Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

CBR125R · Post by **CBR125R** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:35 pm

I'd be interested in a multicart.

TLovskog · Post by **TLovskog** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 1:40 pm

Quite attractive.

Do they offer gold plating for the edge connector?

Could you PM me contact information?

I am on the move right now to a trip to Japan and have the details at home. Get it as soon as I come home. In beginning of May I am going to Shenzhen, China to meet and audit one of the manufacturers. I have 4 VIC 20 boards now in / for manufacturing, and will pick them up in person.

Regarding gold plated contacts. Are you referring to ENIG ( Electroless Nickel Gold ) or real plated hard gold fingers? What I can see most new cartridges SEEM to have the ENIG type ( I do not see the typical plating bars ). On the other hand the one manufacturer I am most interested in can do hard gold fingers. For prototypes I will use ENIG. For the finished boards I might opt for hard gold with selective OSP, if that lowers the total cost.

Mikam73 · Post by **Mikam73** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 12:10 am

Yes. I like to buy new Behr-Bonz multicart too. I have orginal version.

sjgray · Post by **sjgray** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 7:21 am

Here's a VIC memory expander that appears to use one of those skinny dip ram chips:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111649699125

Too bad the markings on the chip are hidden.

Steve

TLovskog · Post by **TLovskog** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 10:40 am

Nice margin in that product. Can't cost many bucks to manufacture. Pretty low quality on the design work for the layout. And even on such a simple board there is a patch wire.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 11:06 am

sjgray wrote:Too bad the markings on the chip are hidden.

It's exactly the same board that's on sale in a thread here in Denial.

A "standard" 74LS08 + 62256/6206 design, which ought be capable of doing +32K RAM actually.

The layout would easily fit on a 90x45 mm footprint.

sjgray · Post by **sjgray** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 12:42 pm

Mike wrote:
sjgray wrote:Too bad the markings on the chip are hidden.
It's exactly the same board that's on sale in a thread here in Denial.

A "standard" 74LS08 + 62256/6206 design, which ought be capable of doing +32K RAM actually.

The layout would easily fit on a 90x45 mm footprint.

Ah, that's why it seemed familiar. It's amazing how small the board could be.

Steve

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 10:14 am

sjgray wrote:Here's a VIC memory expander that appears to use one of those skinny dip ram chips:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111649699125

Too bad the markings on the chip are hidden.

Steve

Ya, its the same one I said could damage the cart port. It doesn't matter one bit the markings are hidden. Skinny DIP SRAM chips are made by a variety of manufacturers. He used the 256kbit type along with a 74LS08 or 74HCT08.

@Tlovskog:
The behr Bonz had hard gold contacts.

I am old school and don't know of ENIG.

TLovskog · Post by **TLovskog** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 11:40 am

ENIG stands for Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold. Popular Soft Gold or Chemical Gold. It is a surface finish / protection for the whole board instead of solder. The main benefit is actually that it is flat. Usage roared when BGAs where introduced. The difference between the two are the gold thickness. A couple of microns with "hard" and typically 0.05 microns with ENIG.
It is much cheaper though.
The dead give away is the remains of small tracks on the fingers that connects to the plating bar / short circuit bar needed for "real" plated gold. To somewhat counter cost I plan to use OSP as surface protection. It stands for Organic Surface Protection and is like a clear coating. Has it's drawbacks, mainly shelf time. One of the topics for my trip to Shenzhen.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:10 pm

@TLovskog
After carefully looking at my 1541U+, I suspect its gold plating is ENIG considering the description you provide.

Hard plating is a few microns thick while ENIG is 1/20 micron so I think its possible strong contacts such as those from the VIC's cart port would damage the thinner ENIG gold layer. Gold is a pretty soft type of metal.

TLovskog · Post by **TLovskog** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 10:30 am

Yes. ENIG was never intended for that type of work with repeated inserts/removal. It is usable as contact for springs, dome keys and similar.

But still understandable it is used considering price.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 9:26 pm

Since I no longer have a PAL VIC-20, can european people help me choose a pleasant color combination for the PAL menu?

I wanted to have one of the "upper" 8 colors for the background so my best candidate so far is white text with blue border and orange background.

POKE36879,142 to test along with CTRL-2 to set the text color.

srowe · Post by **srowe** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 4:32 am

The blue border causes a bit of a bar on the far left of the background. IMO a yellow border (143) looks better.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 12:10 pm

eslapion wrote:white text with blue border and orange background.

Unless a PAL VIC-20 has been modded to output S-Video, that combination (white on orange) is going to produce terrible pixel tearing. Critical combinations are green, red, cyan, purple and orange and their light variants on either white or black. And, of course, all low-contrast combinations like red on blue, etc., are a big no-no for any text dominated applications (like a menu) as opposed to games.

Edit: The combinations of the remaining six colours (white, black, (light) yellow and (light) blue) would comprise:

Code: Select all

black/blue                low contrast
black/light blue          o.k.
black/yellow              o.k.
black/light yellow        o.k.
black/white               o.k.

blue/light blue           low contrast
blue/yellow               garish
blue/light yellow         garish
blue/white                o.k., and my favourite :)

light blue/yellow         garish
light blue/light yellow   not possible due to hardware contraints, but anyway garish
light blue/white          o.k.

yellow/light yellow       low contrast
yellow/white              low contrast

light yellow/white        low contrast

Some of these combinations require to set background from the upper 8 colours, foreground from the lower 8 colours and clearing the /Inverse bit in VIC register $900F.

Greetings,

Michael

groepaz · Post by **groepaz** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 11:24 am

just stumbled about this thread... could someone throw the rom binary in my direction? seems its not emulated by VICE (not that it makes a lot of sense... but hey, so does using a vic20 in the first place =P)

Denial