I’m thought of something I might try if anyone is interested as well. Since I only use one MIDIBox at any given time, I thought that it would be cool to build a backplane for the CORE and bootload settings from a compact flash card depending on the system I intend to use. This way I would only need 1 core for my many boxes and usually 1 outlet.
There are some obvious MIOS changes and a new mcu required to manage the hardware bootload so I think I’ll start with a small hardware bootloader. I know this is a long shot but has anyone tried integrating CompactFlash or SanDisk with their box?
Time required to do this: Months. Let’s say 300 hours (that’s 2 months full time).
Money required to build separate boxes: Lets say $600 (they’d be fairly nice at that price)
So if you earn more than $2 an hour it’s a waste of time.
Obviously those figures might change a bit but you get the picture… But don’t let my pessimism stop ya!
Personally, I’d mount the PIC in a ZIF socket either accessible from the outside (front?) of the casing or in some kind of cartridge, and change pics over instead.
I partially agree with stryder in that there is very little money saved in not building extra cores. They could be built on protoboard very cheaply, and a core kit isnt that much more.
Building a backplane system and compact flash would be a lot more expensive than simply buying a few core kits.
Right away you see that you might need some logic to get the flash bus to play nice with the rest of the Port C/D and E duties.
Good luck with THAT!!
Perhaps a different suggestion? : Why not write some special code for the bankstick? Granted, a MB64 and a SID may not interchange, but maby you can manage to switch MB64 and seq? You would have to figure a way to load a full config file into the PIC ram, but it may be easier than via CF. The technology is ‘built in’ and the code is already half baked.
I decided I am going to use the same core as a portable brick with female sockets like the arduino and bootload from the PC. Should have been the obvious move from the begining. And it wasn’t really about the money, I just dont have the time to keep soldering cores, I have a cnc machine and arcade that are collecting dust.
I guess if you’re building Core modules on perfboard or something, then it would take a while. But soldering everything onto one of Mike’s or SmashTV’s PCBs doesn’t take much time at all…
