New yerar, new CPC board

[seanb]

You fight.I finish housing cover for Just CPC.

[Bryce]

Hi,

As far as I can see Piotrs adapter is my AMX adapter, so it will work fine, but yes, if it's permanently connected you should add a power switch, because it does disturb joysticks.
The original AMX didn't have anything more than an optical digital motion sensor and some basic logic. It didn't have any proportional mode. It's a pure motion-pulse=Joystick direction pulse. The "smoothness" depends on how often the port is poled and how the software reacts to the pulses. Even a joystick can be made proportional in software.
The Symbiface solution is obviously an improvement on this and offers higher resolution, because it can be poled more often and has a real multi-bit value for each direction, whereas the AMX only offers on and off. But the AMX solution needs no drivers at all, it can be used on any game that uses a joystick, whereas the SymbiFace always needs drivers. So they both have their advantages/disadvantages.

Very nice layout Piotr. You've got it down to a very compact size.

Bryce. 

[Piotr]

Bryce, is your adapter, i only redraw it.  Lest do something for Amstrad, don't waste time ?

[Bryce]

Very nice. If I had time, then I would Time is my biggest enemy.

Bryce.

[Prodatron]

so it will work fine

"Working fine" is relative/comparative.
It's a huge difference if you have for each X/Y direction a maximum of...
6 bits = +/-32 (SYMBiFACE II)
2 bits = +/-1 (AMX)
...on each poll.
You can boost the AMX by polling it on each IRQ, then you will have +/-6 instead of +/-1 which is still not compareable to a proportional mouse. Polling it more often isn't useful in practice if you have other things to do beside only checking your mouse position.
The AMX methode is a nice help for software which only support joysticks, but unfortunately it's quite limited if you really want to use a mouse as a mouse on the CPC.
Erm yes, it was the Reisware mouse (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/CPC-Mousepack_2.0), not the AMX mouse, which provided an optional proportional mouse protocol (with 8bits for each direction like the MSX).

[KaosOverride]

As far as I can see Piotrs adapter is my AMX adapter, so it will work fine, but yes, if it's permanently connected you should add a power switch, because it does disturb joysticks.

Loooong time ago I tried to adapt a PS/2 mouse adapter to Amiga mouse based PIC circuit, to CPC mouse. Because of the strange Atari port at the CPC, and the fake ground, I tried this:

http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/74HC_HCT4066.pdf

It's an analog gate, controled by digital signal. What I did was to tie all the joystick signals to the "select" (fake ground) throught the gates and use the digital signal from the PIC to control the gates. This way I isolated the PIC from the CPC joy port, and when the PIC generates a 5V "1", the gate just makes the select pass to the joy dir or fire pin.

blew... my circuit just worked fine for mouse buttons, but for axis movement, I had to roll the mouse over the floor meter and a half to move just 2 o 3 character wide at the screen  Then I quit the circuit 

[TFM]

Even a joystick can be made proportional in software.

No it can't. And that's the difference to all joystick compatible mice. A joystick either sends a signal or not (open or close) while a joystick compatible mouse sends pulses (opens and closes very often per second).

[Bryce]

@Prodatron: With "works fine" I meant "works like the original AMX did".

@KaosOverride: My circuit uses the 74LS240 to do a similar trick with the "Fake GND" as you call it.

@TFM: Yes, they work slightly different, but I meant that you can do something like this to give a "proportional feel" with a digital joystick:
First Poll: Move one pixel.
Second poll: If still activated move 2 pixels
Third poll: If still activated move 5 pixels
etc.

Bryce.

[TFM]

@TFM: Yes, they work slightly different, but I meant that you can do something like this to give a "proportional feel" with a digital joystick:
First Poll: Move one pixel.
Second poll: If still activated move 2 pixels
Third poll: If still activated move 5 pixels
etc.

Well, then you just see the mouse pointer jump, because it checks usually 300 time per second.

[Bryce]

I remember some games having got it quite well. I think it was Beachhead that did it quite well (not 100% sure though).

Bryce.

[Piotr]

In meantime i almost finish my JustCPC.

JUST CPC, my clone of Amstrad CPC, final - YouTube

Nice to see this brain storm how do better mouse

[Joseman]

@Piotr Just received the Jcpc board, can we assure that is the last version? or with this last chat of mouse on cpc the Jcpc board will have more versions?

by the way we  should open a new thread for the assembling of the board? (capacitor values, socket ideas, components ordering, internet sites where we can buy the components, etc..)

what do you think?

[skywalky]

I've received the board too but where is the component list?

[Munchausen]

Is this for sale somewhere now? Did I miss a post?!

[Joseman]

Is this for sale somewhere now? Did I miss a post?!

Nope, only three of the first batch.

But Piotr is counting right now how many people wants one (or more) pcb's

you should post here that you want the board and how many.

[CraigsBar]

Nope, only three of the first batch.

But Piotr is counting right now how many people wants one (or more) pcb's

you should post here that you want the board and how many.

I hope he counts me in for an assembled board

[Joseman]

I hope he counts me in for an assembled board

with one post will be enough (I suppose).

When he wants to do another batch, I think that he will count all the boards that the people say and make a list with the people and the quantity, and, if there is some mistake then correct it in that time.

but i'm not @Piotr 

[Piotr]

Hello, my apologise for delay, here is BOM for this 2 prototype board http://www.eightbitclone.com/bom.rar ,  about boards in final version, i almost finish ZX spectrum clone too  so i planning order both  this boards in one time, bigger order so i can negotiate prices.

[Joseman]

about boards in final version...

Just CPC final board will be any different of this three that you sent us?

just out of curiosity!

[Piotr]

No  i only change position of keyboard and sound socket and fix few mistakes on pcb . Anyway ( i know is bad idea show it here  )  but maybe somebody looking for Just Speccy 128? Heheh

Just Speccy 128, my clone of ZX Spectrum toastrack. - YouTube

[Joseman]

No  i only change position of keyboard and sound socket and fix few mistakes on pcb .

what kind of mistakes? relative with the cpc structure itself? the youtube videos seems to work 100% right...

[Munchausen]

Nope, only three of the first batch.

But Piotr is counting right now how many people wants one (or more) pcb's

you should post here that you want the board and how many.

Ah ok. Well I said very early in the thread that I wanted three, and maybe again since then, but just in case: I want three bare PCBs please!

[skywalky]

Hello, my apologise for delay, here is BOM for this 2 prototype board http://www.eightbitclone.com/bom.rar ,  about boards in final version, i almost finish ZX spectrum clone too  so i planning order both  this boards in one time, bigger order so i can negotiate prices.

Thanks. I want to know the few mistakes too. To correct them in the assembly.

[skywalky]

Also, I want one final PCB too.

[Piotr]

Done. Final version.  Becouse i lost control how many boards people need i do a simply preorder with small deposit here :  Just CPC, amstrad CPC clone PCB board.