Smonson's untitled simple harddisk project

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exxos
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Re: Smonson's untitled simple harddisk project

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Bodge wires :excited: :excited: :excited:
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Re: Smonson's untitled simple harddisk project

Post by Smonson »

My USB Blaster stopped working last week, which has put a damper on projects for the time being. It was one of those little cheap ones with nothing inside it but a PIC microcontroller. I've bought one of the bigger "official" Altera-designed ones but it'll take a few more weeks to get here thanks to COVID.
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Re: Smonson's untitled simple harddisk project

Post by Smonson »

Been trying to finish some projects recently. I got the last prototype of this drive working pretty well - but still occasionally some data corruption happens. With just 2 LEDs for debugging, it was pretty hard to work out what was going on, so I've got a bigger "hero" prototype design ready here which has a serial port on it. This will be just to work out where the issue is and see if I can solve it.
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Re: Smonson's untitled simple harddisk project

Post by Smonson »

And now exactly the same thing again only in TQFP-100. Why? Because I still have 4 of them. There is no way to buy any 5M40Z, 5M80Z, 5M160Z or 5M240Z in any QFP-64 or QFP-100 from Mouser, they just have a few -144s left.
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And I just saw that in July Intel are going to stop producing MAX II, MAX V, MAX 10, Cyclone II, Cyclone III and Cyclone IV in any non-lead-free QFP packages due to their outsourced manufacturer decommissioning that equipment. It's possible they might continue making these products in a RoHS version but it's bound to put the boot into supply even more than it already is. They're already double the price they were when I started this idea, and ice40s are going through the roof as well.
First Bitcoin, then COVID, and now generative AI... we're never gonna have any FPGAs again :dizzy:
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Re: Smonson's untitled simple harddisk project

Post by Smonson »

Yo. So time passed, and I've got this one all made up now. It works perfectly apart from the same issues that the last one had :D
The serial console is something I should have included from the start... you live and learn!
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Although there is one new thing, and it's a mystery to me. I'm using the ICD driver, and right after bootup it displays this "<MSense: $FD>" message in the corner and then hangs.

There are no errors on the hard drive side, and under inspection with a logic analyser the last data transfer worked fine and put the bus back into a ready state.
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The docs refer to an MSense: $fe error code, but I can't find anything about what $fd is trying to tell me. Anyone know?

I think it only happens if I have "retries" switched on in the driver, but no data transfers fail, and it makes no attempt to retry anything. Totally weird.
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Re: Smonson's untitled simple harddisk project

Post by Smonson »

I'm not sure what the go was with that MSense thing, but it went away after a bit of refactoring and hasn't come back.

Actually I've had this running for a few nights playing Monkey Island, Civilization, and Quest for Glory 1, and just copying files around, without any data errors. So I think this thing is nice and stable now.

I'm at a point where I'm tidying up the codebase and making sure any error conditions are handled before I call it done. I've found a nice case that it should fit nicely into and I've started laying out what could be the final version of the PCB.

I'll put an internal microsd slot in it as well as the front-facing full-size SD card to facilitate backups and copying files around. The next version needs a faster MCU because the atmega324p that I used this time is a little slow at 3.3v - next one will be an avr128da running at 20MHz which will give a 10MHz SPI connection to the cards. I'm getting 244KB/s at the moment at 3.125MHz so it will hopefully be about triple the speed. 244KB/s still feels rather fast compared to the ST's "thinking time" so I'm not too hung-up on those numbers.

I guess I'd better chuck a real-time clock in there somewhere as well.

It's a great feeling when projects sometimes actually progress!
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