Most liked posts in thread: I'm going to build a WEFAX interface

Yeah, we've had recent fun n games mix n matching our appliances in the run up to the kitchen install so we know where yer coming from, Matt. Always great when you finally do source some units that do match AND at a discount price - great news. Tongue and groovy, man. Am sure it will look ace when all in place.

 

Very nice.I need to do what you did around your refrigerator. That looks great, instead of just a short dividing wall next to it. Is that just around the refrigerator or is that a pantry area or cupboards too on the other side of the refrigerator? Right now we have the top of the refrigerator filled with odds and ends and that would stop that bad habit and still divide the kitchen from the living room on that side.

My cupboards and counters are in an "L" shape starting from one end where the pantry is around the corner, going to the left is a 3-4 foot counter-top with cupboards, and moving counter clock wise, next is the stove and then more counter space starting a perpendicular Counter. Cupboards all along the wall above the stove and counter to the right. Then the sink and kitchen window moving down the perpendicular counter left, then more counter space after with cupboards above and below finally the refrigerator at the end where it spills into the living room.

 

Yes, they're talking lots about 8bit Slicks on this Oric Faceache forum, Matt:



I might get involved one of these days as it looks like a whole lotta fun.

From an Oric standpoint, I'd need to invest in one of these:

8bit-Hub...



Looks like the Atari Fujinet does all this...and more!

 

Oh still not getting any alerts even when it's shows as tagged and 'watching' I wonder if there is anthting that Tim can do as I'm sure I should see when new posts are added to something you have requested to watch ... doh ..
All looking nice in the kitchen department Andy .. an now with Bev on the mend she'll be able to get around a little easier. Mmm Christmas Dinner at easter .. only time ever did something like that was June/July sometime for my ex brother in law visiting from the States (Matt he lives in downtown Dallas now was in Plano just outside).
The 8 Bit hub looks very intereting. I had a quick look in my electronics boxes and guess what I have all the parts needed to build one, I bought the Atmega 2560 with the ESP8266 only at christmas as a hmm thats intresting i'll get one of those to play with .. was about £12.
For now Fuji Net looks like this :-

Just soldered on the ESP32 module. waitin on a breakout board for the SD card but have the rest of the bits and bobs to make up some circuit boards when I've confirmed the thing all works correctly from my own test's.


these are the 470 Ohm resistors , next to a normal pin header, so there a fraction wider but very short.. 1.55mm x 0.85mm going to be fun soldering ..
hey get this on the pricing .. buy 1 = 7p, needed 5 so 35p it suggested I buy 10 not five ... price for 10 = 10p i.e. a 1p each ...

 

So, @Graham , your not getting any little blue thought bubbles with a number in them directly above the 'ALERTS' button at on the top bar across every page in the forum? How about the latest postings by people if you scroll down the page looking at the far left window column? There is no activity listed if you preemptively click on the 'Alerts' button at the top? There should be a drop-down window when you put the pointer on it, with the last half-dozen postings, and if you click on it, takes you to a separate page where you can scroll back even further. I know this isn't the same as getting e-mail or text notifications, but I usually ignore those anyway and just come to the forum and see what might be new, if I don't already have a blue bubble above the 'Alert' tab/button.

 

Well, back on subject for a moment; the IC for the WEFAX decoder arrived today.

 

I went researching, and I think the PL-330 is right for me too. If my budding interest in SW takes off, I can buy something bigger and better later. I think I'll be integrating WEFAX and Fujinet, etc. into my 800 robot eventually too. The more services my 8-bit robot can offer, the more useful I can make it. I do plan on it having cameras and mic's and motion sensors and other sensors so it can find it's way around. It may not be much better than a Rumba, but it should be. I've been watching lots of videos about building robots and all the types of sensors available for it to interact with the real world, significantly for an 8-bit bot. The PL-330 can be installed in the robot eventually too.

 

The story of my life...Find something, build it, play with it for what seems like a day and then...Bored

 

I still have yet to build it myself. I think have everything to do it though. Just life and 1001 other projects keep stopping me.

 

Matt, I think you can safely excuse yourself for not building it yet. Your roller coaster is still going..

 

Looks fantastic Graham! So, how does the ten pin connector work? is that 9-pins for controller port and the 10th is some sort of switch or selection line for the controller ports? Will this allow both ports on each board to be used at the same time? Or is it that there is another ten pin connector that will go on the bottom side? And if so, then what is the tenth pin for?

 

It's a shame they didn't supply the Cable with the printer! most frustrating, Likwewise with the Fujinet adapter, I did look on the github project pages, but didn't find any software to download, only how to setup, on how to use the source code to create your own program to upload to it. I wonder if it loads up a bootstrap Boot loader. and uses that
strange as the ES32 chips do have a way of boot loading already. perhaps I was just looking in the wrong place.
Amazes me they can send it out seemingly untested if there is no software on it.
I think you are suffering from too many new toys and not enough time to play with them all
Shame about tomorrow, not sure how he did it but Al did join on his phone at some point.
by the way I think most webcams have a built in microphone. most O.S. recognise these without any additional drivers certainly windoze and Linux seems o.k
Anyway I'll let you get back to eBay for your missing cables and webcam

 

Thats a shame So what O.S are you using then Matt ?

 

No problem, I had to ask on AA for the links myself. But there are already a few programs for Fujinet and more in development, plus you can visit BBS's and IRC channels, etc. right off the bat.

There's a lot more info about it in a Fujinet sub-forum under the 8-bit forum on AA: https://atariage.com/forums/forum/346-fujinet-sio-network-adapter/

 

I still use Windows 7 on my PC, but the mic and camera I have are from around Windows XP era, I might not even be able to get drivers for them working under Windows 7 once I find them, I may have to buy new stuff, or finally get around to getting my old XP PC up and running. It was a state-of-the-art custom built 32-bit gamer's PC back in the day. But I know I could still probably get on-line and chat with you guys with it...I think...I was using it still for internet up until 5 years ago when I got a 5 year old 64-bit PC.

 

Yep that was a good move I'd just searched online found the Github site and assumed that was it, It had software but only the source code and how to compile . Thanks for the heads up

I think you will find that current webcam's will be recognised without additional drivers, but going back to early Win XP some of the webcams available at the time did need special drivers. practically anything you get nowdays won't need any bar those in the O.S so likely work with both of your PC's I still use a win XP and Win 7 computers although I don't give them access to the internet directly, I share programs etc, by downloading using Win 10 or Linux, and that gets stored on a hard drive attached to a Raspberry Pi That is then used with each laptop (as they are) But I'm a bit hmm 'Funny' about what connects with several different wifi signal's that are very restrictive.
All my home wifi is commercial grade, with a proper unit as a firewall, another to control access to the networks, and several switches one is POE to power the access points I use, these are dual band, as well as supporting multiple networks. each requires two Gigabyte Ethernet cables to run at top speed. That along with a Synlogy NAS an Apple Airport and a Raspberry Pi NAS for the two older machines as well. It's well well over the top, but I was working commercially from home, and just upgraded bit by bit so its all current (had to double up the ethernet cables to the access points tho)

Going back to your older gaming machine, I suspect that Kicad would run pretty well on that due to its graphics capablity. Have you ever thought of using and learning Linux, for older machines it tends to run much better than the original windows..

 

Good luck with building your Fujinet, I will do that with my second Fujinet for my 1200XL at some point, and probably install it in my old 1030 modem case. I'll probably leave the old modem PCB in there, but cut all the traces going to the SIO ports and PSU port and connect the Fujinet up to them. But I'm glad I went with buying a ready-made Fujinet from The Brewing Academy as it's all basically ready to go. I connected to my wi-fi hot-spot on my smart phone (which is what I used for internet for my PC and Xbox 360 & One already.

There are only satellite services out where I live right now, and I got sick of my slow-arse Hughesnet service and cancelled it and upgraded my phone service for hot-spot instead. It's been a lot more reliable and faster than the Hughesnet Satellite internet by a long shot! How sad is that on Hughesnet's part? I'll go back to satellite service as soon as the new Starlink network is up and running. I put myself on the beta testing release for it once they have satellites up over my part of the world. Though I don't know if I'll be accepted, so may have to wait until it's out of beta testing in year or two.

But so far everything with my Fujinet its working great accept for plugging it into my PC to use the flasher update and it says it's unrecognized device and shuts down. I asked in the Fujinet sub-forum in the 8-bit section on AA and it's a known issue with the V1 Fujinet's and it looks like I have to bridge two pins on the USB UART chip on the board. So I'm currently browsing through the very long 'Bug report' thread I was told to look at to see about it. Because instead of the arsehole just telling me what pins and be done with it, he said I had to go look at the bug report thread (twelve pages long) I guess he has a stick up his arse because I posted about the issue in a new thread instead of looking through the long arse bug report thread in the first place. Talk about a dick-ish move! (one of the main guys on the project and he started the bug report thread). (tschak909) I think it's Thom Cherry...whatever who did the first video on the link I posted.

 

I certainly like the idea of the FUJI NET and watching the video's I thought I'd have a go at knocking one up from the bits and bob's I have around.
As it turns out, Fuji Net is still evolving as they only just released ver 1.3's Hardware , and even had to correct that within a very short time, even though still shown as ver 1.3 that's for the boards in one place on github... and uses an ESP32
Unfortunalty looking on AA, a different design based on its less powerful brother the ESP8266 and thats at ver 2.0
I just wish that peeps actually talked to each other and put both varients in one place so you can choose what to build, one is really simple as you can buy most of it as a ready made module for a £5 and add very few external components the other you basically build up from small components.. the cp2102 chip is 4mm square and has 24 pins .. so 6 pins a side with spacing in 4 mm they chose to use tiny resistors and capacitors as well. 1mm x 0.5mm in the main. known as 0402. assuming you wish to build this from the supplied Gerbers to make an exact copy of course, and that would fit with there reproduced SIO connectors and so on.
Personally I'm going to leave it a bit longer until they have stopped frigging about with the hardware, at that point I'll look to design my own boards that will fit with what I want to do.
I.E. the more potent ESP32 with and external antenna if I fancy. it's unlikely to have a case designed or use the SIO plug / socket as It will be designed to go inside the computer not be plugged in.
These are my choices. I'll wait and see, It seems a very odd that there are multiple github resorces for both hardware and software ..
Meanwhile working on and expansion board to be driven by the additional PIA boards, that is until Fuji Net finally sorts itself out. Bit disappointed to be honest.

 

Hi Matt
yea took ages writing up last entry so you sneaked in .. Well I guess we are all of that age fella, and the only good thing for hair it to keep the rain off your head, well until it seeps through and runs down your neck ..
What do you thing about a Blog / New thread ?

P.S and Microscopes or two pairs of glasses whan needed ... especially on this small stuff hehe)

 

@M.D.Baker Nope !

When I click on the ALERT button I did get a list with three updates all to this thread, two from you and one from Al.
No Bubble or similar, I should also be seeing an email but nothing there either. I did'nt even get one for a PM sent to me, and they did work at some point.
It maybe the security settings I use, or indeed the browser. I stick with Firefox, as I don't really want to you Microsoft or Google's Chrome. for basically similar reasons. I also block all Social media trackers, and near all adverts, although some I still can't block.
I have however disabled all these for certain sites Ebay, as that just stops working with some bits enabled, and I've tried with this site.
If a new thread or something is started I'll have to go looking,AOC says i'll get and alert for watched threads but I don't, On older threads that I've watched, it's like it's decided not to bother letting me know anymore, even in the Alert list nevermind an email.
I guess I spent too much time typing and not searching

 

by the way the
Tecsun PL-330 seems pretty reasonable, but the SSB step is 10Hz, should be o.k for data, voice wont be any different. not sure without checking back what one you were going to get ?

 

Good luck with your hand-eye coordination during the surface-mount soldering! Keep a cigar and a sip of the old Rye nearby for a steady hand.

 

As you can see, I have a few extra of the 2211CP IC's, the core of the WEFAX decoder. The smallest batch I could order was 5. I think it was less than $10 all together though. It would be cheaper for those of you on the other side of the pond just to pick them up yourselves, but if @Timothy Kline ever has the time to join in again and maybe do a project like this, or anyone else here that is state-side, I'd be happy to send one too, for free as I can protect it with a bit of foam and tape and send it in a standard envelope for the going standard postage rate of less than a dollar with my USPS "Forever" stamps.

 

I almost got one of these, selling on Amazon for $90, but then I found a kit SW w/SSB for $30 and assembled for $60. I got the latter since I have enough projects already.