Project: USB connected downloader tool for PS1 development

Any updates?

 

Bump. Has this project been abandoned? It seemed near completion.

 

If you are still looking for a solution Helder, someone else has taken a different approach..

https://github.com/gpoteau/CommLinkUSB

Think its more aimed at uploading homebrew but more features may be implemented in the future

 

Thanks danhans115

 

Charles McDonald also created such a device, but didn't release anything (and never replied to my emails...)

 

It was basically working, but the performance was very poor. I started working on an updated version (using an STM32 as the USB controller), but other stuff got in the way. I should probably tidy up the code and notes I have and release them so that someone else can pick it up.

 

Charles McDonald release all the info, but he has a new website http://www.techno-junk.org/ in the left click on Electronics Projects .

But for Charles's "PlayStation Game Shark clone" no further info has been release.

 

I've looked at his site before amongst other but alot of the projects use old obsolete components and having something more modern and easily obtainable is what I want and some larger flash to store more codes and V-Memory (if it's included).

 

All the links to his «new» website leads to http://dreamjam.co.uk/xxx.

 

I get http://dreamjam.co.uk/emuviews/elec/index.php

AFAIK he never finished adding PSX support, he did Saturn. I haven't spoken to him in a long time, but a USB or Ethernet to Xplorer is certainly something that would be nice to see. I'd dare to dream for WiFi

 

I really should dig out the files for this and put them up somewhere - right now, it's in the "sort of works" phase. There are actually two different implementations:

The first one used a CPLD and a FT245 with the CPLD running a little state machine that faked up the comms link protocol. It worked, but it was horribly slow because each byte transferred over the interface required a transaction in each direction (because the CPLD didn't know which bytes were just junk). The PC end tried to work around this by sending things in 64 byte segments (size of the smallest FIFO on the FTDI chip) - but this only managed to lift it to horribly slow.

The second implementation was a bit smarter and used a STM32F103 and a little CPLD for glue logic - this got to the point where the basic hardware was working pretty well, but I got too busy with real (I.E. paying) work and never finished either the PCB or the firmware. This version was a lot faster, though - it avoided the protocol overhead by having specific firmware for each command running on the STM32 that only sent the minimum required data over the USB. About the only bits that were fully coded were upload/run, reset console and memory card dir/upload/download.

 

I recently stumbled onto this and it apparently works, I'm trying to make the board compact instead of that huge board. That particular Arduino chip has built in USB support so no need for the FTDI or similar chips.

https://github.com/gpoteau/CommLinkUSB

 

Yes, that's what I meant by adding «xxx». The website only has a new name, all the links are on the old website.

He should release what he has done, maybe someone would pick it to contirue. So many projects are thrown to trashcan because of lack of release.