A Softy 2 lives

[Timbucus]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

That reminds me, - Tim - have you now been able to fully test out that Softy 2 you were lucky enough to acquire a little while back? I recall you were having trouble finding a co-operative display for it but you seemed to have found a way around that.

Pretty much as per post #55 I found that my Sony monitor for my MBC worked well enough to exercise it enough to burn and verify an original EPROM. It also worked very well on my little Sony Black and White TV.

I have yet to make a video about it which is on my list of tasks to do it justice and demo it fully.

For that I wanted to make up a cable to use it as a live ROM replacement for something as well so I need to find a 24 pin IDC connector in the wider EPROM shape to put on the end of the ribbon.

I have also been scouring marketplace etc for a small 12inch B&W TV to make it even more usable.

Tim

[SiriusHardware]

Ah, you mean like these:

https://www.peconnectors.com/male-id...-.100/hws5097/

(Just the first ones I found, and inconveniently located in the USA). I will keep my eyes open. I dare say an already made up cable with 2 x 24 way DIP headers on the end would also do. Not that either item is especially common nowadays.

[SiriusHardware]

Just found some, have PMed you to avoid falling foul of forum rules.

[ortek_service]

Yes, I recently-found these IDC 0.6" wide DIL-headers are now getting harder to find. And only certain sizes are still more-widely available from Farnell / RS?

I do also recently recall, from discussions on an open-source EPROM-Emulator project forum on Groups.io, that some makes of these have the connections coming-out in a different order, so pin1 isn't at the edge of the ribbon cable.
- Maybe some cheaper ones from the Far-east, that don't have very-good data on them.

[SiriusHardware]

I've seen images of another Softy 2 which I inexplicably could not find again a mere day after I had found them. One of the images was of the emulator cable which had a dual row female IDC cable mount which would fit onto the male dual-row IDC pin connector on the Softy 2 PCB, and on the other end one of those 24-pin DIL headers, the implication being that the connections were a simple one to one match. Even so I would not assume that, and I would check, with a meter if necessary, to make sure that the Softy 2 signals were landing up on the correct pins of the 24 pin header.

[ortek_service]

Dataman (UK) still sell replacement leads for the S3 & S4, which use a standard 2row 0.1" wide header.
But I think these were DIL28 and DIL32 sizes.

[ortek_service]

Just spotted these DIL24 IDC Headers, quite good value
https://www.peconnectors.com/male-id...-.100/hws5097/
Although I didn't spot any data on these, to show if the start-end of the ribbon cable is pin1 of the DIL or actually pin24, as it seems some types have unconventional swapping of the DIL's two 'columns' sides.

As well as DIL28 & DIL40 ones, plus cable-mount headers for standard DIP ones in various ways.
https://www.peconnectors.com/idc-cab...ectors-page-3/
(and do show 1+ price, when selecting each one)

Although as they are USA-based, I'm not sure about shipping to the UK, and costs.
- If they are the actual manufacturer of these, then may be a UK distributor.

[Realtime]

Just in case anyone is still looking for 24 Pin DIL ribbon cable headers (IDC) there are some good quality 3M ones available here. The original price in 2006 was about £9 each from Farnell.