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Setting up a 632k cart


Gazoo

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Some folks have had better luck with the 29F040, especially if they are using one of the less expensive adapters to program them. I haven't had any problems with the 49F040 chips using the clamshell type sockets though, and I've been selecting the 32-pin DIP version of the chip as opposed to the PLCC on my programmer's menu. Every one I've done that way has worked flawlessly the first time.

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but when I hit "A" for XB 2.7 I get "I/O error 70 in line 100"

 

Could it be an XB program which is auto-loading on startup?

Do you have a disk-image mounted in the drive 1 of the nanoPEB? What happens if you hold the key down after selecting A, while XB loads (to skip the auto-boot)?

 

I seem to recall there's a way of booting XB from the cart without the nanoPEB attached. Have you tried this?

 

Do any other programs load and run? What about the games? Is XB2.7 the only problematic program?

 

If the programmed ROMs have verified, I can't imagine they're the source of the problem unless the ROM images themselves have become corrupted.

 

Edit: As you said in your post (which I clearly missed), the other programs you've tried seem to work correctly, so I still can't imagine there's a problem with either of the ROMs.

Edited by UKRetrogamer
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Could it be an XB program which is auto-loading on startup?

Do you have a disk-image mounted in the drive 1 of the nanoPEB? What happens if you hold the key down after selecting A, while XB loads (to skip the auto-boot)?

 

I seem to recall there's a way of booting XB from the cart without the nanoPEB attached. Have you tried this?

 

Do any other programs load and run? What about the games? Is XB2.7 the only problematic program?

 

If the programmed ROMs have verified, I can't imagine they're the source of the problem unless the ROM images themselves have become corrupted.

 

Edit: As you said in your post (which I clearly missed), the other programs you've tried seem to work correctly, so I still can't imagine there's a problem with either of the ROMs.

 

Thanks for that, hadn't even crossed my mind, I'll move a non XB autoloading program into DSK1 when I get home in about 2 hours. Hopefully that's all it is.

 

I used a el-cheapo Chinese Willem to program the roms, had no problems at all, and a homemade serial programmer on my old win98 machine for the Atmega, will post pics later too.

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That was it. I had to have the one disk loaded in the nanoPEB that caused a problem of course. It was one of the EA5GAMES disks with a LOAD command in there, tried other disks and they behave as normal.

Here's pics to prove You don't need a expensive programmer to program the Atmega. I had to use my 15 year old PC that has a parallel port and Win98se. A combination of Avrdudess (GUI) and Avrdude in a MSDOS prompt

did the trick. I couldn't program the Flash and EEprom at the same time as the MSDOS prompt wouldn't let me fit it all in the one command line.

Another thing I found out was that even a FTDI USB com port was slow as hell and failed the verification, so had to use the genuine COM port of my old pc which programmed it in about 3 minutes instead of 40.

I hope no one here gets a heart attack from these pics of my "Programmer"

post-38169-0-15374400-1422867143_thumb.jpg

post-38169-0-83027000-1422867145_thumb.jpg

Edited by Imperious
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That was it. I had to have the one disk loaded in the nanoPEB that caused a problem of course. It was one of the EA5GAMES disks with a LOAD command in there, tried other disks and they behave as normal.

Happy to be of service and glad the solution was so simple. As I only understand "simple", I guessed I'd throw in my suggestion and see if it helped.

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Excellent news! Actually, I like the programmer--it shows me that everything was right on the ISP connection (I don't think any of us had used that access method yet. You probably could have had a bit of an easier go of it if your TI had been handy--plug the cart into it for power, set the jumpers correctly, and connect the ISP wires to program it.

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I used the ISP method a lot on the early revs of the cart, just I was using it for MPD development instead of cart development. ;)

 

Speaking of which, I have the GROM configuration tool ready, but it needs some guinea pigs to test. It requires the AVR be programmed, and allows for configuring the I/O and loading files into the GROM areas. :)

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I actually made that up to program a nanoSWINSID that has a Atmega88, and it was my only easy option left after I realised the Willem didn't have an ISP connection.

I double and triple checked all connections with my multimeter before attempting to program, also downloaded the Atmega1284p datasheet as wasn't 100% sure of

the +5v and MISO connections on the board.

It did cross my mind to use the TI as power but the old trade college power supply I made uses a bit less desk space.

 

I was also having occasional issues with the other board I purchased. I programmed Gamecart1 onto a rom chip, no Atmega, and occasionally the TI doesn't pick it up, just

shows TI Basic only. So I suspect the EA5 games disk could have been causing some conflict there too.

 

Thanks all for the help.

Edited by Imperious
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Excellent news! Actually, I like the programmer--it shows me that everything was right on the ISP connection (I don't think any of us had used that access method yet. You probably could have had a bit of an easier go of it if your TI had been handy--plug the cart into it for power, set the jumpers correctly, and connect the ISP wires to program it.

 

Come to think of it, my 844USB has an ISP connection ribbon cable with it. I've never even thought to try to use PG4UW to try and program the 1284 without removing it from the board. Do you simply tell the programmer what pin on the ISP connection is what, or is it pretty standardized?

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One note on the UberGROM boards when used as standard 512K cartridges. The 74LE378 (or AM25LS07) chips used do not always start in the first or last bank. Any given chip always starts in the same bank, but I have seen some of them that start at all kinds of crazy places in the cartridge space. Usually, I use the Bank Test program from Tursi to verify the starting bank and make sure that I only use chips with either first or last bank initialization for the regular 512K carts. The UberGROM images from Gazoo do a forced initialization as part of their startup routine to ensure this won't cause issues, which is why you don't notice any problems when using the cartridge as intended.

 

The 512K Games cartridges don't care what is in the disk drive, so there should be no load issues. One note there too: if using an UberGROM and a Navarone cartridge expander, the only cartridge that can be installed is the UberGROM, as the Navarone doesn't do a bulletproof switch between the cartridges (and thus fails to turn the UberGROM off).

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  • 1 month later...

I wonder if someone can help me? I was given a TI99 for Christmas and bought an UberGROM cartridge and a 512K cartridge.

 

To test the UberGROM, I've burnt the SXB images from this thread to the 49F040 and ATMega1284P and that seems to have gone okay - reading back the images appears to confirm this.

 

The cartridge gives the menu but only the following options seem to work:

 

'C - Disk Manager 2'

'O - Corcomp Diagnostics'

'P - Navarrone Disk Fixer'

 

All of the other options either give a blue screen or fill the screen with random stuff. (Although it's random, it's consistent so I get the same random stuff every time.)

 

I think the 74LS378 is starting up in a random bank as that's how it behaves in the 512K board - would this cause the behaviour I'm seeing? As I said, I'm new to all this stuff so please excuse my ignorance!

 

Many thanks,

Rob

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I wonder if someone can help me? I was given a TI99 for Christmas and bought an UberGROM cartridge and a 512K cartridge.

 

To test the UberGROM, I've burnt the SXB images from this thread to the 49F040 and ATMega1284P and that seems to have gone okay - reading back the images appears to confirm this.

 

The cartridge gives the menu but only the following options seem to work:

 

'C - Disk Manager 2'

'O - Corcomp Diagnostics'

'P - Navarrone Disk Fixer'

 

All of the other options either give a blue screen or fill the screen with random stuff. (Although it's random, it's consistent so I get the same random stuff every time.)

 

I think the 74LS378 is starting up in a random bank as that's how it behaves in the 512K board - would this cause the behaviour I'm seeing? As I said, I'm new to all this stuff so please excuse my ignorance!

 

Many thanks,

Rob

 

You either don't have a 32k memory expansion connected, or there is something wrong with it. That much is certain. :)

 

Gazoo

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You either don't have a 32k memory expansion connected, or there is something wrong with it. That much is certain. :)

 

Gazoo

Thanks for the quick reply. I don't have a memory expansion yet - so is this the expected behaviour without the expansion? As I said, I'm new to all this!

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You either don't have a 32k memory expansion connected, or there is something wrong with it. That much is certain. :)

 

Gazoo

Thanks for the quick reply. I don't have a memory expansion yet so that would explain it!

 

Is it safe to assume that my cartridge is working properly then?

 

Thanks again,

Rob

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 7 months later...

While looking at old messages, I stumbled upon this...

 

Too bad Telco needs all sorts of extra modules, or we could put it in there too :)

 

... now with TIMXT out in beta... who knows... maybe someday we'll have TIMXT & Stuarts Internet Browser in one awesome "Communications Cartridge".

 

...it could happen!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I did some chip experimentation tonight, using Gazoo's old MiniPro. I programmed about 20 of my 49F040 chips with it, using a clamshell-type socket adapter for PLCC chips (also called a "flap" adapter). I chose the generic option for the 49F040, not the one for the PLCC variant. Every single chip burned a perfect copy on the first try.

 

With that I can say two things about burning these chips:

 

1. Always burn them as if they are the 32-pin DIP version of the chip.

 

2. Use a 32-pin clamshell adapter. I have bought one of these from the seller I linked to here. They are reliable, and the adapters are approximately $20, shipped. You can use cheaper adapters, but the frustration will eventually bring you to these, as I've had absolutely no problem with them, and I've burned about 100 of these chips with my adapter, in three different programmers (A TOPWIN 3000, a MiniPro TL866CS, and an Advin Pilot U84+), using operating systems from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

 

As Gazoo found out, the 29F040 chips (the alternate family of 512K flash chips for the UberGROM) is a little less sensitive to the adapters--and so he preferred them to the 49F040. My testing now shows that both families will work well--even using the same programmer Gazoo did. With that, use whichever you are most comfortable with and program away, now that we know how to make both families work well in the programmers commonly used by the TI community. :)

Edited by Ksarul
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I did some chip experimentation tonight, using Gazoo's old MiniPro. I programmed about 20 of my 49F040 chips with it, using a clamshell-type socket adapter for PLCC chips (also called a "flap" adapter).

 

I believe it was on your good advice that I bought one of those...

 

sml_gallery_35324_1510_1592934.jpg

 

I can confirm/second your results. I never had a failure since I started using it with my MiniPro.

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