Lets Talk Usb Accessories!

[Grench]

None of the above.

GPS = bluetooth - Assuming anyone ever gets the maps/software nailed down.
OBDII = bluetooth
Drive expansion = shared on 802.11g network

I'll probably try to get this to work on it with Audacity though:
http://www.centrance.com/products/mp/

 

[cbox]

Will the Linux distro on the Pandora support USB DVD burners/readers? Just bought one for my regular laptop, figure it might be cool for the Pandora too.

 

[bzar]

Will the Linux distro on the Pandora support USB DVD burners/readers? Just bought one for my regular laptop, figure it might be cool for the Pandora too.


Most likely yes. I for one don't see any reason why it wouldn't.

 

[borgqueenx]

mmm a extrenal HDD or burner or blue ray player wouldnt be really portable. not something i want for my pandora...

 

[valhalla]

Will the Linux distro on the Pandora support USB DVD burners/readers? Just bought one for my regular laptop, figure it might be cool for the Pandora too.


Most likely yes. I for one don't see any reason why it wouldn't.

as long as they are self powered, I suppose (but I've never seen an USB powered one)

 

[bzar]

Will the Linux distro on the Pandora support USB DVD burners/readers? Just bought one for my regular laptop, figure it might be cool for the Pandora too.


Most likely yes. I for one don't see any reason why it wouldn't.

as long as they are self powered, I suppose (but I've never seen an USB powered one)
Even if it was usb-powered, pandora supplies full 500mA so it would still work, right?

 

[cbox]

The DVD burner I purchased is USB powered, it uses a laptop DVD drive. It has an optional power jack that pulls power off of a PS1 keyboard port but can also be powered fully by USB.

 

[Alibobar]

^ that would still depend on the Amperage of the USB-port and considering the Pondora only gives 500mA this is probably not possible.

 

[bzar]

^ that would still depend on the Amperage of the USB-port and considering the Pondora only gives 500mA this is probably not possible.

CODE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Power

QUOTE
A unit load is defined as 100 mA in USB 2.0, and was raised to 150 mA in USB 3.0. A maximum of 5 unit loads can be drawn from a port in USB 2.0, which was raised to 6 in USB 3.0. There are two types of devices: low-power and high-power. Low-power devices draw at most 1 unit load, with minimum operating voltage of 4.4 V in USB 2.0, and 4 V in USB 3.0. High-power devices draw the maximum number of unit loads supported by the standard.

If I read this correctly, a standard USB 2.0 device can draw a maximum of 5*100mA = 500mA, which the pandora supplies.

 

[Chip]

If I read this correctly, a standard USB 2.0 device can draw a maximum of 5*100mA = 500mA, which the pandora supplies.
The problem being that many USB devices (especially hard disks and optical drives) do not follow the standard. Nearly every 2.5" USB hard drive uses well over 500mA during spin up. They only work at all because nearly all laptops and desktops allow for these variances and limit their USB ports to 1A or higher.

The USB power regulator in the Pandora allows for 500mA continuous and 750mA peaks. Some drives will work, and some won't. It's going to take some trial and error to determine which drives will and which won't.

 

[bzar]

If I read this correctly, a standard USB 2.0 device can draw a maximum of 5*100mA = 500mA, which the pandora supplies.
The problem being that many USB devices (especially hard disks and optical drives) do not follow the standard. Nearly every 2.5" USB hard drive uses well over 500mA during spin up. They only work at all because nearly all laptops and desktops allow for these variances and limit their USB ports to 1A or higher.

The USB power regulator in the Pandora allows for 500mA continuous and 750mA peaks. Some drives will work, and some won't. It's going to take some trial and error to determine which drives will and which won't.

Thanks for the correction. I guess I was too naive to think companies would follow a standard to ensure their products worked

 

[Matthias_H]

I was thinking of a little device that accepts Super Nintendo cartridges on one side and pipes the ROM data to the host via a convenient interface (USB Mass Storage or Bluetooth or so, SMC/SWC files).

 

[jlepley]

There might be something like that, but game copying devices, especially old ones, are pretty hard to find.

Try searching around for a Game Doctor SF7. Bung, the company that made these, was shut down by a lawsuit, so they're pretty rare.

Edit: does anyone know if it would be possible to use USB cables with alligator clips to copy ROMs from cartridges?

 

[Klepto]

I'd like a laser range finder and a compass please

 

[lulzfish]

You'd need a lot of very tiny alligator clips to hit all the pins on a game cartridge. And a microcontroller to translate that into actual data, and to send it over USB.

But it's theoretically possible, assuming that the cartridge itself just provides data and doesn't authenticate for the presence of an actual console at any step. That would complicate things a bit.

 

[Tom`]

You'd need a lot of very tiny alligator clips to hit all the pins on a game cartridge. And a microcontroller to translate that into actual data, and to send it over USB.

But it's theoretically possible, assuming that the cartridge itself just provides data and doesn't authenticate for the presence of an actual console at any step. That would complicate things a bit.

Couldn't that authentication be done by the microcontroller? I mean, dumping (say) SNES games can't be as simple as buying a connector and an Arduino or something (for someone skilled at working with microcontrollers, I assume this would be simple), or dumpers wouldn't cost hundreds of dollars...

 

[Matthias_H]

You'd need a lot of very tiny alligator clips to hit all the pins on a game cartridge. And a microcontroller to translate that into actual data, and to send it over USB.

But it's theoretically possible, assuming that the cartridge itself just provides data and doesn't authenticate for the presence of an actual console at any step. That would complicate things a bit.

As far as I understand,
(1) SNES cartridges should fit into any standard 2-row, 1/10" pitch, 23- or 35-position card edge connector (Digikey/Farnell/etc.). The original SNES did not use alligator clips to hit all the pins ;-).
(2) the data is stored on a standard ROM chip which one should be able to read out without trouble. Pinouts can be found on the web.
(3) SNES emulators should take care of "hardware check" code bits anyway.

I just ordered a few parts, let's see how it turns out

 

[lulzfish]

Yes, but the post I was replying to said something about alligator clips, which is frankly ridiculous.
And I would have expected Nintendo to put some sort of authentication in the cartridge, like:

"Hey, what's at address 0?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Uh, a SNES!"
"Really?"
"Sure, why not."
"Screw off!"

But maybe they didn't, and all that data is just chilling on the ROM unencrypted.

 

[Matthias_H]

Yes, but the post I was replying to said something about alligator clips, which is frankly ridiculous.

Okay, I see and agree

And I would have expected Nintendo to put some sort of authentication in the cartridge, like:

"Hey, what's at address 0?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Uh, a SNES!"
"Really?"
"Sure, why not."
"Screw off!"

But maybe they didn't, and all that data is just chilling on the ROM unencrypted.

Well, after skipping through a bunch of specification pages, I am pretty sure most game manufacturers didn't. (They were more concerned about game cartridges to be copied, and invented things like SuperFX to keep people from doing that. Also, some games have code that checks ROM/RAM access times, but handling that is definitely the emulator's business). So in principle, a relatively simple memorychip-to-USB-wrapper (with USB Mass Storage, a hard-coded read-only FAT16, and conversion to SMC/SWC file format added on top) should do. Atmel even provides a USB Mass Storage example app for their AT90USB uC series, so (theoretically) all that remains to do is mostly about hooking up the cartridge and diverting part of the SCSI read commands to the ROM.

 

[urjaman]

Well, after skipping through a bunch of specification pages, I am pretty sure most game manufacturers didn't.

specifications ... where?

all that remains to do is mostly about hooking up the cartridge and diverting part of the SCSI read commands to the ROM.

I just checked out a few docs i could find and it seems that the cartridge has a simple 24-bit address bus + 8-bit data bus + bus control signals that would need to be connected (+ ofcourse GND,VCC (5V)) -- and do check you have the necessary amount of pins on your µC before you try to connect it
For that usb wrapper, it would need logic to detect the rom mapper used by the cartridge -- or you could just read out the full 24-bit address space (16 MiB - wikipedia says that the biggest games ever were 6MiB (48 Mbit) ) and work from there...

I actually happen to have a device that could be modified to dump SNES cartridges - it's current job is a DIL32 bios flasher --- it has 24 address lines of which 18 are connected to the DIL32 -- one would "just" need to connect all it's pins to a cartridge connector + reprogram the device.
The device is essentially an ATmega88 + 3 74HC164N's (shift registers) (the output-only address bus) + a serial port level translator.
I wont be doing the mod -- i dont have any SNES cartridges -- but just a note on what is a pretty much minimum configuration of a rom dumper device, i think. And dumping 16MiB over serial at 115200 would take over 24 minutes -- less with the software on this thing that can compress emptyness (one single value repeating for 256 bytes) - but as reading 256k without sending it out takes 15s -- 16MiB = 16 minutes.