Saturday 24 December 2016

Quantel Schematics & Documentation

During my adventures with the Quantel Paintbox i have unearthed several pieces of documentation that i have scanned in and provided on my Google Drive for all to access.

Many Quantel products used the 3U V-Series chassis so these documents maybe of relevance even to non Paintbox systems. For example the Editbox used the same architecture as the V-Series but was in the larger rack.

As i add more i will include the details into this post

To access the repository use this link:

The current list of documents is as follows:

Quantel BridgeProcessor2 2058-66 Schematic.pdf
Schematics for the Bridge Processor used in the V-Series chassis.

Quantel CPU3 2060-74 Schematic.pdf
Schematic for the 68010 CPU3 (2060-74) card used in the early V-Series chassis.

Quantel CPU42 2078-82 Schematic.pdf
Schematic for the 68040 CPU42 (2078-82) card used in the later V-Series chassis, similar 2099 & 2101 boards were also used in the Editbox, Domino systems that used the same architecture.

Quantel DiskStore1M 2060-72 Schematic.pdf
Schematic for the DiskStore1M (2060-72) card used in many of the V-Series chassis.

Quantel VideoOut4 2057-69 Schematic.pdf
Schematic for the VideoOut4 (2057-69) used in some of the V-Series chassis, this has YUV/RGB analog and SDI digital output.

Quantel Netcom & Snetcom Documentation.pdf
Some possibly internal user guide for the Netcom and Snetcom board used in the V-Series chassis.

Quantel Network Engineering Training Manual 2066-58-050B.pdf
Network Engineering Training Manual 2066-58 for the V-Series including details of picturenet etc.

Quantel Paintbox Express Installation Manual 2090-58-030B.pdf
Complete installation manual for the Paintbox Express, this is a later 68040 based V-Series machine.

Quantel Paintbox Maintenance Training Manual 2056-58-050C.pdf
Some maintenance & engineering information for the V-Series Paintbox.

Quantel Picturebox Maintenance Training Manual 2057-58-050C.pdf
Similar to the manual above but for the V-Series Picturebox.


Wednesday 7 December 2016

Quantel Paintbox V-Series - Setting The RTC Date

EDITED 25-10-2017: Since this was written i have found there are built in commands for setting the RTC located in the diagnostics console at \FILER\UTILITIES\TIME. However the details here still apply if you wish to set the RTC manually. Note the RTC located on Netcomm or Snetcomm boards is located in a different memory location (base at $F30000) but operates in the same way.

I have recently been playing around getting a Quantel Paintbox (V-Series Harriet) running. During the process i had to replace the battery backed SRAM which also contained the Real Time Clock (RTC).

Within the Paintbox user interface there is an option to set the time but not the date, this is even true in the engineering console where you have more access to the operating system. The only way to set the date is to manually set the RTC clock by poking bytes into a memory location.

This is due to Quantel's time-limited software keys. If there was an easy way to set the date then it would be easy to circumvent their feature expiry time by simply adjusting the system date before the key expires.

The V-Series CPU3 (also CPU3, CPU42 & CPU43) board has two battery backed SRAMs, these are the ST MK48Z02 and the MK48T02. The 'Z' version is a regular SRAM, the 'T' version includes a RTC which is mapped into the last 8 bytes of the MK48T02's 2048 byte address space.

In the CPU3 implementation 'RF' (the component designation on the PCB silkscreen) is the MK48T02 and 'RD' is the MK48Z02. Both devices are memory mapped into the 68000 address space starting at $040000 to $040FFF. The MK48Z02 is mapped to EVEN bytes and the MK48T02 is mapped to ODD bytes to give a total capacity 4,087 bytes (accounting for the 8 RTC control registers).

According to the datasheet for the MK48T02 device the RTC register map is as follows:

Add  D7 D6 D5 D4 D3 D2 D1 D0
7FF:  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  - : Year 00-99
7FE:  0  0  0  -  -  -  -  - : Month 01-12
7FD:  0  0  -  -  -  -  -  - : Date 01-31
7FC:  0 FT  0  0  0  -  -  - : Day 01-07
7FB: KS  0  -  -  -  -  -  - : Hours 00-23
7FA:  0  -  -  -  -  -  -  - : Minutes 00-59
7F9: ST  -  -  -  -  -  -  - : Seconds 00-59
7F8:  W  R  S  -  -  -  -  - : Control

ST=Stop Bit
R=Read Bit
FT=Frequency Test
W=Write Bit
S=Sign Bit

KS=Kick Start Bit


To translate this to the Paintbox memory map we must multiply the address by 2 and add $40001. So the map becomes:

Add    D7 D6 D5 D4 D3 D2 D1 D0
40FFF:  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  - : Year 00-99
40FFD:  0  0  0  -  -  -  -  - : Month 01-12
40FFB:  0  0  -  -  -  -  -  - : Date 01-31
40FF9:  0 FT  0  0  0  -  -  - : Day 01-07
40FF7: KS  0  -  -  -  -  -  - : Hours 00-23
40FF5:  0  -  -  -  -  -  -  - : Minutes 00-59
40FF3: ST  -  -  -  -  -  -  - : Seconds 00-59
40FF1:  W  R  S  -  -  -  -  - : Control


You can poke bytes into these addresses using the Quantel AFS Monitor on the serial port prior to booting the Paintbox software or you can use the 'MEMORY' command from within the Paintbox console.

Using the AFS Monitor to set the date to Wednesday 7 December 2016, remembering the values are BCD and the year is defined as years since 1980.

At the command prompt:

Allow write access to registers & stop clock:
40FF1;80

Set the day of week:
40FF9;03

Set the date:
40FFB;07

Set the month:
40FFD;0C

Set the year:
40FFF;36

Disable write access to registers & start clock:
40FF1;00