TRS-80 emulator on a DuinoMite-Mini, but this doesn't work on DuinoMite

Started by mobluse, March 17, 2018, 09:29:38 PM

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mobluse

I tested a TRS-80 emulator on a DuinoMite-Mini:
YouTube video: https://youtu.be/_GjVNnPW9Zs
See video description for more information.

Unfortunately this TRS-80 emulator doesn't work on DuinoMite, but it works on DuinoMite-Mini. If you run it on DuinoMite it complains about not being able to use the microSD-card even though it is the same card that I used in DuinoMite-Mini. It is possible to use e.g. the same MMBASIC 4.5 in both DuinoMite and DuinoMite-Mini and use the same SD-card, so it is possible to write firmware (i.e. flashable hex-files) that works in both.
iCE40HX8K-EVB w/ iCE40-IO, DuinoMite-Mini, DuinoMite w/ DuinoMite-IO, Olimexino-32U4

mobluse

This project was recently updated with a new download trs80sd-20180330a.zip on https://hackaday.io/project/9077-trs-80-model-1-on-a-pic32 .  That fixes some problems, but one still cannot run it on DuinoMite, but it runs well on DuinoMite-Mini.
iCE40HX8K-EVB w/ iCE40-IO, DuinoMite-Mini, DuinoMite w/ DuinoMite-IO, Olimexino-32U4

KeesZagers

I remember problems in the past with the SD card also in MMBasic. In some systems it worked, in others not. As far as I know Microchip had a new library available in 2012 with the problems solved. This has been used in MMBASIC versions 2.7 up. Maybe you can check if in the TRS-80 emulator still the old Microchip library is used. If you have it available you can try an old SD-card with only 1 or 2 GB. As far as I know they worked and the old library had problems with larger capacities.

mobluse

Quote from: KeesZagers on April 04, 2018, 01:27:54 PM
I remember problems in the past with the SD card also in MMBasic. In some systems it worked, in others not. As far as I know Microchip had a new library available in 2012 with the problems solved. This has been used in MMBASIC versions 2.7 up. Maybe you can check if in the TRS-80 emulator still the old Microchip library is used. If you have it available you can try an old SD-card with only 1 or 2 GB. As far as I know they worked and the old library had problems with larger capacities.

I will tell the developer about this, but I have 2GB and 128MB cards in my DuinoMites, so they should work with the old library. E.g. the 128 MB microSD card that works well with DuinoMite-Mini doesn't work with DuinoMite, when they both run the TRS-80 emulator -- both the old version and the new. The old version of TRS-80 was slightly better since VGA worked on DuinoMite and it printed a message about unusable microSD. Both SD-cards work with e.g. MM-BASIC 4.5 and probably DM-BASIC too.
iCE40HX8K-EVB w/ iCE40-IO, DuinoMite-Mini, DuinoMite w/ DuinoMite-IO, Olimexino-32U4

mobluse

It has been fixed now: "corrects SD support for DuinoMite (non-mini)", see https://hackaday.io/project/9077/files . I tested the file trs80sd-20180507a.zip on DuinoMite (non-mini) and it works well. Now there is a newer version, but I've not had time to test that yet.

The error was that the power to the SD-card was not switched on. In DuinoMite-Mini it's normally switched on (and can't be switched off), but in DuinoMite it's off by default, and one needs to switch it on.
iCE40HX8K-EVB w/ iCE40-IO, DuinoMite-Mini, DuinoMite w/ DuinoMite-IO, Olimexino-32U4