Austin Franklin 80 information

[+warerat]

It seems this board wasn't very common and there isn't much information out there about it short of some magazine reviews. Were the cartridge dumping project was still alive, this is one of the ROM dumps that was missing. So for the sake of historical reasons I scanned both manuals (operations and RGB daughter card install) and am including ROM dumps of the cartridge, the character ROM on the video board itself, and the custom PROM binary. I reverse engineered the cartridge board as there is an IC that has its part number ground off. It wasn't hard to surmise what it was given it ran really hot and the lack of any discrete logic for the decoder, so my assumption was that it was a bipolar PROM. Turns out I was right and it is a 84S129/74S287, 256x4 PROM (CCTL- is used as an enable and A0-A7 are the eight inputs). Only two of the outputs are used, one to clock data when writing to $D5F7 and the other to enable the ROM. On power-up, the cart ROM is briefly mapped to both $8000-$9FFF and $D500-$D5FF. This allows the 800 OS to jump to the right-cart initialization vector at $9FFE which points to the same bank in $D5XX which then enables the RAM back the way it was. As a consequence, you can't use any 16K carts with this.

 

Here's the technical stuff on the cart bank switching that isn't discussed in the manual:

 

ROM size is 4K, is visible at $D500-$D5EF & $D5F8-$D5FF

ROM disabled at $D5F0-$D5F7, single write-only register at $D5F7.

 

Cartridge ROM Bank register at $D5F7:

Bit 0-3: ROM Bank select ($0-$F, 16 banks)

Bit 4: ROM output enable (0 = Enable ROM, 1 = Disable ROM)

Bit 5: Right-cartridge RD4 control (0 = $8000-$9FFF cart ROM, 1 = $8000-$9FFF system RAM)

 

Bit

54

--

00 = ROM enabled both at $D500-$D5FF and $8000-$9FFF (foldback occurs every 256 bytes)

01 = ROM disabled, system RAM disabled at $8000-$9FFF

10 = ROM enabled at $D500-$D5FF, system RAM enabled at $8000-$9FFF

11 = ROM disabled, system RAM enabled at $8000-$9FFF

 

Going to have to lower the resolution on the manual as it is ~87MB in PDF format.

Austin Franklin 80-ROMs.zip

Austin Franklin 80-RGB Guide.pdf

[Ransom]

Wow...thank you for sharing that. I wanted one of those back in the day.

[Curt Vendel]

This is GREAT !!!

 

 

You are the only other person I know of besides myself who actually owns an AF80.... I have several Bit-3 80 column cards and manuals and know how to use them and have several copies of Letter Perfect to use with it. I don't have the manual to the AF80 so I didn't know how to turn it on/off, thanks for sharing the RGBI add-on board info, do you by chance have the manual for the main AF80 video board??? Thanks.

 

 

Curt

 

 

It seems this board wasn't very common and there isn't much information out there about it short of some magazine reviews. Were the cartridge dumping project was still alive, this is one of the ROM dumps that was missing. So for the sake of historical reasons I scanned both manuals (operations and RGB daughter card install) and am including ROM dumps of the cartridge, the character ROM on the video board itself, and the custom PROM binary. I reverse engineered the cartridge board as there is an IC that has its part number ground off. It wasn't hard to surmise what it was given it ran really hot and the lack of any discrete logic for the decoder, so my assumption was that it was a bipolar PROM. Turns out I was right and it is a 84S129/74S287, 256x4 PROM (CCTL- is used as an enable and A0-A7 are the eight inputs). Only two of the outputs are used, one to clock data when writing to $D5F7 and the other to enable the ROM. On power-up, the cart ROM is briefly mapped to both $8000-$9FFF and $D500-$D5FF. This allows the 800 OS to jump to the right-cart initialization vector at $9FFE which points to the same bank in $D5XX which then enables the RAM back the way it was. As a consequence, you can't use any 16K carts with this.

 

Here's the technical stuff on the cart bank switching that isn't discussed in the manual:

 

ROM size is 4K, is visible at $D500-$D5EF & $D5F8-$D5FF

ROM disabled at $D5F0-$D5F7, single write-only register at $D5F7.

 

Cartridge ROM Bank register at $D5F7:

Bit 0-3: ROM Bank select ($0-$F, 16 banks)

Bit 4: ROM output enable (0 = Enable ROM, 1 = Disable ROM)

Bit 5: Right-cartridge RD4 control (0 = $8000-$9FFF cart ROM, 1 = $8000-$9FFF system RAM)

 

Bit

54

--

00 = ROM enabled both at $D500-$D5FF and $8000-$9FFF (foldback occurs every 256 bytes)

01 = ROM disabled, system RAM disabled at $8000-$9FFF

10 = ROM enabled at $D500-$D5FF, system RAM enabled at $8000-$9FFF

11 = ROM disabled, system RAM enabled at $8000-$9FFF

 

Going to have to lower the resolution on the manual as it is ~87MB in PDF format.

Edited December 7, 2009 by Curt Vendel

[sup8pdct]

Wow. They used as much board space as they could squeeze into an 800.

 

James

[+warerat]

Sorry for the awkward format. Unzip both files then un-RAR to get the scanned PDF for the manual.

 

The board is accessed via $D5F6.

 

Bit 0-3: Video bank select ($0-$F)

Bit 4: 0 = Enable 2K character RAM

Bit 5: 0 = Enable 2K attribute RAM

Bit 6: 0 = Enable CRTC registers (Bit 0-3 must be 0)

Bit 7: 0 = 40 column output, 1 = 80 column output

 

Only one of the bits 4-6 can be 0 at a time, the other two must be 1.

 

Video memory/CRTC registers are seen at $D600-$D67F (with foldback).

Austin Frankin 80-Manual.part1.rar.zip

Austin Frankin 80-Manual.part2.rar.zip

[Klankster]

The Austin Franklin card was SWEET. I had one while at ANALOG and it totally spoiled me. He used every possible amount of space, even putting components down on the little "ears" at the bottom! A very impressive card that made word processing a joy.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

Does anybody have plans to turn this into a LEFT cartridge and sell them?

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[+warerat]

Hello guys

 

Does anybody have plans to turn this into a LEFT cartridge and sell them?

 

greetings

 

Mathy

 

Not following you here? This cartridge is useless without the AF board plugged in slot 3 in an 800. It contains the firmware for the hardware that didn't fit on the board.

 

Could it be converted to a left cartridge? Sure. Just a few pin swaps on the cartridge connector. But then an 800 owner has no way to plug in BASIC, Assembler Editor, etc. to use the board in the first place which makes it crippled. Could it be converted so you could plug it into an XL/XE? Sure. You'd have to recode the ROM to not jump to hardcoded OS-B locations and then interface an Atari 800 memory card slot to the PBI bus to make it work. Not to mention the fact that very few people even own the board kind of puts selling anything for it out the window, unless you plan on sourcing the long obsolete ICs and recreating the board.

[+warerat]

This is the RGBI daughter card that plugs in. The monitor connector is a DB-9.

[Mathy]

Hello Warerat

 

I meant the latter: Making it work on an XL/XE. Now that I've thought about it, it doesn't make any sense.

 

Sorry, "80-columns" on an XL/XE has been a dream for me for way to long. And the XEP80 is like a Ferrari with a Golf cart motor. (although, in the XEP80 the "engine" is not the problem, H*ll NO!!)

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[+Stephen]

Hello Warerat

 

I meant the latter: Making it work on an XL/XE. Now that I've thought about it, it doesn't make any sense.

 

Sorry, "80-columns" on an XL/XE has been a dream for me for way to long. And the XEP80 is like a Ferrari with a Golf cart motor. (although, in the XEP80 the "engine" is not the problem, H*ll NO!!)

 

greetings

 

Mathy

Mathy, I don't know if you can use it or not, but the latest version of Sparta DOS X has a nice fast software 80 column driver. Not the same as a dedicated hardware solution, but it at least makes coding on the native machine a bit easier.

 

Stephen Anderson

[Mathy]

Hello Stephen

 

I never liked software emulation of 80 columns. And that's putting it mildly.

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[+warerat]

Demos for Austin Franklin. Run with BASIC enabled.

AustinFranklinDemo.atr.zip

[Curt Vendel]

Well, I am hopeful that the engineer who design the 80 column board for the Atari 1090XL will dig up the schematic for me, I have the mechanicals for it and from the mainframe I found the rom's for it, its a standard 6545 so it could be adapted to be just a simple plug in board for any XL/XE, 80 columns really should've been a major priority at Atari for its computers, its a shame that all we wound up with with the kludgy xep80.

 

 

Curt

 

Hello Stephen

 

I never liked software emulation of 80 columns. And that's putting it mildly.

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[flashjazzcat]

I'd love to see what the output looked like from this thing.

 

For those who dislike software emulated 80 column displays, VBXE is the defacto solution. About its only drawback is that it isn't a plug-and-play device (price, in comparison to these legacy devices, can't be a disadvantage, because I can't see AF or XEP-80 being cheap these days). VBXE has an added advantage that it makes the software solutions look better, too.

Edited December 7, 2009 by flashjazzcat

[+warerat]

I'd love to see what the output looked like from this thing.

 

For those who dislike software emulated 80 column displays, VBXE is the defacto solution. About its only drawback is that it isn't a plug-and-play device (price, in comparison to these legacy devices, can't be a disadvantage, because I can't see AF or XEP-80 being cheap these days). VBXE has an added advantage that it makes the software solutions look better, too.

 

VBXE has the advantage of being a new device, versus having to source these old CRT controllers for AF80/Bit-3 but even then I'd bet they'd still cost less. But make no mistake, the font looks great and is crisp.

 

This is output from RGBI interface on TTL monochrome.

[flashjazzcat]

VBXE has the advantage of being a new device, versus having to source these old CRT controllers for AF80/Bit-3 but even then I'd bet they'd still cost less. But make no mistake, the font looks great and is crisp.

 

This is output from RGBI interface on TTL monochrome.

Really great! It has a quaint retro factor which things like VBXE certainly lack.

[perry_m]

I just added emulation of the Austin Franklin 80 column card to Atari800.

[+Stephen]

Colored text on the Atari - that looks great. 3rd party releases this in the early 80s, and Atari gives us the POS XEP-80?!?!?

 

Stephen Anderson

[Tempest]

Wow I'm really impressed. Too bad more programs didn't take advantage of the card. I'd love to see some text adventures in 80 col on the 800.

 

Tempest

[+warerat]

I just added emulation of the Austin Franklin 80 column card to Atari800.

 

Nice work! I take it adding Bit 3 emulation wouldn't be too difficult?

[Curt Vendel]

I used to run my BBS on my Bit-3... now the interesting thing was the Bit-3 when using DOS XL would give me 4K of extra space and 4K back when you were writing features for your BBS was a Godsend!!! It just felt so good to see my 800 run in glorious 80 columns, it made you proud because you knew your system was far superior to an Apple ][, and now with 80 columns, it proved the point hands down.

 

 

Curt

 

Wow I'm really impressed. Too bad more programs didn't take advantage of the card. I'd love to see some text adventures in 80 col on the 800.

 

Tempest

[Tempest]

I used to run my BBS on my Bit-3... now the interesting thing was the Bit-3 when using DOS XL would give me 4K of extra space and 4K back when you were writing features for your BBS was a Godsend!!! It just felt so good to see my 800 run in glorious 80 columns, it made you proud because you knew your system was far superior to an Apple ][, and now with 80 columns, it proved the point hands down.

 

 

Curt

 

Wow I'm really impressed. Too bad more programs didn't take advantage of the card. I'd love to see some text adventures in 80 col on the 800.

 

Tempest

The nice thing about the Apple II (I moved from my 400 to an Apple IIe around 86) was that it had expansion slots so you could add multiple cards without having to resort to funny tricks with memory addresses. That and since the use of cards was the norm rather than the exception, many more programs supported them.

 

Tempest

[Mathy]

Hello Stephen

 

Colored text on the Atari - that looks great. 3rd party releases this in the early 80s, and Atari gives us the POS XEP-80?!?!?

And that's all Atari's fault! The chip inside (NS405) can handle color in as many bit as you like, 64kB of main RAM, but the data sheet mentions bank switching and has a 16 bit data bus. Check out the XEP80 part of my special stuff page.

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[Ransom]

If there had been an easily available, high-quality 80-column device for the A8 back in '86, I wouldn't have moved to the Apple ][. Why, oh, why did Atari have to restrict its machines to "toy" status?