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Ultimate Cart (SD multicart) - Technical thread


electrotrains

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24 minutes ago, wildstar87 said:

I'd like to build one of these, however the files on Github don't seem to agree with OSHPark.  Also tried importing the eagle files into Kicad, but also got errors.  Anyone else have these issues?  I haven't tried the Santosp version yet though.

Hi wildstar,

 

I've just tried the v3 eagle .brd file from the github repository and it uploaded and previewed fine with OSH park. Did you download a zip of the whole repository (there is a green clone or download button at the top right of the page)?

 

Robin

 

P.S. I've probably got a few spare PCBs that I never used - PM me if you want me to post you one - it will be cheaper than getting 3 from OSH park if you only wanted one.

Edited by electrotrains
add offer of pcb
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  • 2 weeks later...

@flashjazzcat If the firmware is open sorce, is it possible to add new features?

- SIDE loader compatibility mode
- ATR support (partial R/W) if you have a U1MB
- autostart from a specific file
- remembering the last position in the folder after the restart

- file search


Is Altera MAX 10 powerful enough to handle it? 

Edited by madness77
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45 minutes ago, madness77 said:

@flashjazzcat If the firmware is open sorce, is it possible to add new features?

- SIDE loader compatibility mode
- ATR support (partial R/W) if you have a U1MB
- autostart from a specific file
- remembering the last position in the folder after the restart

- file search


Is Altera MAX 10 powerful enough to handle it? 

Robin (electrotrains) is the person to see about most of that stuff. I am 100 per cent sure I will have suggested a SIDE compatibility mode when the project was in the developmental stages, but I got the feeling Robin wasn't an U1MB fan, so my suggestions fell on deaf ears. If support was added on the Altera side of things, I could simply port my SIDE loader across and add cartridge ROM loading facilities, which is something I've been wanting to do for the past three years if only suitable hardware existed. I nearly cracked it with a custom firmware I wrote for the UNO Cart, but unfortunately the bus-racing model used there disallowed seamless IDE emulation (I had to tweak the U1MB firmware to make things work, which partially defeated the object of the exercise).

 

The AVG Cart shows us how SIDE emulation can be done well, and about the only fly in the ointment there as far as I'm concerned is that the U1MB user cannot perform cartridge mounting operations without invoking the AVG's 'native' boot menu. I don't think cartridge emulation and SIDE emulation can run concurrently anyway, but even if they could, some kind of API would be required so that the SIDE loader could pass the cluster number and banking scheme of a ROM or CAR file to the Altera firmware (this is how I went about it with the experimental UNO Cart firmware).

 

It's entirely possible that all this could work perfectly well if some kind of cohesive vision could be adopted, but unfortunately - while I can handle coding for the UNO Cart - the Ultimate Cart development tool chain is a bit beyond my ken at the moment and I have no experience of VHDL, etc. There are at least two cartridges which currently exist which could quite easily make an U1MB-equipped Atari capable of almost every conceivable task (emulating cartridges alongside bootable ATR disk images and hard disk partitions) without the same cart ever having to be removed from the slot, and without having to select different modes of operation depending on what one wants to do, but until a developer gets switched on to this idea and realises they could completely corner the market, the best we can probably do (which is very good indeed) is purchase an AVG Cart.

 

Edited by flashjazzcat
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  • 4 months later...

(Sorry for double-posting, just trying to get this across as effectively as possible):

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Well, since this seems to be the right sport for it, and its also early enough for EU folks:

 

  1. Does anyone familiar with the design of the cart know why does it (electrically) interfere with any cart plugged on a 800's RIGHT-slot?
    • (The $8000-$9FFF address space becomes corrupted when mounting any $A000-$BFFF 8K cart on ULT/SD, and a $8000-$9FFF cart is physically present on right slot)
  2. Is there ANY way to bring FPGA back from "sleep" mode, through any peep-hole on $D5XX register page?
    • (Any special sequence Of reads and/or writes on that area that I could execute from my own code, in order to re-start FPGA AFTER it has been sent to "sleep"?)

A big thanks, in advance, for any feedback on these two issues!

 

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  • 1 month later...

quick question,

 

i have built a couple of the carts and they seem to only boot to the blue 'ready' prompt as if the carts aren't being recognized.  after programming, i do get led flashing, but it's as if the carts aren't being seen by the 800xl.

 

any ideas or suggestions are appreciated!

 

thanks,

 

kneehighspy

 

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21 hours ago, kneehighspy said:

quick question,

 

i have built a couple of the carts and they seem to only boot to the blue 'ready' prompt as if the carts aren't being recognized.  after programming, i do get led flashing, but it's as if the carts aren't being seen by the 800xl.

 

any ideas or suggestions are appreciated!

 

thanks,

 

kneehighspy

 

The only thing I can advise you is to recheck all solder joints,  especially on the 4 bus switch chips.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi,

I have a problem with the cartridge. Loaded contents of the directory from the SD card look damaged.

Trying to load any of them ends with "Bad CAR/ROM file" or computer hanging.

After a reset sometimes there is no content or a message about missing SD card.

The same SD card in another cartridge works well.

What could have gone wrong during assembly?

Thanks.

 

    20200510_010016.thumb.jpg.1c858c56745f7525972066115778847e.jpg  20200510_010044.thumb.jpg.fb87a2baa7fef8e18fd9e71650049ade.jpg

 

EDIT:

I've already figured out what's going on: bad solder joint - D5 line - FPGA pin 74:

ultimate-d5.thumb.png.1aa13a7a6b0845de985b01eb1353c3a1.png

 

...now it's working as it should :)

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  • 1 year later...

I finally got around to building this, firmware flashed ok.  I get to the menu screen, and it does seem to detect the SD Card (gives me an error if it isn't there), but nothing is showing up in the menu, and the keys don't seem to work, tried using X to reboot.  I don't think I have any shorts, but I'll go back and check again under a microscope.  Any ideas why this would be happening?  4GB Sandisk MicroSD in SD Adapter, copied files into subdirectories, but absolutely nothing shows up.  LED is blinking.

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6 hours ago, wildstar87 said:

I finally got around to building this, firmware flashed ok.  I get to the menu screen, and it does seem to detect the SD Card (gives me an error if it isn't there), but nothing is showing up in the menu, and the keys don't seem to work, tried using X to reboot.  I don't think I have any shorts, but I'll go back and check again under a microscope.  Any ideas why this would be happening?  4GB Sandisk MicroSD in SD Adapter, copied files into subdirectories, but absolutely nothing shows up.  LED is blinking.

Nevermind, it seems that I was actually using a Kingston 4GB MicroSD in SD Adapter.  Looks like there is still a little bit of SD Card sensitivity.  A 2GB Sandisk worked just fine.

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I myself use old late 90s/early 2000s stock Dell/Kingston 1 GB SD cards (the blue ones with the white labels) on all four of my multicarts, Harmony Encore (2600), Atarimax Ultimate SD Multicart (5200), Concerto (7800) and the Ultimate Cart (for my XEGS) and everything seems to work just fine on all 4 of them after just simply FAT-32 formatting them and breaking them in, like I had to do with my Concerto when I first got it for my (then) newly-acquired 7800 back in November.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, I recently got one of these, and I've slightly modified the _BOOT.ROM to suit me better.  Maybe someone else will like it too, I don't know.  The minor changes I've made are to remove the logo, and replace it with "SD Card Cartridge Loader Version 1.1"  Which is kind of generic, but I like it.

 

The Atari/Inverse key now cycles the background color, and ESC is reboot instead of X.  Which makes more sense to me...

 

The menu at the bottom has a line added to reflect these changes.

 

I'm considering re-purposing X to show/hide file extensions, and maybe - if possible - using W to 'Write Settings' and save them.  I don't know about that last one, it may not even be possible.

 

_BOOT.ROM

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Hi all,

 

I am doing a proof of concept adding a new atari cartridge format to the firmware, everything compiled fine in Quartus Prime 15.1 and Nios 2.

fpga.PNG.a8a440b2adb306216853db33b0f7fd25.PNG

but I found that the Max10_SD.pof file is not generated, from what I checked it should be generated from here

fpga2.thumb.PNG.7fb1fc0ff570436769fca88082e250b3.PNG

but I don't understand what parameters should I use and where do I get a .cof file??

 

or is there another way? any help would be good.

 

regards

 

 

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13 hours ago, ascrnet said:

Hi all,

 

I am doing a proof of concept adding a new atari cartridge format to the firmware, everything compiled fine in Quartus Prime 15.1 and Nios 2.

fpga.PNG.a8a440b2adb306216853db33b0f7fd25.PNG

but I found that the Max10_SD.pof file is not generated, from what I checked it should be generated from here

fpga2.thumb.PNG.7fb1fc0ff570436769fca88082e250b3.PNG

but I don't understand what parameters should I use and where do I get a .cof file??

 

or is there another way? any help would be good.

 

regards

 

 

I answer myself, for the others I warn you that the Quartus project must be in "C:\altera\projects\" is mandatory if they will not have problems in the path and will not generate the .POF file.?

fpga.thumb.PNG.5e42a214ccaf8f6158d83be9926c889d.PNG

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1 hour ago, ascrnet said:

do I need to be connected to the ATARI?

Only the energy point is enough. The USB Blaster doesn't supply power to the FPGA, you're trying to flash a turned-off device.

 

What about a screenshot of the mod?

 

 

Edited by tane
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9 hours ago, tane said:

Only the energy point is enough. The USB Blaster doesn't supply power to the FPGA, you're trying to flash a turned-off device.

 

What about a screenshot of the mod?

Ok, there is no picture because it is not a graphic mod but a new cartridge format "TurboSoft_64K" for testing.

2 hours ago, madness77 said:

Just use any 5V source, it can even be from USB.

received_490750268671989.jpeg

my pcb version is from 2016 and it doesn't have those 5vol and GND pins that's why my doubt.?

 

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7 minutes ago, ascrnet said:

Ok, there is no picture because it is not a graphic mod but a new cartridge format "TurboSoft_64K" for testing.

my pcb version is from 2016 and it doesn't have those 5vol and GND pins that's why my doubt.?

 

use edge connector and crocodile clips ?

cart.gif

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11 hours ago, ascrnet said:

I'm trying to record the new firmware but it doesn't work, do I need to be connected to the ATARI? ?

 

 

Nope, to upgrade the Ultimate cart you only need:

 

- an IT diploma (equal to rocket science)

- downloading several Gigabytes to update a few Bytes

- a PC with min. 64Bit OS, 64 Cores, 64GB RAM, 64Ghz, etc. so the end result can be used on an Atari 8bit computer with e.g. 64KB RAM and roughly 1.8Mhz single core

 

Tried to update my Ultimate carts. once (for XEX loading) and failed, so I had to ask a friend (who has an IT diploma) to do it for me. He used dozens of curses when doing it and like me, he said: Never again! That's one of the reasons why I like the AVG cart. very much, it is so easy to update. And since the day I own the AVG carts, I have not used the Ultimate carts anymore.

 

Anyone for a "benchmark" of how long it takes to update the Ultimate cart. on the PC (including software download and installation) vs. how long it takes to update the AVG cart. on the A8 (including software download and installation) ?  But DMA must be set to on!

 

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