CPLD success

Apparently it helps when you:

1. Install the ByteBlaster Driver (see the ByteBlaster II PDF)
   
2. Choose ByteBlaster and not ByteBlasterMV (I have to unplug mine for this option to show up)
3. Have continuity between the ByteBlaster and the CPLD.

Anyways... now I can see how close my customs are to the real deal....deals....(deals?).... eh you get the point.

"Can you read me?"

Picked up my programmable device and built my own ByteBlaster but can't seem to program the device. Comparing my byteblaster to the schematic found in the ByteBlaster II datasheet they appear to be different so I may have to modify mine so it looks to be the real thing. Stay tuned....

Breadboard goodness

Got the 08xx just about figured out. All I need now is a programmable replacement from www.fpgaarcade.com and I can see how close I am. Should also be a good starting point for the 10xx. The pinouts are identical so I suspect there may be some subtle internal differences to accommodate the z8002's Z-bus architecture.

Off and running again

Spent a few hours working on the Pole board that I have... did some praying...and got it working again.
Now on to the next custom....

One step forward.. two steps back

Got custom 07xx figured out and was moving onto another when my board started flaking out. :-( Looks like I'll have to go over it and see if I can get it working again. Cloning this system without a 'golden board' is not impossible, but reverse engineering customs and especially comparing simulation to real hardware is going to be tricky.

Z8002 trace adapter

I was trying to debug the 4F/3F custom I/O and was quickly convinced that there's just not enough room to get grabbers on all the pins as well as some of the Z8002 signals I want to look at (help sme get a good overall understanding as to what the system is doing).
So I quickly whipped up a small PCB that will piggyback on the cpu socket and allow me to plug the pod connectors right on to it. Saves a ton of space and dozens of grabbers to boot.

HP16500 to VCD

Finished the core of a software utility that takes a trace from an HP16500 and converts it to a VCD (value change dump) file. Now I can compare actual traces from hardware to those from simulation... side by side. Although it took some time to code up (time that could have been spent plying with the PP boardset) it will save me countless hours in the long run. Eventually it will be available for download and will support multiple analyzers and not just the HP16510A (I have 2 in my system)

Welcome...

Rather than having to decide on a suitable PHPNuke supported blog package and have to host the blog myself... why not let blogger deal with this for me? :-)

That way I can save my free time for actually working on my projects.