ChanServ changed the topic of ##yamahasynths to: Channel dedicated to questions and discussion of Yamaha FM Synthesizer internals and corresponding REing. Discussion of synthesis methods similar to the Yamaha line of chips, Sound Blasters + clones, PCM chips like RF5C68, and CD theory of operation are also on-topic. Channel logs: https://freenode.irclog.whitequark.org/~h~yamahasynths
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<andlabs>
Pietro Gagliardi, [06.03.20 10:37] apparently he doesn't want to make a public git repository because people are stupid and will revert random commits and break things and thinks no one can figure out how to keep things from breaking
<cr1901_modern>
All I need to know about RetroArch: Is SP still the lead dev?
<cr1901_modern>
If so, I'm avoiding it. He's too volatile and every time I've been in the IRC chat w/ him it ended with a fight.
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<emily>
tbf if i got comments like "i wish to track the changes beetween 0.9.36.5 and 0.9.37 to disable stupid usage of C++11 features due now the medanfen in 0.9.38 are very slower rather than 0.9.36," i would also be tempted to not share diffs
<cr1901_modern>
I'm not certain I understand how you're supposed to contribute to mednafen. Presumably, they have release tarballs w/ the source.
<cr1901_modern>
Someone w/ commit access will give you a diff to convert to the tip of the tree?
<cr1901_modern>
You put your changes on top of said diff
<cr1901_modern>
and then mail the patch to a mailing list via git format-patch?
<superctr_>
ah, the Cathedral model
<superctr_>
not very much used these days
<andlabs>
I'm going to guess they merge your changes into the master from behind you
<cr1901_modern>
Aren't those confectionaries illegal in the US?
<fseidel>
I've definitely purchased them herw
<fseidel>
*here. No idea if the store was selling them legally though.
<andlabs>
only the surprise eggs
<andlabs>
kinder is an entire brand of chocolate
<andlabs>
and they're only illegal because no one cares enough to petition congress to fix that
<Lord_Nightmare>
because one person was stupid enough to eat the whole egg and choked on the capsule inside
<Lord_Nightmare>
and all it takes is one moron
<Lord_Nightmare>
there's a special kinder egg version that's allowed by the us law
<Lord_Nightmare>
its egg shaped but has a plastic 'equator' between the chocolate halves which is part of the inner capsule
<Lord_Nightmare>
since the chocolate doesn't completely cover the 'non nutritive element' it doesn't run afoul of the law
<Lord_Nightmare>
the law was originally passed to stop people from making chocolate covered sand/rocks candy
<Lord_Nightmare>
or something like that
<cr1901_modern>
>and all it takes is one moron
<cr1901_modern>
I don't particularly care for that explanation, considering people tend to gloss over why the McDonald's coffee lawsuit happened
<Foone_>
Lord_Nightmare: so I've ordered a new hot air rework station (because of other projects). Reverse engineering the PCB for the no-desoldering-allowed Brandon card has temporarily stalled because I lost a bunch of progress and motivation. Any chance you could send me Krick's card so I can just desolder the whole thing and make high-res scans of the PCB? it'd help and get me out of this rut.
<Lord_Nightmare>
hmm. i don't see why not, though do you have a programmer which can read the plcc PALCEs in readout mode?
<Lord_Nightmare>
balrog: can we maybe work on that card over the weekend and try to get the pals desoldered?
<Foone_>
I don't know if my programmer can do that, but I wasn't planning on trying. I just assumed they'd have put them in protect mode, and was going to build a simple arduino-powered harness for them to exercise all the input bits and determine their configuration from that
<Lord_Nightmare>
Foone_: also did you dump the ROM from brandon's card using debug? does it match the one i dumped?
<Lord_Nightmare>
i assume they protected them as well, but there's always the chance that they didn't
<Lord_Nightmare>
and its worth checking
<Foone_>
it does. I believe I mentioned that here? maybe I didn't, or it got missed.
<Lord_Nightmare>
its too bad that's not the 'final' ROM
<Lord_Nightmare>
i wonder if datel still has it
<Lord_Nightmare>
...i wonder what they'll say if i send in the order form letter :P
<Lord_Nightmare>
krick got a letter (after sending in the registration card presumably) about the ROM upgrade, but never ordered it afaik
<Lord_Nightmare>
i have that letter still
<Lord_Nightmare>
it was 25£ I think
<Lord_Nightmare>
the upgraded ROM added more features to the search/value find page
<Lord_Nightmare>
and presumably more virus defs
<Foone_>
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESczS8xUwAAJVvT?format=jpg&name=orig here's the blurry-and-kinda-destroyed-by-twitters-compression image I was going off of. I'd finished mapping out all the traces, including ones that go under chips, but then it crashed and reverted me back to that, so I lost the last hour or two's worth of work
<balrog>
sorry I'm busy with this xp machine
<Foone_>
and that's where I'm currently stuck. every time I open it up to work again, I get demotivated by the fact I've done this already.
<balrog>
I decided that I'd apply all the post-sp3 updates including the posready-derived ones
<Foone_>
and it wasn't any fun the first time.
<cr1901_modern>
Take a break and come back to it later?
<Foone_>
that's what I've been doing since Monday :(
<cr1901_modern>
Well I can't really blame you
<cr1901_modern>
I'm stalling on doing something b/c "the low-hanging fruit" is all done
<Foone_>
I know how that is, yeah. it's a common pattern for people with ADHD, which I have a bunch of.
<Foone_>
but yeah, I was hoping to get the other card so I can desolder it, which'll let me bypass the roadblock I'm currently stuck at
<Lord_Nightmare>
i'd like to try desoldering/dumping the palce chips before sending it (I'll send the palce chips in a little analog devices esd case used for fancy ADC chips, i have a few of those)
<Lord_Nightmare>
does analog devices (or whoever owns them) still send out evaluation samples if you ask nicely?
<Foone_>
okay. Although if it turns out my programmer can't dump the PAL chips, I'll just buy one that can, I'm devoted to this project I just don't want to lose momentum
<Lord_Nightmare>
i have a bpmmicro bp1600 here and an old win98 box connected to it
<Lord_Nightmare>
the newer usb bpmmicro 1610/1710 etc work on win10 iirc
<Lord_Nightmare>
but they're very pricey new
<Lord_Nightmare>
if you can find a used one on ebay, even with no socket modules its worth getting
<Foone_>
oh, that's an interesting unit. That one is a sort-of-PC, right?
<balrog>
honestly getting a cheap BP1200 + socket module may be enough
<balrog>
Foone_: do you have a parport PC handy?
<Foone_>
by that you mean a PC with a parallel port? yes
<balrog>
yeah
<Lord_Nightmare>
bp1200 are not expensive, there's one on ebay for $185+sh
<Lord_Nightmare>
you need to make sure to upgrade the firmware on it though
<balrog>
$185 is too much unless it has a plcc module
<Lord_Nightmare>
they're SLOW tho, they use non-bidir SPP, with data sent back from the bp more or less serially over the parallel port status pins
<Lord_Nightmare>
bp1400 i'm not sure does any better tbh, it just has more ram and supports the fancier socket modules
<Lord_Nightmare>
bp1600 FINALLY does bidir/EPP and is WAY faste
<balrog>
they're slow but can handle a huge library of chips
<Lord_Nightmare>
if you use a bp1200 you're going to want to run win98, it MIGHT be possible to make it work with winxp 32bit with some crazy-ass raw io driver hackery as administrator
<Lord_Nightmare>
but i know for sure it works fine in win98
<Lord_Nightmare>
getting the data OFF a win98 computer is a whole other can of worms, the last version of winscp that runs on win98 doesn't supoort diffie-hellman sha256 modes, so no modern ssh will even talk to it
<Lord_Nightmare>
i ran into that problem... yesterday.
<balrog>
a bp1200 will work with xp, and is supported in xp
<Lord_Nightmare>
apparently if you use win98 with kernelex installed you can run winscp 5.7.5 which DOES support that
<balrog>
no hackery needed
<balrog>
xp 32bit
<Lord_Nightmare>
i had issues with the bp1200 and 1600 on xp
<balrog>
it MAY work in win7 32bit
<Lord_Nightmare>
the 1600 kinda worked very glitchy
<Lord_Nightmare>
produced a lot of bad dumps
<Lord_Nightmare>
and comm errors
<Lord_Nightmare>
it could have been a flaky not-5v parallel port too, some motherboards cheap out and run the parport pins at 3.3v which is insufficient for reliable comms
<balrog>
I couldn't get it to work at all with a laptop
<Lord_Nightmare>
a lava parallel pci card runs at proper 5v and everything will work
<Lord_Nightmare>
laptops often cheap out
<Lord_Nightmare>
you need REAL 5V
<Lord_Nightmare>
and some nice current sink
<Lord_Nightmare>
and source
<Lord_Nightmare>
I have a bp1200 which i'm not using, though i already lent it to someone and just barely managed to get it back, so i'm a bit leery about lending it out...
<Lord_Nightmare>
and i only have one (well, it belongs to balrog) plcc adaptor for the bp and it has issues itself
<Lord_Nightmare>
balrog: we need to reflow the plcc adaptor with the hot air station
<Lord_Nightmare>
its just too flaky again
<Lord_Nightmare>
it passes diags though
<Lord_Nightmare>
unlike before
<Lord_Nightmare>
so i dunno what's up
<Lord_Nightmare>
we also need to re-hot-glue those 3 pegs on the bottom and obtain a 4th peg
<Lord_Nightmare>
really high quality construction :\
<Lord_Nightmare>
but the bp programmers are REALLY good quality
<Lord_Nightmare>
if you're going the parallel port way, the bp1600 is the one i'd go for if there's one available on ebay
<Lord_Nightmare>
since its really fast and supports basically everything
<Lord_Nightmare>
someone has a 1400 on ebay for $750
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<balrog>
not worth it
<Lord_Nightmare>
a 1400 is not worth $750
<balrog>
I'd do a 1200 for under $100
<Lord_Nightmare>
maybe $250 tops, if it has a good socket module with it and probably not even then
<Lord_Nightmare>
a 1600 is worth about $400
<Lord_Nightmare>
there was a 1200 on ebay for $75 which failed selftest
<Lord_Nightmare>
god knows how to fix that
<Lord_Nightmare>
oh there was the one i fixed, which was also cheap
<Lord_Nightmare>
that one however had the misfortune of only having 4 of the 6 pin driver cards
<Lord_Nightmare>
so it maxes at 32 pin devices
<Lord_Nightmare>
each pin driver card handles 8 pins
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<Lord_Nightmare>
with all 6 driver cards installed it can dump 48 pin dip chips
<Lord_Nightmare>
and up to 80 digital (vcc/gnd/open only) pins
<Lord_Nightmare>
with the big relay tech module, it can do 240 pins, but those tech modules for the 1200 are rare
<Lord_Nightmare>
the 1400 comes with the 240 module standard, but early units also only did 80
<Lord_Nightmare>
and its kinda hard to tell
<balrog>
I believe that's software
<Lord_Nightmare>
controlled by the serial roms?
<Lord_Nightmare>
the bp1200 uses eproms to hold its firmware
<Lord_Nightmare>
1400 and all later units use flash
<balrog>
controlled by the serial eeproms in the devices
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<balrog>
Foone_: imo it's likely these PALCEs are used in registered mode
<balrog>
was it that runfei thing that could crack them? I forget
<balrog>
still would need an adapter
<balrog>
digshadow has that thing I believe
<Lord_Nightmare>
interesting, if the runfei can crack them, is that viable?
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<balrog>
Lord_Nightmare: yes, it does indeed have a "read secured ic" function for AMD PALCE20V8H-25/4
<balrog>
Foone_: ^
<Foone_>
neat!
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<Foone_>
apparently they're not really available anymore. so hopefully digshadow does have one