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Old 31st Mar 2021, 11:10 am   #141
SiriusHardware
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

No, Germany. Three of the four devices I ordered from there were OK and one faulty, which was replaced immediately when I reported the problem. As I mentioned they were actually the AMD version (AM9111) which until recently were ealier to get hold of than 2111s but they were never especially cheap.

In one of the threads lying around here there is an Arduino based 2111 tester which I can track down if you want to try it, but it sounds like you already have some means of testing SRAMS, at least 2114s, from the way you mentioned that you had tested some of those at both low speed and 'real' Triton speed.
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Old 31st Mar 2021, 11:34 am   #142
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by SiriusHardware View Post
No, Germany. Three of the four devices I ordered from there were OK and one faulty, which was replaced immediately when I reported the problem. As I mentioned they were actually the AMD version (AM9111) which until recently were ealier to get hold of than 2111s but they were never especially cheap.

In one of the threads lying around here there is an Arduino based 2111 tester which I can track down if you want to try it, but it sounds like you already have some means of testing SRAMS, at least 2114s, from the way you mentioned that you had tested some of those at both low speed and 'real' Triton speed.
I have been testing my 2114 in circuit using a PIC18F46K22 micro controller running at 64MHZ, and taking the 8080A cpu and the 8228 system controller off the main Triton board, this way I was able to test the memory and I/O. address logic which looks good.

Is there still stock at the Germany seller ?
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Old 31st Mar 2021, 11:47 am   #143
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

Good system, techniques like that are so much easier when everything in the target system is in sockets. Maybe you can verify your 2111s in the same way, assuming there are already some fitted of course.

I won't be able to check that seller until I get home, perhaps one of the others who bought from the same German source can have a look and point you to it if there is any remaining stock.
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Old 31st Mar 2021, 11:54 am   #144
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

I just found an old link but the original German seller doesn't seem to have any, sorry. Those I do see here in the UK and around the world generally seem prohibitively expensive.
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Old 31st Mar 2021, 12:17 pm   #145
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by SiriusHardware View Post
Good system, techniques like that are so much easier when everything in the target system is in sockets. Maybe you can verify your 2111s in the same way, assuming there are already some fitted of course.

I won't be able to check that seller until I get home, perhaps one of the others who bought from the same German source can have a look and point you to it if there is any remaining stock.

I still got to check out the Video Memory on the Triton it 7 x 2102-2 giving 1k a massive of 64 chars by 16 lines, unfortunately these chips in my Triton are soldered in.
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Old 31st Mar 2021, 5:00 pm   #146
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

I bought my 2102 from insa_electronics on the bay and they still have some listed in case you have any failures.

As regards 2111 then I got mine from utsource - the prices are not too bad but, shipping and import duty (usually £15 on top of shipping) make small orders impractical.

https://www.utsource.net/sch/AM9111.html
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Old 31st Mar 2021, 7:37 pm   #147
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by Timbucus View Post
I bought my 2102 from insa_electronics on the bay and they still have some listed in case you have any failures.

As regards 2111 then I got mine from utsource - the prices are not too bad but, shipping and import duty (usually £15 on top of shipping) make small orders impractical.

https://www.utsource.net/sch/AM9111.html
I will take a look, I know you said you are using 2114 on your Triton is there a circuit diagram out there for the changes required ?
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Old 31st Mar 2021, 10:10 pm   #148
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

As mine was a reproduction board the difference was baked in so not a trivial change perhaps - U25 is is an extra LS138 instead of one of the RAM chips and U26 is a LS08 instead of another and U16-U19 are then rewired.

Here is the relevant bit of the diagram I was supplied with the board....

Click image for larger version

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for those following along the original circuit is on the bottom left of Page 30 of the ETI article.

Click image for larger version

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Old 31st Mar 2021, 11:41 pm   #149
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by Timbucus View Post
As mine was a reproduction board the difference was baked in so not a trivial change perhaps - U25 is is an extra LS138 instead of one of the RAM chips and U26 is a LS08 instead of another and U16-U19 are then rewired.

Here is the relevant bit of the diagram I was supplied with the board....

Attachment 230628

for those following along the original circuit is on the bottom left of Page 30 of the ETI article.

Attachment 230629
Thanks I think that would be hard to do on the original Triton board, I might just stick with my external memory boards based on 2114.
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Old 1st Apr 2021, 11:35 am   #150
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by ortek_service View Post
If those chips under the clear adhesive / glob-top were silicon die, that was wire-bonded to the pads rather than soldered (Even zooming into image, it's not detailed enough to tell), then the die is usually glued down underneath it. So that adhesive (or solder if soldered) must have failed as well.
Back to those Hall sensor modules I put some high res photos here

Hall sensor chip close up

Hall Sensor module

Hall sensor front side close up

They are very small, the two large rectangles in the chip close up photo must be the sensor itself.
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Old 2nd Apr 2021, 2:48 am   #151
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

Thanks for those - Rather unexpected to see the bare sensor IC die in such detail.

Unfortunately, it seems the clear glob-top makes it difficult to see much under it very well, but I am thinking that these weren't actually wire bonded but wire either soldered-down Surface-mount style. Or possibly attached with silver-loaded conductive epoxy - which often seems to crack with age, sometimes after not too long a period. But still in all cases, not too easy to re-attach one.


I did have another thought about the pulses from these - Do they produce a (different) pulse when released?

Otherwise - if they only give a single pulse when pressed - then there would be no way of knowing if key had been released or was being held-down.
And so you wouldn't be able to have any auto-repeat on keys being held down making any scrolling via cursor keys or movement in any games etc. software a bit difficult.
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Old 6th Apr 2021, 12:23 pm   #152
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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I did have another thought about the pulses from these - Do they produce a (different) pulse when released?

Otherwise - if they only give a single pulse when pressed - then there would be no way of knowing if key had been released or was being held-down.
And so you wouldn't be able to have any auto-repeat on keys being held down making any scrolling via cursor keys or movement in any games etc. software a bit difficult.
The Key switches apart from Shift, Shift-Lock, CTL, RPT and Break keys only produce a pulse when they are pressed and do not produce another pulse until released and re-pressed. There is a repeat key (RPT) that is connected to a NE555 timer ic.

On the Keyboard there is a TTL 7403 of which one of the outputs (pin 3) is dead so yet another TTL chip that has suffered, so thats 6 TTL chips so far.

I thought the TTL 74xxx logic family was very robust ?
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Old 6th Apr 2021, 4:19 pm   #153
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by GeraldSommariva View Post

On the Keyboard there is a TTL 7403 of which one of the outputs (pin 3) is dead so yet another TTL chip that has suffered, so thats 6 TTL chips so far.

I thought the TTL 74xxx logic family was very robust ?

Well TTL IC's normally are fairly robust - compared to MOS types (especially more complex Memory / Processor / custom gate array etc. devices)

Although it does seem that your PSU may have gone a bit over-voltage at some point, so may be lucky if it is mostly TTL IC's that have failed and not too many expensive & rarer larger MOS ones.
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Old 8th Apr 2021, 3:45 pm   #154
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by ortek_service View Post

Well TTL IC's normally are fairly robust - compared to MOS types (especially more complex Memory / Processor / custom gate array etc. devices)

Although it does seem that your PSU may have gone a bit over-voltage at some point, so may be lucky if it is mostly TTL IC's that have failed and not too many expensive & rarer larger MOS ones.
Turns out the 7403 is ok I forgot its open collector added a pull and the output is ok

I found another usb microscope today, took another close up of the hall sensor chip looks good check it out Hall effect keyboard sensor chip

Do you think it was soldered-down Surface-mount style as I might have ago to see if I can re-solder one.
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Old 8th Apr 2021, 4:06 pm   #155
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

That's a really good image of the top-surface (even better than previous one)
And it looks like there's 4 'via' holes at the corners that have either filled with conductive epoxy or solder - no evidence of specialist bond-wire pads at least!

Can you get a similar close-up photo of the underside of this 'chip' / the ceramic alumina substrate's pads ?

You could try to see if it's solder, to see if it melts - but need to be careful, as pads can leech away if heated by just a soldering-iron tip and aren't protected with tin-plating etc. And ceramic substrate really needs heating with a background heater / hot air, as it's a very good thermal conductor so makes soldering with just an iron quite difficult.

Plus, if pads on underside don't extend beyond edges of the chip, then it can't really be fitted using a soldering iron, but would require solder-paste and hot air, or very small amounts of conductive-epoxy.
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Old 8th Apr 2021, 4:15 pm   #156
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

I added another close up of the chip with the glue stuff still on, it looks like the glue stuff gets on the underside between the chip ant the ceramic mini board.

Hall sensor with glue stuff on
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Old 8th Apr 2021, 5:22 pm   #157
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Originally Posted by ortek_service View Post

Can you get a similar close-up photo of the underside of this 'chip' / the ceramic alumina substrate's pads ?
yes, other side, mini circuit board with no chip on, and few more takes of circuit side.

https://sites.google.com/view/transa...ensor-module-6

https://sites.google.com/view/transa...ensor-module-7

https://sites.google.com/view/transa...ensor-module-8


I have solder-paste and hot air soldering station had to solder one of those surface mount usb connectors on a external hard drive may be it will work.
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Old 8th Apr 2021, 7:29 pm   #158
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

Well that does appear quite strange, in that there doesn't appear to be any pads on the underside of the chip/die.
And that there's just a 'via' hole thorough it from the top surface.

So it seems like something conductive is dropped down the holes to the substrate below - as you can see the circular marks on the pads of that (which I presume aren't holes through the substrate itself?)

And I presume the holes in the die aren't just filled with the covering clear glob-top (Although maybe they are effectively plated all the way down, and only the bottom part attaches to the substrate - possibly be just being forced into some conductive epoxy on the pads - or possibly solder paste and reflowed).
As I can't see it being very easy to force solder or conductive epoxy down from the top of the chip.
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Old 8th Apr 2021, 9:13 pm   #159
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

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Well that does appear quite strange, in that there doesn't appear to be any pads on the underside of the chip/die.
And that there's just a 'via' hole thorough it from the top surface.

So it seems like something conductive is dropped down the holes to the substrate below - as you can see the circular marks on the pads of that (which I presume aren't holes through the substrate itself?)

And I presume the holes in the die aren't just filled with the covering clear glob-top (Although maybe they are effectively plated all the way down, and only the bottom part attaches to the substrate - possibly be just being forced into some conductive epoxy on the pads - or possibly solder paste and reflowed).
As I can't see it being very easy to force solder or conductive epoxy down from the top of the chip.
A thought , if I go ahead and re-attach the chip I will need to know which is which pin ?

From the photo I assume the pins which connect to many things are the power rails, so the top two.
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Old 9th Apr 2021, 12:59 am   #160
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Default Re: The Transam Triton Personal Computer

If you look at the 4 'via' holes, one is offset a bit from corners of a rectangle.

And the photo of the ceramic substrate you posted,has these marks in the same arrangement, so there is only 1 rotation when all 4 connections will line-up with the existing marks on the pads.

Plus I notice from the previous photo, that there is a shiny, solder-like, fill of the chip's 'via' hole connections.
But they do have a very flat top, rather than a classic dome top of solder joints on circular pads.
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