Acorn Electron ElkSD Plus1 + ATI w/ ABR and ElkSD128 reviews
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2024
- Review of the ElkSD Plus 1: the SD card interface for the Acorn Electron with a Plus 1 expansion unit. I also cover replacing the Plus 1 support ROM and add an ATI (Advanced Tube Interface) with ABR (Advanced Battery-backed RAM) cartridge and add a PiTubeDirect processor to really boost things.
Finally, I don't have an ElkSD128, but I cover what functionality that has and compare these two options against the original ElkSD64.
My review of the ElkSD64 (including an explanation of the paged / banked / sideways memory system on an Acorn MOS 8-bit machine, as well as some of the Support ROM commands) is here:
• Acorn Electron ElkSD64... - Věda a technologie
I found I had the proper Second 6502 unit the other day. I need to find time to poke at it on my Beeb.
Wow, that's awesome. I took the plunge earlier today and ordered an Electron from the UK and an ElkSD128. I'm in New Zealand and none of the 8bit BBC/Acorns are that common here - Acorns started being more common with the Archimedes'. My first was an A4000 because I got sidetracked by Amigas :) haha
But wow, seeing what you can do with the humble Elk now is really cool. Being able to emulate an ARM2. haha that's fantastic.
Really excellent review. It never fails to amaze me how the hardware expansions just keep coming for this machine, some 40 years after it was first released. Oh, the game that you chose to play - Palace Of Magic 2016 - I designed the loading screen for that! ;-)
Thanks for the reply...
Yes - it's really fantastic people are still so enthusiastic. I think part of the reason is that computers these days are so uniform and boring: it's nice looking back to all those different machines with different OSs, keyboard layouts and techniques for getting the best out of limited hardware resources.
I also love that I can now have the BBC I could never afford back then, with cheap hard discs implemented using a Pi Zero and multi CPU Tube processor.
As for Palace Of Magic 2016, the reworking is great and the loading screen a fantastic part of that. I need to sit down and work through it, making a map (I know they're online, but where's the fun in working it out!).
Absolutely excellent and well presented review. Thankyou for this. I knew it was going to be good when I saw the bottle of Laphroaig in the background at the start.
Excellent review.
Great review. Thanks!
more love for the elk. Great stuff :)
Me: That Advanced Tube Interface cartridge looks great -- I should get one now for the Electron and Plus 1 I just picked up!
Our host: It's not available.
Me: 😦
If you keep an eye on the Stardot forum, there's usually a heads up about a new batch of the ATI.
@@rog2224 Oh! That's good to know; thanks.
Bank C: Joystick config program etc
Hi. Thanks for a great video. As a result, I now have the same setup as you. A couple of questions though. You mention a disk interface, which allows use of a Gotek. I can’t find any such device that uses the plus 1. Also, I see you have several language roms and copro applications. Again, I’m having trouble finding them. Do you have any links ir something to these? Thanks.
For the Electron, you're probably best getting a Advanced Plus 3 or 4, or a Pegaus 400. Dave Hitchins sells a remake of the latter with PAGE &E00 DFS and ADFS here: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325963785261?hash=item4be4f4a42d:g:msIAAOSwvT9jZpsG&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4DpZxjIXcBr%2BnJVssqg3RtQMGJG%2FoKKl8F8CWUQiEMFmRaPAQ4PAf7dBFtztNAXC%2BqA2iB5kjDXXva2QWmLh8HfSVIOxkE35Yxz%2FKYqSH7ZpKEEnSKQQjajnr7U4RmsHwVfnsOWPG5w8SvJrZkw5nw4BzGcPA51sy3CTSay2rVNDrmxb6Wh2RYYYdIgf%2BU22eMKaxJHXleUfQS%2BL4PFShWxiLKoVp2aKqgIOLltNHa2wxbpOVCGUpwyJYLGUkmjm20pfeLB3KejWF33ciimPxiYOZD9eSQo8uq%2F4ZJMHhDgd%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR4j2k8mwYw
That'll let you plug in a normal 5¼", 3½" or Gotek and use that. The only thing you can't do is power it as the Electron doesn't do that.
(You could also probably use a Plus 3 with the second disc drive port, but that's probably overly expensive, unless you really want one - and it doesn't come with DFS.)
The best place to get ROMs is from Jonathan Harston's web archive: mdfs.net/System/ROMs/ - if there's anything you can't find, let me know or ask on StarDot. I do have some odd versions of things that might not immediately be obvious (like version 1.45E of The BASIC Editor, which you get from Tom Seddon's GitHub repository).
My only comment about the Plus1 is that by the time you get all the add ons, you may as well get a Beeb, and just enjoy the Elk for what it is.
Yeah - I agree. And even after you've added all that, you've still got the slow memory; it's just interesting to see it running so quickly, with all that stuff (literally) piled on!
I think the Electron was much maligned back in the day as it was always going to be inferior to the BBC: looking back, it was amazing machine for the money, with a really good BASIC, excellent OS and had 80 column output. But that wasn't foremost on people's minds and clearly things like the C64 played better games of the era and, if cost was a factor (as it was for me), you had a Spectrum.
At the time, the Plus 1 allowed one to stagger the cost to get something akin to the BBC (sans Mode 7) especially if you really wanted the user port for I/O akin to what you get with the RPi now. When I was doing my degree in the 1980s, one of the assignments was to make a central heating controller with logging, which screams 'RPi' now. It was never going to be a blistering games machine, but, if you enjoyed breadboard tinkering, there wasn't much on the market that had the versatility of the Elk and Plus 1 for the price, since the two still came in less than a BBC (This is no longer true, but I'm still more comfortable, and like the ease of storage, of the Elk and Plus 1 - I tend to put things back in their boxes when not in use)
I got my old Elk as an ex display unit dirt cheap (£30 to £50 - I forget the exact amount) that let me do a lot of the heavy lifting for my Computer Graphics elective in 1987, without having to wrestle other students for access to the BBCs in the micro lab on campus.
(as a side bar, I recall there being a published kludge for the ZX81 motherboard that allowed the back connector to work in a similar way to the BBC user port, but with a lot less protection for the motherboard. There was a company (I think based in Lincolnshire, but we're now relying on my memory over almost 40 years) that did a greenhouse control system based around the 81 in a plastic box to keep it dry.)
I'm hoping that the ElkSD128 can be fixed to be less sensitive to noisy clocks on the Elk. My Rev 6 board didn't play well (as in 'at all') with the earlier version of the ElkSD64, but worked fine with the ElkSD Plus 1. We swapped the 64 unit for the newer revision and it was fine, but in further discussion with the maker, the ElkSD128 has the same problem as the old 64. Whether a fix is possible wasn't clear.
The latest revision of the ElkSD128 has, I'm happy to say, a 100% success rate working on Elks with poor quality clocks.
@@drramtop1576 Just seen this. Excellent news.
I think it quite hard to find a Plus 1 these days, do not see them coming up much on eBay and when they do, they go for a premium price.
Is there any option to have the Tube without the Plus1 with it connected directly?
I don't know of one. There is the AP5 for attaching a Tube but that still fits in the Plus 1.
Somebody on Stardot did do a design for a "Minus One" as a reimplementation. I think the designs are available but you'd have to build one yourself: stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13089
Can you put the sd plus 1 into the of elk without the extra the extra bit
You need the Plus 1 expansion as the slots in that are not the same as the connector the back, physically and electrically.
If you don’t have or want a Plus 1, get an ElkSD64 or ElkSD128 (comparison at the end of the video).
where you get the plastic box for the pi processor please
It was this, from the same seller (surprised she still has some, a year later!): www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184087659976?hash=item2adc7ac5c8:g:b-wAAOSwed9d-qLK - I just had to cut a slot in the end of the box to get the cable out and put some rubber feet on it.
I'm sure you can get one from another seller, but that one just came up in my search and was pretty much exactly the right size for a 3A+.
Thank you liked the box you had because of the box colour .
Your youtube channel on the Acorn Electron is excellent keep up the good work ....
could I be cheeky and ask you to send me / link me to where you got the .mmb from please?
It's one I assembled myself, starting with a blank MMB file created with the 'beeb' Perl script. Most of the games came from places like bbcmicro.co.uk. Is there something specific you're after?
@@lsbyte ah sorry, I meant the pi firmware. You seem to have more than the 14 co pros I currently have. Perhaps I have an older firmware?
Ah - you can get it straight from the horse’s mouth here: github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect/releases
The latest stable release is Gecko, which is what I was running in the demo. You can find out what you have by immediately typing OLD then LIST after powering on to a 6502 processor (0-3) and looking near the top: the git commit and release name will be there.
There is a new Hognose in alpha at the moment (currently alpha 3) which has some reworking, including a new coprocessor 24 that is a reworking of the 6502 in native ARM and is over three times faster on a 3A+. There’s also a new Pi VDU driver that can display stuff via the Pi’s HDMI output, but there are often physical problems getting to the HDMI connector with most boards.
Just download the ZIP, format your card and copy everything across on your PC/Mac and then stick the card in the Pi and it should just boot.
@@lsbyte thanks so much , much appreciated. I watch your channel a lot so keep up the good work :)
weird-unlike my older firmware I can't get this to work. To be clear did you use etcher to mount the firmware or just copy and paste the files to a micro SD card?