USB MegaDrive DevKit

For hardware talk only (please avoid ROM dumper stuff)
prophet36
Very interested
Posts: 234
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:58 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Post by prophet36 » Tue Jun 28, 2011 6:02 pm

I don't know, I don't have a 32X to try it on. I don't remember the exact cycle-counts of the memory controller, and I'd rather not spend time messing with it now because I'll need to revisit it anyway when I move everything off the Nexys2 board (on which it is currently based) onto my own PCB which will use a different RAM chip.

The good news is I now have a GDB remote daemon working, so when I hit F11 in Eclipse, it runs the build and uploads the generated ELF binary to the MegaDrive over USB, and hits a breakpoint in main(). It's very cool to be able to step through the code running on a real MegaDrive. I'll make a video demo of it in the next few days and upload it to YouTube.
KRIKzz wrote:prophet36 i wonder if your memory controller enough fast for 32x?

prophet36
Very interested
Posts: 234
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:58 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Post by prophet36 » Sat Jul 02, 2011 7:55 am


TmEE co.(TM)
Very interested
Posts: 2440
Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:37 pm
Location: Estonia, Rapla City
Contact:

Post by TmEE co.(TM) » Sat Jul 02, 2011 8:24 am

that's pretty cool stuff :D
Mida sa loed ? Nagunii aru ei saa ;)
http://www.tmeeco.eu
Files of all broken links and images of mine are found here : http://www.tmeeco.eu/FileDen

KanedaFr
Administrateur
Posts: 1139
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:56 am
Contact:

Post by KanedaFr » Sat Jul 02, 2011 9:34 pm

Hmmmmmmm.... didn't know about this GDB serial debugging...
I was about to make something similar (porting KDebug to use port 3 of the MD1) and ordered a serial to USB board 2 days ago !!
I now see something else to do with this board ;)

anyway, your work is just AWESOME ! Congratulations on this!
Last edited by KanedaFr on Sat Jul 02, 2011 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

prophet36
Very interested
Posts: 234
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:58 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Post by prophet36 » Sat Jul 02, 2011 11:35 pm

Thanks!

Actually I was surprised too. The GDB remote protocol is very simple, and you can get away with only implementing a small subset of the protocol. In my case I implement the protocol on the PC side, and have it forward requests over a custom USB protocol to trigger actions either in the FPGA or in the 0.4KiB monitor program that runs on the MD. But you could implement the whole protocol easily enough entirely on the MD side, provided you have some kind of bidirectional port on the MD side.

I made a few changes to GDB to make it use Motorola format (and drop the %-prefixes for registers) for the disassembly. The code for those diffs is here.

I will update the UMDKv2 repository in the next few days; hopefully you'll find my remote protocol implementation useful as a starting point.

Next thing for me is to debug my VHDL SD-card interface and its 68000 driver! And at some point I need to start laying out the final PCB...

doragasu
Very interested
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 8:15 am

Post by doragasu » Sat Sep 07, 2013 6:33 pm

This is really neat. I would love having a tool like this!

If this could be produced using a cheap FPGA, I would surely buy one (or build it myself).

MintyTheCat
Very interested
Posts: 484
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:11 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany

Post by MintyTheCat » Sat Sep 07, 2013 9:57 pm

doragasu wrote:This is really neat. I would love having a tool like this!

If this could be produced using a cheap FPGA, I would surely buy one (or build it myself).
It is one of the most useful things to be seen in the MD Dev Scene since the start I'd say. He needs the support of the community to finish it.

KanedaFr
Administrateur
Posts: 1139
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:56 am
Contact:

Post by KanedaFr » Sat Sep 07, 2013 11:25 pm

I don't exactly remember but I think he moved to something else...
He more or less learnt FPGA with this project ....

MintyTheCat
Very interested
Posts: 484
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:11 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany

Post by MintyTheCat » Sun Sep 08, 2013 7:21 am

KanedaFr wrote:I don't exactly remember but I think he moved to something else...
He more or less learnt FPGA with this project ....
He's working on a number of Projects such as FPGALink - the MD received less interest so it is a lower priority - er..... Community!!!!!

bastien
Very interested
Posts: 208
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:19 pm
Location: Besançon,France
Contact:

Post by bastien » Sat Nov 02, 2013 10:28 am

Hi , i have just a question about custom megadrive cart builing.
I want to make a PCB with a 0,6mm for route track.
is-it ok for the console ?

MintyTheCat
Very interested
Posts: 484
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:11 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany

Post by MintyTheCat » Tue Nov 05, 2013 1:23 pm

bastien wrote:Hi , i have just a question about custom megadrive cart builing.
I want to make a PCB with a 0,6mm for route track.
is-it ok for the console ?
I'd try asking that in the Hardware Section and not in this Thread.

Teancum
Newbie
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:12 am

Post by Teancum » Wed Dec 18, 2013 6:26 pm

Looks like the repository has been updated as recently as 3 months ago. Hope to see an update on this soon.

MintyTheCat
Very interested
Posts: 484
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:11 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany

Post by MintyTheCat » Wed Dec 18, 2013 10:24 pm

Teancum wrote:Looks like the repository has been updated as recently as 3 months ago. Hope to see an update on this soon.
He has been busy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iett8oM92J0

KanedaFr
Administrateur
Posts: 1139
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:56 am
Contact:

Post by KanedaFr » Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:45 pm

OK, so now I have to convince Prophet to selling some of us (me included) his dev kit ;)

edit : just watched the vimeo video...is it Linux only (umdk) ?

MintyTheCat
Very interested
Posts: 484
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:11 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany

Post by MintyTheCat » Thu Dec 19, 2013 12:21 am

KanedaFr wrote:OK, so now I have to convince Prophet to selling some of us (me included) his dev kit ;)

edit : just watched the vimeo video...is it Linux only (umdk) ?
It is not 'Linux only' but many of the Tools are UNIX Tools.

Come on, kaneda, are you looking for reasons not to use it or what?

Post Reply