 RAMCart
Missing a proper development system
for your Atari 7800 ? Then RAMCart is probably what you are waiting for.
The RAMCart is basically an A7800
cartridge consisting of 512KByte of emulation SRAM, a 512KByte FLASH
memory for the monitor software and a USB interface for downloading the
code to the cartridge. An advanced programmable logic device is used to
create the memory banking schemes and mapping.
The cartridge supports all the existing
banking types and also adds a new bank type that adds extra flexibility
for programmers. Although it is able to emulate all existing it is
not really suitable for gaming when the programs always reside in RAM.
On the PC side there will be a debugger
software capable of downloading the code to the system, setting
breakpoints in the source code, single stepping code and performing all
sorts of tasks that can ease the development phase.
Before I started the devlopment I
created a brief document with what I considered to be the required
functionality of the RAMCart system. You can download this document in
the "Documentation" section on this page.
News:
| 2006-04-30 |
Well,
the progress is slow but steady. The debugger (NoIce) now
connects securely to the RamCart and it is possible to download
code to the SRAM. You can start and stop the downloaded code as
well as insert breakpoints. I have tested the system quite
extensively and it seem to be rather stable. There are some
known traps you can fall into but with them known you should be
able to work efficiently anyhow. So it now really is a true
debugging tool. The PCB needs to be remade and the work to
create a genuine debugger can start. So still some work to do. |
| 2006-03-09 |
Time for another
update.
I have been having problems to work up the energy to continue
this project, but now I am happy report some progress.
The USB controller part has now
been soldered on to the board with its companing components.
When inserting the USB cable into the board, Windows detects the
controller and installs the correct VCP drivers. I made a small
test program that simply receives data from the PC via the USB
controller with amazing speed. 32 Kbyte is just noticable.
I can now continue the
experiments with the NoIce debugger which will work as a test
vehicle for the platform.
Anyway, in the process of
getting this far I have discovered a number of minor flaws in
the PCB layout which now makes the board look like an ants nest.
But... most importantly it now works. |
| 2006-02-05 |
Finally
got the time to solder a RAM onto the board yesterday and after
correcting some small quirks in the VHDL description the major
parts now seem to be operating as they should. The FLASH can be
read, written and erased. The RAM can be read and written and
the background write mode (read the specfication for more
detailed info) works as expected. I have removed the VHDL file
from here as it continously changes and is probably always
incorrect :-) Next part to build is the USB interface, will see
if I have the time to do this sometime this week.
I have now decided that the ROM
monitor will permanently occupy the top 64 bytes of the memory
map. I have estimated that this is sufficient to hold the reset
and interupt service routines needed to service the ROM monitor
and the user application. Unfortunatly as the 6502 does not have
a separate BRK instruction interrupt vector there will be some
overhead in the IRQ ISR for detecting the BRK instruction. If
this becomes a problem one could always implement a way of
mapping two different interupt vectors in the CPLD, thus
creating a way of having one vector with BRK instruction
detection support and one without.
Just to clearify one point, the
NMI vector will reside in RAM directly ($FFFA, $FFFB) so there
is no delay when servicing this interrupt.
Anyway, once a BRK instruction
has been detected (because of a user breakpoint insertion) the
rom monitor is mapped in and takes over the 7800, enabling all
debugging features. |
| 2006-01-25 |
Haven't had as much
time as I would have wanted to to mess around with this project.
I found one or two bugs in the VHDL code and have identified
some issues that need to be addressed. I should be able to
solder an SRAM this weekend and start testing the ROM monitor
and debugger. I did an update to the design specification if
anyone is interested in reading. |
| 2006-01-22 |
Well after many long
hours I decided to start building the second board and voila !
It works as a charm. Either the PCB was faulty on the first or I
managed to destroy the CPLD device while soldering it to the
board :-(
Anyway the project is now
showing some progress again, I have now managed to read and
write data to the FLASH memory on board. The next step is to
solder an SRAM to the board and start testing the banking
schemes in the CPLD. After that the USB device will be tested.
Anyway if something happens, you can read about it here. |
| 2006-01-21 |
Aaaaarghhh,
something is terribly wrong. The first prototype I built just
keeps locking my 7800 when it is inserted. Most signals keep on
going like PHI2, R/W and others. But something is causing the
CPU to fetch incorrect data. Something is altering either the
address signals or the data signals. Ohh well, back to the lab
now to hunt the problem out. |
| 2006-01-17 |
This is the first
entry and the current status is that the PCB's have been
delivered and I just received the Xilinx CPLD's that should go
onto the boards. So there will be some soldering done this
weekend. |
Documentation:
These documents are just here for
reference and does probably not describe the current status of the
project. I'll try to keep them updated but if you really want the
latest you should probably contact me.
If you have any question you can always
contact me.
(C) Pontus Oldberg 2006
You can freely use any images, source code, text or other material from
this site as long as it is for a non- commercial purpose. If you want to
use something for any other purpose please contact me.
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