Aurora somewhere?

[vanpeebles]

A cherry mx ql keyboard sounds mega fancy

[RWAP]

I guess the Aurora has been surpassed now by the Q68 (well until there are some more Super Gold Card clones)...

Don't forget that there is currently no source of SuperHermes either

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Rich,

Point well made with regards to the Superhermes. The Hermes Chip is still available, which would replace the 8049 in the Aurora or QL.

The Superhermes SER3 port will not do SRX/STX for Sernet networking.

Maybe this is a personal project, as I have the hardware lying around doing nothing.

Just need a decent keyboard, I did a schematic last year in Eagle, just had the PCB layout to do. But Eagle has taken a nose dive when Autodesk bought it. So I am in the process of moving all hardware designs to KiCad.

There are some Eagle to KiCad conversion utilites, but I have not had much success. Quicker to redraw from scratch.

Pity there nothing for schematic drawing that could load the PCB layout into PCBCAD.

[bixio60]

... I have a LOT of interest for this ...

Fabrizio

Hi Nasta,

Do you have any unpopulated PCBs?

If not, I was thinking about making more Aurora boards, do you think there is any interest in more Aurora boards.

I had an idea of building the Aurora into a QL case with SuperGold Card, Super Hermes.

Along the lines of:

AuroraQL.JPG

Which a friend produced in the 1990s, whith a QL mebrane keyboard, I would make a Schon Style keyboard, with CHerry MX switches.

Not sure if there is any interest in this.

Could the QLSD work in the Aurora ROM socket?

[mk79]

There are some Eagle to KiCad conversion utilites, but I have not had much success. Quicker to redraw from scratch

The latest KiCad version has an inbuilt Eagle importer, worked quite well for me if you haven‘t tried it yet.

Marcel

[Derek_Stewart]

There are some Eagle to KiCad conversion utilites, but I have not had much success. Quicker to redraw from scratch

The latest KiCad version has an inbuilt Eagle importer, worked quite well for me if you haven‘t tried it yet.

Marcel

Hi Marcel,

I forgot about the KiCad Eagle project importer. I have imported most of my Eagle Cad designs.

There a Cherry MX Switch library for Kicad, so I just need to make the PCB layout to suit the QL case.

[Nasta]

Hi Nasta,

Do you have any unpopulated PCBs?
If not, I was thinking about making more Aurora boards, do you think there is any interest in more Aurora boards.
I had an idea of building the Aurora into a QL case with SuperGold Card, Super Hermes.
...
Could the QLSD work in the Aurora ROM socket?

Derek, all of my Aurora stuff has been sent to Dave (boards and lots of parts to complete them).
The Aurora interesting as long as there is a SGC to mate with it.
Another possibility would be to mod the GC, which I guess would be something for Tetroid to do if there is a decent source for the Ingot. I did get it from Tetroid but there are problems with it. Without the old software used to compile the files from the sources it is very difficult to re-write the logic in a more legible manner, because some special features of the 1810 are encoded in shorthand in the code (so very difficult to interpret exactly what they do, although I have a vague idea).
Strangely enough, there may well be nough space inside the 1810 to implement an Aurora compatible IO area. Fully 8 pins of the Ingot 16 are just used to buffer a part of the address bus (if I remember correctly), which could easily have been done by a cheap bus buffer chip, leaving them for more interesting uses.
Alternatively, this means that using such a buffer frees 8 pins on the chip, which makes it possible to re-target the logic to many other CPLDs, assuming the source can be adequately interpreted.

Also regarding Aurora, I have *somewhere* a SB program that I wrote that takes resolution specs and encodes them into the SCAN EPROM. It is possible to generate many types of display formats as long as the horizontal resolution is either 512, 640, 768 or 1024 pixels. The total number of display lines (visible + invisible) is limited to 1024, though. There are comments in the MAC PLD source on the coding of the data in the EPROM.

As far as I know, there should be no reason QLSD would not work on Aurora as long as the ROM socket jumpers are set to the standard QL ROM settings, and it is plugged in the proper way.

[gorlum]

Who can put a photo of the Aurora on the side of the tracks?

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

I have some faulty Aurora boards, which I am in the process of repairing. I can upload a photograph if required.

I have also generated a PCB file in Altium Designer, so in principle, I could create Gerber files for construction of more Aurora PCBs.

I have not import and linked the Aurora Schematic to the PCB file yet, as this is a harder job to reverse the CAD process from PCB >Schematic.

But are there any changes to the current Aurora design?

[Pr0f]

Who can put a photo of the Aurora on the side of the tracks?

It looks like a 4 layer board - so that probably won't get you very far.