Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

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tjewell
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Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by tjewell »

Hi all! Reading through November 1984's Dragon User, I stumbled across a review of Premier's Sprite Graphics Board - and that was a new one on me! It's basically a TMS9929A in a cartridge. Has anyone got, or even seen one of these? I've found one chap in the US on Facebook who has one, and that's it.

Here's a link to the article: https://archive.org/details/dragon-user ... 9/page/n13

Cheers, Tony
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robcfg
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Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by robcfg »

That’s quite an interesting device!

Can you ask the gentleman in the US to take some nice pictures of the device and the board?

There has been also an expansion for the CPC with a similar video chip, so with the pictures of the actual device and some help from MSX and CPC people, we may be able to learn how it works.
Pernod70
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Location: Croydon, UK

Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by Pernod70 »

Did any further details and a ROM dump ever surface for this?
tjewell
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Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by tjewell »

Let me nudge the owner again. There's a small chance he'll be in the UK at the same time as the Dragon Meetup, which would be wonderful if he could - then we could actually see it in action! I'll keep you posted.
tjewell
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Location: Cambridge, England

Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by tjewell »

Yes, looks like he'll definitely be there! @pernod70 - not sure who you are IRL :) Will you be coming to the event? If not, a bit closer to the date, have a think what you'd like to know about the board and we'll do our best to get all the photos and dumps you might want on the day!
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robcfg
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Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by robcfg »

Do we know which kind of chips does it have so we can check our eprom programmers?
Pernod70
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Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by Pernod70 »

tjewell wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:31 pm Yes, looks like he'll definitely be there! @pernod70 - not sure who you are IRL :) Will you be coming to the event?
I'm attending the Acorn event the week before so unlikely to escape the family for both weekends.

From the photos on FB there's the ROM to dump, and get as many hires photos of the board as possible, ensuring IC's are readable along with any crystal values. There's an X1 and X2. The board doesn't look fully populated which may be an issue, hopefully any documentation may contain some technical details. The ROM is likely a 2764 but unclear from current photos.
dlinsley
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Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:15 pm
Location: Seattle, USA (formerly Chester-le-Street, UK)

Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by dlinsley »

Hi,

I've just uploaded the manual and example programmes to the Upload section. I'm borrowing an EPROM programmer from a colleague at work tomorrow, and so hopefully will get clean dumps of the ROMs. I have two, both 2764 EPROMs, and so hopefully they dump identically or at least to sane diffs when dissassembled and not corrupted.

Unfortunately I just realized - after 27 years of having these boards! - that there is no cart edge connector. The boards connect via a 40way socket to IDC cable, but I never received the edge connector adapter. The pinouts are in the upload, so we'll need to fabricate the adapter to bring the board online.

Cheers,
David.
Pernod70
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Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by Pernod70 »

dlinsley wrote: Wed May 08, 2019 4:42 am I've just uploaded the manual and example programmes to the Upload section.
Thanks for those. It's interesting to see it was originally developed for use with the UK101/SB, so have posted a link to it in their forum http://osiweb.org/osiforum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=482. Hope your ROM is the Dragon version, though a UK101 would be a good find too.

I've implemented what I can from the information in the manual, just need the ROM to get it running. The manual states crystal X2 is 10.7MHz, can you verify this as the TMS9929A is usually used with a 10.738635MHz crystal.
dlinsley
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Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:15 pm
Location: Seattle, USA (formerly Chester-le-Street, UK)

Re: Premier's Sprite Graphics Board

Post by dlinsley »

Added the ROMs and some details in the same upload thread
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