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New items in stock and product updates

Hello everyone!

TLDR alert! But… we have three new boards to announce!  We also have an update on a few older products but first, we are officially announcing the release of the X16 Dual MIDI / Wavetable Card.  This card will allow you to drive your external MIDI equipment, as well as a standard 26-pin wavetable module from your Commander X16!  Melodious now supports MIDI playback and you can play the MIDI enhanced version of Attack of the Petscii Robots with any General MIDI device.

Speaking of general MIDI devices, our second product announcement is the Little Dreamer wavetable module.  This small module uses the Dream SAM2695 single IC MIDI synthesizer.  This low-cost module packs a powerful punch for its size.  Not only does it boast an impressive General MIDI instrument set, but also an MT-32 sample set which sounds very nice.  This is the sound chip the 8-Bit Guy used in his recent X16 update video.  Hear it in action here:  X16 2024 Update

The final new product is one I developed while working on the Little Dreamer, and that is the USB MIDI Wavetable Header.  This simple device uses a single USB to MIDI IC and has the circuitry to drive most standard 26-pin wavetable modules.  Just plug it in, and use it with your favorite MIDI enabled software, or use your wavetable as a synth in favorite DAW!

You may have noticed the X16 Network / Serial card has been out of stock for some time now.  A HW bug was brought to our attention which caused the interrupt to fail.  We had worked out a patch to resolve this issue, but a larger issue appeared as we worked through ANSI support for ROMTERM.  In a nutshell, I redesigned the card making sure the data lines stay completely away from the ESP32 module. 

As we were testing the network card, another issue became apparent with the 90-degree riser board used by Lazer3D cases.  The problem is very intermittent, but it did seem to cause enough reflection for occasional failures.  We did more testing and redesigned this card with signal termination.  The terminators seem to resolve enough reflection to fix any remaining gremlins.

We finally feel that we’ve done enough testing to release them both for sale again.  If you own a riser or network card purchased before Oct 2024, please contact us and we’ll replace them free of charge.  Please accept our apologies for the issues, but we want to make sure everyone has what they paid for.  We haven’t received the final PCBs; they arrive later this week, but I wanted to make the announcement asap.  Please also allow us a little time to get them built.  If you do happen to place an order for another card, please let us know so we can send your replacement riser and/or network card along at the same time.

Whew! 

Thank you all so much for supporting TexElec and the Commander X16!  We are privileged to serve the vintage computing community, and we couldn’t do it without you!

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Announcing the New QuadFlop from TexElec!

The QuadFlop is a four-port ISA based floppy controller which has some additional features not found on other controllers. It has a built-in display to show drive activity which can be removed from the card, and mounted remotely. It also has a microcontroller installed to send TG43 information automatically to 8″ floppy drives which need this support. Read more about it here: Quad-Flop – Four Port ISA Floppy Controller – TexElec

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Introducing the QuadFlop Floppy Controller

I would like to thank Shelby with Tech Tangents for his recent review of our upcoming card, the QuadFlop Floppy Controller. We have been through a few revisions, and Shelby has been very patient working through the bugs with us. I first designed this to have TG43 support for 8″ floppy drives, and it got a little out of control from there. 🙂

We really wanted to release the card by now, but the last year has been one shortage after another and now, we are completely out of ROM chips. I have already designed an adapter board to use a TSOP version of the ROM chips in the DIP socket. Short-term, we will be using these on some of our products, including the QuadFlop.

We should only be a few weeks away from launch, and I plan to do a video to show off all the features, so keep an eye on our YouTube channel. If you want a sneak peek, check out Shelby’s review of the card, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjNBPHjUSHE

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Jr IDE updated Rev B, Resound jr OPL3 Adlib Clone, TandyMod and more for the PCjr!

Hello PCjr fans!

The original Jr IDE Rev A went out of stock on the TexElec website about three months ago, when one of the CPLDs went out of stock. At the time, all of the suppliers said it would be May of 2023 before they were back! We decided to make a few updates and we are now happy to introduce the Jr IDE Rev B.

Functionally, the two cards are identical with a few minor changes. The POST display was removed, and we added a battery for the real-time clock. The IDE pinout was inverted, which allows a standard IDC right-angle box header to be used. We put a capacitor near the IDE power pin to help with CF card stability. But one of the most important additions is the new expansion header. The expansion header will allow for lower cost cards to be added on without another sidecar connector or enclosure.

This leads me to our second product announcement, the Resound jr OPL3 / Adlib clone! We ported our popular Resound 2 OPL3 card to the PCjr. We couldn’t add an expansion port without making a card for it! It has a built-in line-level 3.5mm / 1/8″ headphone jack built-in and a 3-pin header if you want to add your own port on the back of the sidecar.

I know, I know, you already bought a Rev A Jr IDE, but how are you supposed to add a Resound jr to your system? Not to worry, the third product we’re releasing is the TexElec jr Expansion / Prototype Board. This board has the same physical dimensions and expansion port as the Jr IDE Rev B. It also comes with a sidecar connector preinstalled! It can be installed in a sidecar just like the Jr IDE, and also has a prototype area for DIY projects!

Lastly, we are releasing the TandyMod for the PCjr. This board has been around for some-time now and will change the PCjr video memory map to match that of the Tandy 1000. This allows many Tandy 1000 specific games to run on the PCjr. With the release of the Resound jr, we thought it would be important to increase game compatibility as much as possible.

We made a video to release at the same time as the product launch. The video discusses the cards in more detail and shows a demo of them in action! It also shows how to install the TandyMod in your PCjr.

You can check it out here: https://youtu.be/az39Hpfn6KY

Whew, it took us a while to get here, but they are all for sale in the store today. Thanks for everyone’s patience, and continued support of our store. We couldn’t do it without our great customers, and we hope to keep making vintage PC parts for many years to come!

Thanks!
Kevin & Sara

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Christmas SID – A STM32-SID-PLAYER Christmas Ornament – Coming soon?

The Christmas SID is based on the the STM32-SID-PLAYER by Bakisha on GitHub. This is a really cool little project designed to play SID files back on the Blue Pill STM32 ARM development board. When I first became aware of this project, I really wanted to use in something, but I wasn’t really sure what. Way too late in October, I finally decided it would be a neat Christmas Ornament! I made the board and ran it naively hoping it would just work the first time. Well, it did work, sort-of. But, not well enough for production. So I quickly made some changes and ran another board. So there is still a chance we could get them out towards the middle of the month. That means I couldn’t resist making a quick video however, so please enjoy!

If we do happen to get the PCBs in soon, and they work, I will make an update post asap to get them out for sale!

See it in action here: https://youtu.be/4TGFFvTyasQ

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TexElec will be at VCF Midwest on Sept. 11-12

Hey everyone, this is Kevin with TexElec! I just wanted to let everyone know I’ll be attending the Midwest Vintage Computer Festival on September 11th and 12th in Elmhurst, IL. I’ll be at the 8-Bit Guy’s Booth with him and the Commander X16 prototype. If you have a minute, stop by, squeeze through the crowd of people who aren’t there to see me, and say hi. David told me a few weeks back that LGR will be at the booth directly next to us. So, if you’re wondering who the weird spare guy standing between the two famous people is, well, that would be me. 🙂