STorm ST/Cloudy decoder with RTC compatibility

[DoG]

ROM2 and CE on H4 board

It is not ROM2 and CE...

CE goes to the ROM IC itself on the H5.

The output is from LS11 gate. This is actually AND gate for ROM0,ROM1,ROM2 (IIRC - too lazy to check exactly) when any of them go low it will enable the H5 ROM. But ROM2 (IIRC) is only used for address zero decoding.

So what you actually have hooked up is TOS104 decoding on the H5 and on the lightning board. I'm actually assuming lightning has its own TOS104 decoder..

In any case, there is not actually any ROM2 connections to tap into on the H5, it was just simply not needed with the intended upgrades.

Yeah, I know it is all of the ROM0-2 combined and CE is tied to GND and it is actually OE.

Cloudy has Flash rom on board and uses STorm for decoding. Rom on motherboard is removed.

The Lightning board needs both signals (ROM2 and CE). It has no rom on board. Uses rom on motherboard.

You either use STorm OR Lightning for decoding. Never both.

[Bikerbob]

Ok DoG.. I know that.. so let's say I want to use the lightning for decoding.. I see the H5 has ce and r2 (the pin beside CE on PCB) I know where the r2 goes on the lightning.. where does CE go???

James

[Darklord]

Cloudy has Flash rom on board and uses STorm for decoding. Rom on motherboard is removed.

Don't want to get off-topic here, but in some cases you do not have to remove the motherboard
ROMs.

Example, my Mega ST4.

At least, that's what the STorm ST team reported to me when I was having a few issues. At first
we thought I did but then they said no, I didn't.

It's working anyway.... <shrug> :)

[Bikerbob]

Cloudy has Flash rom on board and uses STorm for decoding. Rom on motherboard is removed.

Don't want to get off-topic here, but in some cases you do not have to remove the motherboard
ROMs.

Example, my Mega ST4.

At least, that's what the STorm ST team reported to me when I was having a few issues. At first
we thought I did but then they said no, I didn't.

It's working anyway.... <shrug> :)

Yes with the storm I found that too Darklord, lightning I think is only addressing the rom2 area .. so therefore I think it needs the roms out.

James

[Darklord]

Yes with the storm I found that too Darklord, lightning I think is only addressing the rom2 area .. so therefore I think it needs the roms out.

I'm wondering if you're not right. I mean, it's working, fast, stable, rock solid in fact.

But (there's always a but, right?)...I did just have this major screw up when attempting
to flash to the newer version of EmuTOS and I can't help but wonder if it's because I
still had the ROMs installed. My Mega ST4 has the 2 chip version of TOS v1.4...

I'm exchanging e-mails with the team to try and resolve it. Lucky for me I had bought
2 each of the Cloudy and STorm ST boards so I swapped the bricked one and the
working one out.

Even removing the ROMs (which I still haven't done yet) I'm now afraid to try and flash
the Cloudy board... :(

[Bikerbob]

what kind of error are you getting when you try and update the EMUTOS??

are you at least getting it to read the img?? I try and drag and drop a .img or .rom onto updater and it just simply refuses to read the file.. I have tried 8-10 different files, transferred different ways.. network, usb, on the SD card of the cosmos.. none of them will read.

20211021_165708.jpg

20211021_165657.jpg

[Darklord]

Oh, mine is far worse than yours. :(

It actually seemed to work, but then did not reboot and changed to a
red (danger Will Robinson!) background and that was it. It's dead, Jim!

EmuTOS attempted update01.JPG

Then this after rebooting or powering off/on...

EmuTOS attempted update02.JPG

[Bikerbob]

OH... sorry dude.. that was not me..

I did get it to work today.

just the computer .. no autofolder items.. no asci device.. just the floppy .. completely plain jane.. and it flashed successfully.

James

[Darklord]

OH... sorry dude.. that was not me..

I did get it to work today.

just the computer .. no autofolder items.. no asci device.. just the floppy .. completely plain jane.. and it flashed successfully.

James

I'm glad you got it working. :yay:

In my case, we're thinking that leaving the original Mega ST4's TOS v1.4 ROMs in place is the culprit for my problems.

I have removed them, for the record, albeit too late.

From exchanging e-mails with the Cloudy Team, I stripped it down to just the Cloudy/STorm ST board, even removing the RTC and tried but it's a brick now. Per their kind offer I'm going to return that Cloudy to them and see if they can do anything with it. It has a JTAG connection so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that they can just reprogram it?

My gut feeling is right now, with the ROMs removed, that if I tried to flash the 2nd Cloudy board that I now have in the Mega ST4, it would work just fine. I'm going to hold off on that for a bit though... :)

[Darklord]

Just a quick follow up on this. Matthias checked out the STorm ST board and the
Cloudy.

The STorm ST was fine, no problems there but the Cloudy did have something
defective, affecting the one slot. Matthias corrected it and reinstalled the latest
version of EmuTOS and returned it to me. Yay. :)

Thanks everyone.