Help with Zicog on Ramblade
nyje
Posts: 35
Just got Cluso's RamBlade as a gift
A nice birthday present indeed
Time for some testing...
Have built a daughter board to feed regulated 5v Vin thru a 1117 3v3 vreg with cap,
and soldered four pins for the prop plug to the bottom right pins labeled 'O I <blank> G'
So far so good, Using bst Terminal, i see the card boot ok, and
hitting ESC and 'spin rb-test' from PropCommand gives all a-ok, all tests pass.
However, when I 'spin zicog150', i get the following,
and thats all folks... the output stops & accepts no input.
I am using fresh files downloaded from cluso's home page
http://www.cluso.bluemagic.biz/clusodocs/SDfiles.zip
on a 2Gb Nokia microSD freshly formatted FAT with 32k clusters
.
Does zicog default CP/M to one pin video and keyboard mode perhaps?
Please can anyone enlighten me as to which humorous and obvious
thing I'm missing??
TIA
Nigel
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Post Edited (nyje) : 5/15/2010 2:12:35 PM GMT
A nice birthday present indeed
Time for some testing...
Have built a daughter board to feed regulated 5v Vin thru a 1117 3v3 vreg with cap,
and soldered four pins for the prop plug to the bottom right pins labeled 'O I <blank> G'
So far so good, Using bst Terminal, i see the card boot ok, and
hitting ESC and 'spin rb-test' from PropCommand gives all a-ok, all tests pass.
However, when I 'spin zicog150', i get the following,
---------------------------------------- ZiCog 1.0_rc_6.0 on the RamBlade v0.150 104MHz Starting HDisks... A:ZICOG_A2.DSK 33990 8388608 B:ZICOG_B .DSK 50374 8388608 C:ZICOG_C .DSK 66758 33554432 D:ZICOG_D .DSK 132294 8388608 E:DRAC_A .DSK 966 8388608 F:DRAC_B .DSK 17350 8388608 G:ZICOG_G .DSK 181446 1048576 H:ZICOG_H .DSK 183494 1048576 BOOTHDSK.ROM 838 1024 <-bootcode Loading SRAM... Done Starting Z80... Done ----------------------------------------
and thats all folks... the output stops & accepts no input.
I am using fresh files downloaded from cluso's home page
http://www.cluso.bluemagic.biz/clusodocs/SDfiles.zip
on a 2Gb Nokia microSD freshly formatted FAT with 32k clusters
.
Does zicog default CP/M to one pin video and keyboard mode perhaps?
Please can anyone enlighten me as to which humorous and obvious
thing I'm missing??
TIA
Nigel
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Post Edited (nyje) : 5/15/2010 2:12:35 PM GMT
Comments
Just wait until the Earth turns a bit more, and that part of the world wakes up.
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Style and grace : Nil point
As updated info, have now tried 3 different microSD's 256Mb 512Mb & 2Gb all freshly formatted FAT
copied the files over.. Same as above. ;-(
Edit>
Even fired up Windoze and formatted, unzipped & copied from there...
Same as above.
Edit>
Sphinx for ramblade seems to work ok, can compile and launch anything I want except
CP/M ;-(
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Post Edited (nyje) : 5/15/2010 2:12:48 PM GMT
I am chasing down a bug with the 1pin versions on the RamBlade - they are just not reliable yet.
Be aware that mpark said there is a bug in Sphinx that corrupts the SD card. I have seen a corruption of the files.
So just to be sure...
Reformat your uSD card with FAT16 (says FAT under Vista) and 32KB clusters. Then copy all the unzipped files you downloaded. This is important as the files must be contiguous. Then see if you can run Zicog150.
Note: I will post (on the RamBlade thread over the w/e) an updated PropCmd (which is also loaded as BootPropSD on the SD card) which has the following two additional commands ? and RUN. ? will display the commands (note FTP is not supported yet) and RUN is equivalent to SPIN (becuase RUN makes more sense now). I have a 1pin version but as I said above, it is not stable - locks up after <30 mins at the SD> prompt which is weird. Resolved - keyboard was locking up. New keyboard (USB + conversion plug) has now been running for hours.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
Post Edited (Cluso99) : 5/15/2010 9:14:08 AM GMT
done, with freshly downloaded PST on WIN XP SP3, both before and after another format. result as above ;-(
>>Reformat your uSD card with FAT16 (says FAT under Vista) and 32KB clusters. Then copy all the unzipped files you downloaded. This is important as the files must be contiguous. Then see if you can run Zicog150.
done, using win XP sp3, result as above ;-(
The blade ran overnight at the propcommand SD> prompt, and was still working in the morning...
If I may ask, have you tried get a card to work using the methodology above, or do you have a 'master' card you keep copying?
I understand you are straddled with windows, is there any possibility you could use dd under linux to make an image of the card (or the windows equivalent)?
Could it be that although contiguous, the files need to be at a certain block on the card?
Just some thoughts...
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Post Edited (nyje) : 5/15/2010 2:13:00 PM GMT
Sorry, I was not ignoring you. But actually I don't have much of a clue (Cluso has most of those[noparse]:)[/noparse]
Whilst I have a RamBlade here I'm having difficulty finding time in life to play with it. And I'm somewhat out of touch with the the work Cluso has done on the software stack for it.
Re: the disk images. It would be great if Cluso could copy one of his working SD cards to an image file for you to download. Then you could "dd" it to a card and be sure you have exactly the right thing.
I have never done such disk image manipulation from Windows but there are a few programs around that should be able to make the SD to image file copy. For example www.winhex.com/winhex/index-m.html.
Re: Contiguous files. Yes they do need to be contiguous but it should not matter where they are exactly. Their start blocks are discovered dynamically prior to starting ZiCog.
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For me, the past is not over yet.
I have a copy of the SD files on my PC's hard disk. I just copy them by drag and drop using Vista after formatting the card.
I have attached (need to swap laptops first so will update·shortly)·the ZiCog binary in case you have a corruption. Just rename ZICOG150.BIN as ZICOG15A.BIN and copy to your SD card and run it instead of ZICOG150. This way your card will not have to be reformatted.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
Post Edited (Cluso99) : 5/15/2010 7:16:46 AM GMT
Be careful here. Surely that is only true if there have been no deletions from the card since it was formatted. Otherwise the image file may end up occupying disjoint "holes" around the SD card.
This may make no difference but dragging and dropping files form PC to formatted SD is not the same as making a bit for bit copy of a working SD card into an image file on the PC that can then be used to "clone" other SD cards with a known working image.
Us linux guys would use the very simple "dd" command to do this. Looks like on Windows it needs a whole huge application like the one I linked to.
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For me, the past is not over yet.
The method I described above is exactly what I do.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
didn't think you were for a moment, zog must be keeping you busy..
thanks for the link, I was not aware of winhex - may come in handy when I'm stuck with only a MS OS
@cluso99
ok, will try this binary then it's off to the shops to try to find a shiny fresh uSD card to try...
I've no idea if winhex is any good or not but a search for "Windows hex editor" or "windows disk editor" turns up a few similar apps.
Good luck.
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For me, the past is not over yet.
and stops... RIGHT off to the shops then just in case this card has issues.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
Guess what, the source doesn't want to compile (see thread if interested)
In my youth, I never had the money or a business/education connections to actually even use a CP/M machine, and so always I have had within me a 'Yearning' to play and learn with it... I believe for an OS which was usually vt/console based, the ramblade is the perfect system. In the end it just means that I get the freedom to build/connect whatever terminal rings my ctrl-G
it seems life/fate/deity of choice is still trying to stop me
Nige.
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Post Edited (nyje) : 5/15/2010 2:14:12 PM GMT
Anyway, My apoplogies that it did not work straight off for you - it's a letdown I know.
I have PM's you with my contact details so we can chase down the problem. I have my suspicions as to where the problem may be.
I have just re-formatted a 1GB card (which I know is marginal) and damn, it works! Then I copied Z164G.BIN to it (attached here) and using PST I rebooted the RamBlade. After "ESC" I did "SPIN Z164G" and copied the trace to the file Z164G.TXT (attached here). This will tell me how far we are getting into the emulation. This version traces the disk I/O. All SD reads once the emulation·runs (not in its setting up)·have ".nnn" where "." means read SD sector and nnn = the sector being read. Then the first few bytes of the sector are displayed. For writes, a "+" is displayed (no sector number etc).· BTW, this trace is enabled by the "#define ShowDiscAccess" parameter in ZiCog.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
This may be similar to the problem I had with the Catalyst loader and Pullmoll's CPM binary. Catalyst wouldn't successfully load a binary that expected to always be started in cog 0 - my loader (and many other loaders) just start it in the next available cog.
There were two parts to fixing this - I had to tweak the Catalyst loader so that it can be started in any cog, and also that it now always starts loaded programs in cog 0 - you may want to try loading your program off SD card using the Catalyst loader.
You can find the alpha loader in the Catalyst thread here - be sure to use the last one in this thread!
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Catalina - a FREE C compiler for the Propeller - see Catalina
If not will investigate further.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
Ok - but I am also battling some very wierd behaviour on the RamBlade. I'm beginning to think there may be a problem with the power circuitry. I normally power mine from external 3.3v and do not have VR1 or C10 installed.
Today I spent all day trying to track down what I thouught was a Catalyst bug - but the same code works ok on other platforms. On the RamBlade I keep getting all sorts of wierd behaviour.
I managed to isolate the problem to memory corruption, but it finally dawned on me that this may not be the software at all. A few minutes ago I decided to power the RamBlade with 5v instead of 3.3v - and the wierd problems vanish.
Here's what I now see:
Powered by 3.3v - weird problems with serial I/O and SD card access, but SRAM access works ok.
Powered by 5v (using the 3.3v input pins) - serial I/O and SD card access now works ok, but cannot access the SRAM.
Any ideas?
Ross.
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Catalina - a FREE C compiler for the Propeller - see Catalina
If the 3v3 supply is not close (i.e via wires) then C11 probably should be fitted as the tantalums may not hold enough charge for a fully loaded prop, SD & Sram. Remember I am overclocking to 104MHz but not raising the voltage.
You may be onto something though as I have now gone back to the old driver without success for Nigel. I have tried lengthening the access times for SRAM just in case it is marginal - not fully tested yet.
I have a different problem in that I cannot get ZiCog to run properly with 1pin TV & 1pin KBD, so I may look at this tomorrow. Unfortunately off to qld tues.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
Sorry, I mean't C11, not C10 - I did think installing that could make a difference, so I tried it - but no change.
I realize running the chips at 5v is not a good idea - but it was desperation time! When I supply all the chips with 5v (and don't use the SRAM) then I don't see any problems. When I run it at 3.3v it will often run ok for a few minutes, but eventually I always get memory corruptions I can't explain.
I tried several 3.3v sources (basically, getting 3.3v off various other Prop platforms, including the TriBladeProp) but none seem to make any difference.
Ross.
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Catalina - a FREE C compiler for the Propeller - see Catalina
RossH: I still think you may be on to something here.
Ross: How are you connecting to the 3v3 power supply (distance, leads, etc)? What sources of 3v3 have you tried (TriBlade, Prop ProtoBoard, etc)?
So far, swapping the fsrw driver and slowing sram access has not resolved the problem. Still waiting on results of the latest test though.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
Yes, I'll work on generating a self-contained example. But just posting source that others will be able to compile is not trivial - I am using an unreleased version of Catalina to generate the code I run on the RamBlade. Also (drat!) last night I broke my PropPlug because of all the plugging and unplugging I have to do (i.e. plug it on this set of pins to load the EEPROM, then that set of pins to test!).
But in fact AntoineDoinel has already reproduced the failure (see the Catalyst thread). Programs acts as if there is a stuck key, or they look like they are continually re-executing old commands. In fact what's happening is that the most obvious failure is when the serial comms buffers get corrupted. This occurs quite randomly - sometimes you can execute many commands before it fails, sometimes none - but eventually the program locks up and keeps reprocessing old keystrokes or re-sends chunks of text it has already sent. I have had this happen even on the 'othello' program - and this program is exactly the same code on all platforms except for the serial tx and rx pin numbers (it does not use either the SRAM or the SD card).
I'm not really convinced it is not a simple software problem - but it just seems strange that the software fails quite quickly whenever the RamBlade is powered at 3.3v, but I have yet to see any such failures when I run it at 5v. My next step is going to be to follow Cluso's advice and plug the RamBlade directly into the TriBlade for power (currently I run the power via leads about 20cm long).
Ross.
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Catalina - a FREE C compiler for the Propeller - see Catalina
See answers in the post above - I use leads about 20cm long, mostly from the TriBladeProp (connected to the pins labelled "3.3v. Gnd, 5v, Gnd" near the TV output) the Morpheus (via the power available at the SD card slot expansion adaptor) and the Hybrid (can't remember exactly where offhand).
Ross.
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Catalina - a FREE C compiler for the Propeller - see Catalina
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
The crystal is plugged in? It looked soldered to me. I'll check when I get home.
Ross.
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Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz
Ok, I too am attempting to recompile Zicog for 5Mhz Xtal...
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You're right - changing the crystals was easy. I didn't have a 5Mhz crystal, so I tried the 10MHz crystal from my Hydra.
Do you want the good news first, or the bad news first?
The good news is ... that it works The bad news is ... that it works At 80Mhz Catalyst and all the external programs runs perfectly - no memory corruptions, no spurious serial I/O, SD card and SRAM 100% functional.
I also have some of Bill's 6.25Mhz crystals, so I tried one of those as well - no luck. Same problem - memory corruptions and spurious I/O. Perhaps I'm just unlucky with my RamBlade - it appears I cannot clock it at anything above 80MHz.
Ross.
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Catalina - a FREE C compiler for the Propeller - see Catalina