Phoebe Schematics rev 1

[anightin]

Dear All,

Many thanks to Alex Bienek from the original Acorn Phoebe hardware team for these.

I have permission from Alex to share with the forum so that they can be archived for posterity.

Kind Regards

Andy

Phoebe_Schematic_rev1.pdf

(1.53 MiB) Downloaded 110 times

Please note for the eagle-eyed that there was not a sheet 4 for some reason in the originals that Alex has.

[Arcadian]

My goodness Andy, what a find!

Thanks for sharing such treasure, and thanks to Alex too for passing the schematic across! Wow!

[Multiwizard]

Wow awesome...

Thanks a lot for sharing this...


Greetings, Wim...

[Arcadian]

Now we just need Prime to clone and build it ... !

[Multiwizard]

Now we just need Prime to clone and build it ... !

Hear hear...


Greetings, Wim...

[danielj]

Dear All,

Many thanks to Alex Bienek from the original Acorn Phoebe hardware team for these.

I have permission from Alex to share with the forum so that they can be archived for posterity.

Kind Regards

Andy

Phoebe_Schematic_rev1.pdf

Please note for the eagle-eyed that there was not a sheet 4 for some reason in the originals that Alex has.

Now, does the content of the FPGAs exist?

[Prime]

Now we just need Prime to clone and build it ... !

Hear hear...

Getting hold of some of the custom chips could be um....challenging......

Cheers.

Phill.

[SimonSideburns]

Unless the schematics of the chips went up in flames along with the cases, there would be some surviving evidence somewhere, but I'd imagine it's going to be quite rare.

One other option I've heard about is removing the surface a chip to take high resolution scans of the silicon itself, but I very much doubt that anyone at either of the two museums that have machines would allow anyone anywhere near theirs to do that, and I wouldn't blame them.

I do wonder how far through development of the Phoebe they were at the time of canning the product. How many actual machines had been built, how many boards, chips, components, etc. had been made, built, bought up, etc. ready for final fabrication.

It is such a shame that many of the details could be lost. If only someone could build a time machine and go back to 1998 and take backups of all the documentation, etc.

I used to wonder why nobody else has ever decided to build a replica of the machine. I reckon most people who've heard of Phoebe would be interested in owning one, even if it's newly built, purely to see what could have been.

[BeebMaster]

of some of the custom chips could be um....challenging......

Naa, just buy from genuine 100% guaranteed working new old stock Corona China sellers:

[philpem]

Unless the schematics of the chips went up in flames along with the cases, there would be some surviving evidence somewhere, but I'd imagine it's going to be quite rare.

One other option I've heard about is removing the surface a chip to take high resolution scans of the silicon itself, but I very much doubt that anyone at either of the two museums that have machines would allow anyone anywhere near theirs to do that, and I wouldn't blame them.

I do wonder how far through development of the Phoebe they were at the time of canning the product. How many actual machines had been built, how many boards, chips, components, etc. had been made, built, bought up, etc. ready for final fabrication.

It is such a shame that many of the details could be lost. If only someone could build a time machine and go back to 1998 and take backups of all the documentation, etc.

I used to wonder why nobody else has ever decided to build a replica of the machine. I reckon most people who've heard of Phoebe would be interested in owning one, even if it's newly built, purely to see what could have been.

Well, there's an emulation of Phoebe in RPCEmu. If someone were sufficiently inclined, that could probably be used as a base to develop a "Phoebe remake" using FPGAs and a StrongARM CPU.

Good university final year project for a couple of folks on a hardware course?
(Maybe it's the sort of project only someone like me would have pitched...!)