Category: News

Things are going well. Have added some features to the software side and also got some stuff working hardware wise.

Can confirm that US/JAP roms are working.Only tested EU roms before. Used my japanese Nintendo junior and a japanese CIC to confirm that the snesram is working with that setup too.

Max and i added an bootloader to the AVR software toolchain. Now its possible to flash the AVR firmware via the same USB cable as for the normal bulk transfer. So no extra ISP programmer is needed to change the AVR firmware. This is super fast, can flash the 16kb client side firmware in like 3 secs.

Added a reset line trigger to the snes bus. Now the client software can reset the snes after uploading the software. So its possbile to push a rom via ucon64 from the pc and then reset is done by ucon64 and the firmware. No interaction needed from there.

Max is refactoring the schematics so that we can send them over to the pcb fab soon. Stay tuned.

Max took a quick break from his vacations and was able to work on the new hardware revision of the snesram. Its mainly a bugfix to version 0.1 . We also did some cost reductions. Most obvious is to go for 2 Mbyte of sram instead of 4Mbyte. It just make the PCB smaller and less complex. I guess this should be alright with most peoples needs.
We gonna print a small amount of PCB and will take pre-orders as soon as we know they will arrive. Not sure about the final price, depends on the PCB costs and if we get
better prices for the sram. Stay tuned.

Changes in Detail:

* Add AVR reset button
* Fix CS bug and add additional gate
* Reduce to 2 Mbytes for 16 Mbits games
* Snes reset line trigger
* No FTDI for the serial line
* Add RX/TX to pin header
* Model Snes connector header
* 1,2 mm PCB for direct plug
* Blacksolder Mask
* White silk screen

Preview:

The software is coming down smoothly. Ported the usb uploader code to ucon64. Also Hirom support ist working now with ucon64 autodedection. So the Snesram board is becoming quite handy for daily dev work.

This hardware revision has 2 bugs which doesn’t make it possible to print pcbs now. There is additional OR gate needed to drive the CS line properly and an AVR reset switch is missing too. I guess when Max is back from his holiday he wants to fix this in the pcb layout. I think
it would be smart to only use 4 sram chips and to have 2mb and not 4mb. Just to reduce the cost and get some more space on the pcb. If there is an interest from the community to support this hardware revision we gonna print some pcbs and sell them. Otherwise we gonna start working on a enhanced version soon.

A video showing the hardware with ucon64 in action…

[flash]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mfq6yJA1MQ[/flash]