USB replacement instead of parallel port for Caetla

[Orion_]

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 !

[Administrator]

The debugger for PSIO is in the works according to this.

[szalay_1]

"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 ?

[Orion_]

"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

[szalay_1]

I was built the PSX blaster, to work it, need write firmware.
no one wants to write code :/ (doesn't works with regular bios)
Shadow wrote:
"It needs a lot of programming to get it to work as intended"

[danhans42]

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

[Administrator]

Unirom is probably the best option at the moment.

I disagree. n00bROM is superior.

[danhans42]

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

[LameGuy64]

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.

[danhans42]

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