Phoenix H5 and Sidecartridge

[coonsgm]

Greetings other Phoenix H5 builders.

I was displaying my H5 ST at VCF midwest a couple weeks ago and tried out my sidecart on it for the first time there. I wanted to load up a diagnostic ROM to help another ST user at the show on the sidecart and my 520ST decided to go all psychotic on me.

So I moved to the next system I thought would be most compatible with the Sidecart. With the Sidecart inserted, it was never recognized.

My question for those of you with H5's, have any of you tried the Sidecart with your system? I'm working if it is a compatibility issue or a me building poorly issue.

Thanks!

[ijor]

I wanted to load up a diagnostic ROM to help another ST user at the show on the sidecart and my 520ST decided to go all psychotic on me.

So I moved to the next system I thought would be most compatible with the Sidecart. With the Sidecart inserted, it was never recognized.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that you tried the SideCart on multiple computers and on all of them had problems one way or the other? I mean, are you sure the SideCart you are trying is working fine?

My question for those of you with H5's, have any of you tried the Sidecart with your system? I'm working if it is a compatibility issue or a me building poorly issue.

I tried SideCart on my H5 and it worked fine. But I didn't test it extensively.

[logronoide]

SidecarTridge perpetrator here! While the device doesn’t officially support modded computers with accelerators or fancy setups like the H5… what the hell! This forum is for the braves! We’re here to have fun!

The truth is, the device works with a wide variety of custom computers (though not all). Happy to explore different setups and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

What’s on my mind right now is why the device isn’t working for you. If you’re trying to emulate a diagnostic ROM, you don’t even need an SD card—it can download directly from the web! Almost plug and play.

Let me know what issues you’re facing. If you prefer avoid troubleshooting over forum posts, feel free to DM me or hop onto the project’s Discord!

D.

[coonsgm]

SidecarTridge perpetrator here! While the device doesn’t officially support modded computers with accelerators or fancy setups like the H5… what the hell! This forum is for the braves! We’re here to have fun!

The truth is, the device works with a wide variety of custom computers (though not all). Happy to explore different setups and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

What’s on my mind right now is why the device isn’t working for you. If you’re trying to emulate a diagnostic ROM, you don’t even need an SD card—it can download directly from the web! Almost plug and play.

Let me know what issues you’re facing. If you prefer avoid troubleshooting over forum posts, feel free to DM me or hop onto the project’s Discord!

D.

This is the forum for exploring different and unexpected combinations. My issue is in no way with the Sidecart (which I love btw). It works wonderfully with my stock systems (except for my 520ST that began behaving sketchy without the Sidecart...it has an original from the 1980's piggyback RAM upgrade I suspect is causing issues.) and even with my STE536 accelerated STE. My question is more around do I have an issue with my H5 build. Everything has worked great with it, but I haven't really explored the cartridge port before this attempt here.

I was at a Computer festival and didn't have a PC there with me to download any ROM images, but could use my mobile phone hotspot to connect the Sidecart through. I was able to get everything to work out just fine.

As I mentioned my question is more for those who have build H5 boards, have they had success running a Sidecart with theirs. This is so I can see if I need to troubleshoot my cartridge port on my H5.

Cheers

[logronoide]

As I mentioned my question is more for those who have build H5 boards, have they had success running a Sidecart with theirs. This is so I can see if I need to troubleshoot my cartridge port on my H5.

Ok, got it. The device should work on any computer with a system clock of 2Mhz (8Mhz CPU clock divided by 4, you know) as it is. But the fact is with very simple code modifications it should work with any accelerator, if the system clock does not take more than 50ns. I have not focused on computers with accelerators, TT, and Falcon, because of lack of time and hardware to test. Still, this autumn and winter, I will definitely make the device compatible with faster buses.
The "enemy" of my device is not the bus speed but the CPUs with caches enabled. For MegaSTE, I disable the cache when reading in the hybrid ROM emulations modes: https://docs.sidecartridge.com/sidecart ... erspective