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Upcoming Jaguar Game Drive Cartridge


SainT

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So excited for this as well. I started a conversation about remote storage for old systems over on the Atari forums, and it came up in discussion a thing I hadn't even considered possible. SD cards with Wifi built into them. Any idea if this would work on the Jag SD Cart?

 

Being able to just have roms on an NFS share rather than having to copy them around sounds pretty nice to me. Especially for developers. Write a rom, copy it to a folder on a share, test on real hardware, rinse and repeat.

 

Something like this;

https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Wi-Fi-Class-Memory-TS32GWSDHC10/dp/B00A659ILQ

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I'm using a memory card at the moment... However I will have USB support for remote dev work. There's no reason I couldn't give access to the file system on the memory card via USB...

Edited by SainT
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I don't know about everyone else, but my computer is in my other room than my Jag, so a USB cable for that would be kind of painful :P The main reason I'm looking into things like this is for various platforms, I think it'd be much easier to do all the management of what files are there from a central place. With all the SD/micro SD cards I have floating around, it's getting kind of nuts!

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Man, that was a pain. Found a bridged via after removing 3 chips. Fixed it. Yay. Found another issue which meant I couldnt write to the chip... tried to bodge it... managed to rip a pad off a via and buggered the PCB. Arse. Next de-soldered and re-soldered all the components to another PCB. Eurgh.

 

Anyway, upshot is I have been able to read the flash manufacturer and device id from the cart, so it should be at the bare minimum required to get something to boot on the Jag now. I just need to actually sign a little test program and flash it.

 

This is the cart so far. Notice all the small chips at the bottom of the cart on both sides. They are ALL 3.3v<>5v level shifters. The only other things on there are a little 3.3v voltage regulator between the voltage shifters (U13) and the flash (U3). You can now see for yourselves this cart will be voltage safe... :-D

 

post-37728-0-95387500-1502125002.jpg

 

post-37728-0-58478900-1502125004.jpg

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I've finally got something worth doing a quick video on:

 

 

It's now at the first stage -- booting code from the on-board FLASH. This is designed to be the fail-safe state -- even if the custom chip gets bricked during an update the fail safe state is to still boot the FLASH. This enables you to then do another update from the Jaguar through the microcontroller on the cart. Likewise the microcontroller will have a protected boot area such that it can't get bricked either. It should be impossible to bugger the cart through power loss, etc...

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Great job :)

 

Looks like the PCB edge is not beveled. I understand this is an internal prototype, but I'd advise you to use a file to manually remove the sharp edge, roughly like this:

http://www.eurocircuits.com/Edge-connector-beveling/

 

I made the same mistake for the Jagtopus prototype, and ended up having to replace the connector on the Jaguar because plugging the PCB crushed some pins ; it's expensive and a real pain to do.

 

Be sure not to forget to specify gold plating on the contacts on the final version, too ;)

Edited by Zerosquare
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Thanks for the advice again, yes I do intend to have a bevelled edge on the final board. I hope this will be something the pcb fab house will be able to handle for me, but I've not had that conversation yet. :) But I think I'll take a file to the proto board as you suggest while all the pins are in good shape on this jag. No point temping fate...

 

And, yes, I use immersion gold finish on final boards. HASL is fine for prototypes. :)

Edited by SainT
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I hope this will be something the pcb fab house will be able to handle for me, but I've not had that conversation yet.

It's best to ask them right from the start. Some of them have no problem with it, others (lower-end ones) do not offer it. You may have to shop around a bit.

 

Here are the bevel parameters, for reference:

post-8748-0-90771300-1502232482.png

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I've finally got something worth doing a quick video on:

 

 

It's now at the first stage -- booting code from the on-board FLASH. This is designed to be the fail-safe state -- even if the custom chip gets bricked during an update the fail safe state is to still boot the FLASH. This enables you to then do another update from the Jaguar through the microcontroller on the cart. Likewise the microcontroller will have a protected boot area such that it can't get bricked either. It should be impossible to bugger the cart through power loss, etc...

 

Shut up and take my money! I sponsor other projects. Let me know if you're taking donations...

 

-Brian

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