[WTB] Displaywriter Beamspring Controller

[headphone_jack]

Looking to convert a Displaywriter using the new Andrei controller. I've also got a normal SMD controller to trade if someone needs it!

Don't want anything bought from jahota-0 on eBay

[xxhellfirexx]

What is wrong with buying from jahota-0? I think I know who that is here because not many have an IBM 4978 and boast about it at every opportunity. Buying from here will save you the eBay fees.

Also, what is an Andrei controller? I never heard of it.

[Bjerrk]

Also, what is an Andrei controller? I never heard of it.

I would assume it refers to pandrew's controller. I use one with a 5251 (although I didn't know he made one for the Displaywriter)
viewtopic.php?t=24512

[Muirium]

Xwhatsit made one for the Displaywriter, which could be flashed with Pandrew’s software just as well as the regular Xwhatsit 3278 controller card. I presume Xwhatsit just lost his hardware credit in conversation, now he’s been gone so long.

Pandrew’s work is excellent, don’t get me wrong. But the hardware is Xwhatsit’s effort. We enjoy the beamspringy fruits of both!

[headphone_jack]

Pandrew has been making new controller hardware for quite some time now. They're quite a bit better than original xwhatsits in my experience.

jahota-0 has quite the reputation among many for poor quality soldering on his controllers and inflated prices. Don't want to pay more for lower quality!

[Muirium]

Aren't the various controllers around now (including the Model F version inside Ellipse's boards, redesigned by Wcass if I recall?) all derivatives of Xwhatsit's open source design? I mean, they all still use the same lousy ATmega chip with such tight RAM it limits what can be run on them. If other people really were making their own, wouldn't they have started from a newer CPU?

There's re-routing PCB traces to make a smaller card, then there's actually redesigning the controller itself. Not the same thing at all!

[headphone_jack]

Yes, I think "making a new PCB in kicad and writing your own firmware for it" constitutes making a new controller. Either way, I need one.

[Muirium]

As NathanA put it: the specific Atmel chip: 32u2 Xwhatsit used is kinda garbage with extremely limited capabilities. If people really were “designing their own controllers” why would they stick with this pain in the arse of a chip as the guts?

I've continued to play around with Vial-enabled builds, trying to find a combination of features that will run stable without disabling/sacrificing too many of them.

At this point, I'm guessing there is either some kind of RAM-contention issue or RAM space violation issue (one part of QMK scribbling over memory space belonging to another part). ATmega32U2 only has 1KiB of SRAM according to the spec sheet, and I have to believe that this microprocessor doesn't have any memory protection features, so neither would surprise me.

Amazing, frankly, the work people have done in mangling the firmware to fit on the damn thing. But since when was this the 1970s when 1k was a sensible amount of ram?

from a brief glance there don't appear to be many keyboards that fit this bill. The 32U2 appears to be popular when it comes to macropads and the like, but not so much on full-blown keyboards (likely due to fewer GPIO lines compared to other MCUs).

32u2 is a bad chip. Xwhatsit was a smart fella and it likely made a lot of sense back when he started out on his beamspring project, but the years have flown by since, with new silicon aplenty and software stacks like Vial he couldn’t have anticipated. Now 32u2 is in very short supply as well, thanks to the worldwide production shortage on legacy nodes. A true, new controller would dump that crap and go Arm or the like, and open up the software possibilities while also being cheaper and quicker to source!

[kelvinhall05]

you're exhausting, jesus christ.

32u2 is a bad chip. A true, new controller would dump that crap and go Arm or the like, and open up the software possibilities while also being cheaper and quicker to source!

since you clearly know better than everyone when it comes to this, i want you to explain your thinking behind both of these statements, and also choose and justify a better chip.

[Bjerrk]

you're exhausting, jesus christ.

Well, all I'm reading is "credit where credit is due".

(That and some good points about how a chip with 1K of RAM that's getting harder to source would probably not have been first choice for an entirely new controller.)

[Muirium]

Exactly. Credit is due to Pandrew, all the contributors to QMK, and to Xwhatsit. We’re all using derivatives of his work, for better and for worse: namely the 32u2 at the heart of it.

you're exhausting, jesus christ.

Thanks!

Read NathanA’s struggles with that miserable chip on Ellipse’s thread. A lot of good hacking has been done just to make it work with Vial at all. Why? Because it’s still all we have.

[headphone_jack]

You guys are all fucking braindead retards. Go bitch at each other on another thread. If you aren't offering me an acceptable price on a displaywriter controller then you can fuck off.

[Muirium]

Good morning!

[kelvinhall05]

Exactly. Credit is due to Pandrew, all the contributors to QMK, and to Xwhatsit. We’re all using derivatives of his work, for better and for worse: namely the 32u2 at the heart of it.

you're exhausting, jesus christ.

Thanks!

Read NathanA’s struggles with that miserable chip on Ellipse’s thread. A lot of good hacking has been done just to make it work with Vial at all. Why? Because it’s still all we have.

you're dodging my question lol. if you have no clue why the 32u2 was used for a new design then don't act like you know better

[Muirium]

It’s the same design. That’s my point. Cosmetically quite different—a nice bit of Kicad work to shrink the PCB down and take new connectors—but the same obsolescent guts doing the actual work. Strange “choice”, huh? Conspicuous!

[doomsday_device]

i miss the times when you could browse the dt marketplace without seeing a muirium (aka offtopic man) response to every fucking thread.


good luck to headphone_jack finding the part they seek for.

[Muirium]

Offtopicthority is Deskthority.

holy shit guys, can you all stop trying to win this pointlessly long argument already? especially on other people's posts, there is no need to pollute all of deskthority.

You may not know yet, but this is offtopicthority, where derainling threads is quite normal while fulling the spy with bumps is a nuisance.

Anyway, Xwhatsit is an old friend so I don’t like seeing other people take his credit. The new guys who actually do the work of remodelling his design always name him in their documentation. We should respect their wish. Until someone designs a controller with more than 1024 bytes of ram, it’s still Xwhatsit’s little baby!

Good luck with sourcing the hardware. I don’t know who’s still sitting on surplus stock, however. You may need to do a batch yourself.

[Bjerrk]

I actually got a few of the compact controllers made a while ago.
However, my original question (see second reply of the entire thread) was never really answered by headphone_jack, namely precisely which controller he's looking for ...
Would've been straightforward - link to a thread or git repository.

Now, my knowledge may be outdated, but pandrew's thread specifically states that

This design is based on the TH Xwhatsit ( viewtopic.php?t=23406 )
...
Displaywriter/Beamship are currently only supported by the TH.

So, yeah, if you wanna stay on topic, don't get hysterical. Rather, give some answers to questions pertaining to the topic.

[soyuz]

wow, i sure am glad the verbal diarrhea brigade showed up to shit all over a marketplace thread

[Weezer]

Why is everybody so worked up and edgy? I know keyboards are an antisocial hobby but come on - are the insults and passive aggressive comments really worth it?

I have an extra model F xwhatsit controller, but it would need to be reflashed with the appropriate firmware for beamsprings and then soldered to an edge connector.

[Muirium]

Xwhatsit’s beamsping and F controllers are that similar? Cool.

There’s a lot more F ones still out there, obviously, what with Ellipse.

[Weezer]

With the Displaywriter you have the use the Model F controller because of the PCB matrixes. Orihalcon did a post on it some years back.

[mmm]

With the Displaywriter you have the use the Model F controller because of the PCB matrixes. Orihalcon did a post on it some years back.

Oh that's cool.

The thread mentioned, also linking to firmware

The SMD version of the Model F controller. I'm guessing this should also work? The price for 5 of these were around 60 USD on JLCpcb a month ago (not including pro micros).

The pandrew version of QMK also has a configuration for a Displaywriter, not sure whether it's the Model F or Beamer edition, or if these happen to share configuration/matrixes.

[Weezer]

With the Displaywriter you have the use the Model F controller because of the PCB matrixes. Orihalcon did a post on it some years back.

Oh that's cool.

The thread mentioned, also linking to firmware

The SMD version of the Model F controller. I'm guessing this should also work? The price for 5 of these were around 60 USD on JLCpcb a month ago (not including pro micros).

The pandrew version of QMK also has a configuration for a Displaywriter, not sure whether it's the Model F or Beamer edition, or if these happen to share configuration/matrixes.

QMK uses different firmware and is a different implementation than xwhatsit so they're not 1 to 1. I think Muirium was just commenting that they had the same EEPROM chip. I went and dug up Orihalcon's thread for everyone where the necessary pinout for xwhatsit is outlined. viewtopic.php?t=16469

[Muirium]

My understanding, which may be wrong, is that they use the same processor full stop, and are in fact the same hardware with minor implementation details tweaked: like secondary components such as the USB connector.

Spoiler:

Xwhatsit knew his stuff. It’s a great design: for 2015. The fact we’re all still using it says more about us, though, than the eternal genius of the 32u2. That thing is not only a PITA to program for but a liability to source.

Anyway, Ellipse has a bunch of the F model, surely. No problemo!

[headphone_jack]

Only the TH version of the Andrei controller is displaywriter compatible, I tested the SMD one and it certainly does not work. The F model doesn't have the right hardware for the displaywriter matrix. I just need a displaywriter-compatible controller, I only specified Andrei because I *thought* that was the accepted standard these days. Apparently some people are still stuck debating over almost 7 year old semantics though.

[Weezer]

Accepted semantic standard lmfao

[mmm]

QMK uses different firmware and is a different implementation than xwhatsit so they're not 1 to 1. I think Muirium was just commenting that they had the same EEPROM chip. I went and dug up Orihalcon's thread for everyone where the necessary pinout for xwhatsit is outlined. viewtopic.php?t=16469

Yes that's the thread I linked to!

I'll elaborate. I'm aware that there are two different pieces of firmware for the same (give or take) hardware. I was just stating that in case they wanted to use QMK rather that xwhatsit's firmware, it seems like it is available without any additional work.

Only the TH version of the Andrei controller is displaywriter compatible, I tested the SMD one and it certainly does not work. The F model doesn't have the right hardware for the displaywriter matrix. I just need a displaywriter-compatible controller, I only specified Andrei because I *thought* that was the accepted standard these days. Apparently some people are still stuck debating over almost 7 year old semantics though.

I'm sorry you are being a bit vague about what about what you are looking for, and seemingly getting angry when people are trying to ask clarifying questions. I understand that some of the developments in the thread is off-topic, but you are not really helping yourself.

From what I can tell, there is no TH version of pandrew's controller. Sure, he has a fork of a TH controller, but that was just so he could make a PR to the original one.

When you say you have tried the SMD controller, do you then mean the F or the Beamspring controller?

Is this the controller you are looking for?

[headphone_jack]

At this point I've been so thoroughly confused by all this pointless arguing that I have no idea what I'm looking for. I just need something that works with a displaywriter. I tried the SMD Beamspring controller, and it doesn't work.

[Bjerrk]

Oh, the "pointless arguing" has you confused? Also known as people with experience pointing out the available options and repeatedly trying to help?

At least own your own ignorance. The alternative is not a good look.