Foal of un1b0x

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danboid
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by danboid »

Today I fully finished my Uzebox by adding the light pipe. I wrapped it in tin foil except for the front facing edge to improve its brightness and loosely attached it to the PCB with a bit of blu tack.

I work at Salford University as does the guy (Kevin) who printed the light pipe for me. I gave him a quick demo of my Uzebox earlier and I'm giving him a Uzebox PCB later this week. He's going to build his own Uzebox but even better than that is that he said he might get his electronics students to build Uzeboxes! Wouldn't that be something? This is surely one of its ideal use cases.

Are you aware of any other universities or schools that have already used the Uzebox for teaching Alec? Of course, he might decide against it yet but I'll be sure to let you all know if it does happen.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Good job finishing the Uzebox :ugeek:

It does seem like a great school project. If that works out, who knows, maybe we see a new generation of Uzeboxers come around.
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danboid
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by danboid »

Thanks D3thAdd3r!

It'd be a shame if no educational establishments have utilised the Uzebox so it'll be a great honour if I can be at least partly responsible for fixing that omission.

The Uzebox seems to tick pretty much all the important boxes for being an ideal platform for electronics and embedded / games dev education. It's relatively simple to build and cheap to make, its a fully open source, mature and well documented platform with a about as low a barrier to entry as is possible for developing for a console.

You'll likely have noticed that I've been posting about how a £30 TV box running Armbian makes for a perfectly usable Uzebox development machine, thanks to them being able to run Armbian well and run cuzebox at full speed. Of course, the same can be said of the RPi 4 if you're OK paying 4x the price for the addition of GPIO and an extra USB 3.0 port.

The light pipe reminds me of the power LED on the Amiga 500, if you use green LED. Is it exactly the same dimensions on the outside I wonder? Was it an intentional borrow or tip of the hat to the Amiga at all? I'm pretending that it is.
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uze6666
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by uze6666 »

Artcfox wrote: Sun Feb 19, 2023 2:18 am ...so I will either just use a cheap quartz board pre-heater to reflow low temp solder paste, or a $29 Black and Decker toaster oven that I modified into a reflow oven using a Whizooo ControLeo Reflow Oven kit I picked up.
Love the custom control box on that oven!
Today I fully finished my Uzebox by adding the light pipe. I wrapped it in tin foil except for the front facing edge to improve its brightness and loosely attached it to the PCB with a bit of blu tack.
Post a nice pic where we can see that LED I say. :)
Are you aware of any other universities or schools that have already used the Uzebox for teaching Alec? Of course, he might decide against it yet but I'll be sure to let you all know if it does happen.
I vaguely recall a PM discussion I had a long time ago with a teacher that used it in a class. He ordered a batch through Adafruit IIRC. Since I can't seem to search PMs on PHPBB, I can't confirm the details.

Another interesting thing not many peoples know or recall is that the Uzebox was featured in two German Electronics magazines and was one of Make Magazine's project of the Year in 2009 (I think, have to check on the Internet Archive to find it). Eh, it was also use by Redbull in their first Redbull Creation promo. I will try to find those, scan them and post them here for you guys to enjoy.
It'd be a shame if no educational establishments have utilised the Uzebox so it'll be a great honour if I can be at least partly responsible for fixing that omission.

The Uzebox seems to tick pretty much all the important boxes for being an ideal platform for electronics and embedded / games dev education. It's relatively simple to build and cheap to make, its a fully open source, mature and well documented platform with a about as low a barrier to entry as is possible for developing for a console.
Yeah I know. The biggest hurdle to adoption now is the video interface. In 2008, composite (and S-Video to some extent) was still pretty much on all new TVs. Now, not so much alas. Even component output is getting rarer although there was a Uzebox version for that too! (Thanks to Artcfox for the dig).

All that said, the fact that all components for the console can still be sourced easily amazes me (SNES connectors and AD725 abounds on ALiExpress) . But the thing that most flabbergasts me to this day is that the ATmega644 is still in production *and* available in DIP format for almost 20 years now. I recall investigating or using many other AVRs since the beginning of the project. I actually have a graveyard of them as you can see. All of those are out of production now (remember the Xmegas? ). To me it seems like the Atmega644 is in its own way like the 6502 of the 2000's and I can't say that it doesn't makes me happy. :mrgreen:
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danboid
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by danboid »

uze6666 wrote: Sat Feb 25, 2023 7:13 am Yeah I know. The biggest hurdle to adoption now is the video interface. In 2008, composite (and S-Video to some extent) was still pretty much on all new TVs. Now, not so much alas. Even component output is getting rarer although there was a Uzebox version for that too! (Thanks to Artcfox for the dig).

All that said, the fact that all components for the console can still be sourced easily amazes me (SNES connectors and AD725 abounds on ALiExpress) . But the thing that most flabbergasts me to this day is that the ATmega644 is still in production *and* available in DIP format for almost 20 years now. I recall investigating or using many other AVRs since the beginning of the project. I actually have a graveyard of them as you can see. All of those are out of production now (remember the Xmegas? ). To me it seems like the Atmega644 is in its own way like the 6502 of the 2000's and I can't say that it doesn't makes me happy. :mrgreen:
Good choice of chip!

I'm very happy with the s-video to HDMI adapter in bought for £25. I gives me a better picture than using my old Sony TV with s-video input and most modern TVs have a USB port available to power such an adapter such its not that big a hurdle but it would be nice if it wasn't a hurdle to cross for most users.

I recently updated the https://uzebox.org/wiki/RGB_HDMI_Video page to add to it a newly created list of known working svideo -> HDMI adapters that currently just lists my adapter. Please add yours if you have one that works well with the Uzebox.

Saying that the analogue purist in me perversely still prefers to use the s-video on my old TV just so that I can avoid having to plug that adapter in.
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danboid
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by danboid »

As requested by Uze himself, here's a pic of my fully finished Uzebox with its very Amiga 500-esque POWER lightpipe beaming:
Dans_Finished_Uzebox.jpg
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It took much longer than anyone expected but it was worth the effort.

Thanks for everyones help!
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ry755
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by ry755 »

Very nice :D

I have yet to 3D print a case for my Uzebox, it's still just the bare PCB but honestly that kinda adds to the coolness factor of it hehe
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danboid
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by danboid »

Jimmy requested a pic of my populated PCB to assist in ordering his parts so here it is:
Fully_Populated_Uzebox.jpg
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JimmyDansbo
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by JimmyDansbo »

Thank you very much for the picture.

I did actually mean that I would have liked a picture of the bare PCB, but this seems to be even better. :-D
It seems there are a few different versions of the board, is there any chance you could point me to the correct BOM for this board?

Thanks.
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danboid
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Re: Foal of un1b0x

Post by danboid »

This is the PCB I'm sending to you:
bareUBpcb.jpg
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For the BOM go to https://uzebox.org/download.htm and download the F5 revision of the Uzebox reference design:

https://uzebox.org/website/schematics/U ... -1.3.3.zip
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