Timtheloon's CD32 TF360 Plus ProModule Build

[Timtheloon]

Yo Yo Yo Retro Users.

Here is another one of my crazy builds a CD32 with a TF360 Rev 3.0 with a Rev 1 060 fitted & ELSAT ProModule

little back story about the ProModule a few years back a friend of mine gave me the promodule due to it not working and its sat under my CD32 waiting for me to get around to it. I read on facebook that someone managed to get the ProModule to work with a TF330 which I thought would be great and give the system an FPU and all the ports an Amiga 1200 has. This prompted me to look in to why the ProModule I had was not working.

On prior inspection I noticed the Riser had track damage to the FMV expansion slot but this wasn't the reason the Promodule wasn't working but I had to repair it if the TF330 was to work with it. The Initial test of the ProModule just made the CD32 go into a boot loop i.e., green light then green flashing light over and over again. It did this with everything disconnected even the memory and FPU. So I decided take it apart and look under the board. It looks perfect under there but I did notice it had 2 CIA chips, I had one spare so I thought I would try and change one and lo and behold the ProModule sprung into life. Now came the search to find a floppy drive which would work but every amiga disk drive I had would not be seen, but I could get it to read from an external disk drive.

Now it was up and running I thought lets try the TF330 however I just found the ProModule and TF330 would just boot loop again, now I'm not sure if this is due to the revision of my ProModule which is a v1.1 or if I'm just doing something wrong so I gave up.

After @fitzsteve making me jealous of his TF360, My TF360 arrived and I thought to myself I wonder if it will work with the ProModule, hey presto the machine powered up and booted into workbench and the external floppy was seen and video out and AT Keyboard Ports all working however I was experiencing crashes and this was due to the FPU in the ProModule, so I removed the FPU IC and set JP1 to Sync so the oscillator was taken out of the picture. this sorted my crashing issue

Then I thought I wonder if it can add an extra 8mb of fast ram to the 128mb already given by the TF360. Now I forgot to mention that with the TF360 Installed and the memory jumper on the promodule is removed = onboard Memory off, the ProModule is not seen in the Amiga CD32's Expansion section of the Boot menu also if I set the memory Jumper to on, then the TF360 is not seen in the Expansion section of the boot menu but the promodule is, the TF360 seems to function as normal and the extra 8mbs of fast ram is seen however I did find that it had to be a certain type of simm or again I would see crashes.

Now back to finding the main floppy disc drive: Reading through EAB's forums I tried to find as much information as possible on the ProModule, to see what disk drive would work with it. I read that it was possibly a PC disk drive but no firm confirmation of this. Finding a manual was a nightmare, luckily @a.mi.goun had a manual but it was in polish, so slow time using google translate, I translated the floppy drive section of the manual which stated that it was indeed a PC floppy drive and would work like a normal DD amiga disk drive. So I bought a black Alf floppy disk drive which seems to work perfectly. sadly everywhere I read stated that the ProModule would not work with a Gotek.

Today sitting in my man cave I wondered to myself, wait a minute can I set the Gotek up to be an IBM PC Drive with flash floppy installed, scouring the FlashFloppy site I found this wonderful bit of information.

IBM PC​

IBM PC compatibles have a non-Shugart interface which must be explicitly configured in FlashFloppy:

• IBM-PC interface mode must be configured
  
  • Strap jumper JC at the rear of the Gotek; or
  • Specify via FF.CFG: interface = ibmpc
• Strap select-line jumper S1 at the rear of the Gotek
  
  • S0, S2, MO should all be left open

By setting the jumpers on S0 and JC the ProModule could now see the gotek too.

I'm having one issue with the ProModule (this happens without the TF360 installed too) is that switching the jumpers so that DF1 is seen as DF0 doesn't work correctly if a drive is attached to the internal floppy drive header of the ProModule I don't know if this is normal or if there is still an issue with it. the manual does state that the internal drive will not be seen if this is selected but it doesn't state it need to be disconnected which is the case with mine would like to know if other who have the pro module have this issue too.

Spec of CD32

TF360 with 128mb
060 rev 1 @ 50mhz (not tried speed boosting yet)
Elsat Promodule with 8mb (FPU Removed) battery backup clock functioning
Gotek with rotary selector and OLED
read on @alenppc TF360 page that they manage to get a subway USB to work with the TF's Notport so this is something I May add to it.

Pictures to follow as I went through the stages of discovery Hope you enjoyed it.

Other projects of mine you maybe interested in:

A500+:

Timtheloon's A500+ with A570 CD-ROM and TF536 Build​

A600:

Timtheloon's A600HD PiStorm Build​

A2000:

Timtheloon's A2000 Triple Processor Project​

A1200:

Timtheloon's Checkmate A1500 Plus (A1200 Build)​

CD32:

Timtheloon's CD32 SX32 Pro Setup with Cosmos Kickstart Mod​

Timtheloon's CD32 TF360 Plus ProModule Build​

A4KD & A4KT

Timtheloon’s A4000cr Alice project​

Timtheloon's A4000T Project​

Acorn RiscPC:

Timtheloon's RiscPC 600 build​

RetroPC

Timtheloon's Retro High-End AGP (HD3850) PC (Dual Boot WinXP & Win7)​

 

[Watson]

Nice bit of kit, Tim

Never owned a CD32, if I did, I'd definitely be on the lookout for a Pro Module 32, although I haven't seen many for sale, are they rare?

 

[Timtheloon]

Has with most original expansions for the CD32 yes they are rare, I tried the TF360 with the SX1 which seem to be a little bit more common but sadly no dice.

 

[Bladejack]

Thanks for that Tim, I got a Pro Module here a while back , checked it was all working but didnt get time to get it all setup as I was busy doing house renovations. You've given me a great idea of what to do over my Xmas break this year ;-)

 

[Timtheloon]

Thanks for that Tim, I got a Pro Module here a while back , checked it was all working but didnt get time to get it all setup as I was busy doing house renovations. You've given me a great idea of what to do over my Xmas break this year ;-)

nice to know what rev your Promodule is

 

[Bladejack]

I got this from the seller, it's actually well packed away just now as I am still finishing off the Man Cave, will be happy to get all my retro stuff back out when I get the units and storage all set up with the sockets and network as well.

 

[Timtheloon]

The rev is written on the main PCB of the ProModule if you look at the one on Amiga Resource it is V1.2 so when you unpack it we will see

 

[awmosoft]

Which PSU do you use on your setup?

 

[Timtheloon]

Which PSU do you use on your setup?

The PSU I use, is one of the ones I bought from this Thread it seems to have the power to drive all and 2 external disc drives. The only time I seen it struggle is when I added an original IDE HDD to the ProModule

Speaking of which, I forgot to add: I've not tested the internal IDE header, the serial, & parallel posts on the ProModule.

looking at that PSU the 12v supply is only 560mA which is probably why it didn't like that 3.5" HDD.

 

[AdaptiveSystems]

a few thoughts -
pretty sure that was my post on FB you're talking about.

interesting that you got the gotek working from the inside - i saw someone on here that only had it working as external.


i thought about getting a tf360, but for the price, it seemed like overkill - the cd32 is likely just going to be a games machine, and i only bought the promodule for its floppy capability.

need a better scandoubler solution for mine, was hoping to get an indivision at some point, but next to no chance of that...


wondering if anyone knows anytihng about this 'floppyfix' image i found on an https://bboah-hardware.de/cgi-bin/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=275. odd that it doesnt show up on the english ersion of the site....

do you have that polish manual kicking around?

also, adding external power supply to it seemed to help stability- not sure how much it draws or whatever

oh, and i really hate how the promodule doesn't attach to the console in any useful way - like if you picked up the cd32 without realizing, you'd probably snap the riser....

 

[Timtheloon]

Hi @AdaptiveSystems

My board has that floppyfix but I believe it is just to fix my revision of board which is a 1.1 is yours a 1.2

 

[AdaptiveSystems]

yeah, mines a 1.2

 

[Timtheloon]

here is the manual I got from @a.mi.goun

 

[Timtheloon]

looking at the main BBOAH page you can see that this is a rev 1.1 and this is probably why the floppy fix is there.

 

[AdaptiveSystems]

here is the manual I got from @a.mi.goun

thanks, was wondering if thre were multiple versions of drives used - but didnt expect them to be in the manual! with jumper settings!

 

[Timtheloon]

So far I found every PC drive set to D0 works

I got an Alp with black faceplate and it works great and then obviously the gotek.

Just to add Amiga resource show the 1.2 version and there is no floppy fix on that board

 

[Timtheloon]

@AdaptiveSystems does yours show the tf330 and promodule in the Amiga boot menu expansions section?

 

[Timtheloon]

Forgot to add a screenshot of the system up and running with a WhichAmiga display. Even though it thinks it's an A1200 you can see the Akiko chip and the two board ID's for the ProModule (Uploaded to first post)

 

[Akiko80]

Now it was up and running I thought lets try the TF330 however I just found the ProModule and TF330 would just boot loop again, now I'm not sure if this is due to the revision of my ProModule which is a v1.1 or if I'm just doing something wrong so I gave up.

I have been using a TF330 on my Elsat pro module for about 4 years now without any problem, stability has been rock solid. I notice from your post that the TF360 and TF330 seem to work a bit differently with the ProModule, with the TF330 you must first flick the disable switch to disable the ProModule's internal memory before using the TF330 as they don't work together at all, but it seems with the TF360 you can use both.

I asked another ProModule/TF330 user on the Exxos forum a few years back if his Rev:1 TF360 that he was beta testing at the time worked with his ProModule, and he reported back that they wouldn't work together. I think therefore something must have changed in-between with the firmware which now allows this to now work, it's either that or the ProModule is revision sensitive when it comes to compatibility, I have a TF360 on order so fingers crossed it works.

 

[Timtheloon]

@Akiko80 interestingly yours shows both cards in play in the boot up expansion menu mine will only show either the TF360 or Promodule depending on what the memory switch is set to.

Memory On = Promodule indicated. Memory Off = TF360 indicated, however they still both seem to function fine together whichever way it is switched just the 8mb goes off or on has expected, drive and ports still function