If you have trouble with the tool, try getting help in chat from rot.
I do not think I mentioned having trouble with the tool, Raz. In fact, I am not a user of it, my question was more from a technology stand point, to know if it was considered to open source the tool or if it will be kept closed source, that's all.
@neosd any ETA on an official firmware release with some of the progress you have made?
@fensiko... just come into chat pal... or send me a PM...
xROTx
PS... Give me 24 hours... I will have it done... I am sorta busy
Rot, buddy, take it easy. I'll shoot you a pm sometime after Christmas. I'm very patient about these things.
I'm mostly annoyed with myself for being unable to get the program up and running when everyone else seemed to have almost no problem.
So I finally got my NeoSD for Christmas, but being the mild retard that I am I put it in the wrong way round in my Omega MVS (MV1C). There is no arrow on the board or the case so was confused as to what way to put it in.
I soon realised and corrected it. I managed to load a game and everything seems OK, but do you think I am likely to have done any as yet un noticed damage to either the MVS or NeoSD?
What a total dumb noob I am
If it's working I wouldn't worry about it! Obviously its better if you put it in the right way around lol, but my understanding of the pinout on MVS carts is the ground is on the outer edges of the boards with +5v bang in the middle. So if you accidentally put the cart in the wrong way, most of the time it's not an issue. Obviously that means that the other pins (data, address, clocks etc) ultimately get connected to the wrong places, but typically that doesn't do any damage for a short period of time.
Thanks for clarifying =D Yes, a bad idea to put it in the wrong way - consider yourself lucky if it survives OK and don't do it againYes, you are right. The power pins are symmetrical so you can plug them backwards and there will not be current flowing backwards through the cart. Also, on startup, the buffers are set to input, with OE disabled, and the flashes should have OE disabled too, so it shouldn't be a big issue, and as the clock pins will probably not be mapped to something that changes, the FPGAs won't exit their reset state to enable them, but that's not risk free.
So, in short, it shouldn't break if plugged backwards but it's not something I'd recommend trying. It can not only damage your cart, but also your MVS board, imagine the MVS board driving a pin to 5V and the cart driving it to 0V, that's not good for any of the 2 sides. The same can happen with an original cart.
Also, the cart should have a white arrow (a white triangle actually) on the back of the NEOSD-MVS-CHA board. On horizontal 1 slot boards, the arrow should go underneath, and the chips and led should be visible. For vertical 1slot (MV1C and consolized 1Cs), the arrow should be in the same side than the jamma/controls connector. For multislot, it must match the arrow printed on the MVS PCB.
Thanks for the reply guys, and for reassuring me! It all seems to work OK game wise, the only small thing is that if I go into test mode, I get a message saying "hardware test failed on Calendar" or words of a similar nature. I have unibios 3.3 is that normal?
Yes, I made sure the arrow was matching up and I've visually looked to see the pins lining up with the cart connector. It just seems weird its so finicky to get it to run when I can casually pop in a regular mvs cart and have it boot immediately as the video shows. I was hoping the shell would align the boards better and make it boot easier when in fact the opposite is true.
Taking the board out of the shell gives me more tolerance to move it around in the slot and I can eventually get it to work. It's just a frustrating experience I was hoping not to have to deal with. The power should be just fine with all the different psu's I've tried. I even tried them with and without a Japanese step-down converter. We run at 120v in the US, where as the step-down drops it to 100v.
I haven't had any crc issues, and when I get it to run as a bare pcb it appears to run perfectly. No lines or glitches.
Yes, I made sure the arrow was matching up and I've visually looked to see the pins lining up with the cart connector. It just seems weird its so finicky to get it to run when I can casually pop in a regular mvs cart and have it boot immediately as the video shows. I was hoping the shell would align the boards better and make it boot easier when in fact the opposite is true.
Taking the board out of the shell gives me more tolerance to move it around in the slot and I can eventually get it to work. It's just a frustrating experience I was hoping not to have to deal with. The power should be just fine with all the different psu's I've tried. I even tried them with and without a Japanese step-down converter. We run at 120v in the US, where as the step-down drops it to 100v.
I haven't had any crc issues, and when I get it to run as a bare pcb it appears to run perfectly. No lines or glitches.