this is very interesting I'm gonna be cheering for you guys

a new revision? Great! But how long would it take to make a first party of 64drives for sell?

Patience will get you far in life... patience. I say this while I do my daily check of the 64drive page, with a straight face... even though I subscribed to the newsletter

Wow, you managed to combine the sub-board with the Altera MAX II onto the main PCB!

Out of curiosity, why did you decide to use two 256Mb SDRAM chips, instead of one 512Mb SDRAM chip?

I think it was that 2x256Mb SDRAM is cheaper to get over 1x512Mb SDRAM.

Hmm, but is the price difference that great? Using one SDRAM chip would help save board space...

...and whoa I think I just noticed something major!...marshallh, are my eyes deceiving me or is that a microSD slot behind the CompactFlash slot?!?

Wow Link, you really pay attention to detail
I didn't notice it at first but there are even 8 pins and traces from that micro sd slot to the fpga

This cart gets better and better

Some questions, to update the code on the fpga do you need such an usb blaster cable like with the everdrive64 or can your USB chip handle that on his own without needing to buy extra cables?
Also can you give us some feedback you got from your betatesters? Does everything work? All savetypes and stuff?
Did you implement a cap somewhere to hold the savedata until the N64 gets turned on again or does it get written to the sd/cf card instantly or after a reset?
If you would own such an old cartridge T-connector and would plug that between the 64drive and the N64, could the 64drive then dump the savedata of a cartridge that is plugged in the back of the T-connector?

The FPGA firmware and bootloader update through USB. Menu is even easier, just drop new file onto the memory card.

Right now the save contents are flushed back to the memory card upon reset.

Is it wise to post the EAGLE schematics? I dunno. I wouldn't want people to replicate my hard effort and work.

He didn't post the actual file itself, so someone would have to replicate it by following the traces, which they also could do when they are for sale.

The real work is probably in the software, anyway.

obviously

The schematic is much easier to follow then the board itself as some traces go under chips, etc...

But true. All the hard work is in the programing / logic.

Said it before; GOOD WORK MARSHALL!

Hey just a question Marshall (if you want to answer that is)...

What FPGA are you using?
Did you get your PCB's made at a factory by sending them the EAGLE file?
How did you order and flash your Altera Cyclone II chip with your data? (or is the Cyclone II like the 'cpu' by default and one of the other chips is your data?)
Did you flash the chips once on the board with a USB / JTAG cable soldered on?


Very interested.

(if you don't want to answer here for reproduction purposes, PM me)


Thanks.

> What FPGA are you using?
> Altera Cyclone II chip
I think you answered your own question. As for the rest of your questions, marhallh didn't use eagle iirc, as it couldn't handle something as complex and dense as the 64drive. marshallh said which program he used in the other thread. I believe that he initially flashes the USB with JTAG, and I now that from there both the bootloader and the firmware can be flashed from a PC over USB.

Oh ok. Thanks for that

I meant FPGA in the development board. The prototyping board or whatever. Like there is the Altera DEII which I was going to get...


*EDIT* Searched Marshall's thread posts and he did not mention anything about the schematic builder (EG: EAGLE) he used...