[Coco] Superboard discussion: Serial EEPROM

[Mark Marlette]

At 09:57 AM 5/3/2004 -0500, you wrote:

Darn software guys...... The "SuperBoard Rev 1.0 (Serial #0001)" would be 
nice but it would require a different .pof file for each SuperBoard and 
chew up a ton of the CPLD. Not something I would want to maintain.

We could VERY easily add a register that would be a byte or two wide that 
could handle configuration, options data and SB presence info.

Mark
Cloud-9



>On May 3, 2004, at 9:40 AM, Bob wrote:

>>Agreed.

>>

>>So, next question, and possibly one for a new sub-topic... how does a 3rd 

>>party

>>program detect the Superboard? and the installed options? Perhaps another 

>>byte

>>in the EEPROM with a bit for each option (would the unused 2 bits be

>>enough?)... just thinking out loud.

>

>Probably the easiest and most sure-fired way to detect the presence of the 

>SuperBoard would be to reserve an address in the $FF1X or $FF3X region 

>which when POKEd, would return data about the board.  For instance:

>

>POKE &HFF3F,0

>?PEEK(&HFF3F)

>

>Would return 'S'.  Then...

>

>POKE &HFF3F,1

>?PEEK(&HFF3F)

>

>Would return 'u'....

>

>And so on and so forth.  The value POKEd into $FF3F would correspond to 

>the position in the string where the character would be returned on the 

>next read.  We could also embed serial number information this way.  So a 

>maximum of 256 characters could be stored this way.  Such a string could be:

>

>SuperBoard Rev 1.0 (Serial #0001)

>

>Of course, when POKING and PEEKING on a non SuperBoard CoCo 3, you would 

>likely NOT get an S, u, etc...  so you could immediately detect the 

>presence of a SuperBoard.

>

>

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