Brian, If I understand your comment, I don't think you need an IC to do rom
selection. I think the DAR uses a rotary encoder.
When I first saw the DAR, I wondered about that. I'm pretty sure I found
the part at Digikey.  Very good!
Steve

On Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 3:51 AM Brian White <[email protected]> wrote:

> Gratuitous use of another chip just for 2 OR gates to implement a 4:2
> encoder. It's all less efficient and less practical than the dial-a-rom, in
> that the dar holds 16 roms and doesn't need another ic, and the dar
> programming connection is even simpler and more robust.
>
> But it just amused me to have a direct selector without manually binary
> encoding dip switches because why not? And I didn't want it to require a
> tool to use either like a screwdriver. And of course I always want an open
> source option, and I'm not up to the task of coming up with an open source
> rex-alike but using a Lattice part and the open source toolchain.
>
> It's unfortunate timing but I had already started this at least 3 years
> ago but just never finished it. A non-working version has been sitting in
> that github since 2019. A few weeks ago I finally dusted it off and
> corrected my bonehead pinout error, dialled-in the programming connection
> so it works well (the holes are slightly closer together than the pins, and
> the pattern and amount of offset took some trial & error) and replaced dip
> switches with the slide switch & or gates. I had no idea the dar was in the
> works. Not that it would have stopped me, but I just mean to say this isn't
> a reaction.
>
> It's no competition anyway because only a very few people ever build these
> diy-only things. I want them to exist so the option is there, but almost no
> one actually employs it. So this is not touching anyone's sales. Besides,
> *16* roms. And of course really it's even sillier when rex exists which
> doesn't even need a programmer or adapter to load it's, what, 30? slots?
> But for other platforms 4 is plenty. There's only 2 roms total for the 600
> for example. Still leaves 2 free slots for hacking.
>
> I just added the browser-friendly render of the schematic to the readme so
> you can see the bank-select.
>
> --
> bkw
>
> On Sat, Feb 25, 2023, 8:18 PM Mike Stein <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> How do you select among the 4 images?
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 6:50 PM Brian K. White <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/25/23 10:31, [email protected] wrote:
>>> > Morning all,
>>> >
>>> > I just made this video live this AM. The DARs for the Model T
>>> computers
>>> > have sold out already but my friend is making more.
>>> >
>>> > In this video we take a look at the ‘Dial-A-ROM’ a spiffy new
>>> multi-ROM
>>> > for vintage portable computers. It was designed by the same guy who
>>> did
>>> > the Backpack drive. First, we’ll learn how to use the Dial-A-ROM with
>>> > the ROM images that come preinstalled on it. Then we’ll see how to add
>>> > our own ROM images if we so desire.
>>> >
>>> > *https://youtu.be/CejyLsI0HIw <https://youtu.be/CejyLsI0HIw>
>>> >
>>> > Jeff Birt (Hey Birt!)*
>>> >
>>>
>>> And for the diy-er, I finally vetted these last week:
>>> https://github.com/bkw777/Teeprom/blob/master/4ROM.md
>>>
>>> --
>>> bkw
>>>
>>>

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