Re: How do I add firmware to a card?

[Tristan Mumford <xtristan.xmumford@xgmail.xcom>]

RedskullDC wrote:

> Hi Again Tristan,
> 
> "Tristan Mumford" <xtristan.xmumford@xgmail.xcom> wrote in message
> news:459b763f$0$38173$c30e37c6@lon-reader.news.telstra.net...
>>
>> I can get pretreated boards. I think I saw them in Jaycar. But i think
>> they
>> have been sitting in light for a very long time. I have less than total
>> faith in their protective coating.
>>
>> Why is everything so hard to get here?
> 
> I gave up making my own boards a few years ago. Modern chips are
> just too small (for my rapidly ageing eyes hehe) to see to solder.
> 
> Places like:
> http://www.expresspcb.com/
> Will make boards to your design, relatively cheaply, no fuss, no mess,
> software is free to download, yada yada.

Well yeah, there's that. But why pay for a wellmade board made to my specs
when I can spend a lot more time making something of subpar quality?

I'll definitely keep them in mind if I come up with a half decent design.
That's for sure.

Admittedly my first etch will be a double sided board with 0.1" strips so I
can attach it to a prototype board. After that something a little better.


> 
>>
>> On one final note, let's say I wanted to put an EPROM or whatever on the
>> card for firmware. How much extra work is required to do that for the ][
>> based design? I'm not really concerned about writing to it etc. Just a
>> simple thing that will (with correct firmware) work with a PR#n
> 
> Easy as pie.
> Take a look at:
> http://redskulldc.50megs.com/Flashrom/Flashrom.html
> 
> Circuit is there to show how an eprom (in this case a Flash rom)
> can be interfaced to the Apple bus.
> This example has the rom appear at the $CN00-CNFF space.
> Getting it to appear in the communal $C800-$CFFF space isn't much
> more difficult.
> 
> Red.

Ah nice. I'm surprised I've never seen that project page. Thanks for that. I
like the writeup too.

Is there anything you haven't interfaced a flash ROM to?

That reminds me. I got some nice ones recently with a separately protected
bootblock. Problem is it needs a +12v rail to enable writing.

> 
> p.s thanks for the +ve rap. Thought I recognised your name from somewhere
> else (Amiga territory).

Yeah. Generale I think my amiga.org ID is.
You deserve it. You've been very helpful :)




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