A2Pi

it's Prime /phill! In cahoots with Thecorfiot. I'm sure he'd be accomodating

edit: no its not, its danielj, who's also on here!

edit - nice direct solution there. would the pcb be strong enough?
 
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Good, I would expect TC's already thinking about it :)

It should be strong enough... just! Hence the strengthening bit for the back. There might be a bit of flex but should be no issues with torque forces from the weight of the Pi... but I might add a little 'foot' to the Pi end of the board like some of the longer Apple bus cards have...
The main trick, if plugging rather than relying on solder joints would be to make sure to use spacers for the screws through the GPIO adaptor or things would get a bit, um, bendy. The boards are small and hence would be dirt-cheap to make so one could just double them up for more strength if required. The main 'gotcha' is being sure the solder the A2Pi board with this adaptor in mind. Soldering direct would be simple: Adaptor across the back of both boards leaving the Pi's GPIO pins available, but is plugging in the A2Pi board would need enough pin length poking out the front to accommodate a plug on both sides.

Hmm,
I think I might just make up to gerbers and send an order off to Seeed... can you see any fundamental issue with this hack? The only one I can see is I might need to get some longer USB/Ethernet to panel mount leads.

Hmm, I think I might just go
 
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btw in your video, I noted the nice intro splash screen but you are missing any launching images. just helpfully pointing out bitsnbobs:)

here

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/runcommand#adding-custom-launching-images

ive gone for these cool pixal art style ones

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4611/runcommand-system-splashscreens

Ooo, thanks for that, I was completely unaware that could be done - I'm really not a fan of Linux's habit of of sneaking command-line unpleasantness through what should be a nice modern UI. Time to do a little modifying I think.
 
sorry charlie, Ive downloaded your zip, each time the 7zip inside comes out corrupt. please could you check it unpacks ok for you? perhaps its the zip program I'm using.

next thing I wanted to ask - you got the pi scanlines shaders working yet? if not I'll share another link.

Which leads me to another stupid idea. Wouldnt it be cool and proper retro-sad (no really, it would be) to fit a 5:4 or 4:3 ratio LCD screen into a steelcase so it looked proper retro. I see your lcd screen on your apple 2, the picture is great, but the retro look isnt there. I look at my 9" PVM monitor and its the other way round! seriously I'd love to find a metal bending company that could make a dummy steelcase, proper microvitec style, that could present a modern lcd as if it was an old school CRT.

sad aint i :)
 
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Hi Iain,
Sorry to hear the file isn't working for you, a few thoughts:
-I compressed it specifically using 7zip to get the archive as small as possible. While oher proggies do handle .7z files I've found they can be unreliable, did you use 7zip itself?
-The archive was fine at my end but I've not tried to download my upload and uncompress that, possibly a corrupted upload..? I'll check and get back to you
-Sorry if I've put you to the trouble of downloading a corrupted archive, I shall download it now and see if it uploaded ok.

On the subject of a more retro-like monitor if it's a sad thing to wish for then I'm sad too because I've had much the same idea! :)
I'm using the LCD TV in the picture primarily because it's got just about every input under the sun on it (as old LCD TV's often do) and apart from my other retro boxes it particularly suits my Apple II set up as it accepts NTSC composite and HDMI...
...having said that, like you, I'd much prefer something more in keeping.
I've been looking for a while for something that suits the aesthetic better while having much the same functionality and come up blank, so my current plans are:
-See if I can find some vinyl paint of a reasonably Apple II-like shade, paint the monitor, remove the stand, and make a picture frame-like stand so it sits on the computer more nicely (having trouble with the paint)
or
-Build my own monitor up from scratch using something like a dead Microtevic Cub with an LCD panel in the front and an arcade I/O board in the back (lots of work)

Some might say, quite rightly, that LCDs just aren't retr0 enough and a proper CRT should be used. I do have a 17" Acorn AFK85 multisync which has a nice picture and will accept almost anything but it's a sonking heavy beast and I'm afraid I've gotten to quite like LCD's over the years...
...one of my many stalled projects is to put some modern components in a dead Mac SE/30 I have (working motherboard and CRT if anybody needs parts). That was going to have a 10" LCD in the front with a piece of perspex in the front heat-formed over the the old tube...
...if I get an old monitor for the Apple II for an LCD conversion I might do the same thing.

PS
The main reason the Mac project stalled is I painted it black with a bit of metallic flake in it, decided I hated it, and never had the gumption to go through the many hours needed to remove the paint. As a result I now never paint old computers, lesson learned.
 
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charlie, its unzipped and un-7zip'ed ok! sorry, user error! mac user here, had to use 7zip in windows in a vm...all works fine. now writing the card

great minds think alike!

imagine a folded steel case, it shouldnt be as deep as a regular crt.

wood would be simpler to construct and sand and spray. sounds a bit rubbish though. I might try find a 5:4 aspect lcd with suitable inpurs and a old fashioned black fascia to mock up
 
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charlie, its unzipped and un-7zip'ed ok! sorry, user error! mac user here, had to use 7zip in windows in a vm...all works fine. now writing the card

great minds think alike!

imagine a folded steel case, it shouldnt be as deep as a regular crt.

wood would be simpler to construct and sand and spray. sounds a bit rubbish though. I might try find a 5:4 aspect lcd with suitable inpurs and a old fashioned black fascia to mock up

You can bring a copy over with you Bud ;)
 
charles, the image boots to GSOS, the readme says it boots to emulation station.

so mines booted to GSOS, I've open-closed apple 4 to exit GSOS, that takes me into the desktop. quit that to command line, what do you then tyoe to load retropie/ emulationstattion etc?

the video cuts just at that moment into i think into attract mode and I missed the key steps. cheers! bas yes of course i'll bring the .img
 
Hmm,
That's very odd! Pardon me a mo' while I go write that image to a uSD card and see what's what... Um, I have two images on my HDD: One is a straight update of the latest A2Pi OS to the latest Raspbian, and the other is the image I then installed RetroPie to and am currently using without an issue.

I do hope I uploaded the right image!?!

While I go check would you mind trying something for me?
Open a terminal and type:
cd RetroPie-Setup <Return>
sudo ./retropie_setup.sh <Return>

If RetroPie's setup proggie doen't come up I'm a doofus for uploading the wrong image
If it does I need to fix the uploaded image anyway, but the following should sort it:
While in the RetroPie setup go to the menu option: Configuration / Tools
Then select: Autostart
And make sure the following is selected: Start Emulation Station at Boot

Then: sudo raspi-config
Select: Boot options
And make sure the following is selected: console auto-login
And reboot as requested.

Did that work?
 
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...well that's just odd:
I just un-7zipped and wrote the image to uSD I put on Dropbox (admittedly from my HDD) to a uSD card, stuck it in a Pi 2 for good measure and it worked without a hitch!
I'm currently downloading the upload to try again in case the upload was indeed corrupted in some way. If that's the issue, my apologies I'll re-upload a hopefully better copy of the image.

If that proves good too I have to admit I'm stumped as it seems to work for me on a Pi 3 and a Pi 2... I can't find my miniHDMI->HDMI adaptor to try a Pi Zero, is that what you're running Iain?

PS:
@mjnurney:
If you're interested I'm duty bound to say there is an official A2Pi board to be had from the US...
...mine's much cheaper, and IMO 'better'... for a given value of 'better'. I've tweaked the software a little bit but can't claim any kudos for the design or writing of said software.
At this moment I don't know how many boards I have left but feel to PM me if you're interested (I have my dev-mule board that's very scabby but works fine, you can have for postage. Or one of my latest PCB's for soldering up, for a small sum... I think I may still have one or two 6511's left, but will need to check)

PPS:
@Bas:
A little bird (Iain) tells me you may be involved with a new Superserial card over on *. Fantastic!!! If I may be so bold it would take almost no effort to add a GPIO header (or just the five necessary lines) to add A2Pi support... Obviously the driver software isn't mine, but it is available on Github and it would also be wonderful if there was room to add that to the Superserial ROM.

Update:
Just back from skateboarding (no fool like an old fool, eh?)
The Dropbox archive has the same checksum as the version I tried with a Pi 2 & 3. I do hope you're sorted Iain, because I'm now not sure.
Just in case it matters the exact version of Zzip I used was 17.01(beta) x64 (Windows 10)
 
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Hi Charlie - it's me with the superserial on stardot. I'm at the stage where I'm considering whether to continue with the 65C51 route (depends on availability) or crack my knuckles and go for an emulated option using a cortex microcontroller that has built in UARTS. There's quite a lot of mileage in the latter if I can get it to work!

I have the superserial schematic in kicad currently, but even if I continue the 65C51 route I think I'll swap out 3 of the LS ICs for a 22V10.

Currently waiting on some breakout boards for the Apple II bus: https://goo.gl/tSZMsV
I'm going to open-source the design for whatever it is I come up with. Happy to join forces on anything! All additional brainpower is very welcome! :) :)

d.
 
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actually that was me mis-reading a contribution from prime to DANIELS thread, sorry.. I did update above but guess that was missed sorry.. this superserial design is all daniel;)

funny all this discussion.. the superserial is so useful for ADTPRO, but depends on the rom commands to initiate transfer etc. never used it for anything else but ATDPRO. Yet the pi zero has usb's on it and you can even get a hat with more usbs and a uart! seems to be going in circles sometimes!

ps guys, ive got a spare a2pi empty board i can send daniel if it helps.

charlie, I dont yet know why but its still booting straight into GSOS /GS emulator. I should have known how to force retropie to boot straight into ES, I play with my retropie equiped pi all the time. But it is going straight into GSOS so perhaps thats down to the apple2@apple2pi user setup?

dont worry about a new version, maybe I'll spin up a version myself for my zero, with no desktop (pointless on my crt).

I'll mount the img and nick your artwork and wheels and see if I can kludge up a build:)
 
Right. I think I see what's going on here. FREE THE CIRCUITS, MOAR APPLE2PI FOR ALL! I think emulated is probably the way forward, that will have the ROM in there too. The timing might be the tricky bit, but I see no reason why it shouldn't be possible to get that working nicely.

Question - Does the serial clock have to run from the pi, or can it work perfectly well using an onboard crystal?

d.
 
Hello, I downloaded the image a couple days ago. It does boot into ES for me (asks to set up an controller, haven’t had time to play with it yet) and when I f4 it goes into GSOS. This is just using a pi2, I don’t have a A2Pi card yet to test.

This could be a unrelated problem, but I did have a issue with my SD card. I got a kernel panic which was related to the size of the image. My 16 gig Patriot SD card was not quite big enough. I reloaded to a Sandisk 16gig card and it worked fine. Weird thing is I never received an error message copying it over.


Whats the easiest way to get the startup.txt to a disk image? I see Charlie mentioned Ciderpress, I will download it and play with it. Is that Going the right direction?

THANKS
 
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Thats so odd. I dont know what i'm doing differently.

which pi are you using please, a pi 2/3 /zero /zero w?

probably best to write a floppy on your apple via atdpro (serial card or over audio etc)
 
Thats so odd. I dont know what i'm doing differently.

which pi are you using please, a pi 2/3 /zero /zero w?

probably best to write a floppy on your apple via atdpro (serial card or over audio etc)


It's because you are being cheap as usual and using a Pi Zero lol

;)
 
Cheek! :) "Efficient and cutting edge" is how I'd describe it.

A pi zero w on charlies' tinsy board is pretty good. Normally!
 
It’s on a pi2. Just a bare pi plugged into a keyboard and monitor. I’ve got a card coming from Charlie, so just getting the odds and ends ready.

I can transfer disk images via ADTpro, but how do I get the text file to a disk image? I’m thinking that’s where Ciderpress comes in. Will,do some playing around in Ciderpress and see.
 
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