make a video showing off this cool project, especially as there doesn't seem to be a lot of TRS-80 videos around, especially not showing off a useful project like this.

I was able to eventually compile this (it's very particular about the linux and esp32 libraries used), but the files still did not seem to work correctly. Not clear what the issue was but I got some working files from a gentleman off of facebook who had similar issues and made some custom changes to the source code to get it to work (documented in the issue tracker on the main TRS-IO github site). In any case, I have documented the process to image the ones i've received via the flashing tool which alleviates the need to build an entire development platform just for this one board.

Since there appears to be a lack of interest in this project on this forum, lets communicate directly and update here when we have everything sorted.
 
Hey guys. Let me answer/clarify a few things: these are the MOS-FETs:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/microchip-technology/2N7000-G/2N7000-G-ND/4902350

You also need to use the SN74LVC245 variant as this chip is used for level-shifting:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/texas-instruments/SN74LVC245AN/296-8503-5-ND/377483

For your reference, that is the ESP32 module I'm using:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0718T232Z/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_EsWpEbJRVGJGT

You can use 100 Ohm for R1-R3 and 4.7K Ohm for R4. Note that you need to install R4 even if you don't have a FreHD. This acts as a pullup resistor.

In terms of compiling the firmware, make use to use version 3.2.2 of the Espressif SDK. Make sure to call "make" in TRS-IO/src. There are some compile-time artifacts that are needed to compile the ESP firmware. You need to install sdcc to compile the TRS code.

HTH,
Arno
 
Missing from the BoM appears to be the following:

R1-R3 - 470ohm ?
R4 - 4.7k ohm ?

The values are not critical on these. R1-R3 are current limiting resistors for the LED so the actual value depends on the LED but anything between 100R and 470R will be OK.
R4 is a pull-up resistor. Some value between 4K7 and 10K will be OK.

No mention of SW2 that I could find.

In the schematic, there are two switches paralleled. Normally you would install SW2 and the LED on to board edge if you wanted to mount in a case or SW1 and the LED in the middle of the board if you want to leave the board exposed.

I also assume this supports both the 30 pin and 38 pin ESP32, which is why there are two different connections on the board?

Correct. The 38 pin module is known to work. The 30 pin is still being tested.
 
The values are not critical on these. R1-R3 are current limiting resistors for the LED so the actual value depends on the LED but anything between 100R and 470R will be OK.
R4 is a pull-up resistor. Some value between 4K7 and 10K will be OK.

Thanks. I ended up using 470 and 4K7 for R1-3 and R4 respectively. I think 470 might have been a little high for the LED ones, so yeah, something more like 200 or so might have been better to make it brighter. But then, it's an LED so after it's working it's not super relevant. I did notice my LED flashes blue and not green, but who knows what my LED was, i dug it out of my led stock.

In the schematic, there are two switches paralleled. Normally you would install SW2 and the LED on to board edge if you wanted to mount in a case or SW1 and the LED in the middle of the board if you want to leave the board exposed.

Cool, that makes sense.

Correct. The 38 pin module is known to work. The 30 pin is still being tested.

Ahh, good thing that's the one I got. But yeah, So I have RSCLIENT/CMD working and placed it on an ldos boot disk (for whatever reason it works on LDos 5.3 but not on LSDos 6.3.. it just hangs). The other part I have no idea if its possible or not, but I'd like to test the FreHD stuff... But... I don't have an autoboot rom (its a Model 4 GA so I haven't wanted to tackle that yet). But, I saw on a video of Ian's that with his FreHD he is able to boot from a floppy and have it set up the hard drives.. I'm not clear if that's possible with TRS-IO or not though. There isn't really any documentation on the FreHD functionality. I also can't find the infamous IMPORT2/EXPORT2 files.. i see some source code for them on the github site for the FreHD, but not any of those utilities in compiled form.
 
Since there appears to be a lack of interest in this project on this forum, lets communicate directly and update here when we have everything sorted.

Lack of posts doesn't always equate to lack of interest. I see this topic as a nice amount of views.

I'm interested, and I'd be even more interested if I knew where to get a PCB to build my own.

Pete? had some kits on ebay a while back - but looks like they all sold.

Jim
 
Lack of posts doesn't always equate to lack of interest. I see this topic as a nice amount of views.

Generally a lack of posts does mean a lack of interest. Even if interested, I meant that there wasn't a lot of folks who have pursued this project to this stage, so there wasn't much point to continue talking to myself here. :)

I'm interested, and I'd be even more interested if I knew where to get a PCB to build my own.

You can have a place such as PCBWAY, JLCPCB or OshPark make the boards for you. PCBWay and JLCPCB are the cheapest, usually under $15 shipped for 10 boards, but they are slow and you'll need to convert them from KiCad to Gerber (instructions on the net or I can send you the gerbers I used). OshPark is US and I think they can directly do KiCad files so would be the easiest and fastest, but cost more.
 
Generally a lack of posts does mean a lack of interest. Even if interested, I meant that there wasn't a lot of folks who have pursued this project to this stage, so there wasn't much point to continue talking to myself here. :)

Sometimes it's good to talk to yourself if only to leave a log for someone to find via google later on.

I made my own board, but then got sidetracked for a while; I'm back to trying to get the ESP32 code built. Having found the various libraries I'm as far as:

Code:
CC build/bootloader/bootloader_support/src/bootloader_flash.o
at 1: error 131: cannot generate code for target 'longcalls'
make[4]: *** [/home/phlap/esp/esp-idf/make/component_wrapper.mk:292: src/bootloader_flash.o] Error 1
make[4]: Leaving directory '/home/phlap/MINIPRO/trsnic/src/esp/build/bootloader/bootloader_support'

This is at step 5 ("make" in the TLD). As far as I an see I've got the right CC being executed; suggestions?


You can have a place such as PCBWAY, JLCPCB or OshPark make the boards for you. PCBWay and JLCPCB are the cheapest, usually under $15 shipped for 10 boards, but they are slow and you'll need to convert them from KiCad to Gerber (instructions on the net or I can send you the gerbers I used). OshPark is US and I think they can directly do KiCad files so would be the easiest and fastest, but cost more.

I used JLCPCB - the (now slightly out-of-date) gerbers on pski's site uploaded fine and the whole thing was cheap and easy.

PJH
 
This is at step 5 ("make" in the TLD). As far as I an see I've got the right CC being executed; suggestions?

So, I never got it working properly. Even when I got it compiled and tried to image it, it wouldn't work. It would get the TRSIO SSID but when I connected, no page ever loaded. However, heres the notes I had up until that point:

As su:

1. apt-get install dh-autoreconf texinfo unzip help2man gawk libtool-bin libtool-doc git g++ z80asm sdcc vim python-pip zip
2. ln -s /usr/share/sdcc/lib/z80/ /lib/z80
3. Install Toolchain and ESP-IDF 3.2.2 https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/v3.2.2/get-started/linux-setup.html
4. export IDF_PATH=/esp/esp-idf
5. python -m pip install --user -r $IDF_PATH/requirements.txt
6. cd /home/<username>
7. git clone https://github.com/apuder/TRS-IO
8. cd TRS-IO/src
8. make
9. Cd src/esp
10. make menuconfig
11. make flash

As an aside, some notes (including apuder earlier in this thread) say to go into the src directory and run make from there.. but what isn't clear is whether you do it from the src directory and the root directory, or just the src directory, or one first then the other... Everything was very vague on the process. Anyway, If you get it to compile, please document the process and share here.. I'm not a programmer (unless you count QuickBasic 30 years ago), so I was a bit out of my realm. If you don't have any luck, let me know. I've got a much simpler process but of course it relies on using bins that someone else compiled so it won't help if new updates/fixes come out.
 
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Question, has anyone tried the FreHD boot disks with TRS-IO? I tried both the model 3 and model 4 ones on mine but one of them just does a bootloop and the other gets 11H errors. I know folks have gotten the TRS-IO to work with the autoboot roms (on model 1,3,4) but not sure if anyone tried the disks on these cards? I have the Model 4 GA which is a little more effort to swap out the rom so i was hoping to at least just test with the boot disk for now.
 
Updating this thread. So it appears that the autoboot disks don't work with this, so I installed an autoboot rom (a bit of a pain since I have the Gate Array model 4 which needed a special pcb for a larger eeprom). So now it boots, but then I get a message about no bootable roms. Any suggestions?

frehd-noboot.JPGfrehdfiles.JPG
 
Updating thread (again). Problem is solved (thanks to John Wiggins in facebook trs80 group). The SMB share has to be a root level share (ie. 192.168.1.200/trs, vs 192.168.1.200/tandy/model4/software/trs).
 
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So I’ve almost completed the hardware portion of my Trs-io and like others am having problems compiling the esp32 project. I’m using vs code and am getting exasperated with bad cmake errors. Any advice?
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