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• Board

  SHAOS • 07/13/2019 at 20:47 • 4 comments

  Finished main board design - it's 13.7 x 6.6 inches:

  For the board I used the same Circuits.CC (my online tool for making simple schematics and PCB):

  To make board image more readable I rotated it, moved to grayscale and inverted:

  and even printed in scale (160 dpi) to see if components are fitting well ;)

  Now I need to write C-program to convert my tiled pseudo-ASCII design to Gerbers for production ;)

  P.S. Just noticed a few things to fix - probably 1st of all I need to write C-program that is looking for errors like interrupted wires. incomplete pads etc...
  

• Last piece of the puzzle

  SHAOS • 06/29/2019 at 06:45 • 0 comments

  Final part of the logic plus ROM:

  Here you can see how I do address bits manipulation for ROM to have memory models described earlier - now total count of integrated circuits is 22 (plus #PDPii CPU module and #PDPii RAM module). As I said before RAM module will have its own slightly modified BBQ-slot - instead of A15 it will have always "1" and custom BSYNC signal will be used to mask RAM in places where it's not supposed to be located. Also XOR chip IC21 will be used to mix ROM pages (just to be able to boot from any of them).
  

• More TTL gates

  SHAOS • 06/28/2019 at 05:19 • 3 comments

  Now it looks much closer to completion:
  

  IC11 is bank register, that store 4 bits when LCDE=0, LCDRS=0 and STROB=1 for a short period of time and it's cleaned on boot (when BINIT=0). If LCDE=0 and LCDRS=1 then STROB goes out as OFLAG (will be used in future). Higher byte of the word is always going back to the BBQ-bus when !RDEN is 0 (Q-bus read cycle from address 0xF800...0xFFFE), but lower byte can be LCD data output if !RDEN=0, LCDE=1 and LCDRW=1 (read from LCD) or IEX0...IEX7 if !RDEN=0 and LCDE=0 (LCD disabled). Those 8 extra inputs are reserved for future so if it's not used then IC13 could be omited. REG0...REG7 are connected to LCD data bus only when LCDRW=0 (write to LCD).
  

  Next I should add ROM 27C1024 and show how to mix RAM module and ROM address signals with some logic to get memory modes described earlier - TO BE CONTINUED
  

• Control register

  SHAOS • 06/27/2019 at 05:57 • 0 comments

  This is how it could be implemented (drawn in my Circuits.CC online editor):

  As you can see it writes data to register at the end of BDOUT=0 and BSYNC=0 (Q-bus write cycle) when BBS7=0 (it means A15=A14=A13=1) and A11=A12=1 (so technically speaking it will respond on any address from 0xF800 to 0xFFFE, but for future compatibility we are saying that address must be 0xFF00). We will use inverted outputs (REG0...REG15) to fix our inverted data bus and straight outputs will go to 16 LEDs for indication. Also BINIT signal will clean the register on boot (but because we use inverted outputs we will get value 0xFFFF). And finally we have signal !RDEN (read enabled) to connect buffer to databus when CPU reads (BDIN=0 and BSYNC=0 that is Q-bus read cycle) from address 0xFF00 (actual buffer schematics will be added later).

  
  TO BE CONTINUED
  

• Memory map

  SHAOS • 06/24/2019 at 01:47 • 1 comment

  Original #PDPii memory modules occupy these address ranges:

  • nedoPC-18.10 aka "ROM module 64KWord or 128KB" - 0x0000...0x7FFF or 0x0000...0xFFFF (paging with jumpers);
  • nedoPC-18.20 aka "RAM module 32KB" - 0x8000...0xDFFF or 0x8000...0xFFFF (use or ignore /BBS7).

  Here I will not use ROM module, because ROM chip 27C1024 will be on motherboard itself with programmable paging (16 pages ROM0...ROM15 8KB each). RAM module will be inserted into dedicated BBQ-slot and split to RAM0 and RAM1 halves (16KB each) that will be connected to memory windows independently with help of some additional logic. So I plan to have 3 BBQ-sockets on that motherboard:

  • BBQ-bus+ socket for CPU module;
  • BBQ-bus+ socket for RAM module (this socket will be customized BBQ-socket just for RAM);
  • BBQ-bus+ socket for any I/O module controllable by /BBS7 signal (for example RC2014 adapter).

  Also motherboard will have 16-bit register (probably better to take 4 x 74LS175 to have ability to use inverted bits and clear it on RESET) and 16-bit buffer (inverting 2 x 74LS240) to write/read LCD accessible by address 0xFF00 (or 0177400 in octal system that was "native" for PDP-11). For keyboard addressing it will be 74LS138 decoder chip that converts 3-bit address to 8 control lines (and we will read 5 signals back from keyboard - similar to classic ZX-Spectrum):

  For bank switching we can take 4-bit register and make it accessible with some combination of control bits when LCD is disabled. That bank switching latch will encode memory mode:
  

  Memory mode	Window 0 0x000...0x3FFF	Window 1 0x4000...0x7FFF	Window 2 0x8000...0xBFFF	1st half of Win3 0xC000...0xDFFF
  0000	ROM0 + ROM1	RAM1	RAM0	ROM0
  0001	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM1
  0010	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM2
  0011	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM3
  0100	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM4
  0101	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM5
  0110	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM6
  0111	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM7
  1000	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM8
  1001	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM9
  1010	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM10
  1011	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM11
  1100	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM12
  1101	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM13
  1110	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM14
  1111	RAM0	RAM1	ROM0 + ROM1	ROM15

  On reset it will be memory mode 0000 (ROM in window 0 then RAM1 then RAM0) then BIOS will programmatically switch memory mode to something else to have RAM in the 1st half of memory to be able to run RT-11 apps and 1st half of Window 3 will be used to access other ROM pages. 2nd half of Window 3 will always be BBS7 area for peripheral devices inserted into 3rd slot. Also it is possible to add 4 jumper switches to mix ROM pages to start from any ROM page if needed (for debug purposes for example).

  ---

  Description of every bit of memory location 0xFF00 (LCD control register and keyboard reading):

  Bit	On write	On read
  0	LCD data bit 0 (also goes to bank register)	LCD data bit 0
  1	LCD data bit 1 (also goes to bank register)	LCD data bit 1
  2	LCD data bit 2 (also goes to bank register)	LCD data bit 2
  3	LCD data bit 3 (also goes to bank register)	LCD data bit 3
  4	LCD data bit 4	LCD data bit 4
  5	LCD data bit 5	LCD data bit 5
  6	LCD data bit 6	LCD data bit 6
  7	LCD data bit 7	LCD data bit 7
  8	LED output (error) and may be sound (?)	Keyboard data bit KB0
  9	LCD control input RS (0 - command, 1 - data)	Keyboard data bit KB1
  10	LCD control input R/W (0 - write, 1 - read)	Keyboard data bit KB2
  11	LCD control input E (0 - disable LCD, 1 - enable LCD)	Keyboard data bit KB3
  12	Keyboard address bit KA0	Keyboard data bit KB4
  13	Keyboard address bit KA1	Extra button S1 (?)
  14	Keyboard address bit KA2	Extra button S2 (?)
  15	Extra output (goes to bank register if E=0 and RS=0)	Extra input (reserved for future use)

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