Avian’s Blog

A few weeks ago I met with Mr. Vojislav Ivetić in Maribor. He entrusted me with an old Galaksija computer circuit board. Several years ago he obtained it from Janez Stergar at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor. He told me that the historical computer was in an unknown condition, very likely not working, and was interested in restoring it back to usable state. This post is the result of my visual inspection of the circuit to estimate the extent of the restoration that would be necessary.

Galaksija is a small home microcomputer that was designed in Belgrade by Voja Antonić around the Z80 microprocessor. The designs were openly published in a magazine in 1984 with the intention that readers would build their own computers from scratch. Do-it-yourself kits could be ordered by mail and eventually also complete, factory made computers. Galaksija was often easier to obtain than similar foreign computers due to heavy import restrictions in the former Yugoslavia. It is generally considered the most successful of several attempts at a domestic home microcomputer.

At the first glance, Mr. Ivetić' Galaksija appears to be built from one of the kits. It has a white mechanical keyboard and a factory made single-layer printed circuit board with the green solder mask and white silk screen print on top. The integrated circuits and other components were most likely gathered from various sources and soldered manually (not all are in sockets). All original Galaksija computers I've seen looked very similar to this. Some had black keyboards, but they all shared the same PCB design.

The circuit board has the basic Galaksija configuration. Only the 4 kB ROM A is installed. This ROM contains the BASIC interpreter, video driver and the rest of Galaksija's minimalistic operating system (here marked Master EPROM). The ROM B socket is empty.

The quartz windows on UV-erasable EPROMs are only covered with a white paper sticker. If the board was stored for a long time exposed to light, it might be that the EPROMs have lost their charge due to ambient UV light and will have to reprogrammed.

There is a single 2 kB static RAM chip installed. Interestingly, the logo suggests this is an Iskra EMS6116, a domestic integrated circuit. I was not aware that RAM was produced by Iskra. In fact, the original magazine article that gives instructions for Galaksija builders suggests ordering RAM and other chips by mail from abroad (with suggested distributors that will ship to Yugoslavia and tips on getting the shipments through customs). Sockets for additional two 2 kB RAM chips are empty.

All other chips are foreign made. The Z80 CPU and EPROMs are all from SGS (former Italian semiconductor company, later merged into STMicroelectronics). These also have the most recent date codes among the identifiable components on the board: first week of 1986. Original Galaksija design was published in January 1984, so this board was built at least 2 years later. Other logic chips I could identify are from TI and SGS. The oldest chip is the 74LS38 from 1979.

There is a small bundle of components wrapped in sticky tape hanging off the PCB on four wires. It looks like it contains an IC in a DIP package and some capacitors. The circuit sits in front of the shift/load input to the 74LS166 shift register that generates the video signal. It's also connected to the ground and the power supply. Since the extra circuit is not connected to any other digital lines, I'm guessing it is most likely a delay to fix some timing problem.

Normally, the shift/load input is driven directly by a circuit that detects when the CPU is in the M1 (opcode fetch) cycle. See full schematic here. I know from my previous research that M1 detection circuit on the original Galaksija is unreliable, since it depends on signal timings that are not guaranteed by the design of the Z80 CPU. It's possible that this was an attempt to work around this issue.

There is no RF modulator installed. The circuit has been modified so that composite video signal is directly present on a pair of improvised screw terminals. I'm guessing this Galaksija was used with a monitor or a TV with composite input. Those were quite rare at the time, but it was not uncommon for people to modify their TV sets to add a composite input.

Two potentiometers are wired in series with R12 and R13. They have been glued down, but are now hanging loose on wires. Potentiometers seem to have been installed to adjust horizontal and vertical sync pulse widths. They are not part of the original design. They affect the time constants of 74LS123 monostable multivibrators that generate synchronization impulses in the composite video signal.

The space keycap is missing, but the key itself is present. I guess even if a suitable replacement can't be found, one could be drawn in a CAD program and 3D-printed.

A look at the bottom side reveals that the condition of the copper laminate is quite bad. Many tracks and annular rings have broken or lifted off the substrate. The PCB shows signs of old repairs to some of the damaged tracks, so at least part of this damage is not due to age. Maybe soldering was done at a too high temperature or the quality of the laminate was not particularly good. This Galaksija shows no signs that it was ever mounted in a case, so the damage might also be due to mechanical stress. Many tracks around EPROM sockets are broken, suggesting that the stress of inserting and removing the EPROMs was at least partially responsible.

I've counted around 40 points on the PCB that would need repair. Some are hairline breaks in traces that seem easy to reliably bridge with solder. Other parts would require replacements of copper areas using foil and epoxy glue to bring them back to original condition. Fortunately this PCB has relatively large features compared to modern SMD boards. However, this extent of repair still seems like a lot of delicate work. I'm also not certain that other areas of the laminate that look fine now would not start failing during repair.

If all else fails, another possibility would be to have a whole replacement PCB made and re-solder the keyboard and other original components. This would obviously decrease the historical authenticity. While the scans of original PCB masks are available on the web, those are not precise enough to make a usable replacement board. They would need to be redrawn before they can be sent to a fab.

In conclusion, all basic components are there and look fairly well preserved. At the moment I have no reason to believe that any chips are bad. However the PCB should be repaired before attempting to power up this board. The extent of damage and the amount of fine work with the copper foil would make this repair quite time consuming. It would be nice to somehow check the state of the most critical chips before proceeding on that path. Fixing the PCB would be a big waste of time if the CPU or RAM chip will eventually turn out to be bad. On the other hand, replacements for 74LSxx series logic still seem to be relatively easy to come by.