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Tester needed: C64

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 9:41 am
by channelmaniac
I posted this on the Lemon64 forum yesterday... thought I'd ask over here too.

I have a supply of NOS (New Old Stock) 82S100 and PLS100 chips and have programmed one as a replacement PLA. I need someone to put it through its paces: Test with carts, cassettes, and disk programs are needed to make sure the chip is operating correctly.

For this, I'll send you one programmed PLA chip (it has passed 160 cycles with the C64 Diagnostic Cart and loopback plugs) and upon successful test completion, I'll send you a second programmed PLA chip to keep too... This will give you 2 spares of a very common failure item.

Thanks,

RJ

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 12:19 pm
by channelmaniac
w00t!

I have a PM over on the Lemon forum from someone willing to test the chip.

Once it all looks good, I'll have NOS 82S100 and PLS100 chips programmed as fresh PLAs ready to sell... I'll also post the .jed file on my site in the downloads section for anyone that wants it.

I already had someone asking for the .jed file on the other forum. I won't be posting it for download until AFTER the testing is done. I don't want people to download something that hasn't been fully tested yet.

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:04 pm
by rhurst
Excellent, and good luck with that prospect. This could be very useful in keeping more C= from finding their way to the local resource recovery plant. :D

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:52 pm
by channelmaniac
Thanks!

I have small cache of new PLS100 and 82S100 programmable logic array chips.

The problem I had was that the fixed version of the chip (MOS labeled) wasn't a programmed one so it wouldn't read. To top it off, the .jed file that's available on the internet is bad. Chips programmed with it don't work.

I thought I was out of used, tested PLAs but I dug through my storage building out back and as I got to the last stack of boards, I found an 82S100 labeled "C64A" in a board. I quickly copied it then cross my fingers as I powered it up in my testbed system... and it worked.

Since it was an 82S100 I was able to read it in my programmer and duplicate it. I put the duplicate through 160 cycles of the C64 test cartridge (with all loopbacks installed) to burn it in. It's in the hands of the US Postal Service on its way to be tested with different software and hardware items - disks, tapes, cartridges, CP/M cart, and more.

Now I get to anxiously wait. :)

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 12:45 pm
by channelmaniac
Got this note back from the tester:
I got your PLA in on Friday, and it's been going all weekend with no problems.

1) I ran the C64 Diag cart for about 260 cycles (several hours).
2) Ran several Ultiimax carts
3) Ran several standard game carts.
4) Ran several speeder carts (Fastload, WarpSpeed V2, and Super Snapshot V4).
5) Ran Easyflash cart
6) 1764 REU (Upgraded to 512M)
7) Commodore CP/M cart
Cool Many NTSC games and demos.

It had no problems with any of it. As far as I can tell, you've got a 100% clone of the original chip.
WOOHOO!

I'll have NOS PLA chips up on my site later tonight.

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2010 6:51 pm
by e5frog

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 11:24 am
by channelmaniac
Yes,

That was the source for the first .jed file I tried. It didn't work.

I posted the .jed file I created from dumping the PLA on my website in the downloads section in case people want to play with it.

RJ

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2010 11:30 am
by e5frog
Hands up everyone that has any 82S100 chips and a programmer for them...