Re: Assistance with Star Wars w/Clay's ESB Kit --- SW novram clobber?

  So if switching to ESB during power off does it then the only things I
can think of would be that SW is actually getting corrupted while ESB is
writing to the NVRAM. So... try this...

a. Do what Joel suggested first

1. put in SW mode... put up a high score.
2. Power Down.... remove the SW NVRAM (on Clay's PCB if I read that right)
3. Switch to ESB... turn on game
4. Put up an ESB high score
5. Power down... replace the SW NVRAM
6. Switch to SW (don't forget this or you will have to start over)
7. Bring up SW and data should be good still.

So, with that, like Joel said on his check, you can see if it is chip
specific then you can see if there is something funky in my process. If
my process works and SW memory is still OK, then there must be something
going on with the chip select between the two NVRAMs which is letting
ESB write data to the SW NVRAM... when SW is powered back on and the
data isn't checksumming correctly, it will restore it to DIP settings
and overwrite it. If the memory in SW is still corrupt after this
process, then it has something to do with the powerdown with the select
switch being in different positions.

??

jess

On 2/22/2011 8:22 AM, Joel Rosenzweig wrote:
> It would be worth swapping the two 2212 chips between SW and ESB to see if the failure moves with the chip or stays with the socket. If it moves with the chip then that's one debug path. If it stays with the socket then that's a different one.
>
> Joel
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Feb 21, 2011, at 11:56 PM, "Altan (altan@aol.com)"<altan@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, I think the reason this is hard to figure out is because the behavior is just plain screwy.
>>
>> I replaced the SW 2212 a couple days ago and it definitely started storing settings.
>> For several days, it would power up with free play and my settings.
>> About 4 hours ago, I got a high score (yeah! ... #3). I turned the game off.
>> I just turned it back on and the settings were lost (as well as the high score). Boo!
>>
>> So we can most likely conclude from this that switching from ESB to SW isn't the root cause. Maybe I was just unlucky that the failure occurred at those times --- leading me to assume they were correlated.
>>
>> What's odd is that the novram test passes. FWIW, the novram test also passed with the original 2212.
>>
>> What does that tell us when the novram test passes? Anyone know what Atari actually did for the novram test? Did they write a pattern into the ram and then tell the chip to store it, then clear the pattern from ram and then ask the chip to restore it from novram? I'm wondering if knowing why the novram test passes might help explain what I'm seeing.
>>
>> Thanks again to everyone is hash chimed in --- or will do so :)
>>
>> ... Altan
>>
>>
>> On Feb 21, 2011, at 11:46 PM, Altan (GAPAS) wrote:
>>
>>> Joel, you have it correct.
>>>
>>> SW saves fine.
>>> ESB saves fine.
>>> Switch from ESB to SW (with power off) and SW loses settings
>>>
>>> ... Altan
>>>
>>> On Feb 21, 2011, at 11:40 PM, Joel Rosenzweig wrote:
>>>
>>>> If the timing was wrong, wouldn't it fail to save the score in that 2212 all the time? I thought he said that SW saved the scores now, but, when switching back from ESB, SW was re-initialized.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe I'm misreading him again.. don't know.
>>>>
>>>> Joel
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Feb 21, 2011, at 11:33 PM, Jess Askey wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I did lots of fanagling with the NVRAM on my I,Robot when it had trouble saving settings and indeed, Atari seemed to balance the /SAVE line with the timing of the +5V NVRAM supply *just right* to make the NVRAM save data right before power disappeared. Technically, if you doubled the load, the power supply would drop in about half the time so putting a big cap in parallel with C93 seems like the best bet... at least to eliminate that possibility.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/21/2011 8:42 PM, Clay Cowgill wrote:
>>>>>>> I'm assuming this is the 2212 used for SW novram. Is that right?
>>>>>> I'm 99% sure that's right. (Sorry, it's been a long time since I had to
>>>>>> look at/think about that. ;-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The idea was that you could take your existing Star Wars settings and high
>>>>>> scores and move them over to the daughterboard without losing anything.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The only thing that comes to (my) mind at the moment is that maybe with two
>>>>>> NOVRAMs sharing their connections (except for the chip select which is muxed
>>>>>> by the game select switch) maybe the 'new' SW 2212 doesn't have enough time
>>>>>> to store the SRAM copy of the memory to the NV portion of the chip before
>>>>>> the EAROM power goes away.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For grins, you might try something like putting a big electrolytic cap
>>>>>> across the "+5EAROM" power and ground pins of the 2212's on the
>>>>>> daughterboard. (Like a 470-1000uF or something-- you could also put it in
>>>>>> parallel with C93 on the SW board-- careful with the polarity.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Clay
>>>>>>
>>>>>> P.S. My apologies to anyone contacting me in the last few months if I
>>>>>> missed replying to you. We *just* finished getting Ground Kontrol back to
>>>>>> our permanent location after a huge three month remodel, so it'll be several
>>>>>> weeks still before I get my head above water again. We were doing 120+ hour
>>>>>> weeks there towards the end. ;-)
>>>>>>
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Received on Tue Feb 22 10:40:52 2011