PacMan

Sweet, Kind of makes me wanna go ahead and do that space shooter I always wanted to do =) I'll bee watching this thread for updates. /P

*Hehe* that assembler block sure could use some comments

42 Years (thought it was 43 till my girlfriend reminded me =) My first computer was an Acorn Atom, purchased in 1980 (Still have it and it is still working). After that I got an A800 with dual 810's. Must have been 1982 sometime. /P

This document have some good information about the chip.

Guess I'll have to dig it up and take some pictures of it.

I used to have one of these which worked fairly well They are quite hard to find now, since SMD technology has pretty much taken over. Currently I am using a tool I made myself. I have shaped a 1mm thick copper plate to fit in between the pins of the IC and attached it to an old tip of a 75W iron. Desolders up to 48pin DIPs in seconds without destroying the board. Of course I need to wick the holes out afterwords if the board is to be reused. I had my son desolder 600 EPROMs from old computer boards and it took him less than 2 days so it works very well. (If anyone wonders, yes he got paid for the job ) /P

Think Bra and washing machine !

I have the Batupo (Found here http://www.progshop.com/shop/programmer/BX32P/index.html) which works beatifully. Small, connects with USB, excellent software, inexpensive... and the list just goes on It won't do PLD's but i have a Xeltek unit for those guys. /Pw

Absolutely any game I touch

I just recently received a 1200XL in excellent condition. It wasn't boxed but the unit was just in a fantastic condition. It still had the protective soft plastic attached to the alu buttons. No yellowing at all.

I created a cartridge a while back using the Wiznet chip W3150A and a FLASH for drivers. It is quite cool, a small webserver only requires about 2.5K program memory to work. With this I think it would be fully possible to integrate a new network device to do real LAN networking. Think <LOAD "X:TEST.BAS">. A friend of mine has it now to write drivers, but he is like the slowest guy this side of Moronville (Hej Thomas so that will take a while *hehe*. I'll post some pictures when I get it back. /P

Allan, Do you have the possibility to program an EPROM ? In that case I can send you a test BIOS that will test the XBoard and report back what it finds. If you don't have this possibility I can send you a preprogramed EPROM instead. /P

O yes, I use them for almost all my equipment. They are small, light and reliable and generate no heat. /P

I definitly want one... erhh no make that two. /P

I am using a somewhat similar technique (listed below). I have also started to work on some RAM test functions which I have included as an attachment. These are not completely done yet but the data bits check and address bit check routines work. The last section is an embryo for the data integrity test. Feel free to offer comment and suggestions on how to improve the functions. /P Memtest.zip ; The POKEY is located in the high section of the available memory area at $0400 ; of the 7800. It is selected from $0460 - $046f when Bit 4 of the XCTRL register ; is set to "1" if Bit 4 = "0" the POKEY is disabled. ; XCTRL = $0470 ; Note Write only ; Bit 4 = Enable POKEY chip ; Bit 3 = Enable Banked 128Kbyte SRAM ; Bit 2 = Bit 2 of SRAM bank select ; Bit 1 = Bit 1 of SRAM bank select ; Bit 0 = Bit 0 of SRAM bank select ; ; Bit patterns for enabling/disabling XBoard features. XENABLEMEM = %00001000 XENABLEPOKEY = %00010000 XPOKEYBASE1 = $0450 XPOKEYBASE2 = $0460 . . . lda #XENABLEPOKEY ; Enable the pokey ora XCTRL_SHDW ; inclusive jsr SetXCtrl ; Set the values lda #$00 tax ST2: sta XPOKEYBASE1,X ; Clear Pokey1 sta XPOKEYBASE2,X ; Clear Pokey2 inx cpx #$10 bne ST2 lda #3 sta SKCTL + XPOKEYBASE1 ldx #128 ldy #0 XCheck8: lda RANDOM + XPOKEYBASE1 nop nop cmp RANDOM + XPOKEYBASE1 beq XCheck11 iny ; Count differences XCheck11: dex ; Dec loop counter bne XCheck8 ; Loop again cpy #16 ; No less than 16 hits bcc XCheck9 ; Jump if less than 16 hits ; XBoard Pokey is available do something special with it;-) XCheck9: ; XBoard Pokey not available :-(

Ken, I'm guessing that it is not your code that is messing things up since both versions works here without hitches. I will be taking Schmutzies XBoard back to see if it faulty. Allan: I checked my NTSC board and C10 is one of the yellow capacitors ritgh behind the channel selector switch at the rear end of the board. The second one from the cart connector. You should connect the wire from the XBoard to the terminal on the capacitor closest to the connector. /P

It definitly worked for me, i tried removing the connector to the XBoard and the music went away. Seems you are using TIA sound for sound Fx and POKEY for music. Schmutzpuppe, I will mail you a BIOS EPROM with a test program so that we can debug what is going on. You are using a PAL 7800 nes pá ? /P

If you fry MARIA Best Electronics has them. I never liked the idea of desoldering pin for pin so I created a a desoldering tool with a copper plate bent to touch all the pins at the same time and mounted it on a 75W soldering iron. When I remove DIP IC's I simply fasten the board in a holder that holds it in an upright position, put the new "solder tip" on the pins for 4-5 seconds and pull the IC out. Works everytime an I have not managed to destroy any chip or board yet. /P

I'd keep my eyes on ebay for that, don't think many people here are willing to part with their precious. It took me almost 4 months to find a 130XE in good condition and with a fair price here in Europe. I believe that the 65XE is easier to get and you could always upgrade that to 320K (or whatever memory size you are looking for). /P

The 6502 is truly amazing /P

Eckhard. Excellent explanation. Thanks a lot. /P

Yes, that is correct, so this is before the INPCTRL register is locked. Did you know by the way that all accesses to $01,x in the loop generates a write signal to the INPCTRL register ? /P

I have been working on a new BIOS for my 7800 for a while now and everything has been going pretty smooth. I have done all testing in the Prosystem emu and been quite happy with that. I was really surprised to find out that when testing it on the real deal nothing worked at all. I spent the entire evening tying to track the problem down, I even got my logic analyzer out to see what is going on. Turns out that the initialization code that clears the TIA: lda #$00 ; Clear TIA/Maria registers tax ; ST1: sta $01,x ; inx ; cpx #$2c ; bne ST1 ; needs to be located above $f000 in the memory map to work. Otherwise the system crashes. Has anyone seen this ? And in that case do you know why this happens. I traced it so far that I could see that when the code was at the original location ($eed6 something) the RDY signal got stuck and was locking the CPU out from doing anything at all. Anyway, it works now. That is good /P

I have one NTSC unit at home so I can check that when I get home tonight. /P

The strangest thing happened when I removed the Pokey from my CC2. It couldn't find MENU.CC2 ! When I plugged the Pokey back it worked, when I removed it again, it failed. I had to reformat the MMC and write everything back to make it work without the Pokey. Have anyone seen that behaviour before ? /P