Recreating my old uk101

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tinplatepete
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:42 am
Location: West Sussex. UK

Recreating my old uk101

Post by tinplatepete »

Hi Everyone
I remember going to Comp Shop back in the early 80s and buying my UK101, as soon as I was home I set to work to build it; It took about 4 or so hours to build. It wasn’t long before I wanted to add more to it, so a few days later I went back to Comp Shop and bought a sound card kit and built it.
As any owner of a UK101 would know it’s not long before you discover the errors with the Rom’s. This was when I discovered Premier Publications and to my amazement they were only up the road from me. I gave them a call and they allowed me pop round and have a chat. I walked away with an Eprom card Cegmon, Basic 1,3, Eproms and their upgraded Basic 4 and a few bits of software. As I was a big fan of Premier Publications every time they bought out an upgrade or add on I had to have it. My UK101 ended up with their sound/Via Card, 32k Ram card, Floppy Drive, Romdos, Link6, Colour card, Basic 5, Basic X, toolkit 2. It also had switchable 1k and 2K screen Ram. I had a lot of fun with my UK101 but it started to get left behind as technology was moving on fast, and when I bought a Commodore 64 it was relegated to the loft.
After about 3 moves and the passage of 30 years I recently decided to hunt for my UK101, it was then I realised I no longer have it, about 10 years ago I had an out building destroyed by a storm and you guessed it my UK101 was in it. Recently I discovered in an old box with the only parts that seem to have survived the storm and this was the 32K ram card & Basic 1,3,4 Eproms but they did look as if they had been run over, I am still not sure how they ended up were they did but I was pleased to find them. Now I was on a mission to get hold of a replacement UK101 and try to recreate some of my old UK101 using the salvaged parts. As luck would have one popped up on Ebay and I had to have it. And luck was on my side and I won it. When I got it home and had a good look at I realised it was factory made and it has never been upgraded. After spending some time with it I managed to clear all the faults mostly bad IC sockets and got it working.
As no upgrades are available anymore I spent days trawling the internet for help and discovered Grant Searle who helped me replacing the monitor Rom with Cegmon, Grant also advised me to visit at OSI web for more information on UK101, I was surprised to find so much info on Uk101, the first Rom I downloaded was Basic 5 but I need a eprom card to put it on, over to Ebay again and found an 8 slot Eprom card with 2716 Eproms in it located in Florida and it Buy now I think it was about £12 +P&P, once I received it I managed to build a decoder circuit and now I have relocated Basic 1,2,3,4 now on Eprom and added Basic 5, Encoder & Toolkit 2, one of the spare rom splots on the Uk101 is now home to Basic X. I did manage to reuse my original Basic 1,3,4 Eproms but I did have to buy a IC leg straightener, however I am still working on the 32K ram card and hope to have that working soon.
This now brings me up to date and my next project is to build a sound card that will be compatible with Basic X as Basic X has sound commands built in to it based around the Ay-3-8910 sound chip. The sound card I would like to recreate would be the Premier Sound/VIA card but I think this may be a bit to complex but I would love to give it ago.
If any member has any info that would help me develop a sound card I would be interested to hear from them, also if anyone has got any info on the Premier Publications AY-3-8910 Sound/ VIA Card I would also be interested to hear from them, the only info I have is a very poor picture I took 30 years ago.

I must thank Dave for this site, I would have got nowhere if it wasn’t for this brilliant site.

Pete
Last edited by tinplatepete on Thu Apr 26, 2018 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MK14HAK
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:49 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: Recreating my old uk101

Post by MK14HAK »

Welcome Pete.
I remember Comp Shop well.
Perhaps you could post that photo of the Premier sound card in the topic: http://osiweb.org/osiforum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=263
and upload the BASIC 1 and 3 to Dave's osiweb.org.
There is a lot of info on his site and checkout the links to other contributors sites from there also.
Mike
600RevB:16K,2MHz,64x32,470,CEGMON
SuperKit:502,540B,542B,CEGMON, 8" and 5" FDDs
Cards:PE IO,6522 D-A-D, AY3-8910,ProgramGraphics,Color,UK101
WIP:HexDOS,FDD Emulator
dave
Site Admin
Posts: 710
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:24 am

Re: Recreating my old uk101

Post by dave »

Hi Pete, and welcome to the forum. I love a good restoration story with a happy ending. I had not heard of the Premier Publications enhancements back in the day, in Memphis TN, USA, but am impressed with their output. As Mike suggested, it would be awesome if you have a chance to dump the Premier BASIC ROMs 1 and 3; that will give us a nearly complete collection.

Good luck on the sound card--I wish I had more info to add, but this is new to me. I look forward to following your progress.

Dave
tinplatepete
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:42 am
Location: West Sussex. UK

Re: Recreating my old uk101

Post by tinplatepete »

This is the only picture I have of my Premier publications Sound/VIA Card. Sorry about the poor quality of the picture. In the picture are three cards, the top card is the Sound/VIA the middle is Premier Floppy drive card and the bottom card is the Premier J1 Mother Board. The J1 Mother Board is connected to the UK101 via Premiers J1 Buffer Board.

I have also included a picture of Premier's J1 Buffer Board.

Dave, At some time I will send you the images my Premier Publications Basic 1 & 3 roms.

Pete
Attachments
J1 Buffer Board.JPG
J1 Buffer Board.JPG (101.07 KiB) Viewed 12602 times
Sound VIA Card.jpg
Sound VIA Card.jpg (117.87 KiB) Viewed 12602 times
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