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Help with testing for PETdisk MAX 2.0

bitfixer

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2011
Messages
679
Location
San Francisco, CA
Hi all,
For the PET aficionados here, wanted to let you know that I recently did a redesign of the PETdisk MAX device to use a new, more capable microcontroller (ESP32 vs ATMega1284) and I'm looking for a few people who would like to help test out the new version with some PETs.
The primary motivation for the redesign was lack of availability for the original controller - currently the ATMega1284 and seems like most other atmel mcus are generally impossible to get right now, at least in surface mount form. The ESP32 has the big advantage of being widely available, as well as having wifi capability and generally being a fast microcontroller. The firmware code, thankfully, was already mostly hardware agnostic with hardware access being in only a couple of source files, so going forward it will be reasonable to support both architectures so both v1 and v2 get regular firmware updates.
I will have a small number of these available for testers, probably about 5 of them. Ideally if you have any other IEEE-488 devices (disk drives, printers, etc) for the PET, would be nice to verify that these still work with the passthrough capability on the device, as I don't have any around for real testing.
If you are interested please let me know - if shipping to you is not much I can just cover it, if not I would probably ask you to pay for shipping.
Thanks everyone. Will post some pictures of the new boards once they arrive.
 
I might be interested. Re: pass-through, it's been a while since I dusted everything off but I do have at least one real IEEE-488 drive that worked last time I tried.

FWIW, I bought some ESP32s for a project I haven't gotten to yet, if your board is compatible with what I have and it's fitted into a plug-in socket I might be able to save you sending the ESP32.
 
I'd be happy to test. I have one of each PET, 2001-8, 2001-32N, 4032, 8032, SP9000 as well as 2040, 4040, 2031 and 4022 printer. MiniPET and a petSD+ as well.
 
Thanks very much, appreciate the help. I will be in touch shortly to send these out to you.
Generally, the new version should behave exactly the same as the previous version (load/save to SD or network drive, support for D64, SEQ, and support for direct block reads i.e. loading ZORK). Eventually the ESP32 version would be able to support some fancier features like supporting HTTPS or using FTP/SFTP for network drives, but for now it just has feature parity with the original version.
 
Hi there - a little late to this party; I am in Scotland and have a 3016 with the Tynemouth ROM/RAM board, a working 4040 and an SD2PET too.

Happy to help if I can and happy to pay the postal charges if that helps.

Colin.
 
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