My Original RC2014 back in service...

[J.B. Langston]

I've recently put my original RC2014 back in service hooked up to some real retro hardware (see one of the attached photos).  That is a WY-50 terminal on the left and a Commodore 1702 on the right. Both screens are driven by the RC2014 using serial and my TMS9918 board, respectively.  There is a C64 in the picture, but it's connected to the other input in the back of the monitor.  The RC2014 is running the Nyan Cat demo that I wrote for my TMS9918 board.

This is a stock RC2014 Pro with the RomWBW 512K RAM/ROM board swapped in for the original separate RAM and ROM boards.  It's running a fairly recent RomWBW build, custom configured to output on the second serial port by default. 

The CPU clock is running at 3.68MHz to closely match the ColecoVision's clock so that those games can run on it. The clock for the second UART is 2.45MHz, because that's the highest it can be and support 38000 baud, the maximum my terminal supports. That's why the default serial output had to be moved to the second port.

I'm using a 2GB CF card formatted with the maximum number or RomWBW slices and the rest of it is a FAT32 partition that has the walnut creek CD extracted on it, and a bunch of software I copied from the AltairZ80 emulator.

The RC2014 is completely standalone, not connected to a separate computer.  I would like to get my wi-fi card up and running again so I can telnet into it on the first serial port but sometime back I flashed MicroPython on the ESP8266 and I haven't figured out how to flash the original firmware back.  I may just try to get it flashed with the ESPAT command set and then the RC2014 could dial out or allow itself to be dialed into.  Someone has written a Gopher Browser for the ZX Spectrum using an ESP8266: https://github.com/nihirash/moon-rabbit-zx. That might be fun to port to the RC2014, but I have too many projects already.

Speaking of which, there is no z80ctrl to be found in this setup. Instead, I have my z80ctrl and my companion CPU/RAM/RTC board to its own cute little 3 slot SC723 backplane (another picture attached).  I was trying to come out with a new revision of z80ctrl using a modern surface mount AVR, but I underestimated the amount of effort it would be to port z80ctrl to the new microcontroller. Despite using the same instruction set, the I/O register layout has been completely changed, so you have to update all the code. That means all the GPIO, serial, and SPI code has to be painstakingly ported over.  And it's made more complicated by the fact that I want to maintain compatibility in the same code base with my current boards... so that's been slow going and currently is on pause...

... because I've been lured over to Agon-land lately by my AgonLight2: https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/open-source-hardware.  I have been working on porting my plasma demo from the TMS9918A and I have a working version (yet another attachment). It has an interesting video architecture modeled after the BBC Micro (and it runs Z80 BBC BASIC) But the RC2014 version still outperforms it.  I have been working with the developer of the firmware for the video chip (really an ESP32 outputting VGA) to add features that will allow me to obtain 60fps even though the serial link between the CPU and video processor is too slow to send each complete frame faster than 30 fps. I'm also having fun with the eZ80 and it's flat 24-bit address space.  Those coding adventures can be found here: https://github.com/jblang/agon-demos/

I also recently attended VCFSW (vcfsw.org) this year and really enjoyed all the exhibits and talks. The talks are up on youtube if anyone is interested. There were some really good ones.  Maybe next year I will apply to be an exhibitor and show off all my retro doodads.  

Anyway, I hope you don't mind my rambling update on some of the retro stuff I've been up to. Hope everyone is having fun and still keeping the retro flame burning, one way or another...

[J.B. Langston]

Sorry, I neglected to include the youtube link for VCFSW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZvKbJnyi00&list=PLM7UHPl-hz6xxymi1SYp85iTY9dkphGC7

[J.B. Langston]

This looks very promising… 

https://github.com/dhansel/WifiModem

It works as a telnet server to uart bridge and also in client mode via AT commands to establish tcp connections. And I was actually able to flash it and connect to it which is more than I can say for the official espresif AT firmware. I tested a basic loopback using two terraterm sessions, one connected to serial and one telnet session to the esp via WiFi. It worked in both directions so next step is to configure the correct baud rate and then I can test it in my rc2014

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[Steve Clarke]

I'm sure you're aware of this but I have had a very good experience with zimodem https://github.com/bozimmerman/Zimodem 

Although it has a commodore bias it was easy to configure and install and has a lot of great functionality.

S.

[J.B. Langston]

In fact I was not aware of that one but I’m happy to report that WifiModem works great both in incoming telnet terminal mode and outgoing atdt mode....

Connecting to RC-BOX BBS via Kermit: https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/bbs/rc-box/

Enabling console on UART attached to ESP8266 modem:

Telnetting into RC2014 and running commands:

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rc2014-z80/c133c608-23db-403b-b01f-7a6986d7d4ebn%40googlegroups.com.

[Kevin Buhr]

I just finished putting together a version of your TMS9918 board a couple days ago and am thrilled to have my very own Nyan Cat bounding across the screen, using a decidedly non-retro composite-to-HDMI adapter.  It looks about 5 times more awesome than I'd imagined.  (Your board is the green PCB closest to the camera.  The breadboard and rat's nest at the back is an interface to an old Adafruit TFT screen.)

i

On Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 10:08:50 PM UTC-5 J.B. Langston wrote:

[J.B. Langston]

Nice! I'm glad you're enjoying it!

[J.B. Langston]

Posted a video on youtube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SUqY9DLg9g&t=78s