Thanks a lot for the info Mark... It is great to know that it may be this
particular game that has the problems with long PCB wires... I will shorten
everything up and see what happens...
--Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark De Smet" <de-smet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <stella@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 7:21 PM
Subject: Re: [stella] Hardware Problems
>
> I think the most likely cause is the wire length. When I was making my
> "anygame cart", I found that I could not use a long ribbon cable, but did
> not have a problem when I kept all the wiring(cart connector to all
> circuitry) less than 6in. When I made my portable atari, I started with a
> 6 switch PCB, and used a ribbon cable to re-locate the cartridge
> connector. This cable is 3 inches long. with no connectors between. My
> portable has some problems with a few games, pitfall! being the most
> likely to fail. I have seen similar problems using a "rom scanner".
>
> For development, I would recommend just using a "simpler" game. If your
> final product is enclosed in a cartridge, this shouldn't be a problem.
>
> I did not spend the time to look at the signals on a scope to see was the
> signal integrity is, but I'm sure that it is not good.
>
> Mark
>
>
> On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Chris Larkin wrote:
>
> > As the work on my flash cart continues on I'm still hitting some major
bumps... During a routine test this morning, I programed the cart with
Pitfall, and placed it in the VCS... when I fired it up.... nothing.... So
I checked over everything, every little last detail, still nothing....
> >
> > So I manually manipulated the Address Lines and read the data out of the
EEPROM with a multimeter on the cartridge connector pins, and it coinsided
perfectly with the data in the ROM image... I even checked the FFD start
address, and it is correct in the EEPROM...
> >
> > This was working fine before, and as usual now it is Caput... so I seek
the help of you all... I removed everything from the breadboard except the
EEPROM and the hex inverter... the only thing I think this can be is the
length of wire coming from the PCB to the EEPROM, it's about 6 inches a
wire... do and of you think this could be the problem???
> >
> > Or the EEPROM is corrupt some how, I cannot check all 4096 addresses by
hand, so I checked about 35 different area's of the ROM, and they all came
out correct.
> >
> > --Chris
> >
>
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