Last week, I populated the second "USB & SD card" dev cart ever 
USB & SD dev cart Rev 3.2
Why "second" ? Because the first "USB & SD card" dev cart I made is the one I'm currently using for dev :
USB & SD dev cart Rev 2f
PCB revision is different ... can you spot the differences ?
It can't be seen on the picture, but Rev 2f have a 128KB SRAM chip soldered on its rear side.
I actually don't use it, this is just a remain of the times I though extra RAM was required in order to get "SD Memory Cart" features to work.
After many tests, I could verify that it was not needed : SH-2 code for "SD Memory Cart" feature runs directly from Flash ROM, and 16KB+8KB of work RAM provided by games for Backup library is enough for my needs.
So I removed the routing for this SRAM chip on Rev 3.2 PCB
Another story, but about Rev 3.2 cartridge pictured in this article : I was about to trash it because I couldn't flash its CPLD firmware, and hence thought it was broken.
I first though that CPLD itself was broken (this may rarely happen when overheating it during soldering), so I removed it and soldered another CPLD, and ... same behavior 
CPLD itself is detected by Quartus, but flash always fails at 98% of the flashing process. I (finally 
) start to think it may be a power supply related problem, and ... bingo : CPLD wasn't 3.3V as expected.
In fact, this board features two 5V -> 3.3V power converter units (on PCB rear side, can't be seen on the picture above), a "spare" one not connected anywhere (just here in case of), and the "real" one, and I populated the "spare" one 
In order to fix this, I didn't populated the "real" one, but instead connected the spare one to SD card and CPLD power supply line, and that's why there is a grey wire nearly USB connector
Final note : as I consider USB port for debug only, I don't plan to improve the architecture and routing of such "USB & SD dev cart", so I suppose its design will remain "messy and fat" for a while ...
But in the hypothetical case many talented developers will suddenly arrive in Saturn Homebrew scene and will want to develop games using both CD ROM for music and SD card for huge game data (yeah, I really want a Saturn game with gameplay/level/whatever data so large that it can't fit a CD-ROM !), I will re-design it in order everything fit in a standard cartridge shell
Read more USB dev cart & SD card interface on a single cartridge
First post in 2016 Happy new year !!! 
Last week was "new year's bargain" here in Japan.
So, no, I didn't spent my whole day in choosing clothes
Instead, I went to electronics store, and bough a 128GB SD card for only 5000 Yens (around 40 US dollars) 
I use this SD card in order to watch movies on my Pandora during lunch time
Pandora : Youtube, Firefox, Thunderbird, mplayer,
and real keyboard in my pocket
Read more Happy New Year !
I sometimes check this blog in order to verify if there are some interesting news, without success, and then I realized that I am the only author of this blog (), hence though I should write something here in order not to deceive my countless fans.
So, sorry for the lack of news recently, I was busy with Saturn things, but also in deciphering Christmas presents lists 
... and now busy in tidying up lego blocks and trashing used wrapping paper
I hope you're spending nice Christmas vacations ! I'm a little late for wishing you a merry Christmas (
), and a little early to wish you an Happy New Year ( ), hence the broken title
So what's new with my Saturn projects ? In fact, nothing worth writing an article, but here is a short (and probably incomplete) list anyway :
1. SD Memory Cart : when overwriting save on Saturn side, keep the old save file on SD card (but remove it from saves list, of course).
Basically, it automatically keeps old saves somewhere on SD card, so that it is possible to revert to a previous state. I hope Saturn RPG fans will like
2. USB dev cart mode : when USB cable is detected, allow to unlock CD-ROM and then prompt for data upload.
This feature allows to makes tests on Saturn main program using data from CD-ROM without the need of installing a modchip, and without the need of burning a CD-R on each program changes
Special thanks to Shazz for reminding me to add such a feature, antime for wiring FTDI's PWREN signal to Saturn (it was unused for 3 years, but it was useful in order to detect USB connection, and hence hiding USB dev mode for normal users not using USB), and of course CyberWarriorX and jhl for Pseudo Saturn
3. PCB changes : basically removing few debug "in case of" stuff, and also moving SD card socket in order to fit better with cartridge shell.
It is still WIP, but plan to send the updated gerber to the PCB house on next month.
4. Few changes to the sources of yabause I'm using for testing my projects.
Especially, I added position save/restore and keyboard shortcut to each debug dialogs ... long time I wanted to do this
5. In Backup Data Manager, some additions to "Import" feature : backup data dump file read and parse was done a while (4-5 months ?) ago, I just added something to select where (Internal Memory or Cartridge or Floppy) to save selected saves, and plan to port save data extract algorithm next month or so 
Thanks to hitomi2500's ss-save-parser project, such "Import" feature is easy to integrate in my Backup Data Manager project
Last but not least, I also want to thank Stac user on Assembler forums
He's doing good job in beta testing, and thanks to his reactivity and good communication, project is progressing faster than I was expecting.
Beta testing is far from being a funny job, especially with me as main programmer (), and when testing requires to play games (this requires time, and bugs on my Saturn project may lead to loose of progress in game), so once more, thank you
Read more Merry New Year !
Updated ... for around two hours, then reverted to previous version
Making a backup of whole devblog directory before trying version update was useful this time 
Details about why I reverted to previous version : I first wanted to try latest version in order to see if image upload is better than current one (sluggish HTTP POST upload 
).
So I download Pluxml latest version, and verify differences with current one installed in this blog (there are some modifications for captcha and extra smileys), merged everything, uploaded and ... article editor plugin (pxleditor) displays corrupted text when trying to modify an article
It's not that I can't do anything without article editor plugin, but ... I don't want to write articles in raw HTML (), and trying other editor plugin was only an half-success, because I prefer pxleditor simple interface (the simpler the better ).
Well, I don't give up, but that's enough web-related things for today this week this month ().
I don't know if I hate html/php, or if html/php hate me, or both, but what's sure is that I prefer Saturn programming
Next time I will try to update my blog, I will first try with xampp on my dev laptop ^^
Edit (2015/11/12) : at least I made one change to my blog : I added this smiley : 
This is the image from where I made the cow (not hippopotamus) logo that I put on all my personal projects
I found it in "pre 2007" archive folder in my laptop. Fortunately this old file wasn't lost
Edit (2015/11/16) : re-install from scratch, and local setting & testing with xampp did the job. However, "send email to cafe-alpha when comment is posted" feature seems to be broken, but I will investigate about this later 
Edit (2015/11/18) : email send feature is fixed, everything is working correctly, and blog's CMS is updated to its latest version
Edit (2016/01/14) : fixed article formatter in order to display images in a separate browser tab.
Read more Blog's CMS updated ...
I'm still developing the firmware for my custom cartridge, and it worked enough so that I could take a video of it running on real hardware
Click on the image in order to see its youtube video.
You can also click here in order to download .avi file.
Video may be blurry, so here are some additional pictures :
USB & SD card cartridge.
This is the cartridge I mainly use for testing on real hardware 
(USB port is used for debug purposes)
SD card cartridge for Saturn.
This is the version I plan to release in the case development continues well
And last but not least, many thanks to beta testers for their cooperation and patience
Beta cartridge loaded on modded Japanese Saturn.
Thanks to MeteK for beta testing and taking this picture
Last week, MeteK reported that basic SD card access worked on his Saturn 
Pseudo Saturn Kai System Information screen.
Thanks to Alexandre Souza from www.tabalabs.com.br
for beta testing and taking this picture
-
Additional pictures from Alexandre : cartridge without, then with shell.
Alexandre is currently trying to 3D print cartridge shells. Please do your best
I still can't getting things working on Alexandre side : SD card doesn't respond to SPI requests from Saturn via my cartridge ... I suppose this is due to a bad hardware design on cartridge side, but I still need to investigate about this ...Edit (2015/11/11) : it is fixed and verified here
Fortunately, it was not an hardware error, but a firmware (SH-2 side) error.
About details : I access SD card by using SPI protocol, and the reason some cards couldn't be initialized was due to the fact that commands were incorrectly received by SD card.
Sending a dummy synchronization byte before sending command to SD card fixed the problem.
Log taken from my dev Saturn : first half is SD card initialization sequence,
and second half is data blocks reading.
It works under custom build of yabause too
Thanks to this, most of the tests could be done on PC,
which saved a lot of development time.
Thank you yabause team After doing some testings on my side, I could verify that :
- SD card access works fine on all the 6 Saturns I own
- Some SD card can't be accessed via my cartridge, while the others work fine. (← fixed)
Saturns used for testing.
The one on the top of the picture is my good old dev unit
SD card that aren't recognized by my cartridge.
Edit (2015/11/11) : I fixed firmware and 32GB micro SD card above was recognized
(I didn't tested with the other SD cards, but I suppose it is now OK too.)
SD cards that were correctly recognized by my cartridge.
To conclude this article, I have to say than this project doesn't make exception to Muphy's Law :
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong
Beginning of year (2015) : Virtual Memory Cart related debug. After verifying that it has the chance to work, I temporary stop its development, mostly because I was bored to continue development of this feature ^^;
Until this summer : a lot of struggle with Pseudo Saturn 0.831/0.832/flasher/etc related things.
September : SD card library related troubles. Try to get a solution by using -and trying to fix- thinfat32 library. Using fat_io_lib was a better choice, thank you hitomi2500 for your advice about this library
October ～ Now : Troubles with SD card on Alexandre side ... will work if another SD card is used (currently waiting for test results) ?
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong
But at least, beta cartridge half works, so I can safely continue its development
I plan to release the first batch of cartridges with SD card included, so that there won't be incompatibility issues on user side.
As my project is a low cost one, and also because it won't load commercial games, I plan to sell the cartridges with low cost (8GB or maybe 16GB) SD cards.
Edit (2015/11/11) : SD card compatibility is likely to be fixed, and as far as possible I don't want to do SD card stock management/etc, I will probably release cartridges only.
There still no release date to announce, because some fixes/features addition/testing/etc is remaining, and also because I mostly do this for fun
Read more Firmware development - will it work somewhere else than in my dev Saturn ?
