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The FinalGROM 99


ralphb

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Thought I might share my experience with building and programming my own Finalgrom99.

Got the boards made from PCBWay and parts ordered, soldered everything no problems.

Initially I used a Pickit 2 programmer with AVRDUDE in windows, it said everything went ok and verified.

No LED blinking. Next tried Raspberry PI 3 and the same deal, no blinking LED.

 

After quite a bit of head scratching and testing with my multimeter not proving anything, well eventually I realised

I had saved the HEX, AVR, and PLD files from the GITHUB page by doing "save link as" which results in a very large

and incorrect file.   I figured this out as accidentally I looked at the file sizes in the ZIP file which are much smaller.

So I reprogrammed the correct HEX file with my Raspberry PI and all good, LED blinking once a second.

 

The Next problem was no matter what SD card or formatting I did it would not load the UPDATE.AVR file. I just got a fast flashing

LED which never stopped until the TI was turned off. No idea why even now but figuring the successfully programmed

HEX file was likely already at 1.3 version I tried UPDATE.PLD and it worked perfectly.

My TI99/4a with Finalgrom99 and NanoPeb is now working perfectly. 

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4 minutes ago, dhe said:

So the correct path, is to always click on the download button?

This might work in most cases, but to be on the safe side, view the file in GitHub, and then either select Raw and save the file, or select View Raw (if the file has no actual preview).

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I have no idea why, but the HEX file ends up as 438kb.  The thing is I should have realised the file sizes were enormous. Avrdude didn't complain at all when programming.

 

Just go to code and download the Zip file. 

Edited by Imperious
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  • 3 weeks later...

Greeting 99ers,

 

 I have scrubbed around looking on the forum, FAQs, alas left needing direction.  Used multiple SD cards, took FG out of case; have not checked caps, power voltage levels, cleaned connectors yet or tried another console.  My FG works great, with one file; if there is more than one game, tool, or file on the SD card(s) only: 1. TI Basic shows up on boot.  FlashROM no issues. Black/Silver. Any other recommendations?

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Rog, I've used the FR99 for a few years now really great, brass fingers, just re-checked in case I was going kookoo ?.  S/W version no clue, got it and the FR from TBA, but, I will buy the SD card from TBA and see if that does anything, probably SD card.  BTW I'm just copying the FG99 zip from here and putting on the SD card.  https://ftp.whtech.com/Cartridges/FinalGROM99/

Still could be a myriad of things, I know AS talks about cleaning the slot connectors a lot but if one file works, shouldn't all of them, maybe not...

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Rog, I've used the FR99 for a few years now really great, brass fingers, just re-checked in case I was going kookoo [emoji2960].  S/W version no clue, got it and the FR from TBA, but, I will buy the SD card from TBA and see if that does anything, probably SD card.  BTW I'm just copying the FG99 zip from here and putting on the SD card.  https://ftp.whtech.com/Cartridges/FinalGROM99/
Still could be a myriad of things, I know AS talks about cleaning the slot connectors a lot but if one file works, shouldn't all of them, maybe not...
Did you put the files on the card or the zip.. it doesn't read zips

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

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HA-no menu sry can't asnwer that one. AS rog, extracting then copying. 

 

Of interest, when more than one file on the SD card, on boot/power on the LED blinks one short like a mircrosecond pretty fast, then goes out, and only TI Basic on menu  Also beyond power up, pressing FG reset, same LED behavior.  When only one file on the SD card, upon power up, long LED lit, then menu displays TI Basic and the one file name, and that file can be executed, interesting.  If I put two files on the SD card say pitfall and fshark, then it doesn't work.  But, if I put say fshark and the iamge-list/txt file on there, it does work.  I think the SD cards I have are too fast, but hard to tell, I don't know what FG versin S/W it's using.

Edited by Nightengale
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