Falcon Rebuild

Falcon Update 8-24-2025

From now on, the Falcon rebuild project will be known as Falcon Re-Imagined. This system is not a standard Atari Falcon, nor is it a clone—it’s built on the original Falcon foundation but enhanced with extensive upgrades. We hope this new name helps clarify its identity and eliminates any confusion moving forward.

Falcon Re-Imagined Update – August 24, 2025 Revision 1B now marked as Prototype 2.0 has officially been routed and is now set for production. We expect the new boards to arrive within the next 10 days. Assembly will be handled by a Long Island-based company, allowing us to support our local community and keep the dollars—and the jobs—right here in the USA. The estimated turnaround for assembly is about two weeks. After that, the real excitement begins: testing. If everything goes according to plan, the system should power up flawlessly on the first try.

Falcon Update 7-21-2025

Falcon update

Well a bit of a delay in our future.

We are currently rerouting our PCB’s. We had several errors both software related and user related.

The cost of our manufacturer to assemble was a bit higher than expected, several quotes as high as $1000.00 each so the new plan is, we will attempt to hand assemble several of the Boards we have on hand ( we expect each one to take a full day maybe 2). For those of you who are familiar with PCB stencils for surface mount technology you know what it’s like to hand solder 800 parts, fortunately many are 0603 packages and not 0402’s. With this said I personally will be doing the work starting August 4^th when I get back from a business trip out of state.

Being a prototype it’s not a big deal just more time and more work. We knew a second and third revision would be necessary but we did not plan on hand assembly (should be lots of FUN!)

Prototypes for sale: May have already requested information of how to obtain one. The hand assembled units will be for in house use only. The next revision we will have a limited release and this will be on a first come first served basis. We will make the announcement when that time comes.

Our lead engineer is currently out with some medical issues that has slowed progress in the past, and will do so again, so this hiccup may not necessarily be a bad thing. It will just take a bit longer. Sorry for the delay but in the long run I’m sure it will be worth it.

Falcon Update 7-11-2025

Our PCB’s have arrived, upon checking the layout (as in the word Prototype) we found several non-critical errors. Parts have been arriving throughout the last several weeks and we now have stock on everything required to assemble our first boards.

All we are currently waiting for is our place in line at the assembly house. We hope to have several test units by the First week of August. We will post a Video of the initial powerup, working or not.

A continued Work in Progress, this has been challenging to say the least.

Falcon Update 6-25-2025

We expect to have our Blank PCB’s by next week, our fabrication facility told me it will take about 3 weeks before it will be on their line to assemble. Realistically I would say we will have a fully assembled prototype by end of July.

We made 10 units for the first revision, Wizztronics may offer some of these for sale (they will be a fully functioning board with all necessary adapters included).
If we decide to sell the extra prototypes it will be limited to this first run and on a first come basis.

The second revision will include more on main board, including more logic,SDRAM but less jumpers, test points and hopefully a reduction in physical size as well as the amount of layers needed to route it.

Revision 2 will also be a very limited run, and again we will make some of the units available for sale. The overall plan is to have a fully working and finished product by years end. That production run will be limited to inventory of custom parts.
While we want this to be a profitable experience, it was done to keep the Atari alive. It’s been a long road to travel down and taking a fairly large gamble but I am confidant it will be worth it.

Plugin PCB’s so far will be included to purchasers of the revision 1 prototypes.

1) Stock 16MHz 68030 microprocessor, with the ability to install a 68030 50MHz processor.
2) Gal Logic PCB populated with Factory Atari GALS.
3) Audio PCB Populated with Falcon Stock design including the CS4216 Codec. ( this was designed this way to be fully upgradable simply by plugging in a replacement PCB (we may keep this functionality going forward.
4) Atari RAM card adapter to use a standard Atari RAM Module or 3rd party card ( the main PCB will have a Sim connector on board. In that case the adapter will not be necessary.
The SDRAM Module will be made available but not going to be included in the initial release, but when available will plug into the main PCB.

Lastly, given the going price of a factory used Atari Falcon on eBay at$3000.00 I know we will be under that, but until it’s complete we can’t estimate the final cost. Once I recover my investment and make a few $, we will release the gerbers and design for others to play with. this has been and still is a tiresome project. 300 plus man hours to date and counting.

Falcon Update 5-3-2025

PCB layout has begun, first stage is part placement.

The first revision has many extra connectors that will be removed on the final PCB, currently they will allow us to troubleshoot any issues, as well as have the ability to use daughter boards to add the enhancements one by one.

It is our hope this can accelerate the time necessary to complete the project.

It has been 3 days so far and everything is moving along nicely.

The current board dimensions at this time are 449mm x 314mm approximately 17.68×12.36 while the finished Atari Falcon was 440mm x 250mm 17.32″ x 9.8″.

We will keep posting updates as they come available.

Falcon Update 3-2-2025

We have decided to make the first Falcon Remake a motherboard with many plugin cards so we can fine tune each component as we move along.

Any comments are welcome.

Audio/Codec prototype Boards are assembled. Being the first revision we will improve on the audio on each revision we make.

Several Test 68030 CPU Boards assembled, these will be used in the testing phase only, replaced with higher clocked CPU’s.

GAL Logic PCB’s are done ready for testing, once verified all Logic will be on the main board as part of our custom logic saving space and boosting performance.

Falcon Update 1-28-2025

Prototyping of the test PCB’s are in production, at least 3 of them this week.

The stock 68030, which will not be part of the main board (too slow) but we want to test it for compatibility,

The Logic PCB which will be in a single part, saving space and power, not to mention a little better performance and the CODEC/Audio PCB, which we will most likely improve on. Everything is a Work in Progress. The VME and ISA is almost finished as well.

Falcon Update 12-27-2024

We are getting close to finishing the new schematics and will be starting the PCB layout.

We intend to do it in 3 stages. We are going to produce a limited number of prototype PCB’s, many have already asked how they may obtain one.

Developers will have first opportunity on obtaining a developer PCB.

It currently looks like this will be a 6-8 Layer PCB, we will not focus on size in the first revision, since there will be many added diagnostics built on the first revision.

After we have a working model, we will remove unnecessary hardware thus allowing for size reduction, the hope is that the final design will be compact, but have all features included.

Hardware mapping to conform to TT030/Mega Ste /CT63

ISA BUS MAPPING WILL INITIALLY USE A TT OR MEGA STE VME MAPPING TO ALLOW USE OF CURRENT NOVA OR IDEK TYPE DRIVERS

WILL LATER HAVE A UNIQUE ADDRESS TO TOTALLY FREE UP VME BUS.

INITIAL VME SUPPORT AS IN TT AND MEGA ST THAT SUPPORTS SLAVE ONLY. INTENTION TO ALLOW ALT BUS MASTERS IN LATER REVISIONS