[Coco] First experiences with my DE1

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Feb 17, 2014 1:03 AM, "Mark McDougall" <msmcdoug at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> On 17/02/2014 4:29 PM, Bill Pierce wrote:
>
>> I would think that the decb rom would have to be at least in a position
>> "reletive" to the original ecb/decb roms as there are addresses pointing
>> to certain locations. So I would think if ecb is at $0000, then decb
>> would be at $4000??? (org $8000 & $c000) I have no DE1 and know nothing
>> of this, just using logical addressing.
>
>
> Technically, no, the FPGA can be configured to address the flash and
other external memories in any and every way imaginable.
>
> Having said that, in lieu of crappy Yahoo groups being down as usual, I
did manage to find this email from Gary on the subject...
>
> "If you are using the newest version, you will also need to put the Disk
BASIC ROM in the Flash. It starts just after the 32K CoCo3 ROM."
>
> Remember, if you are ever re-programming areas of flash that were
previously written, you need to erase first. A further source of
frustration is that you need to program the 'Control Panel' bitstream into
the FPGA, and then 'Open' the port in the Control Panel host software
before trying to erase/program the flash. Failure to do so doesn't stop
flash programming from reporting NO ERRORS.

Are you sure about this last part?  It has been a while, but I thought you
only needed to load the control panel into the FPGA if you wanted to play
with turning the lights on and off and that kind of thing.  Writing the
flash didn't require it, as I sort of recall.