Falcon030 RTC with external battery

[Triads]

Seems this doesn't generate much interest, so I will not go for a second batch.

Do you by chance have any left?

[Arne]

Do you by chance have any left?

Check my sig.

[Triads]

Thanks for the reply, i'll keep an eye out the next couple months.

[catmando]

I've placed an order too

[Dal]

I placed an order too (to replace my spare). His website stated there was one in stock, but I received rather blunt reply via email:

Hi Darren,

RTC are out of stock.

bye, Arne

I did reply straight back asking for an eta on availability but so far, no response.

Has anyone else managed to get one of these at all?

[chlu600]

I think I ordered the last one, a few days ago.
Arrived 5th february. Perhaps the shop made a reservation until my payment arrived.

[Triads]

Any word?

[Bama]

I'd like to order too.

[atarian90]

Put me down for three.

[duranik]

I would also like to order one.

[Anzac]

i´m also looking for a solution for RTC for a recently received Falcon...

[Arne]

i´m also looking for a solution for RTC for a recently received Falcon...

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.ph ... 25#p288146

[Anzac]

i´m also looking for a solution for RTC for a recently received Falcon...

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.ph ... 25#p288146

Thank you Arne.

i have already placed an order and will wait until it arrives, knowing it might depend on available time and maybe enough orders.

It´s something that sometimes is confusing for me to watch, when sometimes people complain that it takes a long time to receive hardware mods that are being made to 20 or 30 years old computers! please support our developers when they still exist.

let´s say i can´t afford right now to buy a CT6x or a CosmosEX that might cost a couple hundred euros, that doesn´t stop me from sending 2 or 20 euros to the developers to say "thank you for keeping support for my machine".

i have bought accessories even without having any Atari computer just to "keep the market going" a little.

when i first started checking what solutions i might have to do regarding the NVRAM issue, i was a little worried with some of the solutions i saw...
then i saw a suggestion from Atarimusic-net where a ultra-low profile socket could be used and i felt better. it was good to see that people were coming up with new and better solutions to old problems.

in the end, i figured that the solution from Arne was good enough not to interfere with shieldings and affordable enough that i could buy it now.

Lynxman also was kind and fast in the reply regarding a 14MB RAM upgrade, which i´ll wait a little to see if the machine has any other problems before ordering.

Let´s keep the community alive. we´re all we have to keep our machines and hobbies going.

P.S. - i have posted basically the same in a thread i created about my first steps with a Falcon. i´m not trying to Spam the forums, just thought this would be read here by a diferente audience.

[leech]

So I had bought one of these, but hadn't replaced the NVRAM chip in my Falcon since the Diagnostic cartridge said it was fine. So then I tried to change the settings so that it would boot into a higher resolution (for MiNT's boot up output) and I had it work once via bootconf after a reset, but then the ultimate test was to see if it'd survive a cold boot. No such luck, and so figured it was the NVRAM that had died.

So I replaced the battery with this yesterday, and while it seems to keep the date/time (though there was certainly drift while I was at work) it won't survive even a reset with bootconf. Mind you I may be trying to set the video settings incorrectly. I've tried with 80 columns, 2,4,16 colors, VGA, Pal/NTSC.. nothing seems to work. Fool that I was, didn't remember what the exact settings were the one time I had it working before putting this in.

Now I'll admit, maybe my soldering work wasn't all that great, but anyone know what could be the cause of this? It almost sounds like it could be that it's just not in right, and the bit of drift I'm seeing on the clock is due to it being saved to the system, but not the NVRAM, which the battery would keep updated, correct? I may need to do a better soldering job, that wouldn't surprise me either.

Any help would be much appreciated. Oh, I also tried every nvram editor I could possibly find, and yes I've reset it a few times with Control+Alternate+Right Shift+Undo. The official Atari program (CONFIG.APP on the Falcon Language Disk) gives an error saying "Can't read NVRAM ! Is this a Falcon or TT ?"

[qq1975b]

The NVRAM setup is a little bit tricky...I don't remember which version of bootconf I used but I remember giving me some problems at the beginning until I found the right version...Could it be 2.0?
You can also test the NVRAM socket pins with a tester to find out if you have broken any path...but unless you did it awfully they should be ok (you need the Falcon schematics that you can find here: http://dev-docs.atariforge.org/files/Fa ... ematic.pdf )

[leech]

The version I used was 2.01. I will check out the schematics and test. I know I couldnt quit get the socket in all the way because of how I had removed the other chip, there was a bit of solder left, so it is very possible/likely that it just isn't connecting everywhere. I ended up ordering a small heat gun to see if I could heat the solder up enough in that area to get the socket fully in and pins all nicely connected. I had spent hours getting it to where I thought it was as much in as I could get it. I will start with that. Weird that the test cartridge showed it as passed. I should eventually get the loop cables to test the rest of the hardware.

[johannes]

Hi Arne,

great stuff! Want one for my Falcon! I think I have a blind spot, but I do not see Germany in the countries list on your order form. Please advise...

thanks!

Johannes

[leech]

My curse goes on!

So I think I figured out at least why it wasn't working previously, it definitely wasn't in all the way, when I pulled out the original battery one of the pins was stuck in the the whole so the socket wasn't really connecting. I finally got all the pins cleared, but after removing the socket from the board, it was bent a little, and in my stupidity I attempted to bend it back, and successfully broke the socket in two. From looking online, it looks like ICM-624-1-GT from Adam Tech is the socket? Anyone have a preferred place to order it?

[leech]

Hi Arne,

great stuff! Want one for my Falcon! I think I have a blind spot, but I do not see Germany in the countries list on your order form. Please advise...

thanks!

Johannes

That'd be odd, since it says "Made in Germany" on the PC Board.

[qq1975b]

My curse goes on!

So I think I figured out at least why it wasn't working previously, it definitely wasn't in all the way, when I pulled out the original battery one of the pins was stuck in the the whole so the socket wasn't really connecting. I finally got all the pins cleared, but after removing the socket from the board, it was bent a little, and in my stupidity I attempted to bend it back, and successfully broke the socket in two. From looking online, it looks like ICM-624-1-GT from Adam Tech is the socket? Anyone have a preferred place to order it?

I think it is a quite common socket because, if I remember right, I bought them from eBay.com... low profile 24 pin socket.

[leech]

Ha, I ended up finding the two pins that fell out, holding it together while l taped it together enough to be able to solder it into place, and now the clock battery is in there. Unfortunately I think when I set the clock time, I only reset it, was all thrilled, but then when I turned it off this morning, it went back to the date of 2014, which I think is what the diagnostic cartridge set it to. So I did the NVRAM reset, and now fscheck.sh is running again.... it's picky about time stamps for some reason...

[leech]

Still no luck with the clock. Created a new thread; http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.ph ... on#p301876

Granted, as I say in that thread, it's a good possibility I missed something and one of the pins aren't soldered in quite right.

[leech]

From what I can see the issues I have is that A) whenever I set the clock, the nvram tirns everything to ff ff, etc. B) when trying to change video modes it appears to change tge information there, but I don't see any difference in reboots.

When the clock programs write (using control panel or clock_e.cpx) and I get all ffs, I have to remove the battery to get it to clear, the jumper on the RCLR pins don't seem to work.

Any ideas?

[leech]

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=37404

This seems like a perfect solution for us. From the look of things, it's actually much thinner than the original block.

[Maeslin]

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=37404

This seems like a perfect solution for us. From the look of things, it's actually much thinner than the original block.

Man I didn't think my little design would make the rounds so much. Color me flattered!