January 12, 2011: Update

I got my flash cart in the mail the other day. It was then that I realized I didn't have the necessary parallel port transfer cable to copy the roms to it. The part of my brain that deals with cables decided that the printer cables I have were all I needed. I realized in a hurry when I had the part in my hands that it was no centronics connector on the board. What I needed was a cable with DB-25 male connectors on each end. As I didn't want to wait another few days for a cable to come in the mail, I decided to check out a couple of thrift stores that I knew had bins of cables. Luckily, the first store I checked had exactly what I needed:

When I was in line, I finally looked at the tag that was on the bag, and noted that it said something about being an Apple SCSI cable. I pannicked for a moment as I wasn't sure if the pinout for the cable would be compatible for what I needed. Unfortunately it was my turn in line, so I just went and paid for it. Here's the bag, with price:

The best part though was that I only paid $0.99 for it! I don't know why, that's just how it rang up. I'm not sure what to say about that because I know they have certain days that have sales, but 80% off?

The sharp-eyed of you probably also noticed what I noticed when I got back to the car: "DB25 Male - C50 Male". Obviously there is not a centronics connector on the end, so someone stuck it in the wrong bag. Somewhat relieved, I headed home to try it out.

I had a little bit of trouble getting the transfer to work, but once I did, it worked great. I needed to adjust some of my settings for my parallel port to get it to work. Unfortunately, some of the ROMS I have don't work on the console. I know NEC employed a region-lockout system where the Japanese HuCards had some pins reversed from the North American HuCards. I may just have some ROMS that aren't meant for this region.

However, the program that I wrote doesn't work, either, and locks up the system the same way the others do. Again, there may be a setting for the compiler or assembler that affects the region. I'll have to check that out.

Today I received my capacitors in the mail:

Haven't found time to practice my soldering, yet, either. I have, however, found some downtime in my classes to start reading a manual (pdf) on assembly for the MOS6502. I haven't gotten too terribly far, but I haven't found myself completely lost yet either. Friday I should have a decent chunk of time to work with, so we'll see how far I can get with something.