The Lion's Roar!!

Also, Sinistar

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 22:59:00 PST

I'd sort of ended up posting more stuff at Facebook than here, cause I thought everyone had wandered off. Nice to see some people coming back! (Even if you were only replying to what was, to me, just a friendly 'thank you' ad. ;) )

To that end, I should note my latest YouTube video where I decked out one of our robot vacuums as Sinistar... ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeLSRoNGOBY

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Thank you CobraToys!

Tue, 6 Mar 2012 19:08:00 PST

For Christmas, my parents got me one of those remote controlled mini helicopters that were all over this year - and even better, they sprung for the one with a video camera!

http://www.cobratoys.com/Cobra_Spy_Heli_Mini_3_5_Ch_w_Gyro_and_Camera_p/880071.htm

Unfortunately, I managed to break it the day after Christmas when I slammed into the side of a wall - and I broke the gyro boom, the only moving part that spares were not made available for.

My dad had noticed that spare parts were available, so I ordered a kit. It came in, I fixed my copter, and after 8 seconds of flight I hit the side of the bed and broke the gyro again.

I was disappointed, though I blame nobody but myself. But I didn't want a whole 'nother spare parts kit, I just wanted two or three more gyros. ;) So I wrote a pleading email to the company support to see if I could buy just that.

In return, Victor wrote back and offered me another parts kit free of charge. That's very nice of them! Thank you Victor!

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Debugging hardware is much more straightforward under emulation.

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 01:22:00 PST

But.. when you have no choice left....

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The light at the end of the tunnel came back on...

Mon, 6 Feb 2012 20:07:00 PST

Over four months searching for the bug...

Over five hundred lines of replacement workaround code....

nGameFrames = 0;

Right. I knew that.

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Convert9918 v136

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:39:00 PST

Software update: Convert9918 v136 on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:34:07 -0800.

-Rewrote dither engine - many previous issues solved
-Updated to new compiler
-Added half-multicolor mode that works this time!
-Added configuration of error accumulation
-Added configuration of perceptual ratios
-Supports MSX output

I need to get some samples up - I have a quickie at YouTube but not too much yet. Sleepy!

http://harmlesslion.com/software/convert9918

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Tech Support

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:34:00 PST

I have to say that I love NXP's microprocessor support. Even filing anonymous questions on their website, they get back to me quickly, and they have thus far ALWAYS given me useful responses which show that they read my email, understand my question, and are trying to help. Even in the first case, where my understanding was so far off that my question made very little sense, the engineer who responded took several possible interpretations of my question and provided guidelines to solve each of the problems they raised. In other words, he or she really tried, and damn I appreciate seeing that. (Every answer has helped me as well).

The only other support I've had that really matched this was Microsoft's via MSDN. TI might have been good too, we had a good rep, but that project never really got off the ground.

Contrast to most tech support, who either answer questions by matching keywords in your message with predefined responses (something that is so blatently obvious and generally wrong it almost always infuriates me), or who take the "I know more than you, stupid user, so just plug it in already!" approach, which doesn't get me any closer to my goal. (I'm dealing with one of those right now...)

So that's good support: listen to the problem, provide intelligent answers. Bad support: assume you already know the problem and the user doesn't know how to explain it anyway.

I'm terrible with people. At NET, I was "Grumpy Mike". But at my previous job as a technical support rep I built a loyal customer base by simply being honest. It's not something I had to work at - I never went in assuming that the customer didn't know what was up. They knew more than I did when I walked in the door, otherwise I wouldn't be there! If they offered theories that I knew were wrong, I took the time to educate them. (In truth, sometimes I also took the time to talk smack about the source of their myth... ;) ) But I never lied, I never told the customer they didn't know what they were doing, and damn it, I never did anything without explaining what and why (and if necessary, how I made that decision). People liked that. Some of them went so far as to tell me that they wouldn't take other people from our same company because they didn't do that.

Listening to the birds here and there, it sounds like good, small, honest IT firms are pretty rare. Maybe I should copy Andrew's model down here... ;)

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General Update!

Sat, 7 Jan 2012 20:07:00 PST

Got a new network protocol for Cool Herders worked out, but it's a bear to implement. Slow progress but some is better than none.

Got my LLC renewed for the year, then I had to go fight with the post office. They had returned my business license to the city citing "not deliverable", despite having delivered mail there for the last two years. They apologized and will resume mail, but all of a sudden instead of using the office complex's central office, now I need a mailbox. So today I installed one at my door.

Sidetracked a little today, and built a Genesis multicart. I've actually been working on this a little bit here and there for a while, I finally worked out everything that was going wrong and built a Thunder Force III cartridge with a switch that selects my hacked version (hacked not to play player weapon sounds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXe8bm7VnwY

That was fun for a number of reasons. By fun of course I mean rather annoying. The first EPROM I bought was the wrong pinout, and after wiring it all up, it didn't work. Too annoyed to troubleshoot that, I ordered the right EPROMs. These I could just solder to the bottom of the board, and I did that then used the connection to dump the existing ROM, so I could check for byte order.

Then I couldn't program my chip. I eventually found several wiring errors that may have damaged my 16-bit EPROM adapter, so I had to replace that. But the new one didn't work either! THAT turned out to be a software bug which I eventually worked around. And I got my EPROM programmed!

Except, in the Genesis, I just got a black screen. So I went back into it, and I found that Genesis carts are usually checksummed - I hadn't realized that. The main reason for that is the $#! emulators all patch checksums automatically by default. So, great. I had a problem. The EPROM was soldered to the board with the window against the PCB, so I couldn't erase it without desoldering and starting over. BUT, you can always turn a '1' bit into a '0' bit with an EPROM, so I looked through the checksum code for bit patterns that might help. But there were none I could use.

Eventually, though, I had a combination of insight and luck, and found a block of unsued FFFF words. These, of course, have ALL bits set. I told the emulator to stop patching the checksum, then I could breakpoint and see what the checksum SHOULD be, against what I WAS getting. A quick subtraction, and I changed one of the FFFF words to a value that would make the checksum line up again.

Reprogrammed the EPROM (which was putting all the same data in except for that one word), held my breath, and success!!

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Photos from the Rail Line

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:54:00 PST

Posted some pictures from the train to Sinclair Mills, for those who like snow! Not as much mountain as I hoped, I would have had to come from the Alberta side for that, it turns out. :)

But, I got some moose!

http://harmlesslion.com/gtwo/v/Photos/photos2011/viarail11/

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FunkyStars ScreenSaver 1.02

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:39:00 PST

Software update: FunkyStars ScreenSaver 1.02 on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:50:52 -0800.

-Improved Precision
-Added fixed rotation mode
-Increased rotation speed maximum 4 times - if you a prone to motion sickness, adjust your settings!

http://harmlesslion.com/software/funkystars

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Classic99 361

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:39:00 PST

Software update: Classic99 361 on Sun, 11 Dec 2011 20:31:24 -0800.

-Fix setting of VDP interrupt bit to happen AFTER the screen is drawn, not before (fixes Mad Marvin demo)
-fix stack overflow in loading 'O'ther cart types from Classic99.ini
-Updated TurboForth BLOCKS file to today's version

http://harmlesslion.com/software/classic99

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