Category making things

Hmm, the software for the HMLiberator^† is (almost) working. It seems to respond as I hoped five out of six times. The next time it just seems to not do what I want. I’m not sure how to debug it, though, as I can’t really trigger an interrupt with the device in hardware debug mode.

This might take some thinking.

That said, it’s time to go home and build the appropriate cable so I can actually sling it in between an iPod and the HML itself for once.

^† The HMLiberator is the PIC-based device I’ve been cobbling together to sit between the iPod and the Honda Music Link, translating the Mode 4 remote commands into Mode 2 commands. This will allow the user to keep using the controls on the face of the iPod, while the HML thinks it has one locked down and under its control.

Skynet SNP-9F40

Oh, tonight I also threw out an old (unused) SCSI disk enclosure I had in the basement. I figured that the power supply in it might be useful, so I opened it up. To my surprise I found two of the power supplies pictured above. (Side by side photos of the two here.)

That there is a Skynet SNP-9F40 (PDF), and it’ll take (according to that PDF) 90~264VAC as input, and spit out +5VDC (4A), +12VDC(3A), -5VDC(0.3A), and -12VDC(0.3A). I’m thinking this could be quite handy for both some of the music stuffs I’ve been working on (maybe even the 9090), or just as a benchtop supply. (I’ll probably mount one of them in an enclosure with terminals and a switch on it or something.)

There was also a filtered IEC-type mains input on there which I grabbed, some PC-type Molex power connector harnesses designed for connecting the power supplies to drives, brass stand-offs, and plastic clip-type spacers, all of which which may come in handy. All in all, a good salvage.

When this…

sendCommand(mode2, 0)
sendCommand(playButton, 0)
sendCommand(relButton, 0)

Which supposedly sends these commands…

const mode2 as byte[5] = (0x03,0x00,0x01,0x02,0xFA) 'Simple iPod Remote
const playButton as byte[5] = (0x03,0x02,0x00,0x01,0xFA) 'Play Button
const relButton as byte[5] = (0x03,0x02,0x00,0x00,0xFB) 'Release Button

Gives me this in the serial console…

Received: 0xFF 0x55 0x03 0x00 0x01 0x02 0xFA 0xFF 0x55 0x03 0x02 0x00 0x01 0xFA
Received: 0xFF 0x55 0x03 0x02 0x00 0x00 0xFB

…I know it’s time to go home.

And yes, as suggested earlier I just went ahead pre-calculated the checksums. I also just bundled the packet lengths in there too, and I read that first bit to determine how many bits have to be sent so that packets of arbitrary length may be sent simply by defining them as a constant.

It’s sending back to the PC properly, but not to the iPod. I think that’s because of some weirdness with the pins I chose to use. It worked fine on the PIC16F88, but for some reason that thing cooked this morning. (It now reports itself as some 12F part, likely indicating that some of the bits which indicate the part type have failed.)

Now to get the part running from the internal oscillator instead of a crystal and responding to commands from the serial port. (Both of these should be fairly easy.)

After that I can start building the list of responses I want sent to the Honda Music Link (initial by-hand decoding of a sample conversation between my iPod and the HML can be seen here). Then once that’s all set it’s time to plug it into the car and hope things work as designed. If that works it’s time to design the PCB and see about producing a dozen or so.

Thanks very much and for directing me to pointers, structures (even though I didn’t use structures) and the unknown-to-me mikroBasic manual.

Whenever I reset the PIC on my EasyPIC4 (photo gallery retired) my iPod toggles between pause and play.

I now possess the world’s largest iPod remote.

Code here…

Would any of you happen to have any eight-conductor stranded cable, preferably shielded?

I need to make some cables for part of the Honda Music Link stuff I’m working on, and I’m having difficulty finding this sort of cable in quantities less than 500′ or 1000′ rolls. I only need maybe… 20′ or so, at most. Even 10′ would be usable for my prototype stuffs.

Thanks!

Atari 1050 drive PCB with most of the electrolytic caps removed.

Well, it appears that I’ve got the problem with the Atari 1050 sorted out. It seems that some of the 47μF caps (C42, C43, C69, C70) were bad, causing the shorts. I’ve also removed all of the other electrolytic caps and will be ordering replacements from Mouser tomorrow. (The board had looked like this before.)

I did make one pretty substantial mistake and inadvertently lift a trace on the top of the board when removing one larger caps. The hole really didn’t seem through-plated and the leg of the capacitor didn’t let go from it, and I peeled it right back. Thankfully it should be very easy to jump around with a 2″ piece of wire, so when I put it back in place I’ll do that.

Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be able to properly image old 800XL floppies. Yay!

Atari 800XL and my TV

Thanks to this page about the Atari 800XL’s monitor connection output I was able to cobble together a composite video output cable for my parents old Atari 800XL. Thankfully the monitor connection is a standard DIN5 connector, so it was made by sacrificing a spare MIDI cable and an old red / white RCA cable pair.

After the SIO2PC adapter arrives and I’m able to either fix my Atari 1050 floppy drive or borrow one from someone I’ll begin imaging the whole box of floppies leftover from my youth. This will be done using Ape and ProSystem to copy all the old disks to images so they can be archived. Then they can either be run under emulation, or directly on the 800XL with the PC pretending to be the floppy drive (via the SIO2PC).

I should probably also consider doing something with the tape drive as well. Maybe pulling data / games off of that or something… Hmm…