Hi. the cartridge looks nearly perfect.
I'm deeply impressed !!11eleven
Is there any chance to get one of those? What is the status? If you accept preorders, register two for me

regards,
masterhit

Seems there still a few who want one yours truly as well

_________________
Have Fun!!

Well, as of right now, I have a demand for about 16 of these total. That's not nearly enough for me to justify spending the money. If I were in a better financial state right now, I'd do it anyway just for fun. But I can't.

I think I'm going to declare the project dead and just post the files I have. If someone else wants to attempt to produce them, that's perfectly fine. I'll still dabble a little in this project, but I think I want to move on to something else. It was fun doing the design, but until I get my money straightened out, I'm going to have to go strictly hobbyist on any C64 projects.

Sorry, guys.

Hey 8bits! Don't be sorry! You've really made a great effort on this project and inspired many people along the way (me for one), and that alone is a reason to be proud. You even got the things working! Who knows, maybe somebody will pick up the thread at some point, if not yourself Thank you and thumbs up for trying!

Just as an FYI, I've posted the project files here:

http://c64fan.com

If there is a better place to post that, let me know and I'll get it up there after I get some more complete documentation included in the archive files.

The information on the site is far from complete, but you all now have full access to the information so if anyone wants to pick this up and tinker with it, be my guest. I will try to update the information over the next few weeks.

Let me know if you have any questions or issues with the files and/or information.

And, now that EAGLE 5 is out, I may try to load these into that and perform any necessary conversions. I haven't looked at EAGLE 5 yet so I have no idea if any action will be necessary.

Thanks again, Eric!

No problem. Thanks for all the support and feedback! You've been very helpful.

Even if I don't produce these, I can still do one more thing for them. If people decide to build these things on their own, getting a PCB fabbed at prototype costs is going to be about $50 - $60 per board. I can purchase the PCBs in bulk and sell those at cost + S&H to anyone that wants to build a C64NIC. If I buy 50 PCBs, it's about $10/board. If I buy 100, it's about $6.70/board. This would let people get a non-quickturn quality board at a reasonable cost if they want to build these themselves. And, if no one buys the PCBs, I can afford to lose that much money so it's a much easier thing for me to do.

And of course, if a miracle happens and I do produce these, I can still ship out just the boards to those that want to make their own anyway.

OK. I was able to get one of these suckers soldered by hand so I'm going to try a few more and if I get reliable results, I'll consider doing these for retail.

But, there is another issue. I had two of these at C4. While they both ran perfectly, one got fried while swapping it in and out of the cartridge slot. This is the second one this has fallen victim to this. I only made 4 so far so this is a 50% failure rate. I can't release them like this. I checked the datasheet for the CS8900A and there is zero ESD protection built into the chip so it will all have to be done in-circuit.

I'm adding some ESD suppression into the design but I have to redo the layout for over half the board. I should be able to get that done and sent off to fab by Wednesday. I'm also changing the resistors and capacitors from the 1206 footprint to the 0603 footprint. These are smaller and will allow some better routing of the board.

And, I'm extending the back and sides of the board to fit the edges of the cartridge cases. This gives a little more room for placing and routing but mainly lets me set the ethernet jacks out to the edge of the cartridge case so there will be less cutting to make this fit in a case.

This should be the last major modification, but for those who hope to build this on their own, I highly recommend waiting for the ESD protection!

Heh, maybe it's just me?

Assuming that was the issue, how do the RR-Net, FB-Net etc. handle ESD protection?

To be honest, I'm not completely sure. I'm looking at the Omilex and RR-Net boards and I don't see any ESP protection/suppression anywhere.

Looking that the RR-Net's clock port connector being plastic, you're probably not conducting through it if you grab that connector to attach it to the card RetroReplay or MMC Replay.

I'm adding some Littelfuse MHS series MLVs to the data, addy, and I/O lines. Hopefully that will help. To be honest, I'm not completely confident that they will do the job. We'll see. I'm also going to add more decoupling capacitors while I'm at it and some extra vias to give the ground planes on both sides of the board better connectivity. I probably should have had more of both vias and capacitors to begin with, but I wanted to keep those counts low (more of each means more expense, but I think it will be negligible.)

The only other difference I see is that I'm using the lead-free CS8900A-CQZ while both Omilex and RR-Net are not (based on their pictures online.) This is kinda surprising since the EU requires RoHS compliance. Perhaps the total lead in this doesn't exceed RoHS specs. Either way, I cannot find a non-Z part and I don't think that's the issue anyway.

If anyone has other ideas, I'd love to hear them. I'm going to finish up the design tonight and send this off for fab so I'm very eager to suggestions.

dang 15 page thread.

Hiya Schema, Raveguru, Masterhit. eightbits, I don't know you, but thanks for your efforts. Nice work.

I was doing a google search when I stumbled upon this thread, trying to find out if the RR-Net or any other net card is accessable in 128 mode. - saw some discussing about it, but dont think I saw an answer, unless I missed it somewhere on page 12. heh.

Thanks,
Eddie
telnet to: bbs.innercirclebbs.com
C-Net 128 under development: port 64000
Centipede on port 23.

_________________
Eddie!
Telnet to my C= BBS: bbs.innercirclebbs.com
Port 23 = Centipede, Port 64000 = C-Net 128

I don't see why not?
You can do a quick test like this:


In Vice this gives me 14, 99, 0, 9 - which indicates that a Crystal Semiconducters device was found.
14, 99 is $0e63, which is the Two-byte, three-character compressed ASCII EISA Registration Number for CrystalSemiconductor (0x0e63 == 'CSC').
0, 9 is product number and revision which gives revision 'D' - corresponding with the emulated CS8900A revision.

I don't have a functioning C128 at the moment, so I cannot test on the real thing, but try it out and make the proper adjustments to match whatever cartridge your RR-Net is mounted on. The above "should" work with Retro Replay.

..and just to confirm myself here ..the above works with Retro Replay cartridge on a C128 in 128 mode.
Go ahead and start porting/coding rr-net stuff to 128

Some body ought to code a Telnet client for 80 col mode. Hmmm...

Same somebody should code for dual-monitor support with term on one monitor and 64CHAT, IRC, whatever on the other
..once somebody gets his sources cleaned up a bit, that is