Slogger Prototypes, PCBs and Roms

[Arcadian]

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to acquire the remainder of the "stock" that belonged to BBC/Electron hardware specialists "Slogger Computers", the company founded by Andrew Hilbig in the early 1980s and taken over by the late Bill Bradbury in the mid-1990s.

When I first arranged the trip to Hertfordshire to view the items, I dreamt about discovering mountains of brand new add-ons and accessories for the Electron (RAM Cards? Disk Interfaces? Click cartridges? Heck, maybe even a pile of Electrons pre-installed with the mythical "Stop Press" add-on?).

However, despite scouring every inch of the location (workshop, shed, garage) in what turned out to be two separate visits, I'm sorry to report that there was barely a completed/assembled product to be seen, whatsoever ...

Though what we did find was a stack of empty/unpopulated Slogger PCBs, plus a good number of tubes containing various microchips and ICs (so my guess is that when the Slogger operation was winding down in the late nineties/early noughties, the intention was to make items to order ... though I'm doubtful whether [m]any items were in fact made/sold during that period at all, as myself and others [Hello Dave E!] found it IMPOSSIBLE to get a Price List out of Slogger around that time).

In addition to the PCBs we also discovered a box of early/prototype Slogger boards, which give an interesting insight into the "evolution" of certain interfaces.

There was also a large assortment of Roms/Eproms, many of which are bound to be "MIA" (so watch out for rom dumps on STH soon).

But perhaps most intriguing of all were the boxfuls of 5.25" and 3.5" floppy discs I found, some of which appear to contain source code for various Slogger/Opus products.

So even though my visit(s) didn't deliver exactly what I'd hoped for/expected, it was definitely worthwhile and I thought that some of you would be interested in seeing a selection of photographs from the "haul" (see below!).

And finally, I can bring news of one very exciting development: I sent a batch of PCBs for one of the most sought-after Slogger upgrades to a certain STH Forum member, and challenged him to build a new version of the interface, by populating the existing PCB with "modern" components.

By the sound of things it's gone very well, so I've a feeling that said member will be along shortly to make an announcement!

[Prototypes]

Here we have a bunch of prototype versions of the Click! cartridge, several prototype builds of the Slogger Pegasus DFS Cartridge (including one that's been assembled on a breadboard!) plus a few 'mystery' boards which I don't recognise (any suggestions?). Mystery unit 'B' has a 1770 on it, so it might be a [very] early prototype of the Slogger 1770 DFS Interface.

Slogger_Click_Prototype_WithMysteryAttachment.JPG (61.17 KiB) Viewed 4434 times

Slogger_Click_Prototype_WithMysteryAttachments.JPG (49.74 KiB) Viewed 4430 times

Slogger_Click_Prototypes.JPG (69.66 KiB) Viewed 4431 times

Slogger_JSIF_Prototypes-Front.JPG (46.47 KiB) Viewed 4431 times

Slogger_Pegasus400_Breadboard-Front.JPG (43.25 KiB) Viewed 4431 times

Slogger_Pegasus400_Prototypes-Front.JPG (65.57 KiB) Viewed 4431 times

Slogger_RomRamCarts_Prototypes.JPG (54.28 KiB) Viewed 4430 times

Slogger_Mystery_A-Front.JPG (49.83 KiB) Viewed 4429 times

Slogger_Mystery_B-Front.JPG (55.75 KiB) Viewed 4424 times

Slogger_Mystery_C-Front.JPG (58.43 KiB) Viewed 4425 times

[Arcadian]

[PCBs]

Slogger_Click_PCBs.JPG (56.13 KiB) Viewed 4423 times

Slogger_Click_PCBs_WithResistors.JPG (57.08 KiB) Viewed 4424 times

Slogger_JSIF_PCBs.JPG (49.59 KiB) Viewed 4422 times

Slogger_MRB_PCBs.JPG (50.68 KiB) Viewed 4424 times

Slogger_Pegasus400_PCBs.JPG (42.18 KiB) Viewed 4425 times

Slogger_Plus2_PCBs.JPG (39.39 KiB) Viewed 4421 times

Slogger_RS423Interface_PCBs.JPG (49.59 KiB) Viewed 4428 times

Slogger_StopPress64_PCBs.JPG (49.48 KiB) Viewed 4423 times

Slogger_1770DiscInterface_PCBs.JPG (50.33 KiB) Viewed 4424 times

Slogger_UNKNOWN_PCBs.JPG (46.48 KiB) Viewed 4423 times

[Arcadian]

[Miscellaneous stuff]

Slogger_4SocketStripsForRomboxPlus.JPG (57.7 KiB) Viewed 4421 times

Slogger_Labels1.JPG (49.15 KiB) Viewed 4420 times

Slogger_Labels2.JPG (44.2 KiB) Viewed 4421 times

Slogger_Plus1Protectors.JPG (32.29 KiB) Viewed 4415 times

Slogger_Ribbons.JPG (53.73 KiB) Viewed 4416 times

Slogger_RibbonSockets_1.JPG (42.19 KiB) Viewed 4414 times

Slogger_RibbonSockets_2.JPG (55.13 KiB) Viewed 4411 times

Slogger_StopPress64_x2-Front.JPG (61.78 KiB) Viewed 4411 times

[Arcadian]

[Slogger Roms]

Slogger_Roms_1.JPG (65.71 KiB) Viewed 4404 times

Slogger_Roms_2.JPG (62.38 KiB) Viewed 4406 times

Slogger_Roms_3.JPG (59.39 KiB) Viewed 4407 times

Slogger_Roms_4.JPG (81.59 KiB) Viewed 4403 times

Slogger_Roms_5.JPG (40.18 KiB) Viewed 4405 times

Slogger_Roms_6.JPG (38.68 KiB) Viewed 4405 times

Slogger_Roms_7.JPG (50.19 KiB) Viewed 4405 times

Slogger_Roms_Click.jpg (103.7 KiB) Viewed 4405 times

Slogger_Roms_PrinterRomOnBoard.JPG (39.96 KiB) Viewed 4405 times

Slogger_Roms_StopPressInRomCarrier.JPG (45.32 KiB) Viewed 4407 times

Slogger_Roms_8.JPG (48.85 KiB) Viewed 4405 times

[Arcadian]

[Other Roms]

Slogger_MiscRoms_1.JPG (55.9 KiB) Viewed 4410 times

Slogger_MiscRoms_2.JPG (61.82 KiB) Viewed 4408 times

Slogger_MiscRoms_3.JPG (49.11 KiB) Viewed 4401 times

Slogger_MiscRoms_4.JPG (49.38 KiB) Viewed 4406 times

Slogger_MiscRoms_5.JPG (51.25 KiB) Viewed 4402 times

Slogger_MiscRoms_6.JPG (43.31 KiB) Viewed 4401 times

Slogger_MiscRoms_7.JPG (49.08 KiB) Viewed 4397 times

[Arcadian]

There were some other bits and pieces that I didn't photograph e.g. circuit diagrams for the Stop Press and 1770 Disk Interface), a box full of manuals for Slogger roms/upgrades, a Logic Analyser for the Beeb ("Lucifer"), various other connectors, some boxed Rom/Rom Cartridge products, plus 100 or so Electrons (in various states of repair!) ...

... but if I ever get round to taking some more snaps I'll update this post.

[Greybeard]

My Goodness! What priceless gems!

[sorvad]

Strewth, 100+ Elks, you need a garage just for them !

Good stuff though.

[retroclinic]

Hell that was a good haul! I had my Granny chocka full to the brim, and I still weep at some of the stuff we left behind, especially in the attic.

Nice stuff there, expecially the batches of PCBs. Mystery_B looks like a 1770 DFS kit, and mystery_c looks like an Opus DDOS board? Not gonig to run short of Electron Joystick Interfaces in the near future then

On the disks...have you come across anything mentioing sourcecode for any of the DFS/ADFS/DDFS products? Epsecially Challenger would be good?

Mark.

[AlanD]

Hello i have never posted here before usually just lurk in the background ,but am very much interested ,is the same Bill Bradbury who also owned BradStreet computers and Levell electronics? if it was then i worked with him for some years in the early 90's, i know he lived in herts and his house had a name which escapes me now

remebered the house name four hazels i think

[retroclinic]

Hi.

Yes I think he's the guy, certainly had a lot of Levell Stuff around.

Mark.

[regregex]

Mystery C is an EO 118 disc interface which I've got and runs under the weird "EDOS". A 74LS00 should go in the socket. This is very, very promising for the contents of the ROMs and discs. *thrills*

Could mystery A be a WD1770 to 8271/8272 interface with a super-nasty data separator?

The dates on the DDOS ROMs are also interesting. Super find Dave, best of luck sorting it all out and getting the boards built!

--Greg

[Arcadian]

Alan: yes, it was the same Bill Bradbury whom you refer to (though he sadly passed away in 2006).

Greg: so I did have one of those EDOS interfaces after all, eh? When I get a chance I'll slap one of those ICs into the board, blow an EDOS rom and try and get it working with one of my Beebs.

Mark/Greg + Wouter (who've all asked about the types of software which I appear to have source code backups for): the majority of the discs that struck me as sounding very interesting have been archived in Slogger "DDCPM" format - a tool produced and marketed by Slogger that increased disc capacity to 784k and directory size to 256 entries, though Opus DDOS and a Z80 2nd Processor(!) was required.

But unfortunately, I've yet to locate the actual DDCPM software, so I've been unable to access any of the files (I do appear to have a backup of the DDCPM source, but ironically, that's been archived on a DDCPM format disc too! ).

Now I've been liaising with Jason Watton and the most recent pre-release of Omniflop (v2.2c) contains preliminary/untested support for DDCPM. But my PC w/ 5.25 Drive recently got damaged, and this has prevented me from trying out Jason's code. I'll will try and get a new (old) PC sorted out soon (however, even if I do end up being able to produce some DDCPM disc images, there'd still be the small matter of locating the DDCPM software, which I think would still be required if we are to make any sense of the contents!).

Anyway, according to the labels on the discs, below is a list of what I appear to have (there were also a couple of discs that seem to be in yet another unknown format, but I want to get the DDCPM stuff sussed first). There's a chance there may be more source code on some of the other discs that were in other discboxes, but I've a feeling it's unlikely.

[DDCPM format]
Challenger 3 DD BIOS v2.00
CPM DDOS Disk Protection
DD BIOS Test Disk
Documentation for Slogger CLICK
Double Density Source Programs - Backup Disk
RX Documentation OR DDCPM Install Utilities (as the RX came out well after DDCPM, I suspect it's the DDCPM stuff that's been overwritten)
Source code for DiskEd
Source Code for Slogger CLICK (BBC Master 128)
Source Code for Slogger CLICK v1.00 (Acorn Electron)
Source Code for Slogger CLICK v1.01 (Acorn Electron)
Source Code for Slogger CLICK v1.02 (Acorn Electron)
Source Code for Slogger CLICK v1.03 (Acorn Electron)
Source Code for Slogger CLICK v1.04 (Acorn Electron)
Source code for SLOGGER DDCPM v1.01

[Other non-standard/unknown format]
Challenger 3 DD BIOS v1.01 + DDCPM v1.01
CPM-DDOS Source Programs
System Disk - Development Utilities

Before my old PC got smashed up, I did manage to archive all of the above to 7Mb FDI files and they appeared to read in without any problems, so the data should be 'good'.

Finally, for anyone interested, here is some more info about the DDCPM format, lifted straight from the manual:

> Tracks 0-2 formatted Single Density
> Tracks 3-159 formatted Double Density
>
> Single density tracks are 10 x 256 byte sectors per track
> Sector skew of 2
>
> Double Density tracks are 10 x 512 byte sectors per track
> Sector skew of 1
> Sector interleave of 2
>
> CP/M allocation unit block size of 4k
> 256 Directory entries (filenames)

(apparently it was a real bitch for Jason to write support for!!)

[retroclinic]

Hi.

It should be possible to write a sector dump routine that can pull the hard data off and dump it to a file, on an actual Beeb, with OSWORD &7F calls. Once they're on a PC, someone with PC programming skillz who understood the format - like Jason - could do a conversion program that converted all the file data to an ADFS .adl or .dat image.

I'd give the beeb side of that a go, but would need some samples of the disks to work with.....

Mark.

[Arcadian]

Thanks for the info, but like you say, we'll need some samples first (and my PC w/ 5.25 drive is currently out-of-action!).

As soon as I have some news I'll report back here!

[Elk Towers]

Looking at the two click prototypes with add-ons

the first one looks like it has a user port added,ic socket has 40 pins (6522?) idc socket has 20 pins (user port for a mouse?)

the second looks like an RTC add on maybe?

Nick

[Greybeard]

Pure Gold, the lot of it!

[jimmydeath]

Wow!

Isn't the unknown PCB an early version 64k upgrade before they cut out one of the corners (e.g. in the version D)

I notice that at least one of the circuits uses a PAL, were you able to get the binaries for it/them?

For those of us that enjoy soldering will there be an opportunity to buy a bare PCB?

regards

James

[AlanD]

Hello Arcadian

Thanks for taking the time to confirm was the same Bill Bradbury very sad news

AlanD

[MartinB]

...I sent a batch of PCBs for one of the most sought-after Slogger upgrades to a certain STH Forum member...

Yes, I am that 'certain member' and without further ado I would like to draw your attention to this post in the 'For Sale' section of the forum

Martin

[CMcDougall]

There was also a large assortment of Roms/Eproms, many of which are bound to be "MIA" (so watch out for rom dumps on STH soon).

did you (or anyone) ever find Advanced Computer Products DFS 2.10 for elk?

bloody great find Dave, another load of stuff that would of been 'lost in time' , & saved from land fill

i take it the Slogger400 was like a 'copy' of ACP3/4 for the electron? but never actually seen the light of day?

anyways

now, when i get my #3 cart, who's up for making 143 menu driven games discs

[jgharston]

But unfortunately, I've yet to locate the actual DDCPM software, so I've been unable to access any of the files (I do appear to have a backup of the DDCPM source, but ironically, that's been archived on a DDCPM format disc too! ).

I was updating my DiskToImg code to image DDCPM disks with the mix between single and double density tracks, and was doing some random browsing for "DDCPM" and found this page. CPMFiler will access Slogger DDCPM disks and I was using it to check DiskToImg was imaging my one DDCPM disk correctly.
I've just quickly checked CPMFiler and I hadn't got around to implementing double-density access on the BBC, only on RISC OS. The pig of getting the RISC OS code in DiskToImg to work properly to jump from between reading single density tracks and double-density tracks properly reminded me I had the same problems with CPMFiler.
Leave it with me for a mo, and I'll update CPMFiler to access DDCPM disks on the BBC (with the right FDC hardware, of course). I've already added the BBC double-density code to DiskToImg, so I can port it back.

[thecellartroll]

Does this mean that more Slogger Pegasus boards will be for sale soon? I still drool for one

[Prime]

Hopefully Arcadian won't mind me posting this.....

I have now archived most of the source code off the DDCPM disks, using a DOS based PC and 22DISK, an old Sydex program for reading (and writing) CP/M formatted disks.

For the purposes of reading the files from these disks the single density boot track can be ignored as the data is all stored in the double density area. I'll post my disk definitions (for 22disk) when I get home, I guess they could also be used for cpmtools on linux.

As far as pegasus boards go, when I bought one a while back, I traced the circuit before assembling it, so I guess more could be made, the main problem would be sourcing some 1770 / 1772 disk controllers.

Cheers.

Phill.

[Arcadian]

Bare Slogger PCBS finally available to buy!!

http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... f=8&t=6092

[1024MAK]

There were some other bits and pieces that I didn't photograph e.g. circuit diagrams for the Stop Press and 1770 Disk Interface), a box full of manuals for Slogger roms/upgrades, a Logic Analyser for the Beeb ("Lucifer"), various other connectors, some boxed Rom/Rom Cartridge products, plus 100 or so Electrons (in various states of repair!) ...

... but if I ever get round to taking some more snaps I'll update this post.

As the Stop Press was talked about in another thread, maybe a little reminder about photographing the circuit diagrams that you talk about

Mark

[Pernod]

What happened to the ROMs found in this haul, were they all archived?

There are photos of DDOS 3.16 and DDOS 3.36 that I can't find anywhere else, and the Challenger 2.00.

Would also like to see a better photo of the EDOS board, can't quite make out which FDC it uses.

With any version of DDOS (not EDOS) you can do a *FDCSTAT which tells you which FDC it is intended for:
3.1x WD2791
3.3x WD2793
3.4x WD1770

There also exists a MIA 3.00 for the 8272 which is shown in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09alLIz16ck

[Pernod]

Can anyone comment?

[Arcadian]

All of the ROMs were dumped by regregex (Greg).

However I lost my copy of the dumps when an external 3tb drive failed that was less than a year old (tip: never use Seagate drives for anything!).

Greg isn't on the scene anymore but I'll email him in case he still has copies.

I still have the big box of ROMs so if the dumps aren't available, would you be willing to borrow them for (re) dumping?

[Pernod]

All of the ROMs were dumped by regregex (Greg).

However I lost my copy of the dumps when an external 3tb drive failed that was less than a year old (tip: never use Seagate drives for anything!).

I've had quite a few of those Seagate 3TB die, other sizes didn't seem to have the same problem.

Greg isn't on the scene anymore but I'll email him in case he still has copies.

I still have the big box of ROMs so if the dumps aren't available, would you be willing to borrow them for (re) dumping?

Thanks, hope he still has copies. Only way I could dump them would be by putting them in the Beeb and saving to floppy then UPURS, painful process. Maybe someone else could volunteer for a ROM dumping session.