Recent posts

#1

Technical Support - General / Re: 40027 Keyboard Controller ...

Last post by Audronic - Today at 04:12

Hi All
40027 Keyboard Controller For The CPW 8512 - 9512.
Has anybody reverse engineered this chip
As they are Very costly over here (Australia)
I have a Faulty on in my keyboard
Or:-
If anybody has a spare I would like to Purchase one

Thanks

Keep Safe

Ray

Here:

https://icompplus.com/es/circuitos-integrados/amstrad/40027

Hi Dragon

Ok Thanks BUT

The postage to Australia is 35 Euro Plus the cost of the chip ? I cannot afford that
Thanks anyway
I will keep looking

Keep Safe

Ray

Well, i can buy It and send It to you reducing costs a litte.

Probably around 16,50e of shipment(or less).

(7,50 sending It to my house+9e Max resending  It to Australia). (That depend of the weight of the chip).+ Cost of ic apart.

Sending as certificate letter correos have these tarife.

20g 6,55e
20-50g 7,40e
50-100 9e
100-500g 15,35e

Can be reduced around 50%  more  sending It as letter without certificate, but i don't recomend It, because he don't have track number to claim if he lost. So if he  lost between Spain-australia is lost forever. And money lost.

So maybe you can take It for around 22e +- that is nearly 50% less.

Apart of that i don't know the tax from australy side.

In the other hand appears that  the keyboard rom was dumped for mess:

https://mdk.cab/download/rom/pcw8256

I have read in the datasheet that the ic can load a program from a external  rom source instead of their internal rom.

Hi Dragon

Thanks for all that information
Thanks for looking into the costs
The costs are still to expensive, so i will thank you and not go ahead with the Purchase.

I will have a look at the data sheet and see what has to be done.

Keep Safe

Ray

#2

G

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: VGA through rpi pico - How...

Last post by gregg - Today at 03:11

Hey Guys,

I have a first version that works quite well. PCB was just a couple dollars in JLCPCB + $15 for all the parts in DigiKey. I put everything on github: https://github.com/grzegorz-gr/vga4cpc - Gerber files, Kicad project, schematics, BOM, instructions, source code and compiled uf2 file.
The board looks like this:




Here is one more demo:

I tested it on all the games you Guys recommended. I had issues with a couple demos, but besides that it worked fine.

Thanks for all your help!

#3

Technical Support - General / Re: 40027 Keyboard Controller ...

Last post by dragon - Today at 01:40

Hi All
40027 Keyboard Controller For The CPW 8512 - 9512.
Has anybody reverse engineered this chip
As they are Very costly over here (Australia)
I have a Faulty on in my keyboard
Or:-
If anybody has a spare I would like to Purchase one

Thanks

Keep Safe

Ray

Here:

https://icompplus.com/es/circuitos-integrados/amstrad/40027

Hi Dragon

Ok Thanks BUT

The postage to Australia is 35 Euro Plus the cost of the chip ? I cannot afford that
Thanks anyway
I will keep looking

Keep Safe

Ray

Well, i can buy It and send It to you reducing costs a litte.

Probably around 16,50e of shipment(or less).

(7,50 sending It to my house+9e Max resending  It to Australia). (That depend of the weight of the chip).+ Cost of ic apart.

Sending as certificate letter correos have these tarife.

20g 6,55e
20-50g 7,40e
50-100 9e
100-500g 15,35e

Can be reduced around 50%  more  sending It as letter without certificate, but i don't recomend It, because he don't have track number to claim if he lost. So if he  lost between Spain-australia is lost forever. And money lost.

So maybe you can take It for around 22e +- that is nearly 50% less.

Apart of that i don't know the tax from australy side.

In the other hand appears that  the keyboard rom was dumped for mess:

https://mdk.cab/download/rom/pcw8256

I have read in the datasheet that the ic can load a program from a external  rom source instead of their internal rom.

#4

Technical Support - General / Re: 40027 Keyboard Controller ...

Last post by Audronic - Today at 00:50

There are some projects out there to read the roms out of MCS-48 family of microcontrollers and in a worst case scenario we can send one for decapping and get the rom from the pictures.

Hi robcfg

I dont think its worth doing just for 1 Faulty keyboard

Thank
Keep
Safe

Ray

#5

Technical Support - General / Re: 40027 Keyboard Controller ...

Last post by Audronic - Today at 00:48

From service manual don't appear do much thing.

It appears recieve the status of the keyboard Matrix divided in column access+row access. A parallel data

It just transform It to some type of serial data and send It  to the PCW.

The rom was hardcoded in factory It can't be dumped, but the ic comunication can be easy observéd from outside.

Hi Dragon

Thanks

I will keep looking for 40027 IC

Thanks

Keep Safe

Ray

#6

Technical Support - General / Re: 40027 Keyboard Controller ...

Last post by Audronic - Today at 00:46

I took a look at the service manual here https://habisoft.com/pcwwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=manuales:servicio:manual_servicio_tecnico_pcw_8256.pdf and it appears as UPD8048HC, which means that is an Intel microcontroller, fairly common (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_MCS-48).

Now, I don't know if it's been dumped or how easy is to find and program one or if there's a modern replacement.

Hi robcfg

Thanks for the links

Good information.

Keep Safe

Ray

#7

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Rebranded NC100?

Last post by robcfg - Yesterday at 23:38

I can check that as I have all NC models and almost all, if not all, Dreamwriter models. 

But as far as I remember the boards were the same

#8

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Rebranded NC100?

Last post by Prodatron - Yesterday at 22:31

The Dream Writer NTS 325 has a different CPU (8088 clone) and so a completely different software (of course). It was probably an interesting time, when you could share the same case/display/keyboard/most if the mainboard while using either an 8bit Z80 or a 16bit x86.

#9

Programming / Re: DEVPAC80 v2 and missing fi...

Last post by Jean-Marie - Yesterday at 21:24

Those missing files must be found on the original CPM+ disk.
LINK.COM is on the side 2 :  SectorView v1.22 (cpc-power.com)
REN & ERA are on side 1, but have been renamed RENAME & ERASE :  SectorView v1.22 (cpc-power.com)
I couldn't find UNLOAD2.COM though. So i guess you'll have to copy the needed files on your Devpac disk, that is if there's enough room on it...
Anyway, if you wanna dabble with ASM programming, you'd better off using WINAPE emulator and his built-in assembler rather than this antiquity.

#10

GFX + Tunes / 1987 review of the Cheetah Sou...

Last post by ComSoft6128 - Yesterday at 19:11

January 1987 review, by Chris Jenkins, from 'Music Technology' magazine of the Spectrum and CPC version.
Sourced from mu:zines ( http://www.muzines.co.uk/about ]

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/cheetah-sound-sampler/221