Uzebox SD Gameloader V0.4.5

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uze6666
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by uze6666 »

But is the dev kernel branch in general (not just SD) basically stable enough to develop an app for, or am I asking for a world of hurt? What is the timeline for a release?
Oh, it's been in "beta" for almost a year. ;) But it's pretty stable, I try to never commit non-working stuff. Lots of games have been developed on that branch like PacMan, Uzeamp & Arkanoid. Have a look at Uzeamp to see how to use the SD+FAT library.

-Uze
braddock
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by braddock »

Okay, great. Been playing with the dev kernel and the SD Card emulation today. But cannot get it to work. :(

Do you have a known-working SDCard image I could try?

I've tried building my SDCard FAT16 images, with MBR, and without MBR, with WAV files on it and without anything on it, and Uzeamp always says "Init Good. First read fails.", and then the emulator dies with "Error reading SD image".

SDCardDemo loads and gives me a nice hex browser of my image's first sector (although I can't get any emulated key to change sectors).

PS - The emulator had accumulated some Linux bit-rot - looks like the dev has been Windows-only for a while - it wasn't building. I certainly could be encountering a platform issue since the SDCard code has never run under linux (as far as I can tell). I've fixed it all - where should I submit my patch?
braddock
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by braddock »

Also, I cannot rebuild SDCardDemo from source using the svn beta4 repo.

The HEX file that comes with the repo runs (although I can't mount an SDCard image with it as described above), but when I try to recompile, it depends on an "InitFAT(buffer)" function which doesn't seem to be defined in the entire tree.

The last change to this tree was logged 6/30/09, but you made your bootloader post just last week. Are there un-checked-in changes? I have the sinking feeling that I'm working with an old version.

I have a new patch for the emulator code too - this one adds just a couple lines of code to allow a program running within the emulation to print debugging info back to stdout by writing to a magic memory address.

Thanks,
Braddock
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by uze6666 »

I'll have a look a what you mention. In the mean time, I'm not the maintainer of the emulator so it's hard to say about the SD issue you mention. Moreover, I never used it for the SD dev but the real hardware. And what about softgun? Does it emulate the sd stuff ok?

-Uze
braddock
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by braddock »

Thanks Uze.

I never actually set up SDCard emulation with SoftGun. SoftGun seems SO complex I was VERY relieved to see the fairly straightforward support in the dev branch of the Uzebox emulator.

In fact I dare say if necessary I'd rather fix SD support in the Uzebox emulator than try to muck with SoftGun - it really isn't much code. Just want to make sure I'm using the latest version of everything before investing the time.

-Braddock Gaskill
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Jhysaun
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by Jhysaun »

Well I just want to say thanks.

This is really great work Uze and Pragma. I think this is a huge step for the Uzebox.( and a huge blast out of a cannon for the Fuzebox, since we no longer need to unscrew the case to test out/show off our games)
You might be able to get some pretty good publicity for the uzebox with this. From my understanding this will work for other AVR's with very little modification, meaning this wont just help the Uzebox, but the whole AVR community. :D

>J

P.S: If you release the code for the bootloader, see if there is a way to make people have to link back to the Uzebox site, or put "Uzebox Bootloader" on the bottom of the screen and say that it can't be removed. Imagine the XGS AVR with the Uzebox logo on it. :lol:
Lerc wrote:I intend to use my powerful skills of procrastination to ensure that when I get to making things, the chips will be available.
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by braddock »

Jhysaun wrote: P.S: If you release the code for the bootloader, see if there is a way to make people have to link back to the Uzebox site, or put "Uzebox Bootloader" on the bottom of the screen and say that it can't be removed. Imagine the XGS AVR with the Uzebox logo on it. :lol:
Fortunately, an obnoxious advertising requirement would be incompatible with the GPL3 license.
But you can always REQUEST people to acknowledge the project with the logo.
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Jhysaun
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by Jhysaun »

Fortunately, an obnoxious advertising requirement would be incompatible with the GPL3 license.
But you can always REQUEST people to acknowledge the project with the logo.
Once again I've poorly conveyed the true meaning of my post. Sorry about that, I'll try again:

Publicity for the Uzebox is always good, because publicity leads to more people finding out about the Uzebox which leads to more people joining the community.

Before the Post - Signature (or whatever P.S. means) I talked about publicity because I know that if someone found the bootloader, and adapted it to something like the Arduino, odds are they would link back to the Uzebox site just so other people can download it.

After the Post -Signature I was talking about requiring the uzebox logo because I still feel that the maker of the XGS AVR stole Uze's idea.

While I've never gone and had a conversation with the guy who made the XGS AVR, Im still pretty peeved at him for saying its "much more complete than the Uzebox", when it looks like half the system is a direct copy of the Uzebox (overclocked MCU, using a NTSC color chip thing, emphasis on a kernel that runs in the background so people who code in C don't need to worry about it.)

If you read the Post-Signature independent of the body of my post, it does not mention publicity at all, and if you read the body of my post with out reading the post signature it does not mention forcing people to advertise the uzebox.

I was worried about having the code stolen because I looked at some links about FAT 16 access that someone (Pragma?) posted and it was near impossible for me to understand. Pragma and Uze invested a serious amount of time and it would suck if someone stole their code.

But I did a quick google and found the GPL covers that:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IWantCredit

>J
Lerc wrote:I intend to use my powerful skills of procrastination to ensure that when I get to making things, the chips will be available.
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by braddock »

Sorry, didn't mean to put you on the defensive.
I read the body of your post, agreed with it, and did not comment.
I read the PS and commented, because nothing disrupts a good project like a licensing change.

Anyone who lived through the old BSD/GPL/Advertising-Clause wars of the 90's has a knee-jerk reaction to any hint of an advertising clause. If Uzebox adopted that requirement it would not be taken seriously in the Open Source world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licens ... ing_clause

As you found, Copyright protects attribution, and GPL disallows any proprietary software for or derived from the system. Otherwise I suppose we should open a thread.
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JRoatch
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Re: Uzebox SD Gameloader Alpha...at last!

Post by JRoatch »

The best thing to come out for the uzebox is now testable. Hooray! I might buy some hardware in about a month or so. Preflashed chips with this bootloader could save a bunch of money from requiring fewer ATmega-programmers.

As for the Advertising-Clause issue. The problem (IMO) were that people were required to paste the notice to more then the actual software itself.
Personally I don't see a necessity to put a copyright notice on the screen, because anyone who will give the GPLed software (or adapting it to their devices to sell) will have to provide the sources anyway, and those source will have the copyright notice in them. Also a copyright notice on the screen wouldn't work anesthetically. ;)

p.s. I probability should of started a new thread on that but oh well.
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