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New Propeller Platform USB design - Page 4 — Parallax Forums

New Propeller Platform USB design

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  • Martin HodgeMartin Hodge Posts: 1,246
    edited 2012-07-16 17:02
    Thanks, lamb. All the info is going to reside at http://1mgh.com/dna

    I've got a lot of work to do on the documentation, but that's going to start right now.

    Oh, and by the way.. Ordering is now open!
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,652
    edited 2012-07-16 19:03
    Thanks for doing this Martin. Glad they're up for sale now. Did take me a moment to figure out that "DNA" = "Propeller Platform" though...
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2012-07-17 09:49
    Martin Hodge wrote: »
    Thanks, lamb. All the info is going to reside at http://1mgh.com/dna

    I've got a lot of work to do on the documentation, but that's going to start right now.

    Oh, and by the way.. Ordering is now open!

    Order up! It's great that you could accommodate everyone's requests. Now I'll have a USB based board.

    I'm very glad Platform is not the name. DNA implies many relevant things: code, building blocks, organic, etc....
    Didn't see a link to the documentation on the board description page yet. The doc page looks great though.

    Thanks,
    --Steve
  • photomankcphotomankc Posts: 943
    edited 2012-07-17 19:19
    Can't wait to get mine in the mail!
  • TrapperBobTrapperBob Posts: 142
    edited 2012-07-18 04:34
    Anxiously awaiting mine in the mail also!!!
  • RsadeikaRsadeika Posts: 3,837
    edited 2012-07-18 06:24
    When will the Propeller DNA-RTC board be available, and what will be the approximate price? I noticed you have the pads for the RTC on board, but I do not do that kind of soldering anymore.

    Ray
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2012-07-18 06:53
    Rsadeika wrote: »
    When will the Propeller DNA-RTC board be available, and what will be the approximate price? I noticed you have the pads for the RTC on board, but I do not do that kind of soldering anymore.

    Ray

    @Ray,

    They are available now:

    http://mghdesigns.com/

    A    ll SM components are soldered.
    The through hole parts consist of sockets, headers, and plugs. Everything else is SMT and assembled. I had several requests to do it this way.

    Jim
  • RsadeikaRsadeika Posts: 3,837
    edited 2012-07-18 07:54
    Early this morning the DNA-RTC board was not there, but it has been added since then. I may have to wait for SimpleIDE to get the drivers available before I make a purchase. This should be an awesome board to use with GCC, lets see what else could be added ...

    Ray
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2012-07-18 09:42
    Rsadeika wrote: »
    Early this morning the DNA-RTC board was not there, but it has been added since then. I may have to wait for SimpleIDE to get the drivers available before I make a purchase. This should be an awesome board to use with GCC, lets see what else could be added ...

    Ray
    There is already a generic SPI flash cache driver that should work with the DNA board. I think Martin has tested it successfully. Someone will have to write an RTC driver though.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2012-07-18 09:45
    Publison wrote: »
    @Ray,

    They are available now:

    http://mghdesigns.com/

    A    ll SM components are soldered.



    Jim
    What kind of Winbond chip is included with the DNA-RTC? Is it a standard SPI flash chip or a Quad-SPI flash chip?
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2012-07-18 09:52
    David Betz wrote: »
    What kind of Winbond chip is included with the DNA-RTC? Is it a standard SPI flash chip or a Quad-SPI flash chip?

    @David,
    Looks like it's this one:

    http://mghdesigns.com/wiki/_media/dna:w25q80bv.pdf

    J    im
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2012-07-18 10:51
    Publison wrote: »
    @David,
    Looks like it's this one:

    http://mghdesigns.com/wiki/_media/dna:w25q80bv.pdf

    J    im
    Thanks. I guess that's the quad chip. I have a few of those so I guess I can get away with ordering the cheaper DNA board.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2012-07-18 11:03
    Martin- just received my 4 in the mail. Great service!

    The board looks professional, very nice. Can't wait to try it out.
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2012-07-18 11:22
    I was testing one of the prototype boards using the Winbond chip. It ran either with the SPI flash cache or the QUAD-SPI cache drivers. The chip does either depending on how you set up the pins in the .cfg file.

    I tested the RTC with PropForth....so, the good news is for all you PropForth users out there, the RTC works fine with the RTC words in PropForth. The bad news for all non PropForth users, I never got around to writing any RTC library drivers in other languages.

    Its a slick board Martin put together. The prototype I had spent almost all of it's time with me running at 100MHz (6.25 crystal). A good percentage of the time, it had one of jazzed's Tetra-Prop board riding on it's back so it was powering 5 Propellers through the USB port. SD I/O and flash cache with prop-gcc XMM.

    I didn't have any problems during testing.
  • Martin HodgeMartin Hodge Posts: 1,246
    edited 2012-07-18 13:57
    Thanks for all the praise. The pressure's on now. I hope it can live up to everyone's expectations. :thumb:

    David, you've already paid! ;) PM me your address so I can get one out to you.

    The RTC chip on the DNA is the same one Parallax used for the Spinneret, so drivers are already in the OBEX. I'll add them to the wiki too.
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2012-07-19 15:12
    Martin- there appears to be a program loaded in these boards called ebasic 0.001. Any info about using this?

    Thanks.
    Don
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2012-07-19 15:39
    Don M wrote: »
    Martin- there appears to be a program loaded in these boards called ebasic 0.001. Any info about using this?

    Thanks.
    Don
    Ummm, ebasic is my program. It's one of the Propeller GCC demo programs. It's a very simple version of Basic. I'll attach a brief description of it.
    txt
    txt
    README.txt
    1K
  • Don MDon M Posts: 1,652
    edited 2012-07-19 17:12
    Thanks David.
  • cavelambcavelamb Posts: 720
    edited 2012-07-19 17:21
    David Betz wrote: »
    Ummm, ebasic is my program. It's one of the Propeller GCC demo programs. It's a very simple version of Basic. I'll attach a brief description of it.

    Hi David,

    I don't seem to see that in my GCC installation.
    Nor on the Prop GCC site.

    I've already loaded and run several things on my DNA.
    Did I mess up here and overwrite something cool???

    (or in other words, got link???)

    Richard
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2012-07-19 17:24
    cavelamb wrote: »
    Hi David,

    I don't seem to see that in my GCC installation.
    Nor on the Prop GCC site.

    I've already loaded and run several things on my DNA.
    Did I mess up here and overwrite something cool???

    (or in other words, got link???)

    Richard
    It's in the Google Code repository in the propgcc/demos folder. I guess Steve left it out of the distribution for some reason. Maybe it doesn't work with SimpleIDE. I guess we don't include any samples that don't work with his IDE.

    The problem is, we don't really do distributions of Propeller GCC itself. We only distribute SimpleIDE with Propeller GCC included. Many of the demos that were written during the development of Propeller GCC can only be built with the make utility and those weren't included in the release. You have to get them from the Google Code repository or by following a new link I just added to the beta site downloads page.

    https://sites.google.com/site/propellergcc/downloads

    It might be good to create a command line Propeller GCC installer for people who are comfortable using standard editors and build tools.
  • Martin HodgeMartin Hodge Posts: 1,246
    edited 2012-07-19 21:59
    I loaded ebasic on this first batch as a part of my testing procedure. If you haven't overwritten the EEPROM you can connect any serial terminal at 155200 bps to the DNA and be programming in basic out of the box. plug in an SD card and you can load and save too.

    (although ebasic, at it's present version, will throw a stack overflow if you do much more than hello world.)

    Also, I'm sold out of the RTC versions already, but I will have more available this weekend.
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2012-07-19 22:13
    David Betz wrote: »
    I guess Steve left it out of the distribution for some reason. Maybe it doesn't work with SimpleIDE. I guess we don't include any samples that don't work with his IDE.

    This works. http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?140306-Board-configuration-and-cache-driver-for-the-new-Propeller-Platform-USB-Board&p=1100892&viewfull=1#post1100892

    There are several versions. Pick one, make it into a SimpleIDE project, and I'll distribute it.
    The early 64KB EEPROM version was very useful - that's my choice, but it no longer exists.
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2012-07-19 22:15
    Martin Hodge wrote: »
    Also, I'm sold out of the RTC versions already, but I will have more available this weekend.
    Congratulations!

    Nice packaging too :)
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2012-07-20 01:59
    WooHoo! Sold out the first batch. Lots of pent up demand in the Propeller world!

    Way to go, Martin!
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2012-07-20 04:02
    jazzed wrote: »
    This works. http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?140306-Board-configuration-and-cache-driver-for-the-new-Propeller-Platform-USB-Board&p=1100892&viewfull=1#post1100892

    There are several versions. Pick one, make it into a SimpleIDE project, and I'll distribute it.
    The early 64KB EEPROM version was very useful - that's my choice, but it no longer exists.
    You need more than 64k to get a version that can load files from the SD card. Maybe it would be better to use Bean's pebasic. It doesn't require any external memory at all.
  • Martin HodgeMartin Hodge Posts: 1,246
    edited 2012-07-20 06:34
    I misspoke.

    Actually, ebasic is running off the 8mbit flash chip. The qSPI driver is what would be "overwritten in EEPROM".
  • cavelambcavelamb Posts: 720
    edited 2012-07-20 07:58
    Martin Hodge wrote: »
    I misspoke.

    Actually, ebasic is running off the 8mbit flash chip. The qSPI driver is what would be "overwritten in EEPROM".

    Well, I haven't overwritten anything on the other board.
    What would it take to play with this?
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2012-07-20 08:13
    cavelamb wrote: »
    Well, I haven't overwritten anything on the other board.
    What would it take to play with this?
    Maybe I should start another thread about ebasic so Martin's DNA thread won't get hijacked but a quick answer is that ebasic in it's current form uses a serial terminal for its user interface. It runs from external memory in Propeller GCC XMMC mode which means that it's programmed into the SPI flash chip on the DNA board. However, in order for it to boot at reset a loader needs to be programmed into the EEPROM. I can give you the command line options for propeller-load to either start the code from flash or program a flash loader into eeprom so ebasic will start on reset but I suspect you're using SimpleIDE not command line tools. In that case, Steve would be a better person to give advice on how to get ebasic running.

    Martin: Do you have a Propeller GCC board configuration file for your DNA boards?
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2012-07-20 08:43
    David Betz wrote: »
    I can give you the command line options for propeller-load to either start the code from flash or program a flash loader into eeprom so ebasic will start on reset but I suspect you're using SimpleIDE not command line tools. In that case, Steve would be a better person to give advice on how to get ebasic running.

    This works. http://forums.parallax.com/showthrea...=1#post1100892
  • RsadeikaRsadeika Posts: 3,837
    edited 2012-07-20 10:39
    I am not very good at reading electronic diagrams, on the DNA-RTC board, how many pins are left to work with?

    Ray
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