microcat - The ultimative ARM based handheld game console

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 06:16:59 AM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on October 28, 2015, 06:06:16 AM
Ok phew, will the SD card still be formatable afterwards ir useless for any use?

Also I forgot: What is the max SD card size allowed? And what about SDHC?

Maximum supported SD card size will be 32 GB. SDHC will absolutely be supported.
The SD card is normally always reformattable but you can destroy files on it.

Dream of Omnimaga · October 28, 2015, 05:29:51 PM

Ah ok good, I was worried because it seemed like SDHC was slowly replacing SD so it would have sucked if the console only supported a format that could be discontinued in a few years. And if it only supported SD or micro-SD cards up to 1 GB like some phones then it would be problematic for large games with audio.

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 05:48:35 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on October 28, 2015, 05:29:51 PM
Ah ok good, I was worried because it seemed like SDHC was slowly replacing SD so it would have sucked if the console only supported a format that could be discontinued in a few years. And if it only supported SD or micro-SD cards up to 1 GB like some phones then it would be problematic for large games with audio.

Well sure we want to keep it compatible and support SDHC but I really doubt that a normal user will fill even 250 MB of their SD card with actual games or their data.

Dream of Omnimaga · October 28, 2015, 05:53:55 PM

I was more wondering if some games had particularly elaborate audio. I know that music will be compressed and stuff but if for example 20 games have 30 minutes of OST each and 250 KB of code, wouldn't that add up fast? I would be fine with just 1 GB, though.

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 05:55:32 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on October 28, 2015, 05:53:55 PM
I was more wondering if some games had particularly elaborate audio. I know that music will be compressed and stuff but if for example 20 games have 30 minutes of OST each and 250 KB of code, wouldn't that add up fast? I would be fine with just 1 GB, though.

Sure it could add up, but first, I was thinking about going to simple chiptune audio even though the processor does support outputting CD quality audio (16 bit) which would reduce the size drastically.
Also IMO 1GB is more than enough.

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 06:39:23 PM

Awesome news!

Hardware recognition finally works in the BIOS!
We can now determine RAM size and configuration at run time.

Max Leiter · October 28, 2015, 06:40:27 PM

Quote from: DarkestEx on October 28, 2015, 06:39:23 PM
Awesome news!

Hardware recognition finally works in the BIOS!
We can now determine RAM size and configuration at run time.

Looks awesome! Did you ever decide what size to make the stack?

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 06:42:34 PM

Quote from: Max Leiter on October 28, 2015, 06:40:27 PM
Quote from: DarkestEx on October 28, 2015, 06:39:23 PM
Awesome news!

Hardware recognition finally works in the BIOS!
We can now determine RAM size and configuration at run time.
Looks awesome! Did you ever decide what size to make the stack?

Thanks

Well as I will have two stacks (one tiny for the BIOS and a larger one for the OS), the BIOS stack is 750 bytes right now. I might increase it if necessary in the future.

Snektron · October 28, 2015, 06:43:19 PM

Whoa that looks awesome

Nice job!
its really shaping up

Dream of Omnimaga · October 28, 2015, 08:21:39 PM

Good job DarkestEx

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 09:06:16 PM

Thanks

Here is the image of my setup and the new bootloader layout:

Dream of Omnimaga · October 28, 2015, 09:15:35 PM

Looks very good, I can't wait to see it with the game pad and command input in action

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 09:35:21 PM

Controls are not too hard and should be done soon.
First I will get the BIOS done, which is quite a bit of work.

Here is a new high resolution gallery of the latest setup and BIOS layout:
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

Dream of Omnimaga · October 28, 2015, 10:18:21 PM

THanks for the pics

Also good to hear. I hope the screen was not damaged too much by the sparking you mentioned earlier on IRC. Could you clarify about what might have caused the sparking? I was unsure if I understood on IRC.

DarkestEx · October 28, 2015, 10:36:23 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on October 28, 2015, 10:18:21 PM
THanks for the pics Also good to hear. I hope the screen was not damaged too much by the sparking you mentioned earlier on IRC. Could you clarify about what might have caused the sparking? I was unsure if I understood on IRC.

Well I have a wool carpet in my room and I had socks on. When I came back getting some parts, the action of walking over the carpet had generated an electrostatic charge inside me. When I grabbed the oled to move it out of the way, the charge arced over to the oled's frame.
A few minutes later the oled went black and I was not able to turn it back on. While I was searching for a new oled, about half an hour after it went black, the oled suddenly started to live again.

Attached are the new icons that we added to the BIOS. They can be all used inside the BIOS or in applications that make use of the BIOSes routines.

Also this are the icons in action:

Edit: Some fixes and a layout change: