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Stone

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About Stone

  • Birthday 01/26/1985

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Herts, UK
  • Interests
    Hardware hacking, embedded systems, systems engineering, mocking the bewildered.

Previous Fields

  • Skills - Compétences
    Hardware. DSPs. Integration. Electronic warfare.
  1. Jag cart port questions

    When it's done, yeah This is why I don't promise anything...(went back to work and got a new car so I've been hyperbusy) I'll see if I can get back on it soon - ran into a few conceptual problems so I need to get it all straightened out in my head before I go down the wrong path. Stone
  2. Jag cart port questions

    Actually they aren't symmetrical on production carts - that way they can only fit into a cart shell when the board is facing upwards. My actual mistake was that the left-hand cutout isn't just a cutout - the board is wider at the bottom than the top, but my layout assumed constant width. Whoops...
  3. Jag cart port questions

    Done a bit more hacking about. This is before the million iterations of 'print 1:1 copy, swear, tweak, print 1:1 copy...' Can you spot the deliberate error? Should really go to bed now ;-) Stone
  4. Jag cart port questions

    I'll see what I can manage I had an old EAGLE layout of an EPROM cart I never got around to fabricating which was the source of my cart slot footprint but for some reason it's way out! Lots of tedious counting and measuring to do which is why I've been putting it off... Been quite distracted recently with other stuff - but on the bright side I now have a working Time Crisis in my living room I'll have to try and get back into it soon. Stone
  5. Jag cart port questions

    That's what magic numbers are for, right? Stone
  6. Jag cart port questions

    I'm not building a flash cart. Actually what I'd really like is a USB BJL cable - wouldn't be a hard project but I can't really be arsed Stone
  7. Jag cart port questions

    Aww, you guys Another of the pieces fell into place earlier but again I can't tell you what it was without giving the game away! Hurrah for people who keep stockpiles of everything just in case. Also acquired a laser printer off Freecycle so I might experiment with toner transfer PCBs for quick prototyping. It's already been invaluable in printing out 1:1 PCB footprints so I can line parts up on them and check the spacing. My cart edge connector was seriously wonky! After SCPCD's post above I've realised I've screwed up a big chunk of the bus translation logic (and it will get much worse if I allow the Jag to write into the cart!) so I'll have to redo a big chunk of it, which is very irritating. Better now than after the first PCB is made, I guess - I'll have to stop designing stuff so early in the morning. Probably about half of it so far was done between 10pm and 4am Why? Obviously all the data sent from Jag to cart will go out externally too, but why should I care? Does adding a JagLink change something in the hardware side? That makes perfect sense, thank you for reminding me. Again I'd forgotten these things I'll make sure I attach all the relevant pins then, when I've used EPROMs in the past I've just tied BHE and BLE pins active. In this case (16 bit memory ICs) I'll tie BHE and BLE to /EOE1 on one chip and /EOE0 on the other. Stone
  8. Jag cart port questions

    Patience! I promise it will all make sense in the end... OK, that makes sense. I never really looked into how the JagCD hardware worked in detail, I was always happiest at $4000 Yep, got it now. I hadn't realised they were pinned out to the cart port, it makes it a lot easier to talk to custom hardware than by reading and writing magic addresses in cartspace! (also much easier to debug when you do the Jag software - just use an Alpine and listen to the serial port for your commands/data) I was thinking of the different EPROM access methods - many datasheets include one where the chip remains selected (/CE low) at all times and you control reads and writes just by using /OE and /WE. I have scrounged some more level translation pins together now (had to add another small bus tristate for pins going into the Jag - E2DATA, /RESETI, UARTI etc) as I had almost filled up my 74LVC16T245s and couldn't spare eight bits to swap the direction around. The PCB layout is going to be a nightmare, I'm trying to think ahead at the schematic stage but it's not always obvious what will make things hard later... OK, yeah, so for 32-bit accesses they'll both be enabled at once. There seems to be a lot of flexibility in the memory controller for different cart designs - was the 1MB cart they did for Cybermorph a 16-bit-only one with one maskrom? Do you mean /EWE0 for bits 15..0 and /EWE2 for 32..16? Or can you only write in small widths? Very strange Yeah, adding a button isn't hard, that seems the easiest way. Sorry to be so cryptic, it will be worth it in the end though! Stone
  9. Jag cart port questions

    Finally had a bit of time to do some schematic work on this, I've been really busy! I have a few more stupid questions if you don't mind… 1) Are TxD on B49 and RxD on B50 just attached directly to the same pins as on the external network port, and can you talk to them using normal Jag networking code? Do you need to use SCK/WS with it or are they unrelated? Also, what are UARTO and UARTI for? 2) Am a bit unclear on ROM1 (pin A20) - is this /CS for the cart memory ICs? Can I just leave it tied low on the cart and unconnected on the cart port or is it actually used? (am running out of level translator pins ) 3) Likewise /EOE1 (pin B22) and /EOE0 (pin B23) - Matthias has B23 as OE for the high word and B22 as OE for the low word, is this correct or is it backwards? I assume they always change state together in 32-bit accesses anyway so I may be able to get away with just one…once you've told the memory controller to run in 32-bit mode are all bus accesses always 32bit from then on even if you use mv.w? 4) A0 and A1 are always low for 32-bit accesses, correct? (so I only need A2 - A23 hooked up to the memory - A2 on cart port to A0 on my memory IC) 5) How do you use /EWE0, /EWE2 and ERW? 6) /RESETI is for when the cart wants to reset the Jag, but how does /RESET work? Is it just active for a few ms on powerup or does it fire under software reset (*+#) also? Just checking! I'm making EAGLE libraries of all the parts as I go along so if anybody would like a copy once they're finalised and checked then do get in touch and I'll share. Thanks in advance! Stone
  10. Cartridge dumping tool

    Both, actually! I used to use a BJL-equipped Jag to dump carts with and uploaded the program to RAM manually. However I believe the developer JagCD BIOS allows you to hold buttons on boot to specify whether to prioritise cart or CD - speculation only, but otherwise I can't see how their 'jukebox' program (let you run a CD program which wrote cart ROMs to an attached Alpine) would work. If not, once the Alpine has a cart image in it you can't run the CD jukebox program again! I can't for the life of me remember why I put the cart transfer program on a CD, there must have been a reason... With an Alpine you can work around it by loading the CD BIOS into RAM directly and jumping into it, but it's a bit of a pain. This is how I use my prototype JagCDs as they have no BIOS installed! Stone
  11. Cartridge dumping tool

    The dumping tool I used waay back was a BJL program that spat data out of a Jaglink, through a RJ11->serial cable and was collected as an xmodem transfer by a PC running Hyperterminal - I think it was written by Glenn Bruner. We used to run it from a CD. I was reminded of its existance when I found a CD of it the other day along with my dumping cable Stone
  12. Jag cart port questions

    Many thanks for that. It looks kinda like Matthias traced a 4-chip cart without knowing which ROM was which! Also thanks for the edge tip, I'll bear that in mind. This is all very useful, you've saved me two board revs already Stone
  13. Jag cart port questions

    It turns out the answer was yes... The cart port in the schematic has D0 as A23 and D16 as A40, whereas Matthias's website has D0 as A40 and D16 as A23. The rest of the data lines seem scrambled about also. Could someone confirm if Matthias's diagram is correct? (if so why would they use D16 for data into the E2PROM? D0 makes more sense, kinda ) Stone
  14. Cheap cartridges for developers and gamers

    I still remember enough French from school to get by
  15. Jag cart port questions

    Yeah, whoops, it was past my bedtime I'd forgotten about the diodes, I was thinking of latch-up. Thanks. Looks like the easiest way is to buffer everything through a simple PLD, then as an added bonus you can rearrange the pinout to make it more convenient! I think you can get ones with multiple VCCio domains so it can become true 5V signalling as it leaves the cart. Cheers chaps, it's very refreshing to have people on a Jag forum be both well-informed and friendly! Stone
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