USB replacement instead of parallel port for Caetla

General information to do with the PlayStation 1 Hardware. Including modchips, pinouts, rare or obscure development equipment, etc.
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USB replacement instead of parallel port for Caetla

Post by Orion_ » November 19th, 2020, 6:08 am

I'm thinking of getting a newer PC and getting rid of my beloved parallel port in the process
the only system that I need the parallel port for, is the PS1 with my xplorer FX + caetla
so I would like to replace this dev setup with a modern one using USB
I know an AR cart was in development here on this forum with a USB port, but is it still available ?
can we use the USB port from the PSIO to do some dev with caetla ?
adding this feature to PSIO would be really great, uploading a program + printf debug
that would be a real step up in ps1 dev and the PSIO would become not just a gaming device but a dev device too !
I know there is a possibility to stream an ISO via USB, but I guess debugging is not possible and also it needs a Windows + .NET specific software which is really not practical, and the boot time of the PSIO is really slow compared to the instant load of caetla
I don't mind making my own software for USB upload, if you could just provide the protocol to PSIO buyers, and tell me if debugging + exe uploading is possible (or in a near future)
thank you !
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Post by Shadow » November 20th, 2020, 1:20 am

The debugger for PSIO is in the works according to this.
Development Console: SCPH-5502 with 8MB RAM, MM3 Modchip, PAL 60 Colour Modification (for NTSC), PSIO Switch Board, DB-9 breakout headers for both RGB and Serial output and an Xplorer with CAETLA 0.34.

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Post by szalay_1 » December 1st, 2020, 5:55 am

"I know an AR cart was in development here on this forum with a USB port, but is it still available ?"
Do you mean for PSX Blaster ?

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Post by Orion_ » December 1st, 2020, 8:04 am

szalay_1 wrote: December 1st, 2020, 5:55 am "I know an AR cart was in development here on this forum with a USB port, but is it still available ?"
Do you mean for PSX Blaster ?
yes
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Post by szalay_1 » December 1st, 2020, 9:20 am

I was built the PSX blaster, to work it, need write firmware.
no one wants to write code :/ (doesn't works with regular bios)
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Post by danhans42 » December 1st, 2020, 8:23 pm

Unirom is probably the best option at the moment.

Yes it's serial but it does high speed transfers (around 500kbit/s) and has exception handling etc. Also it's open source

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Post by Shadow » December 10th, 2020, 10:23 pm

danhans42 wrote: December 1st, 2020, 8:23 pm Unirom is probably the best option at the moment.
I disagree. n00bROM is superior.
Development Console: SCPH-5502 with 8MB RAM, MM3 Modchip, PAL 60 Colour Modification (for NTSC), PSIO Switch Board, DB-9 breakout headers for both RGB and Serial output and an Xplorer with CAETLA 0.34.

PlayStation Development PC: Windows 98 SE, Pentium 3 at 400MHz, 128MB SDRAM, DTL-H2000, DTL-H2010, DTL-H201A, DTL-S2020 (with 4GB SCSI-2 HDD), 21" Sony G420, CD-R burner, 3.25" and 5.25" Floppy Diskette Drives, ZIP 100 Diskette Drive and an IBM Model M keyboard.

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Post by danhans42 » December 11th, 2020, 3:02 am

If there were usb options available for n00brom I would agree.

However for a solution that is able to use usb simply, again I would stand by unirom as it stands

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Post by LameGuy64 » December 15th, 2020, 1:00 pm

If I can build or find a USB comms interface schematic that doesn't suck (ie. doesn't just emulate a parallel port talking to Caetla's protocol), I could implement support for such a thing in n00bROM and it'd probably be implemented more elegantly rather than following/mimicking the bit banging protocol of Caetla. At the moment, serial and Xplorer parallel port are the only supported comms interfaces in n00bROM.
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Dev. Console: SCPH-7000 with SCPH-7501 ROM, MM3, PAL color fix, Direct AV ports, DB-9 port for Serial I/O, and a Xplorer FX with Caetla 0.35.

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Post by danhans42 » December 19th, 2020, 8:00 am

The WCH372/5/6 devices are excellent for the price and offer fairly quick communication however they are bus interface so require a few modifications to an Xplorer to get working..

That's what I am currently working with and have had great results so far, with speeds way beyond what an Xplorer or even the AR+Commslink could achieve.

I just use the Xplorer sram chip enable so the device sits at 1f040000

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