Trudie - The Next IDE Board

[exxos]

After looking at various protection solutions, its going to just be a "crowbar" on the 3.3V versions. The crowbar won't be fitted on the 5V version. This is to ensure people don't do the dumb thing of buying a 3.3V version and plugging it into a 5V bus and blowing it up.

And mostly trying to cover all scenarios and just produce one PCB for 5V and 3.3V types.. The only other change would likely be in the firmware.. Will probably put a couple of white boxes on the PCB and check them off for which voltage it is configured for.

I'm going to try and start getting the PLD is fitted on the remaining gate boards I have here so they can be on sale after Christmas.

[exxos]

V5.4 off to fab shortly..

Some minor fixes and stuff mentioned previously. I also added in a jumper which will be used to disable byteswap. so then people can use it as a regular IDE interface with other inferior drivers etc.

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[DoG]

How are these going to be sold later on? Fully assembled / mostly done without pins / kit / just big chip soldered on?

I'm guessing mostly done without pins for easy shipping?

EDIT: I think I got HD Driver v10 something. Is v11 really needed?

[exxos]

How are these going to be sold later on? Fully assembled / mostly done without pins / kit / just big chip soldered on?

They will be fully assembled.

I'm guessing mostly done without pins for easy shipping?

I will have to fully assemble them to flash firmware and test.

EDIT: I think I got HD Driver v10 something. Is v11 really needed?

Probably not..but as I am using HD11 I know it works.. I have lesser versions, but no point in trying them until I have finished the firmware.

[exxos]

Started working on a new feature. Overclocking! Currently I have timings wired for MODE6 to fit in a 8MHz bus cycle (as'ya do) MODE4 and below I am not sure even exists anymore ? So not really going to support them. Though when using Trudie on a faster CPU or in conjunction with fast-ram, it becomes a limitation to be locked into the 8Mhz bus cycle. Technically I can just run it faster in a 8MHz cycle and maybe have done with it all.. but then it does add more of a limitation on slower IDE devices. I do support IO-READY , but I am not sure anything uses that past maybe some old brick drives

Anyway, Rather than having jumpers for timings, This can now be controlled in software. On a stock 8MHz system Trudie will operate "out of the box". So if you want to switch to a faster mode, you just need a (yet to be written ) AUTO folder program to switch to a faster mode after the HDdriver loads.. Though this is also opening the door of maxing out the IDE device you are using by actually "overclocking it". If you have fast-ram and a fast CPU and a fast CF card, you can crack the timings down until something breaks.

A more advanced system will just read the CF card info and Trudie can be set to the correct PIO mode timings automatically. Though overclocking will have to be done manually. I plan just to have a small stability test in the software, so you can easily test each timing option to see if it gets corruption before you click save & reboot!

I have been testing Trudie with the fastest and slowest CF cards and all work fine. Though a lot of this was previously tested on earlier IDE projects anyway. I think having support for other cards other than just "Sandisk" will open the door to really cheap storage. Plus of course, the best cards out there may work faster than whats on the box! only one way to find out

[exxos]

Just a quick test proving SD2IDE adapters work I installed HD11 on it and copied a few files over and seems fine

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[exxos]

Finally got the PLD's on the 8 Trudie boards. First one fully built and under soak tests now.

Taking a while as I have to change 2 resistors on the bottom of the board aswell

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[exxos]

Fitted the blitter in my H5 and tried blitter support in HD11.. Speed jumped from 1340 to 1520, so 200k/sec speed boost , or about 15% increase

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[sporniket]

impressive how you squeeze all the juice of those chips till the last drop.

[exxos]

impressive how you squeeze all the juice of those chips till the last drop.

. Though speed is limited by the CPU in most cases.