Denial

I can hardly say that it is moving along in any acceptable pace. Luckily for me it is a hobby project. I think I have spent like 8 hours / month during 2013. Everything else on my companies, work and politics.

That said. Hopefully I can finish the layout for the junior (internal) during christmas brake ( free until 8/1-2014 ... a first in my life ). The cartridge is next.

The problem has, as always, been to strike a good balance between effort, budget and the need to learn something from this endeavour.

Junior is now single sided SMA mounting (and thus larger at 50mm x 42mm). Reason being to reduce the complexity of the board. On the other hand I have added the option to add RAM for all BLK1-3 and 5. Well actually also 6 and 7. This has also given me a way to fix an annoying flaw in the cartridge design. The DMA could not move data from internal memory to/from external. The board is primarily accessed through wireless lan. The memory onboard is 2MByte of SRAM, addressable in individual 8k chunks.



The cartridge has an IEC connector and I also opted for USB and that the SD card was accessible from the backside. WiFi and Bluetooth is gone, but I kept the ethernet. I also now have access to some serious 3D printers and have opted to do plastics for the cartridge.



Will 2014 be the year this project materialises ... I really hope so.


The pool ... yes it was finished, used and a real burden was lifted from my shoulders. Here it is just before the finishing touches ...

Hi Thomas

Before you dip yourself in the pool do you have any news regarding the GCart 2011 ?

Nice day to you.

Hi,

Well it is moving along, although slowly.

Juniors layout is finished except for some last minute fixes on the power planes. Hopefully I can order boards in beginning of May.

For senior I have "contracted" a mechanical engineer for designing custom plastics.

Hi Thomas

Thanks for your reply.

That sounds great, I guess we are some who is looking foreward to see it "live"
Please post some live pictures when the pcb has materialized

Will do ...

Hi Thomas

You will most likely hate me for asking but any progress ?

Not at all. I admire your patience.
Well my mechanical engineer has promised the casing in three weeks when J have vacation. The little internal board is done and ready for order. So small progress, but still ...

Hi Thomas

Any progress You like to share with us fellow Denials?

Not really ...

Well. I have wondered off and on on this project. The prior incarnation got extremely expensive. Mostly due to the rather expensive 4 layer gargantuan (for todays technology) board.

SO I have been back at stage 1 AGAIN. However, I think I have a pretty neat partitioning now between the cartridge and internal expansion.

The cartridge is still run with a FPGA but a MAX10 from Altera with a softcore NIOS II for control. It has access to 256Mbyte DDR2 memory, NOR SPI flash and SD card. The ethernet was skipped, but WiFi is back. MP3 is skipped and added to another idea.
The internal is a small board focused on extending video and internal RAM. It uses only the internal RAM in the MAX10.

Hi,

Just a short note. I have added a place on my own server with a wordpress installation for my projects, including my VIC 20 stuff ( http://lovskog.net/projects ). I will add a note now and then here. I will also try to repair the missing images.

I am backdating some notes, so the chronology might be a little of ...

However, no promises that it moves quicker because of this though ...

Great site Thomas, it's possible to put you site url in the user profile and get it exposured in your posts.

No rush with the release of your card, perhaps it will be retro even before releasing

No rush with the release of your card, perhaps it will be retro even before releasing

Hi Thomas,

I hope everything is great with you and your family.

I wonder what's your plan about the cards, do you want to sell them? open source them? maybe both a la Arduino and HackRF One?

I also wonder if creating a github repo for the firmware might pave the road a bit?

Cheers,

Topo

I really have no specific plans. If the interest is there but only few I might manufacture PCBs. A bit more interest I might opt for selling mounted boards. Huge demands, fully assembled with plastics might be an option.
Once finished, to some degree, I have no problems getting it open source.

Count me in