Denial

Short update ...

GCart Jr ( The Dirt Cheap version ) is alive ...

http://lovskog.net/projects/index.php/2 ... on-junior/

GCart Miceo IEC ... board alive ...

http://lovskog.net/projects/index.php/2 ... micro-iec/

New board on it's way ...

The end-user cost at under 60 USD with custom plastics and color silcscreen lexan overlay is not at all impossible ...

http://lovskog.net/projects/index.php/2 ... rt-jr-pcb/

After some long waiting because of Chinese New Year, the boards are back with me in Sweden and now tested. So far the work just as expected. All basic memory functionality is there.

Last week I was down in Shenzhen with my normal daily work, getting things moving again after Chinese New Year. Well actually I left Saturday, arrived Sunday, worked Monday and lay in bed sick as hell Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday I was back at work for a few hours before returning to Sweden same day. Not the most productive week.

Anyway, while there I got information from Elecrow that the boards where finished. I asked them then to ship my finished boards to the hotel, instead to Sweden. A bit faster.

This time I mounted all of the components and got a fully assembled board. 512k SRAM for the BLK5 and 32k for the other RAM areas.

This morning I updated the firmware with some rearrangements of pins and tested. Worked like a charm.

After that I set-up some more tests for the basic functionality with memory.

• Test that all BLKs are accessible, and can be enabled/disables as thought.
• Test that LORAM ( $0400 - $0FFF ) is accessible, and can be enabled/disables as thought.
• Test that the RAM at IO#2 and IO#3 are accessible, and can be enabled/disables as thought.
• Test that the above RAM positions also can be write protected.

All that turned out to work just as expected.

Below is a test where BLK3 was write protected. All other BLKs where enabled and writeable.
More at ... http://lovskog.net/projects/index.php/2 ... t-jr-2-1b/


I also got the boards for the DC/DC replacement of LM323 with me home, so I will test that soon also.
More at ... http://lovskog.net/projects/index.php/2 ... sion-1-1b/

Thanks for the update and congrats for the positive progress
The above link doesn't work...

Fixed. Thanks Peter!

Hei Thomas,

Great projects!

Will you sell boards or assembled versions of the GCart micro IEC? Would love to have the WiFi connection for loading from my pc.

Oh, man... this is so cool!

Keep us posted as you progress!

kakermoms:
Thanks!
Yes. I will definitely manufacture these, once finished. At least on a PCB level ( Switched PSU and the Internal Expansion ).

The cartridge(s) and especially the micro IEC with WiFi deserves some plastic. I have visited various plastic moulding companies in Shenzhen, China. Finally I may have found one, through contacts, that for around 1500 USD can make a 2 cavity tool ( top and bottom). It does pose some restrictions and have to be without sliders, 2k moulding, etc. However 1500 USD is low enough that even a few sold units makes it plausible.

Muzz73:
Thanks!

I have moved all my servers to Amazon EC2. While doing so I re-adjusted the structure. So now all projects is under wordpress.lovskog.eu/projects.

All public content is now under lovskog.eu including mail. All network, like GitLab, OwnCloud, Renderfarms, etc under lovskog.net ( not that this is interresting to anybody here, but ... )

I did a RewriteRule on lovskog.net, but it doesn't seam to work on all links, for some strange reason. Don't know if it could be a cache thing or something else.

http://wordpress.lovskog.eu/projects/in ... ory/vic20/

Thanks to the people who brought it to my attention. Someday I will fix the pictures that is missing also, in the older posts. My pixel-perfect sens ( which is my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder ) just hates that it is incomplete ... not that it actually matters, but again ... )

TLovskog wrote:kakermoms:
Thanks!
Yes. I will definitely manufacture these, once finished. At least on a PCB level ( Switched PSU and the Internal Expansion ).

The cartridge(s) and especially the micro IEC with WiFi deserves some plastic. I have visited various plastic moulding companies in Shenzhen, China. Finally I may have found one, through contacts, that for around 1500 USD can make a 2 cavity tool ( top and bottom). It does pose some restrictions and have to be without sliders, 2k moulding, etc. However 1500 USD is low enough that even a few sold units makes it plausible.

Muzz73:
Thanks!

Will you also sell these plastic cases for other expansions? It would be nice to have some standardized box to put things in.

Hi Thomas

Any news you will share on your projects?

Hi,

A short update on one of the slowest moving projects ever.

http://wordpress.lovskog.eu/projects/20 ... jr-boards/

http://wordpress.lovskog.eu/projects/ca ... cts/vic20/

This is probably now as cheap as I can get it. SD card, WiFi, 1M SRAM with full possibilities to bank individually, write protect, various accelerations, expansion port for external IEC, MIDI or whatever, etc for less than 25 USD and maybe that also includes custom moulded plastics.

The features of the cart are impressive !

Sorry for the necroposting... is this cart available for sale?

Thanks!

Hi. Just noticed that your cart includes an ESP8266. I'm particularly excited about this..

Can you elaborate on how you see this working, will it be able to download at WiFi speeds into the cart RAM?

Will we be able to make use of the ESP 80mhz risk CPU?

I would be very interested in getting early exposure to this with the intent of writing some software to make use of it...