UMDK Manufacturing ready

Hosted forum for UMDK related questions

Moderators: BigEvilCorporation, prophet36

Montserrat
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Posts: 115
Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2015 2:56 pm

UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by Montserrat » Wed Sep 23, 2015 3:43 pm

(warning weird english ahead)

Hi all. I was interested in the UMDK debugging capabilities, I've tried to find a manufacturer in my country (spain) that wats to make the full product (pcm + sourcing + assembly) but failed. Then one of the manufacturers recomended me a chinese one.

I've been talking with that manufacturer and Chris (UMDK creator) to make sure all things are done well, after 2 weeks of emailing the board is ready for production.

But this do not guarantee its gonna work 100% since Chris told me that most of the times we have to make some adjustements, ill quote him:
You will probably need to learn at least *some* electronics if you're going to get your cart working. You may be lucky and it will work first time, but please be aware you (or someone else who knows about electronics) may need to do some fault-finding, which I will probably not have time to help with (but others on the forum might). I didn't intend it to be a beginner project.
Considering this i wish to know if there are any interest in getting the hardware, if so please write it down.

Montserrat
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Posts: 115
Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2015 2:56 pm

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by Montserrat » Tue Sep 29, 2015 5:00 pm

I'm surprised no one had interest in getting a UMDK,may be its my weird english.

The plan is i got a quotation for a 5x run: (no shipment included)
MAINBOARD
5 X PCB Manufacturing: 47USD
1 X Stencil Manufacturing: 17.7USD
5 X BOM Part Sourcing: 226.01USD
5 X PCBA(Manual with stencil):155.37USD
Total: 446.08USD

BRIGDEBOARD
5 X PCB Manufacturing: 11.9USD
1 X BOM Part Sourcing: 38.37USD
1 X PCBA(Manual): 121.49USD
Total: 171.76USD
Grand total is 617,84 USD, thats 123,56 USD per UMDK full kit unit, plus shipment, all arready assembled and with 100% electrical test.

I can try to talk whit my chinese contact to make some kind of cooperative order with everyone paying his own unit and shipment, but i need to know if there is 4 more people interested. Write it below please!

BigEvilCorporation
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Posts: 209
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:41 am
Contact:

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by BigEvilCorporation » Mon Oct 05, 2015 9:55 am

There's a thread here viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1825 with info on manufacturing runs being organised but seems to have been derailed due to an argument of sorts (I only skim read, will catch up on it properly when I get 5 mins to myself). I had my name down on the list but I've no idea if it's still going ahead, what with Minty gone from the forums.

Perhaps it's just delayed further, these things take a loooonnng time to get moving.
A blog of my Megadrive programming adventures: http://www.bigevilcorporation.co.uk

Montserrat
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Posts: 115
Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2015 2:56 pm

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by Montserrat » Tue Oct 06, 2015 1:33 pm

Ey! lol BigEvil corporation!

Thanks for your megadrive assembler introduction, was very useful :)

I know about that thread bu since theres no activity i started my own. So as i said i only need to confirm the order, all is set up, but i cannot afford the minninmun 5x run by myself.

Thats why i need 4 more people, ill share all the info of course but we need to be 5 in total, i want my UMDK :(.

plee
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Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 11:32 am
Location: Houston, Texas

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by plee » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:14 pm

I'm in...

Montserrat
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Posts: 115
Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2015 2:56 pm

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by Montserrat » Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:02 am

ok, thanks for reply, 3 more to go. Patience...

mikejmoffitt
Very interested
Posts: 86
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 4:16 pm

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by mikejmoffitt » Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:42 pm

I'm in.

Just wondering if this device provides SRAM at typical location(s) for testing games that use save files too. Either way, the ability to use GDB and operate from a POSIX-compliant environment has me sold.

mswan
Newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:39 pm

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by mswan » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:41 pm

Count me in.

Burbruee
Interested
Posts: 29
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:30 am

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by Burbruee » Tue Oct 13, 2015 7:31 pm

Hi, first post here. I recently learned about programming for the MegaDrive/Genesis and I'm very excited about it! Bought a Everdrive for now.. but this looks absolutely amazing to be able to do real time debug and dump ram etc .

I'm in, 100%.

Grind
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Posts: 69
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:26 pm
Location: US
Contact:

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by Grind » Wed Oct 14, 2015 12:00 am

Looks like I am late to the party.

If for whatever reason one of these guys disappears I can be backup :)

db-electronics
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Joined: Mon Feb 24, 2014 6:04 pm
Location: Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada
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Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by db-electronics » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:04 pm

I built a few successfully in my lab but the issue Chris and I encountered was testing. I had a few skype sessions with Chris to test the boards, everything seemed to go well save for a few tests - but then life got in the way. I hope to be able to resume my UMDK builds soon...

That being said, I designed a new PCB which can act as a "test console" for the UMDK. This would help detect I/O problems on the board itself.
What does db stand for? Well that's an excellent question...
http://www.db-electronics.ca

db-electronics
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Location: Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada
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Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by db-electronics » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:09 pm

BigEvilCorporation wrote:There's a thread here viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1825 with info on manufacturing runs being organised but seems to have been derailed due to an argument of sorts (I only skim read, will catch up on it properly when I get 5 mins to myself). I had my name down on the list but I've no idea if it's still going ahead, what with Minty gone from the forums.

Perhaps it's just delayed further, these things take a loooonnng time to get moving.
I was building those, Minty was not involved at all in the manufacturing. As I stated in my previous post, Chris and I encountered some issues during testing (mainly, not having a physical I/O test) and I've since designed a board which can do those.
What does db stand for? Well that's an excellent question...
http://www.db-electronics.ca

mikejmoffitt
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Posts: 86
Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2015 4:16 pm

Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by mikejmoffitt » Wed Oct 14, 2015 4:54 pm

If and when you have boards built and working, I'd be a happy early customer.

prophet36
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Location: London, UK
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Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by prophet36 » Sat Oct 17, 2015 3:44 pm

Montserrat wrote:ok, thanks for reply, 3 more to go. Patience...
Well done Montserrat, looks like you've got your five orders, with some healthy overcommit! It's great to see others diving in and getting UMDK carts built. The best of luck to you. Keep us posted with your progress and/or questions.

Chris

prophet36
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Re: UMDK Manufacturing ready

Post by prophet36 » Sat Oct 17, 2015 4:16 pm

mikejmoffitt wrote:Just wondering if this device provides SRAM at typical location(s) for testing games that use save files...
I only ever tried this with one of the Sonic games (the one which starts with Sonic standing on the wing of a biplane), and I don't remember it working.

That said, there's no reason why it shouldn't work; the SRAM writes are just like any other writes, and the UMDK instruction-tracing capability should make it fairly easy to debug, because you should see the SRAM write cycles in the trace log.

There's one likely cause which springs to mind, but all this was a long time ago, so my memory might be playing tricks on me: I remember encountering a problem with Universal Soldier, wherein the game init code does a word-write to a location near the bottom of the cart address-space, which is fine with a real game cart (on which ROM-writes are just ignored) and on the MD2 (on which only one of the two write strobes toggles in the cart address-space) but on the MD1 this write succeeds, preventing the game from starting[1]. Minty and I were able to debug this easily using dumps from the UMDK instruction-tracer. I fixed it by disabling[2] ALL 68000 writes to the cart space, which may explain why game saves didn't work, and if that's the case, it should be fairly easy to fix in the VHDL.

Chris

[1]Perhaps some kind of protection mechanism? Perhaps some sort of weird devkit feature used when the game was developed, and left in the "production" code by mistake? Who knows...some people enjoy such archaeology, but not me.

[2]https://github.com/makestuff/umdkv2/commit/148d175

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