A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader !

Libraries, utilities, bootloaders...

Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby Myndale » Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:33 am

Hmm...yes, that version has the support for button C. Just to clarify the steps should be:

1) Open NameBoardSketch, change the variable name from "ARDUINO" to the name of your sketch e.g. "BLINK".
2) Format the SD with FAT16 and place BLINK.HEX in the root folder.
3) Power-up the Gamebuino holding the C button down.

That should cause BLINK.HEX to be flashed into the Gamebuino and then executed. It should work without a reboot but if it doesn't then try a reboot anyway. It's late in this part of the world so I'll have to leave this until tomorrow, the next version I upload will also output a debug stream to the serial port so we can figure out where it's failure.

Sorry it's not there yet but hey, at least the USB part is working :)
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby Myndale » Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:42 am

Wait a minute, my bad, sorry. I just checked your schematics and you're hooking CS up to PB2. For some reason I was using PB6, I must have been consulting the wrong board schematic or something. I've re-built it with the makefile set to use PB2, hopefully you'll have better luck with this one.
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby rodot » Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:46 am

Cool, I'm burning it right now.
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby rodot » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:03 am

Bad news, it's still not working.
I see in pin_defs.h that it uses PB5 to blink a led... this pin is used for SCK, doesn't it interfere with the SD card communication ? I think you should replace it with PD5, the backlight's pin.
I hope to see that bootloader working soon !

Until you come back tomorrow, I'm going FINALLY release Gamebuino on indiegogo. It may sound early as the bootloader isn't already working, but we'll still have 3 months until I ship the first Gamebuino consoles, and you're working damn fast ! And I want to release it before Arduboy... hem... even if that's not really the same kind of project, I'm afraid that there is some kind of... rivalry.
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby Myndale » Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:45 pm

Rivalry is good, keeps everyone on their toes :) I like the idea of the Arduboy and I wish Kevin all the best with it but I see some serious flaws with the design. The non-standard form-factor will keep costs high, and people are unlikely to want to pay $50 for a pre-assembled hand-held that needs a new battery soldered into it after every 9 hours of gameplay. I'm also skeptical about the portrait orientation and capacitive buttons, those haven't worked out too well for mobile gameplay.

Anyways, I've attached the next version of the firmware to try, this one outputs a series of strings to the Serial port at 115200 baud. The expected output is:

C button detected
Found board name
Initializing FAT
FAT initialized
Found file on SD card, flashing
Done!

Any errors along the way will print an error message and stop. Let me know how this one goes and we'll take it from there.
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby Myndale » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:32 pm

Oh, and BTW, the LED #defines are just in a header file that the 2boots source includes, it doesn't actually use them to blink any LEDs. Just one of several things that need a bit of cleaning up in that code.
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby Myndale » Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:30 am

Just a quick update...I did some tests today and it's quite easy to set up a jump table at a fixed location in the boot loader that the main application can call into. This means it will be very easy to load and run the LOADER app when the C key is held down and then have it call a function in the boot loader directly to load the game without needing a reboot or the use of EEPROM or a temp file on the SD card etc to store the file name. It also means that the bootloader source code can be changed at future without breaking backwards compatibility with other units already released.

Now if we can just track down that SD card issue then everything else should fall into place.
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby rodot » Thu Mar 13, 2014 9:02 am

Well, I don't really know how to say that... IT WORKS !
Now, now Gamebuino can RULE THE WORLD thanks to you ! This is MARVELOUS !
I don't find the right words (I'm not a native English, it doesn't help) to express how happy I am, so I'll post a self portrait (did I say I was a mad scientist?)

Image

Wow, I'm still in shock... :shock:

Well done Sir, you just earned a free Gamebuino. You know what ? I'll hand solder one for you and send it in the coming days, so you'll have it way, way before everybody... If you accept.

I hope you don't mind If I ask you keeping up the good work? :)
I'll do the LOADER program with the GUI to navigate through the SD card soon.
It's going to be HUGE. It's going to be PERFECT.

Edit: It only seems to work when I'm connected to the USB port ?..

About the Arduboy, I totally agree with you, the form factor is funny but it's not really usable. But it has been published on many famous websites and made hundreds of thousands of views... that's why I felt I had to release my console before him.
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby Myndale » Thu Mar 13, 2014 10:51 am

More than happy to keep working on it, I'm actually pretty excited about seeing the Gambuino being released :) I spread the word a bit on Facebook today and I know a few of my friends signed up as a result. Good to see the Indiegogo campaign is already off to a good start after day 1!

Thanks for letting me know about the reboot only working if it's plugged into the USB, I'll look into that first thing in the morning. Now that I know the SD card routine is working I'll start cleaning things up and put together an initial LOADER app.

Still waiting on my 5110 displays...very frustrating!
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Re: A free Gamebuino if you compile the SD card bootloader

Postby Myndale » Fri Mar 14, 2014 1:58 am

I've attached another version of the boot loader which more closely matches the stated specs. When you hold down C in this version it loads and executes LOADER.HEX from the SD card. The loader application itself can then invoke the boot loader directly like this:

Code: Select all
#define load_game (*((void(*)(char*))0x7ffc))

load_game("BLINK");


I've included a example loader which prints a message to the serial port, waits for a character to be received from the serial port and then flashes the Gamebuino with BLINK....I would have made it use the LCD but I'm still waiting for mine to arrive.

Source code and SD files attached, details as always in README.TXT.
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