Help for bebox replica

@lorezan / @Dr_Slump - you can see these on the PCB with the blinken lights.If you look on the right side, there are two white push buttons. I think the reset always worked, but the interrupt probably didn’t work port PR8.x (or does it drop in to HDL? I can’t remember…)

To reset you have to press both buttons.
About the Interrupt button, i’m not sure it works in DR8, i’ll try later.

I had a slightly hellish soldering session last night (I am not a natural electronic engineer, and I always forget that given enough time and try to do more soldering…) and after blowing a few LED’s (how do you even do that? By not using a multi meter and instead a random 3V li-ion battery you have lying about to test the circuit before you put the resistors on.) I have one side soldered. I ran out of 220 ohm resistors (2 short, I only has 22 and 16 are on the breadboard) and apparently the cheap chinese resistors I have flat out just don’t work, so I had to bodge in a couple of 100’s over the top of the ones that didn’t work)… should be okay for the POC.

It got too late so I left soldering the rest for another day. But not I have one done, I learned a bunch of stuff and the second will be neater.

Looking at the document @lorezan provided (I remember having a hard copy of this with my BeBox) I think the BeBox must have used the 4 shift registers in line. You can do this by connecting one of the pins to the data pin of the next chip in the sequence. My breadboard does this with 2 chips, but apparently the BeBox used 4 in sequence.

Front Panel Port (J1)
Pin I/O Signal Name Pin I/O Signal Name
1 O PowerLED+ 2 NA PowerLED–
3 O DiskLED+ 4 NA DiskLED–
5 I Interrupt SW 6 NA GND
7 I Reset SW 8 NA Reset RTN

9 O LED_D0 10 NA +5V
11 O LED_D1 12 NA +5V
13 O LED_D2 14 NA +5V
This will be clock, data and sync

15 O LED_D3 16 NA GND
17 O LED_D4 18 NA GND
19 O LED_D5 20 NA GND
21 O LED_D6 22 NA GND
23 O LED_D7 24 NA GND
This will be a common ground, plus a ground for each bank of 8 LED’s

25 NA Reserved 26 NA Reserved

Anyway - installing KiCad, so will hopefully get a board designed and get some cheap Chinese service to make some for me. (PcbWay?! that gets a lot of press these days.) I will assess if getting the components picked and placed works out or not. I’m not going to do SMD soldering myself - put it that way. So it’ll either be what I can solder, or what I can get soldered.

If I do go that far, I’ll sell the boards at cost to anyone interested. It’ll more than likely require an Arduino or another break out board for the comms though.

NB - this will not be a drop in replacement for a BeBox front panel. It’ll be something to base that design on (probably.)

So, roughly… looks like I can get something max size of 100mm x 100mm and 10pcs for about $5 plus $10 shipping (china post, that might be a long lead time), with no components placed. I calculate the BeBox panel is about 145mm x 125mm, so it is too small. Any bigger and the price hikes massively. So, might be able to do a design where the boards can be flipped 90 degrees and use two to make one panel (sounds harder)… or just live with the smaller size (<-- probably this one). I’ll look at manufacturing when I get a design sorted though, so might be able to do something else.

Don’t forget to test the is_computer_on_fire() function, should bad things happen here! :sweat_smile:

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Can I assume you at least used flux when soldering? I always grab a syringe of MG Chemicals from amazon… easy to clean up with isopropyl alcohol after and your solder joints will be easier to make, avoid lead free solder unless you know what you are doing. The lead free type balls up too easy and doesn’t flow to the parts as well.

One thing I’ve learned with components is if you need 50 of something like a resistor you may as well order 1000 of them. For instance I needed 82k and 18k resistors for a voltage regulator recently 1000 of each was $7 total from digikey even. LCSC is even cheaper on components like that also you can get simple components pre assembled from JLCPCB with LCSC parts (note you have to use thier basic tier parts but that’s fine for LEDs).

A rather hilarious mix up on my end was that I ordered some 200ohm resistors for LEDs… and ended up with 402 resistors… they are like grains of sand and basically fit entirely between the pads of a 805 part… so I soldered them to the 805 pads it’s quite funny to look at but they work.

summing up … I built the prototype following the author’s scheme (and I’m sure it works … we went over it again and another engineer to be sure)
IMG_20200430_102115

… the problem is that connecting everything to a pc where there is beos I have no results … I don’t know if the program that passed me @caleb
it works correctly (since when I exit the program it gives me an error) …
Since Daniel Switkin gave me the source code of HIS program, he would prefer to use that … only that I have no idea how to get the binary to use it under beos.
If anyone can do me the favor of compiling the source and giving me the binary I would be extremely grateful
I leave you the for the source code
https://www.classicdevicesclub.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/GeekLights.zip

thank you all !!!

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FYI, some posts had been moderated because you’re a relatively new user and posted lots of links to the same website. I saw that only now, and made the posts visible to everyone.

thanks … I don’t spam but I only insert links to show other users where to find programs and help for the project

I show you the errors generated by the program that I found DIFFERENT from that of the author who should manage the blinkenlights

Certainly it has been modified by someone … but these errors are not normal

IMG_20200501_113622 IMG_20200501_113143 IMG_20200501_113127 IMG_20200501_113116 IMG_20200501_113108

@Dr_Slump did you compile from source or is this the version that was already compiled?

I have a BeOS VM, but it’s under PCEM, and there is no easy way to get that file to the emulator because your website is using ssl. I’ll try to ftp it to the VM.

Does it always die, or just with the board connected?

I found the program ALREADY COMPILED which is a reworking of the original version (I found it like this) …
The program generates the error every time I close it, and I am sure that the circuit I built, works (the scheme is that of the author 's site)

another version of the GeekLightsNG program that I found in the zip that @caleb had indicated to me but tells me that he needs a library to startIMG_20200501_144638

This second one is possibly built for BONE, I think? libsocket.so sounds a bit suspicious anyway.

GeekLightsNG was compiled on a NetServer
system

@Dr_Slump - okay, I managed to get the source on to my BeOS VM. So, the NG I have no idea why it wants libsocket, but I think that lib is part of BONE. I can’t find it on plain vanilla R5.03 with netserver.

Your other code - this looks really old. I think it was circa R3, as the project was using some really old libraries (libbe.so.LIB, libroot.so.LIB and thingls like glue-noinit.a, init_term_dyn.a and start_dyn.a) All of that stuff is a hang over from BeOS PowerPC and the MetroWerks compilers used by that - R3.x used the MetroWerks compilers still, and PE format executable. R4 moved to gcc and ELF. So no one has built this in this version century!!! So I created a project (you can do this too) and it compiles without changes… But is still crashes. I think the code is running okay, because from what I can see in the debugger, it gets to the GeekWindow::QuitRequestsd() methot, then returns to the main function and deletes the app. But as part of deleting the app it crashed with a segment violation. I have no idea why it is crashing. It looks like it is in the code that cleans up.

Capture1
This is what the new project should look like.

Capture2
Ran the app and the debugger correctly stops on the first line… if you then run it it shows the window:

Capture3

I then attempted to close the app (having set some break points)

Capture4

I hit the breakpoint in the Window’s QuitRequested()

Capture6

We get to the point past the app running - we are now outside of the main app loop, and deleting the instance.

Capture7

Then this happens…

Capture8

This might help - look at the error number:

Capture9

Suffice to say - I don’t know and I can’t help as I don’t have the hardware to test this on (nothing with a parallel port), nor do I have the hardware you built.

after a night (night) to test 5 computers to see if it was a parallel port problem, ram, processor that maybe was not compatible, various BeOs distributions … I can guarantee with certainty that the program DOES NOT WORK … … so, avoiding to waste any more time, I switch to another project regarding the blinkenlights (obviously not based on arduino … I follow the old road of the signals on the serial) … I keep you informed anyway on my blog

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I just tried and the other NG source compiles really easily too and crashes on shut down.

forget it … I don’t want to waste time anymore … instead I found the “pulsebox” project that works perfectly on the software side … I launched the program and on the serial it gives me a train of impulses if listened to on 9600.8.n.1
I therefore consider him skilled for the next step, that is, to build the base of the printed circuitphoto5877354989150646775

Finally, after days of testing and varied anger, we managed to make a prototype of flashing lights work … If you want to know the rest of the story go here

or if you want to see step by step, all the steps that I will do for the construction of the bebox replica go here

unfortunately it’s all in Italian but I think you use google traslator you read it quite well (there are also many images that are good for you)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inHA2ALkzDg&feature=emb_logo

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