PlusCart(+) + SD

[Fierodoug5]

Anybody else get their PlusCart with SD pcb's yet? Andrew?

[+Andrew Davie]

2 minutes ago, Fierodoug5 said:

Anybody else get their PlusCart with SD pcb's yet? Andrew?

Still waiting. Supposedly with airline on 25/2 and since then.. nothing.

 

[+Andrew Davie]

My boards have finally arrived... and they're useless

The milling layer for the cutout for the jumper... has not been performed.

Bummer.

 

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

If you don't solder these two pins on the PlusCart breakout board, then you can put the jumper 

[Fierodoug5]

1 hour ago, Andrew Davie said:

My boards have finally arrived... and they're useless

The milling layer for the cutout for the jumper... has not been performed.

Bummer.

Thats a bummer. When I ordered mine from JLCPCB they emailed me asking to proceed with or without milling the cutout. I emailed back with cutout.

Easy enough to flash it, then just jump the pins with a solder bridge

[+Andrew Davie]

3 hours ago, Fierodoug5 said:

Thats a bummer. When I ordered mine from JLCPCB they emailed me asking to proceed with or without milling the cutout. I emailed back with cutout.

Easy enough to flash it, then just jump the pins with a solder bridge

... also the holes for the SD card board are smaller than all the other through-holes, so I can't push pins through.

Strange; I'll have to check that on the design.

Edit: desinn was bad. Have adjusted.

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Andrew Davie

[+Andrew Davie]

Follow up....  the good news is that I can actually push pins through for the SD mount. It's tight but not a problem.

Also, the jumper -- if I mount the STM closer, then the mounting pins on the top-side of the board are long enough to secure a jumper.

So, all good. It will work, even though not exactly as I designed it, will still be perfect.

I'll build up a board when I get some spare time. I only have one STM available, so I guess I'll order some more, or desolder some existing bitchess boards.

 

 

[+Andrew Davie]

... also I appear to have placed the logo on the incorrect side!

Also, consequently, the marker for the jumper is on the incorrect pin (as it's on the wrong side too).

Oh dear. Time for another run of boards, I guess.

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Andrew Davie

[+Andrew Davie]

Well, my brain is having a bit of a hard day today. The logo wasn't on the incorrect side after all.

I started building a PlusCart with the new board, just to see how it would go.

First thing I did was solder the SD board onto the wrong side - backwards, so in the bin that went. I'm not a fan of desoldering.

Next effort, I got the card soldered in the right way, and promptly snapped the blade off my ONLY pair of Chinesium side-clippers. That's really frustrating, because just try trimming pins with other tools. I tried wire cutters, scissors, wire strippers, pliers... and eventually found something that actually worked and let me get close to the board -- nail clippers, of all things.

So, I managed to bridge numerous pins, requiring the solder wick to fix, and really didn't have much of a fun time getting it together. I got pretty angry/mad by the end. Very frustrating. But once I did, the USB connector wouldn't work - board not recognised when plugged in to laptop. I guess that wasn't that much of a surprise, because I was using a STM that I'd previously failed at soldering - made a mess with it - and threw it in the junk drawer. Anyway, no USB but because it was from a previous effort I was lucky -- it had an old (15.6) version of the firmware on it. So, I could boot and see an actual screen - but unfortunately it was a test and extremely buggy version of the firmware, which went straight to "wifi setup" with no keyboard available at all.  When I got to setup, I did get a keyboard, but it was an experimental one and completely non-functional. In other words, at some point I'd flashed experimental firmware to this, and abandoned it. *Almost* but not quite completely unusable. Good thing, though, there are numerous ways to setup WiFi, and I managed to get to the setup menu and then to setting up the portal... which worked... so I connected via my laptop and setup the WiFi password -- and lo and behold that worked.

Even better, on reboot it was back in the main menu where it should be, and now I had ***Update Firmware*** available. So, I went through that and although it didn't auto-reboot, after a power cycle I'm up and running with v1.0.0 and now connected to my account. I'd say its a fully-functional PlusCart, albeit one which does not have/use the USB connector working.  That means I can't update the firmware to the SD-card firmware until @Al_Nafuur provides that as an OTA option. That's the only reason I'd need it, though, so other than that this will be workable.

But still, I've "rescued" a STM board, and basically demonstrated to my own satisfaction that the redesigned board works fine. Assembly is actually somewhat "easier" than the original, as you can get the spacers to act as bases for the STM, and these provide just enough clearance over the SD board that sits between the STM and the main board, and as an added bonus you don't need to clip/trim the pins poking up. You don't have to eyeball or worry about bits pressing on other bits (like the SD card pins on the STM card)-- clearance is slim but good. I tried to show with the picture.

I note with interest this has been assigned an ID of 400+ so I guess there's been a lot of experimenting/building going on since I last made a cart.

 

 

 

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

35 minutes ago, Andrew Davie said:

But once I did, the USB connector wouldn't work - board not recognised when plugged in to laptop.

For USB connection "boot1" has to be short, but as far as I can see it should be shorted by your PCB

?

 

I had these situation too, but in the end all the boards connected. Here's what I do in such a situation: 

• pressing the button beside the USB-Connector for a longer time (5 to 10 seconds)
• pressing the button while (and before) connecting the USB.
• start such a stubborn device in normal mode with boot0 jumper set, before I try to boot in flash mode again.
• reboot the PC to reload the USB driver.
• try the next day

 

[+Andrew Davie]

44 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

For USB connection "boot1" has to be short, but as far as I can see it should be shorted by your PCB

?

 

I had these situation too, but in the end all the boards connected. Here's what I do in such a situation: 

• pressing the button beside the USB-Connector for a longer time (5 to 10 seconds)
• pressing the button while (and before) connecting the USB.
• start such a stubborn device in normal mode with boot0 jumper set, before I try to boot in flash mode again.
• reboot the PC to reload the USB driver.
• try the next day

 

 

Great, thanks for the tips.

I had a faulty boot1 connection.  Now I am able to USB-connect, and have uploaded the PlusCart-SD variant.

And, the SD card works just fine. Yay!  The whole thing is an ugly mess of soldering/desoldering/jumpers, fixes.

But... it works

 

 

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

1 hour ago, Andrew Davie said:

The whole thing is an ugly mess of soldering/desoldering/jumpers, fixes.

But... it works

This is the fine art of DIY?

[Fierodoug5]

Yeah, those sd card pin holes are pretty tight. All is well though, I have built 4 PlusCarts with sd cards so far. No issues 

[+Andrew Davie]

18 minutes ago, Fierodoug5 said:

Yeah, those sd card pin holes are pretty tight. All is well though, I have built 4 PlusCarts with sd cards so far. No issues 

Yep. There's a new design already that fixes that so don't order any new boards in the old design.

Also, the mounting holes for the SD board are out of place and useless anyway, so those will be gone.

I may adjust the shell insert-hole across both halves, because it's not sitting quite right and needs to be a little indent in both halves rather than a bigger in one half.

 

[+Gemintronic]

On 2/11/2021 at 2:39 AM, Andrew Davie said:

..We're currently discussing what actual need/use there is for a SD card on a PlusCart, because most/all use-cases appear to be covered by the Offline ROMs functionality. I happen to think having a SD card also is pretty cool, but there does not seem to be much justification for one. ..

 

I'd love a PlusCart SD that recognizes the ROM name autorun.bin from the SD card and automatically boots the 2600 with it.  This would make the PlusCart a single game with online features.  Maybe fever dreamed concepts like an RPG that queries world data from a server.  Or, LAN party style action games.

[+Andrew Davie]

Just now, Gemintronic said:

 

I'd love a PlusCart SD that recognizes the ROM name autorun.bin and automatically boots the 2600 with it.  This would make the PlusCart a single game with online features.  Maybe fever dreamed concepts like an RPG that queries world data from a server.  Or, LAN party style action games.

I have yet to ship your cart (sorry) I'm a bit under the pump with no transportation and 3 assignments due Friday.

The good news is it is all ready. The other good news is if you want me to switch to this SD pluscart (guaranteed to work, and with special idiosyncratic "get it working" additions) then you're welcome to swap for the one you had chosen before. Honestly, it's a perfectly functional cartridge with the addition of the SD capability. Your choice.

I believe it's already possible to have an autorun file on the pluscart, that will run on startup.

 

[+Gemintronic]

1 minute ago, Andrew Davie said:

I have yet to ship your cart (sorry) I'm a bit under the pump with no transportation and 3 assignments due Friday.

The good news is it is all ready. The other good news is if you want me to switch to this SD pluscart (guaranteed to work, and with special idiosyncratic "get it working" additions) then you're welcome to swap for the one you had chosen before. Honestly, it's a perfectly functional cartridge with the addition of the SD capability. Your choice.

I believe it's already possible to have an autorun file on the pluscart, that will run on startup.

 

Thank you for the update!

 

Yes, I'd love a switch-er-roo to the SD model.  I'd love to play around with all the features local, PlusCart cloud and SD storage!

[+Al_Nafuur]

25 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

 

I'd love a PlusCart SD that recognizes the ROM name autorun.bin from the SD card and automatically boots the 2600 with it.

http://pluscart.firmaplus.de/pico/?Manual#offlineAutostart

[cbelcher]

Another successful build!

 

Will do more testing today

[Fierodoug5]

2 minutes ago, cbelcher said:

Another successful build!

 

Will do more testing today

 

Nice, looks like the Black "Vader" edition

[+Andrew Davie]

52 minutes ago, cbelcher said:

Another successful build!

 

Will do more testing today

Looks like with the "pre-pinned" SD board, you can just remove the plastic spacer, push the pins through the main PlusCart board, solder and clip. Super-quick (except for the hard part - pushing through those narrow holes).  I've had some back-and-forth with PcbWay regarding that shunt hole - it just seems so difficult to get them to understand/fix. They are requiring me to design a new layer with the rectangle, name it "MILLING", add a note to the engineers that I DO want to cut it out, and drop the pads etc that it surrounds. No way could they work with the original file.

Makes me wonder what you did to get your boards manufactured (seemingly) so easily.

[+Andrew Davie]

... oh, and you have a hairy shunt, there.

Just saying.

 

[cbelcher]

Ha!  Tried wiping off the flux remover and apparently brought hair into the mix!  Or the board is growing up...

 

For the SD card I didn’t use pin headers. I just soldered some old component leads through the small board holes then onto the module and some tape to prevent shorting (but it didn’t look like there was much chance). 

[+Andrew Davie]

31 minutes ago, cbelcher said:

Ha!  Tried wiping off the flux remover and apparently brought hair into the mix!  Or the board is growing up...

 

For the SD card I didn’t use pin headers. I just soldered some old component leads through the small board holes then onto the module and some tape to prevent shorting (but it didn’t look like there was much chance). 

I considered carefully the placement of the SD unit when doing the design, particularly with a view to potential shorts.

I'm pretty confident it's not going to be a problem; things would have to go significantly wrong.

[+Al_Nafuur]

7 minutes ago, Andrew Davie said:

I considered carefully the placement of the SD unit when doing the design, particularly with a view to potential shorts.

I'm pretty confident it's not going to be a problem; things would have to go significantly wrong.

I think the metal SD card slot might shield the WiFi antenna of the ESP8266 in that direction.

?

To test it you can use the "WiFi Manager Portal" to compare the signal strength with and without SD-Card board (especially when the SD board is between the router and the ESP8266).