CV Cartridge Emulator Project USB

[juice2839]

I wanted to make a device that could stay plugged into the cartridge slot and have bin/rom files loaded to it through a PC USB. So I could do software testing and debugging on real hardware (Namely the CV). I ended up using battery backed ram with an Arduino Nano and shift registers to program it. I ordered some pcb's for it and am patiently waiting.. In the mean time I thought I would share the progress with anyone that is interested. I did this project solely for my own needs. Most of you have the Atarimax which works awesome. I just wanted something that worked for what I needed as a programming aid. This is limited to the 32K Rom space on the colecovision. It will work fine to load any original CV game or any game that is 32K or less. The supervisory chip that controls the ram and battery back up is a ADM691AARNZ.

colecoEpromEmu.pdf

Edited December 30, 2015 by juice2839

[Kamshaft]

Awesome man!

[+evg2000]

looks cool, does it work on a Mac? how long does it take to transfer?

[juice2839]

looks cool, does it work on a Mac? how long does it take to transfer?

 

It should work on a Mac, but I use Windows. 32K transfer is probably 5-7 seconds.

 

 

Note:

 

I didn't write this Windows application I am using. It was written by MARTIN_H from the 6502.org news group. His github is here if anyone is interested https://github.com/Martin-H1/MEEPROMMER

 

My project was inspired and is based loosely on the project in this thread

 

http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2491

Edited December 31, 2015 by juice2839

[Tony Cruise]

Now this would be very handy, even though I have a Atarimax, removing the steps of removing SD, writing file to SD and then booting up the Atarimax cartridge, would be much more convenient when you are in final stage testing.

Is there any way, information about the current machine state could also be incorporated so you could potentially live debug issues i.e. memory dump (video and normal), Z80 registers etc?

So you could potentially dump and then debug a game on a live machine rather than using an emulator.

[juice2839]

Now this would be very handy, even though I have a Atarimax, removing the steps of removing SD, writing file to SD and then booting up the Atarimax cartridge, would be much more convenient when you are in final stage testing.

Is there any way, information about the current machine state could also be incorporated so you could potentially live debug issues i.e. memory dump (video and normal), Z80 registers etc?

So you could potentially dump and then debug a game on a live machine rather than using an emulator.

 

This doesn't emulate the Z-80, just the 32K Rom space. I guess if you put some interrupt routines in the CV bios you could load some stuff in an area of the 32K Rom space (Which is now 32k battery backed ram using this device) and have the NANO send the info serially to a PC to look at.. Very interesting Idea.

 

Edit: You would also though have to halt the Z80 when you were doing reads from the ram so a little extra circuity would be needed, but I don't think it would be anything major.

Edited January 4, 2016 by juice2839