Not “out of the box” but with only slightly changes on the software part, the new quickdev16 PCBs are working. Their shape fit the SNES cartslot, the changes in hardware design and parts worked out great and we have a kind of stable firmware and upload tool.
When you turn on the SNES, the microcontroller extracts a small loader-rom into the cartridge RAM that is mapped into the SNES addressspace. This one copies itself to SNES’s WRAM and jumps into it. So the cartridge RAM is unaccessed and we can safely switch back to the AVR mode to push a real payload rom onto the cartridge. We are also working on a shared memory function so that we can use the cartridge RAM
to exchange infomation between the AVR and the SNES. This will be used to display a proper Progressbar
while uploading a rom.
As usal you can use our patched version of ucon64 – even under windows – to upload a game to the quickdev16. When the upload is done, the SNES reset line is pulled by quickdev16 and the game starts. When you press the reset button, you only reset the game, not the quickdev16 – it acts like a normal cart. When you press the reset button during the upload process or while watching the loaderscreen, you reset the quickdev and can abort uploads or just restart the quickdev16 – thats a really usefull feature. To initiate the upload of a new game, just start the upload process with ucon, the quickdev switches to the loader mode by itself and receives the new ROM.
So the steps are now to improve the loader code, finish the progress bar stuff, figure out how to solder the PCBs faster than now and add some minor features. Stay tuned for updates, it’s not too long to the release.
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