Alright. It's all about reading the manuals and noticing little things. Those fuse bits are what's actually recommended by the build manual. But that's not what made me change it. The crucial setting is what the fue calculator describes as "Ext. Clock/RC Osc./Low-freq. Crystal: enable internal Capacitors (36 pF) Internal R/C Osc.: leave unchecked! External Crystal: enable full swing (neccessary for >8 MHz)" The important part is "enable full swing" which makes the oscillator circuit go between 0 V and 5 V instead of running on a lower voltage, presumably to save power. This reminded me of something from the FT232BM datasheet.

Input to 6MHz Crystal Oscillator Cell. This pin can also be driven by an external
6MHz clock if required. Note: Switching threshold of this pin is VCC/2, so if driving
from an external source, the source must be driving at 5V CMOS level or AC-
coupled to centre on VCC/2.

So without that fuse bit set, the clock line will not reach the switching threshold and the FTDI chip will not be properly clocked, and USB will not work.

So, now I want to know, is one of the Atmega chips actually broken?

What do you mean by bunk? "Broken" or "bogus"? Is one of the ATMega chips still broken, ie can't be programmed even with the added crystal?

Did you check the value of the capacitors? I have new fuse values which I think may solve the problem: Low: 2E, High: C9. Would hate to have you send the flasher all over the world if the solution is something simple like that.

Probably an avrdude quirk. Try reading the fuses individually with the following switches, rather than just looking at the summary.

-U lfuse:r:-:h -U hfuse:r:-:h -U efuse:r:-:h

548

(16 replies, posted in Other Vintage Computers & Consoles)

What about Galaksija, a local Yugoslavian computer...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIwC9vdqfqw

This is normal. Burning the EE fuse value tells the chip to disable the internal RC oscillator and use an external crystal. The chip needs a clock signal to be programmed, so the chip won't work while in the AVR programmer, since it has no crystal or other clock source. I should have thought of this before recommending that fuse value, given that I saw your AVR programmer. (If you had programmed the flash memory and high fuse first, the chip would be usable now.)

The quick'n'dirty way to solve this would be to add a crystal between the same two pins as in the actual circuit. The value shouldn't be too critical for just programming the chip. Any crystal >=1 MHz that doesn't exceed the rating for the chip should work well enough for the purpose.

You MAY be able to program the chip adding the -B 1.0 switch to avrdude, but if it works it will be slow as a dog's butt.

The less quick'n'dirty way of solving this is to add some form of programming header to the board, so the AVR chip can be programmed in circuit. If you had sent it to me, I probably would have done this just for my own convenience.

However, with this in mind you should be able to plug the chip back in to the GB programmer and notice an improvement. There's no code on the chip, so it won't work as a flasher, but now that the crystal should be oscillating at 6 MHz, the FTDI chip should be identified since it should be able to communicate over USB.

550

(17 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Spoiler: most of that song is not LSDj.

katsumbhong wrote:

12. Thread titles should describe the topic of the thread. Please avoid titles like "Help!" or "Have you seen this...". Something like "How can I do a beefy bassdrum with Midines?" or "I just saw a chip music reference at the bus stop" is good. Staff reserves the right to edit unclear thread titles to something more descriptive.

If this thread wasn't related to music creation, I would consider editing the title. But now I won't.

This is not an SD card problem. The ._ files are extra files created by Mac OS X. Those are not the ROM files, but extra files (so called resource forks) containing some sort of information about the corresponding actual files. Normally, those files should be hidden under both OSX and Windows, and never cause a problem, but here, they are visible. Just ignore them and scroll down (or if you're lucky, up past the beginning) to reach the real ROM files.

To solve the problem permanently, see the second answer in the following link. It will tell you how to remove those files and make sure they're never recreated on that SD card.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/question … ds-and-usb

Actually, the EMS cartridges, even the 64M one, support multiple ROMs, basically as many as the cartridge can fit. This is a lesser known functionality, I guess because LSDj doesn't play well with it. You can normally use this by just dragging multiple ROMs into the EMS software, but...
1) Adding LSDj typically makes the built-in EMS menu fail to work at all.
2) The built-in menu doesn't deal with multiple saves between the games. There are alternative menus that do, but they are not compatible with LSDj's file saving.

So, I've integrated an EMS menu into LittleFM. There's a download link andinstructions on how to use it in the link below. You have to manually produce a ROM file that you burn to the cartridge. However, there's still no save management for other ROMs, so you should only use saveless ROMs.

http://blog.gg8.se/wordpress/2013/03/04 … fects-you/

Since many EMS cartridges are buggy and get stuck on page 2, I suggest producing a ROM like this that you verify is working, and write it to both pages.

As a test, I've made a ROM which features LSD + LittleFM + a number of saveless noise ROMs. I've also added a function where pressing seö+start+B+A in any of the programs will return to the LittleFM menu.

554

(22 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Was Mr. Gimmick a homebrew game?

Jazzmarazz wrote:
nitro2k01 wrote:

For this version it's more like L: 0xEE and H: 0xD9. Especially for the low fuse.

Even though he is using an external crystal? I will not argue with you of all people, but this was my understanding.

Yes. External clock source is different from using an external crystal. External clock source means you're generating the clock somewhere else on the board and send it to the clock input of the Atmega. (Such as in your (jazz's) flasher and mine, where the clock is generated in the FTDI chip.) If you're using an external crystal connected between the X terminals, choose external crystal in the drop down and the appropriate frequency range.

For this version it's more like L: 0xEE and H: 0xD9. Especially for the low fuse.

BTW, just another idea of what might be wrong. Did you program the microcontroller fuses, and not just the hex file? Without the fuses configured, the crystal won't be set oscillate, and the FTDI chip can't communicate. (The crystal is shared between the chips, and the microcontroller is driving it.)

*FT232BL

The chip labeling is usually made using laser engraving. If it less readable on the chip that is on the board, this may be due to corrosion, but also just to a layer of flux residue sitting on top of the chip. Try cleaning the top of the chip using a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol if you care, and see if that makes it more readable. And anyway, I'd be more worried about the pins than about the top of the chip case.

Yup. smile

In the interest of promoting sample playback glitchiness, there's something else you can do. There are four 256 byte lookup tables that are for two channel wave mixing. This is the dist setting, which you can normally set to clip, shap, shap2 or wrap. If you hold A and pressing left or right 4 times beyond the leftmost or rightmost setting, you can use data from anywhere in the memory map for this table. Most of it just sounds harsh, but worth checking out. This only works when there's a sample on BOTH the software channels, otherwise this table is not used, and you will hear no difference.

560

(1,485 replies, posted in Trading Post)

I guess with those you can press left + right easily? (If you tried.)