20-04-2022, 07:35 PM
Hi Snuffytime!
Someone's glad you've got an interest with upgrades.
Someone has some super dooper Alpha plus machines and can tell you a few stories as to why the Premium Series ended up the way did.
1. The Alpha Plus prototypes were designed for "Skinny DIP" 0.3 inch wide 6116 and 6264 RAMs.
Even at the development stage, the 6264 Skinny DIP RAMs were scarce thus the prototype PCBs were modded to accommodate the standard 0.6 inch wide packaging.
The supply problems carried on through to production leaving only room for 2 6264s (instead of the intended 4).
2. The 2K/8K Char/Attr/Colour RAM debacle came because of a stupid design decision that when 2K RAMs were fitted its PCB mods applied ignored current APLUS latch bank setting. (i.e. Bank#0 was permanently mapped).
With that being the case software was written with this incorrect behaviour in mind.
If you want, you can implement a switch between the behaviours.
3. There is software available for the SN76489 PSG (Programmable Sound Generator) but as Ewan said not commercially. (Someone's got a jukebox app that plays a selection of songs). The logical choice was use the AY-3-8912 PCG because the existing BeeThoven software could be leveraged but
the Alpha Plus PCB did not have enough room to accommodate it because it was a 0.6inch wide DIP package so the smaller SN76489 PSG was used.
4. The Alpha Plus has a wonderful 320/256 x 256 (Viatel variant) display mode that is great for video games and colour based applications.
In conjunction with a non production implemented PCB mod, an Alpha Plus can display 8x8 characters with 100% efficiency of the PCG RAM.
Running an Alpha Plus in 256 x 256 mode improves bit map graphics by simplifying and speeding up graphics calculations.
It makes it great to run ZX Spectrum, Apple ][, MSX and arcade software ports.
With that said, there are more mods such as pixel byte flippers, improved colour modes and multi read/write.
As for mass storage to work with a ROM based machine without the need for implementing a disk controller, and if you're feeling game, why not implement a FTDI VDrive/VMusic module? You can attach this to the parallel port and plug in your own supporting NET ROM.
From it you can save and store files to USB memory sticks as easy as NET SAVE "filename.mwb" and NET LOAD "filename.mwb"
If you've got a Disk based system and you feel like a challenge, configure an ARM based microcontroller to fit into the FDC socket to read and write to SDCards, USB sticks and alike without the Floppy disk performance retarding seeks and transfer rates. This solution has the advantaged of using the standard BOOT ROM.
Have a great day!
Someone's glad you've got an interest with upgrades.
Someone has some super dooper Alpha plus machines and can tell you a few stories as to why the Premium Series ended up the way did.
1. The Alpha Plus prototypes were designed for "Skinny DIP" 0.3 inch wide 6116 and 6264 RAMs.
Even at the development stage, the 6264 Skinny DIP RAMs were scarce thus the prototype PCBs were modded to accommodate the standard 0.6 inch wide packaging.
The supply problems carried on through to production leaving only room for 2 6264s (instead of the intended 4).
2. The 2K/8K Char/Attr/Colour RAM debacle came because of a stupid design decision that when 2K RAMs were fitted its PCB mods applied ignored current APLUS latch bank setting. (i.e. Bank#0 was permanently mapped).
With that being the case software was written with this incorrect behaviour in mind.
If you want, you can implement a switch between the behaviours.
3. There is software available for the SN76489 PSG (Programmable Sound Generator) but as Ewan said not commercially. (Someone's got a jukebox app that plays a selection of songs). The logical choice was use the AY-3-8912 PCG because the existing BeeThoven software could be leveraged but
the Alpha Plus PCB did not have enough room to accommodate it because it was a 0.6inch wide DIP package so the smaller SN76489 PSG was used.
4. The Alpha Plus has a wonderful 320/256 x 256 (Viatel variant) display mode that is great for video games and colour based applications.
In conjunction with a non production implemented PCB mod, an Alpha Plus can display 8x8 characters with 100% efficiency of the PCG RAM.
Running an Alpha Plus in 256 x 256 mode improves bit map graphics by simplifying and speeding up graphics calculations.
It makes it great to run ZX Spectrum, Apple ][, MSX and arcade software ports.
With that said, there are more mods such as pixel byte flippers, improved colour modes and multi read/write.
As for mass storage to work with a ROM based machine without the need for implementing a disk controller, and if you're feeling game, why not implement a FTDI VDrive/VMusic module? You can attach this to the parallel port and plug in your own supporting NET ROM.
From it you can save and store files to USB memory sticks as easy as NET SAVE "filename.mwb" and NET LOAD "filename.mwb"
If you've got a Disk based system and you feel like a challenge, configure an ARM based microcontroller to fit into the FDC socket to read and write to SDCards, USB sticks and alike without the Floppy disk performance retarding seeks and transfer rates. This solution has the advantaged of using the standard BOOT ROM.
Have a great day!