Bee3 - Its alive!

[bikeguychicago]

Have you solicited any people who actually do know what you're talking about to help expedite the testing process?

[GroovyBee]

Have you solicited any people who actually do know what you're talking about to help expedite the testing process?

Thats the idea behind this automated test ROM. If the Inty tests the Bee3 cart itself, then the testing process doesn't rely on a person's skill level playing any particular game or their technical ability in being able to identify issues. A huge advantage of the automated test is that it can run for several hours (if need be) and it performs the exact same tests, time after time. Repeatability under known conditions is the key to identifying and solving any design issues.

 

Once I've done the technical in-depth testing, then I can send some carts out to Rev and/or cmart for testing on a selection of their systems. They can just leave the automated test running for a while, take a photo of the TV and then test another system. When the carts go out for external testing I'm not expecting any major issues because the design will have been hammered to death by me .

[intvnut]

Thats the idea behind this automated test ROM. If the Inty tests the Bee3 cart itself, then the testing process doesn't rely on a person's skill level playing any particular game or their technical ability in being able to identify issues. A huge advantage of the automated test is that it can run for several hours (if need be) and it performs the exact same tests, time after time. Repeatability under known conditions is the key to identifying and solving any design issues.

 

Once I've done the technical in-depth testing, then I can send some carts out to Rev and/or cmart for testing on a selection of their systems. They can just leave the automated test running for a while, take a photo of the TV and then test another system. When the carts go out for external testing I'm not expecting any major issues because the design will have been hammered to death by me .

 

FWIW, I went through a similar process with my own cart designs, and I did that in the past helping Chad with the Intellicart and CC3. I write automated tests that loop for hours to try to identify any issues. They are pretty boring, but necessary.

 

Development-wise I've been fairly lucky. (I could say skillful, but I acknowledge there's a big element of luck, too.) For the most part, things either worked, or they didn't, so I didn't need to spend much time chasing things that were flaky or marginal. Only a couple things fell into the category of "flaky / marginal", so I beat those to death early so they were rock solid. I suppose my original prototype board was a bit flaky, but that was a physical flakiness issue owing to all the cables everywhere, and the fact that my desk was a disaster area. Some pics from 2007: http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/jlp/

 

I suppose it worked. Out of the literally thousands of JLP carts out there, I haven't had any reports of JLP hardware issues that weren't actually issues with the Intellivision itself. (That's not counting the boards that come back from the fab non-functional; we don't ship those.)

[doomguy]

 

FWIW, I went through a similar process with my own cart designs, and I did that in the past helping Chad with the Intellicart and CC3. I write automated tests that loop for hours to try to identify any issues. They are pretty boring, but necessary.

 

Development-wise I've been fairly lucky. (I could say skillful, but I acknowledge there's a big element of luck, too.) For the most part, things either worked, or they didn't, so I didn't need to spend much time chasing things that were flaky or marginal. Only a couple things fell into the category of "flaky / marginal", so I beat those to death early so they were rock solid. I suppose my original prototype board was a bit flaky, but that was a physical flakiness issue owing to all the cables everywhere, and the fact that my desk was a disaster area. Some pics from 2007: http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/jlp/

 

I suppose it worked. Out of the literally thousands of JLP carts out there, I haven't had any reports of JLP hardware issues that weren't actually issues with the Intellivision itself. (That's not counting the boards that come back from the fab non-functional; we don't ship those.)

 

Interesting. How long did you test the LTO Flash Multicart?

[intvnut]

 

Interesting. How long did you test the LTO Flash Multicart?

 

I'd say at least a couple months or so. I'm still banging on it as I finish things up.

[Intymike]

 

Some pics from 2007: http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/jlp/

 

 

 

The best part of the photo's is the "Nothing to see here" area.

[GroovyBee]

The Hive announcement and attending Play Expo at the weekend hasn't left me with much free time for a full update so I'll just leave this here for now :-

 

 

[jaybird3rd]

Great to see your progress on the new hardware, Mark!

 

Reading about the testing process reminds me of when I was testing the Aquarius SuperCart board. It was (and is) fairly primitive stuff compared to the work that Mark and Joe have done, but I followed a similar procedure: I wrote some routines in a test ROM to exercise the bankswitching logic as rigorously as I could, and following Mark's advice, I left it running for days on end on a variety of Aquarius systems (and even with a hair dryer blowing on it at one point) as a way of stress-testing the design under a variety of conditions. I'm glad to say that it worked out very well; except for a few flaky '374 chips which made it into the very first batch of boards that I shipped, I haven't had any problem reports from my users. I hope to get back to my tinkering again once I can free up my schedule later this year.

[GroovyBee]

@jaybird3rd: It was fun helping you out with your Aquarius cart project. Although, I wasn't much use with Z80 assembler, given the number of years since I'd last touched it . I did purchase some Z80 tech manuals and coding books from ebay at one point (quite a while ago) but they've pretty much been left unopened. Maybe down the line I'll go back to tinkering on the Speccy .

[pimpmaul69]

@jaybird3rd: It was fun helping you out with your Aquarius cart project. Although, I wasn't much use with Z80 assembler, given the number of years since I'd last touched it . I did purchase some Z80 tech manuals and coding books from ebay at one point (quite a while ago) but they've pretty much been left unopened. Maybe down the line I'll go back to tinkering on the Speccy .

im assuming you are talking about the zx spectrum? A shame we didnt get it here. Ben heck made a handheld one. He rebuilt the entire board. It was pretty cool.

[GroovyBee]

im assuming you are talking about the zx spectrum?

Yep!

 

A shame we didnt get it here.

You did get the Timex 2048/2068 tho

 

Ben heck made a handheld one. He rebuilt the entire board. It was pretty cool.

Interesting! I'll have to look that up.

[+BBWW]

Wonder if it could save level editor for say, something LodeRunnerish?