The 1-Bit Forum — AON, project in progress

Re: AON, project in progress

2020-01-30T20:12:45Z

Good read, thanks!

Re: AON, project in progress

2020-01-29T22:37:22Z

A ton of distractions happened since, but English translation of the making of the demo is finally here: https://habr.com/ru/post/486010/

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-27T12:12:32Z

Thank you, guys.

Should note that this was a side step related to the original intents. I did not use any software 1-bit synthesis in this demo, it is just the plain single channel 8253 music (very much like classic PC Speaker), created with PCSPE. Truly 1-bit and truly monophonic, though.

Still going to do a music sequencing, or a performing software perhaps, using this platform, with a custom 1-bit engine.

Also thinking on creating a cut down replica version of the schematics, omiting all phone line related stuff, and a PCB layout, so more people can get the thing without relying on buying old hardware overseas. The device is quite easy to assemble, and does not need rare parts (the obscure single piece LED display obviously has to be replaced with some modern ones).

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-26T22:58:07Z

Great demo. Glad you perfected your code, like the tune too

Thanks for the greet

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-26T20:16:29Z

Thanks! At least some real outcome of messing around and flooding this thread with this stuff. Also helped to improve the emulator. Also my first 'full' demo since 1997 when I first learned what a 'demo' is.

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-26T17:38:35Z

Ha ha epic demo, mate! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3db3HIQuGds

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-24T19:41:03Z

Another fun fact gained by the means of digital archeology. I was messing up with the firmwares that featured the sampled speech stuff, attempting to make a sample decoder. They use different formats, I did only one (4-bit samples at 5000 Hz), other ones is well distorted, but recognizeable. I learned that there was the first version to feature voice, it had male voice that only spelled a few numbers and short messages, then there was the second one (Selena), it had best quality female voice. Latter has been ripped, downgraded, and reused all across other firmwares. Derivative versions has varying sample set, some say tens and hundreds, and extra messages, some not.

The fun fact is that one of the firmwares, the only one (of those I checked so far, at least) that features good quality female voice, also has an angry male voice clip in the middle of the data: FUCK OFF! (in Russian)

That made me remember that an urban legend circulated at the time, that if you enter some secret code, you can blacklist a number with such a message played to the caller. Turns out it wasn't really a legend.

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-15T15:01:45Z

Hmm, very intriguing. So there was some Ukrainian involvement.
More info: http://nodehist.fidonet.org.ua/?address=2%3A461%2F256 http://nodehist.fidonet.org.ua/?address=2%3A461%2F60

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-14T10:26:08Z

Got yet another unit, nothing to show really, but it is an old large Z80 board build with one of the oldest firmwares - Arctur 36. Tried to find this one on the webs, and alas, all dumps is now gone. So I dumped it (it is very different from all others), the ROM was unstable, so I had to stare to the hex compare quite a bit. This way I figured that I may seek for hidden messages in firmwares. And there is indeed some! Here is the list for your digital Indiana Jones pleasure.

Fortuna
Fortuna. (C) Copyright 1995.....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Illegal copying is strictly prohibited !!!....Hacker - Alex Taran 2:461/256.11 @FidoNet....Phone number (0572) 62-32-79 (24h)

Arctur 36
(p) S.Batalov 095-939.75.05: Improvements, settling to 2764, voice adjusted.

Ravel19f
Corrected by FALCON inc. 7-095-404-6807

Rus7
KMON-U-Overlay read error

Rus13p
Thanx 2 Selena8!

Rus19e
(c) 1995 by RAVEL

Rus20c
(c) 1995 by PASHA. Tel:(095)-251-17-80

Rus20e
(c) 1991-1995 by PASHA, SERGEY. Tel:(095)-251-17-80

Rus20f
(c) 1991-1996 by PASHA, SERGEY. Tel: (095) 268-22-81, 268-28-74

Rus22c
(c) 1991-1996 by PASHA, SERGEY. Tel: (095) 268-09-33

Rus23c (transliterated from Russian)
(c) 1991-97 Pavel Sukhodolsky, Sergey Kosov Tel:(095)2680933 Moscow

Julia25pr
JULIA-25 (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-96..... FidoNet: 2:461/256.111 (Aka 2:461/144.11)....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Special thanx to Alex Taran, 2:461/256.11 @FidoNet

Julia27dp
JULIA-27 d (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-97.....FidoNet: 2:461/60.1....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Special thanx to Alex Taran, 2:461/60 @FidoNet

Julia27f
JULIA-27 F (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-98.....FidoNet: 2:461/60.1, E-Mail: heiki@iName.com....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Special thanx to Alex Taran, FidoNet: 2:461/60, E-Mail: alex@dnp.ukrpack.net....Very big thanx to PS Design, Kharkov

Julia27lp
JULIA-27 L (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-99. ....For all questions about distributing, future versions, hardware..please refer to Boris (PS Design, Kharkov). E-Mail:

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-13T15:46:32Z

At this moment I'm on the 'make it work' part, before 'make it pretty'. I need to figure out lots of details to create faithful emulation that is useful for new developments. VCL just helps me to speed this process up, as I know VCL very well, while I don't know anything about CLX (yet). Sure, eventually I'll put some time to make it more accessible and useful.

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-13T10:59:39Z

Thanks for your hard work, Shiru. Any chance of migrating from VCL to CLX though, so the emu could become portable?

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-08-11T01:05:18Z

So, I finally made my emulator work, more or less. I used the 8253 core recommended by utz for this time being. Sorry, no docs whatsoever so far. A ton of firmwares included, so please be my guest and feel yourself a true hacker exploring them!

I can give you a crash course, though. Load 'rus23c_z80.rom' firmware. All firmwares of this branch use a system where you press * twice to enter F-unction mode, then you press a number to select a function. Press ** 5 to enter Alarm Clock setup. In most modes singular * presses switches between available parameters. Press it until you see 'PLAY 00'. Enter a number between 00 and 24. Hold down * to hear selected tune (it plays while you hold the button). Try song 21 for extra fun.

If you have issues with sound stability, check the cfg file, you can change buffer size there.

Download: http://shiru.untergrund.net/files/aonz80emu.zip

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-04-19T21:20:21Z

Hardware review #6

With another $8 I finally got my hands on an early AON with the 'large' board that has been designed to fit into the VEF-TA-12 phone case. Although this was the most common design for first half of 1990s due to the relative availability of the phones of this model, mine is made sometime mid 1994 - the phone itself was produced May 1994, latest dates on the chips is May/June 1994, so it is one of the latest of this classic kind. It also has mods on the board made to run Rus 17c firmware (few wires to enable 64K ROM banking, some minor fixes). Surprisingly it is in the most mint condition among all units I got so far. Actually came complete with box and original phone's manual, although the box wasn't in good condition and get damaged further during delivery, so had to get rid of it.

This early large board does all the same like the small one that you seen in these reviews, just with specifics of the analog part of original VEF phone considered, or lack of it - this design replicates analog part of the VEF phone on the board, while the small board omits most of it. The most obvious difference is that huge transformer that got omited later.

Exterior view. The display is placed where the orignal VEF label has been located very conviniently, so it looks just like it was originally designed to be this way.

Closer look on the display. As you could see on the exterior view, one of digits is noticeably dimmer than others. That's not due to the dynamic refresh, it is clearly visible with naked eye. The same happened with another unit, but another digit is dim. Normally the brightness should be all even. I think this is LED display degradation that happened by some reason. Maybe this unit once froze and remained so for a long time, so dynamic refresh stopped at this digit and worn it out.

The board. The two extra wires are changes and fixes to support later Rus firmware. One of ROM pins connected to a 8255 output, providing 64K ROM banking support. RD line of the 8253 connected to RD line of Z80, allowing to read back timer registers.

Close up on the transformer and the extra ROM address line wiring. Interestingly, you can see two logic chips with proper 74xx marking. The ceramics packed EL7493J is in fact a Soviet produced chip made to be exported to other countries. 74LS04, however, seems to be an imported chip.

Back side of the board. Has hard mounted LED display and buttons of the original phone. Despite the serious looks, these buttons isn't working well, producing many missed or repeated presses, and that's not because they're old now, they always were like that.

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-04-15T13:37:56Z

Ah yes, I was almost going to make a comment about the thing being GPL. However, the Borik brothers seem to be nice folks from what little contact I had with them some years ago. So they might be possible to talk to them about relicensing the relevant portion to MIT/BSD or something. Let me know if you want their contacts.

Re: AON, project in progress

2018-04-15T13:04:54Z

Thanks a lot for pointing this one out, didn't see it. One issue, though, is that it is GPL, and if I simply use this or MAME implementation, which is the easy way, it'll put the whole project under GPL, which I kind of dislike - I'd rather released it under PD/CC0/WTFPL. That's why I'm trying to cook up my own implementation that is not derived from MAME. Actually I'm trying to fix up my very old implementation from 2007 or so to current needs.