ExplodingLemur wrote on 2023-07-07, 23:03:

Tried with my iron but I kept flowing solder onto the metal cage of the slot instead of the pins, it's a bit tight in there. I'll dab a bit of solder paste onto each pin and break out the hot air.

Yeah, unless copious amounts of flux doesn't work, solder paste plus hot air should. Just be careful with the sd connector - I think there could be a bit of plastic in it that might not like too much heat...

I think I have a long fine-point conical tip that I can try too.

Got the SD Card Activity LED working! Here's what it looks like hooked up to the TinyLlama using the SD card snooper:

Here are few observations. I tested on signal using both CMD and CS pins. The CMD is pretty blinky, while CS seems to stay active longer. I also switched down to a 200 ohm resistor for the external LED, it wasn't bright enough with the 330. Here's the schematic and PCB if anyone is interested.

vanfanel wrote on 2023-03-09, 16:41:

Thanks to @Eivind for creating such an AMAZING piece of hardware and for his great support.

True that!

vanfanel wrote:

Now, I am trying a LOOOOT of DOS games on this beast, and I have found some games that refuse to play correctly, no matter what settings I try (EMMS/NO EMMS, XMS/NO XMS, all possible combinations of CPU speed with LEVEL 1 CACHE ON/OFF)

I'd definitely be interested in help to set up a catalogue of what works and what doesn't, and what might work with a few tweaks. Shall we set up a google sheet to track this like Eivind suggested?

I'm trying the games you mentioned:
-Ishar: Legend of the Fortress -> I selected Soundblaster in the initial config, but get PC Speaker sounds.

-SuperFrog -> Game plays well but shows a noticeable screen tearing defect on the bottom of the screen. - Confirmed!

-Pinball Dreams -> BPRO.SDR, SB20.SDR or SBLASTER.SDR as the sound driver there, but the game is still silent with those. - I entered the game without any configuration and the sound seems to work. Music plays, the flippers make sound, but I'm not getting many sound effects from events inside the table.

-Another World -> Game is VERY slow with Sound Blaster audio set to 1000Hz - confirmed!

Here's one I've been stumped by:
- Bio Menace and Duke Nukem 2 -> games load great, but after killing first enemy, hard crash.

ExplodingLemur wrote on 2023-07-07, 21:10:

Ok, now this is weird. I think my SD card socket has gone bad! If I boot with any SD card inserted (even a blank one) it freezes at "Booting from Hard Disk..." and also freezes after launching the BIOS config or boot menu. If I hold the card all the way in (past the point where it clicks into place) then it boots. Wheee...

It now freezes even with no boot media (SD or USB) inserted (so trying to boot from floppy), Pi removed, ESP and HIDMan turned off...eegh 😒 I also swapped the SD card slot with no change. Checked all the SD card lines, no shorts or opens, everything has continuity to where it should, 3.3V supply is good. I wonder if the SPI flash got corrupted somehow. I'll see if I can write it directly.

Well I think I have a bad SPI flash IC! It's failing verification when I try to write, and at different addresses each time. I'll try desoldering it to program it instead of using the SOIC clip.

Desoldered and reprogrammed in a socket and it worked fine. I guess my SOIC clip is just a cheap piece of junk 😀

To anyone else who wanted to have the MT-32 Pi but had trouble locating a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W at a reasonable price, and ALSO happened to have an extra Pi hanging around, here's one way to use it with the Tiny Llama 2. Since Tiny Llama is aligned to mount the Pi from the bottom up, and most other Pis come with top down headers, it is either necessary to desolder the headers and flip them to the bottom, or I've done this:

I used a Raspberry Pi GPIO header block and a GPIO ribbon cable. Fortunately it's a limited number of pins that need connection, they are:

- 3: SDA
- 4: VCC
- 5: SLC
- 6: GND
- 10: 3.3V_MIDI_OUT
- 11: SYNTH_SW
- 12: I2S_BCLK
- 13: ROM_SW
- 35: I2S_LRCLK
- 40: I2S_DATA

Works great!

poprhythm wrote on 2023-07-10, 17:53:

Since Tiny Llama is aligned to mount the Pi from the bottom up, and most other Pis come with top down headers, it is either necessary to desolder the headers and flip them to the bottom, or I've done this (...)

Yeah, I chose to set up the female connector for use with a Pi Zero 2 with downward facing pins to avoid having components on the Pi board collide with components on the TinyLlama board. I know it's not perfect for full-sized Pis, but I thought it was a good solution for Zero 2s at least.
Speaking of Zero 2s - looks like they're back in stock a few places again! 🎉

Nice to see you got it working though! 😀

juami wrote on 2022-08-16, 07:16:

I found VortexEX modules from icop-eshop. https://www.icop-shop.com/product/vex-som/ This include vex som module + VGA + dev bo […]
Show full quote

Eivind wrote on 2022-04-15, 12:26:

Joined moments ago after spotting your awesome 86Duino project, very nice work! I'm afraid the supply chain issue is affecting all manufacturers these days, including DMP. One of the many problems is sourcing the 128MB DRAM chip, probably because not much demand for small memories these days. It seems the 1GB version will be more available in the future, costing $18 USD above the 128MB version. I don't have any relationship with DMP other than buying x86 boards and their responses to lead times and supply issues.
Please let me know if you do another run of those boards, I'm very interested in buying a few of them.

I just checked, the 1GB modules are also unavailable now. I sent an updated request for future availability to DMP, let's see what their response will be...
I actually have PCB's and components in stock for a run of ~30 units which I'll happily sell as kits or assembled - if we can just get our hands on the x86 & vga modules! :p

I found VortexEX modules from icop-eshop.
https://www.icop-shop.com/product/vex-som/
This include vex som module + VGA + dev board

https://www.icop-shop.com/product/vex-6254-s/
This one includes PC104 baseboard + VEXSOM+VGA

Is it possible to replace 86duino with vex-som? Is pin map compatible?

shimart wrote on 2023-07-20, 18:34:

Is it possible to replace 86duino with vex-som? Is pin map compatible?

It's the same module, just has a different color on the heatspreader! 😀

Just wondering, if there a curated ISO with DOS and games and utilities etc... that can be downloaded and runs on the TL2?
Sorry if this is an irrelevant questions.

ahmadexp wrote on 2023-07-26, 04:46:

Just wondering, if there a curated ISO with DOS and games and utilities etc... that can be downloaded and runs on the TL2?
Sorry if this is an irrelevant questions.

I don't know about such a thing, but you can easily install DOS from the TL2 itself, and after that you can simply copy over your DOS games.

That's the best part, but after that, compatibility is not so good with DOS games, even if you know what games need/don't need EMS/XMS, etc... many fail or have bad audio etc. so making a ready-to-go image would be complicated.

vanfanel wrote on 2023-07-26, 10:21:

ahmadexp wrote on 2023-07-26, 04:46:

Just wondering, if there a curated ISO with DOS and games and utilities etc... that can be downloaded and runs on the TL2?
Sorry if this is an irrelevant questions.

I don't know about such a thing, but you can easily install DOS from the TL2 itself, and after that you can simply copy over your DOS games.

That's the best part, but after that, compatibility is not so good with DOS games, even if you know what games need/don't need EMS/XMS, etc... many fail or have bad audio etc. so making a ready-to-go image would be complicated.

So what I meant was if there is a way to run something like what has been done for the AO486 of the Mister project by eXo/Flynn and the Menu to select the games. However, I am still not sure if there is a good way to mount an ISO on the TL2 to make it work as the CD-ROM driver to run those games. I think maybe we should look into that somehow. Not sure if we can do it either with hardware or software.

Hello @Eivind,

I was wondering if I can get the source for the top short case because I want to build in the 128x64 OLED and I need to remove the lines to make the front of the display clear.
Would it be possible if you can share it with me or github?

Thank you

ahmadexp wrote on 2023-07-26, 18:12:

I was wondering if I can get the source for the top short case because I want to build in the 128x64 OLED and I need to remove the lines to make the front of the display clear.
Would it be possible if you can share it with me or github?

The case model files are at https://github.com/eivindbohler/tinyllama2/tree/main/case
They're STEP files so they're importable by most CAD software as a complete editable model rather than just a bunch of triangles like STLs would be.

sneak peek

If anyone wants to use the Waveshare 1.51" Transparent OLED, you need some hardware modifications since the board comes with SPI mode enabled and you need I2C.

Here is the list:
Move the two zero-ohm resistors to the I2C setting.
Connect DC and CS to GND
Connect RST to VCC
Remove the two 4.7K-ohm pull-up resistors from DIN and SCK.

For the Software side, simply use the following in your mt32-pi.cfg file:
type = ssd1306_i2c
width = 128
height = 64

After many hours of gradual refinements, I've completed a TinyLlama 2 (with wavetable selector) embedded version of a 3d printed mini IBM PS/2 25 that I had designed last year. Here are the STL files and list of materials - Printables - and here are some more detailed build instructions - Instructables. It's got built in power supply, LCD monitor, audio amplifier and speakers, case fan, front panel SD card access, back panel with the a TinyLlama control board, and a big red switch to turn it all off.

There are several pieces that are different for the TinyLlama - mainly the electronics board for mounting the PCB and holes for the ports.

To use the internal power supply it required adding 5V connection to the Llama. This was done by very carefully soldering in some connections at these points:

. Thanks to Aaron707 for working this out. Here's what it looked like on mine:

Here's a photo of all the electronics before they were mounted to test:

The PS/2 25 has a disk access light I used the circuit that Eivind had suggested to control this. I connected this to the HDD Clicker from Serdaco to add even more authentic feel for the experience.

Here's a bunch more photos of the internals. It's not easy to get good camera angles in there, but I can try to elaborate if there's any questions.

It's been a very fun project - thank you Eivind for your great designs and help, and thank you Aaron707 for sharing this project and your thoughts!

poprhythm wrote on 2023-07-28, 17:08:

After many hours of gradual refinements, I've completed a TinyLlama 2 (with wavetable selector) embedded version of a 3d printed mini IBM PS/2 25 that I had designed last year.

This has got to be one of the most impressive things I've seen this year, mad props!! Proud to have been part of this! ❤️

And here is comes, TL2 in transparent case with a transparent OLED for the MT32-Pi