Bootloaders and Backplanes

[Digineural]

I'm thought of something I might try if anyone is interested as well.  Since I only use one MIDIBox at any given time, I thought that it would be cool to build a backplane for the CORE and bootload settings from a compact flash card depending on the system I intend to use.  This way I would only need 1 core for my many boxes and usually 1 outlet.

There are some obvious MIOS changes and a new mcu required to manage the hardware bootload so I think I'll start with a small hardware bootloader.  I know this is a long shot but has anyone tried integrating CompactFlash or SanDisk with their box?

[stryd_one]

Let's see...

Time required to do this: Months. Let's say 300 hours (that's 2 months full time).

Money required to build separate boxes: Lets say $600 (they'd be fairly nice at that price)

So if you earn more than $2 an hour it's a waste of time.

Obviously those figures might change a bit but you get the picture... But don't let my pessimism stop ya! ;)

Personally, I'd mount the PIC in a ZIF socket either accessible from the outside (front?) of the casing or in some kind of cartridge, and change pics over instead.

[Digineural]

Ok, shoot me down.  It should give me an excuse to learn new things and you cant put a price on that ... unless your an overpriced university.  ;)

I'll get back to you guys soon with something working.

[stryd_one]

It should give me an excuse to learn new things and you cant put a price on that ... unless your an overpriced university.  ;)

LOL Too true! Good luck with it!

[MRE]

I partially agree with stryder in that there is very little money saved in not building extra cores. They could be built on protoboard very cheaply, and a core kit isnt that much more.

Building a backplane system and compact flash would be a lot more expensive than simply buying a few core kits.

That being said:

http://www.walrus.com/~raphael/pdf/compactflashOnPicArticle.pdf

Right away you see that you might need some logic to get the flash bus to play nice with the rest of the Port C/D and E duties.

Good luck with THAT!!

Perhaps a different suggestion?  :  Why not write some special code for the bankstick?  Granted, a MB64 and a SID may not interchange, but maby you can manage to switch MB64 and seq?  You would have to figure a way to load a full config file into the PIC ram, but it may be easier than via CF. The technology is 'built in' and the code is already half baked.

[Digineural]

I decided I am going to use the same core as a portable brick with female sockets like the arduino and bootload from the PC.  Should have been the obvious move from the begining. And it wasn't really about the money, I just dont have the time to keep soldering cores, I have a cnc machine and arcade that are collecting dust.

[MRE]

hmm.. well..

that got me thinking...

You could mount all your units in one bus cage.  The common bus could be tied to all Din, Dout, Ain and Aout cards.

Then, using some sort of multi-position switch, only power the appropriate boards for the hardware you want to use.

[AndrewMartens]

I guess if you're building Core modules on perfboard or something, then it would take a while.  But soldering everything onto one of Mike's or SmashTV's PCBs doesn't take much time at all...