[Coco] Repro Run for Wordpak or Wordpak 2+ a Wordpak SE if you will.

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 13 June 2017 11:57:41 CoCo Demus wrote:

> If someone who has a 6845 PBJ wordpak could lend it temporarily for a
> cloning, that would help.
>
I actually have 3, one very early version I had to reburn the character 
rom in before it read right, its in a very thin skinned cream colored 
blow molded case, 6845 powered. One in the black plastic case, 
with "word pak rs" on it, stock composite output, and another just like 
it except for a flying db-9 connector that fed a 13" ttl input magnavox 
amber monitor.

Using the std co80 driver, these things made a postcard sized image in 
the middle of the screen with over 50% of the screen real estate unused.

Every characteristic of the screen had its own coded into the co80 
driver. I figured out which was which, and since it had 2k of ram, there 
was room for a 25th line, and I reduced the blanking on all 4 sides 
which expanded the text until it well filled that 13" monitors screen. I 
did not adjust the clock crystal, so it wound up driving the H-synch at 
around 18.5 Kilohertz because of the saved time.  Unlike going lower in 
frequency, the only thing it did is reduce the crt's anode voltage, 
making it a bit dimmer, but that also was part of the magnification 
since the crt sweep power went down in the same cadence.  I ran it that 
way for quite a few years.

I do not know if my changes to co80 ever made it into the nitros9 repo.

Any way, someone wanting to clone it should make me an offer for one of 
the stockers.  That way you who does the clone can just keep it for 
future reference.  The cream colored one even has an ancient paper 
sticker on it with the serial number.

> the manual has some sketched schematics but no details.
>
> The new clone would require it to allow choosing the address like
> FF50, FF70, the same way I did with the first clone I made.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 2:48 AM, Tormod Volden
> <lists.tormod at gmail.com>
>
> wrote:
> > Hi Mike,
> > I am a happy user of Luis' cloned design of a rare PBJ prototype.
> > Note it uses a "CRT9128" chip. However I'd also prefer a 6845 (or
> > 6545) based design for a few reasons: More close to the actual PBJ
> > products that are around (so we can use the same drivers) and that
> > the 6845/6545 chips seem easier to get and are generally more
> > referenced in retro communities. And hopefully full 80x25 display on
> > all monitors so there is no need for driver tweaks around the lost
> > border columns that Luis mentions. So I am sure interested in one
> > (kit is fine).
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tormod

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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