forum.defence-force.org

I contacted Mustangus and booked two devices by PM on 14/11.

I have started a new thread for orders.

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2038

My Erebus...
Made by a guy in a Spanish forum. It works perfectly and is a very nice add on for our machines.

The only minor problem is that games such as Defence Force refuse to load. I guess that is because it is either using a custom loader or calling the ROM routines at unusual entry points, so the device does not do what it is supposed to.

In any case a fantastic device!

Nice! I am looking forward to receiving mine as well .. the Cumulus is awesome, but a bit tedious for new-comers. I'm hoping the Erebus will make the OOBE for new Oric users a bit more manageable.

Well, the Cumulus is a completely different device, as it emulates the disk controller and 4 floppy drives... The disk drive really transforms the Oric into a very competitive machine and, imho, is almost a must to get the most out of the Oric.

But I understand that it is not a common piece of hardware and may be a bit cumbersome to make it work: either use a controller and fight to get a real floppy drive or HxC working or get a Cumulus (which is quite expensive) and be lucky enough not to be one of those owning an incompatible Oric.

TL;DR: if you have an Oric, get this erebus to load games in a convenient way, but also get a disk drive and spend some time to make it work. It is worth it

I have Cumulus, as well as real floppies and an HxC - don't get me wrong, the Cumulus is awesome. Just, for displays and demo, I believe Erebus will be a little more user friendly.

What I'm wondering is how difficult it would be to merge the Erebus and the Cumulus in one single device.
After all they are both using the expansion bus, they both use a SD card for storage, they both have some boot eprom.

I kind of like the Erebus way of using the actual Oric to select the tapes, I'm pretty sure that could even be used for the Cumulus using some fancy reset trickery to override whatever is running without destroying the content of the memory, that would have the advantage of not requiring the complicated color screen and allow to use the actual Oric keyboard instead of playing with the secondary device on the back

The thing that the Erebus has going for it over Cumulus is, in my opinion: easier to produce and extend the firmware.

Its kind of dodgy getting stuff built for Cumulus. Erebus, I don't predict will be so gnarly.

I'd really like to participate in pushing Oric storage systems forward - wasn't able to get off the runway with the Cumulus toolchain. Lets see how things go with Erebus.

The ROM-loader of Erebus is indeed intriguing, as is that empty RAM bank ...

I am not sure Erebus will ever merge with Cumulus. Erebus patches the ROM feed the bytes of a tape file into memory, as an emulator might do, but emulating the hardware behind a disc controller AND the floppy drive is e itself is a completely different thing. You need actual hard to produce the signals, an FPGA to act as the rest of the chips, including the FD chip, and more to read/write the disk image from/to a n SD card...

That is you need a Cumulus which includes the functionality of the Erebus, not the other way round.

the difference between Erebus and an existing disk interface is the impossibility of writing to RAM Overlay. We can burn Sedoric in Uvprom, the memory is not full, read and write in Dsk files, but the content between # C000 and #FFFF cannot be modified.

When I say "merge", I mean "functionalities".

I suspect the Cumulus would be able to emulate the Erebus tricks, after all the Microdisc has its own boot eprom, and it has full overlay access, so technically it could do a copy of the Oric ROM into the overlay RAM and then do whatever patching Erebus is doing, no?

Yes, Dbug, that is what I meant. Cumulus might include a mode which behaves like Erebus, probably. I thought you all were talking about the other way round.

It is not only Sedoric. It is the FDC hardware. The Oric issues commands to the controller through page 3 such as sector read, and expects signals, such as interrupts or data being ready in the bus through the expansion port.

But I may well be wrong here...

Updated case with switch

The knob is discreet, there is no risk of awkward reset. Good job !

Cool! Whats the value of the resistor please?

My two (non-button) Erebus' are gonna get a mod.