Nathan's Z80 Project Mark 2: Serial bug killer
Last updated: 10 Jan 2010 - 21:50
I left my Z80 project behind when I went to see family over Christmas, I did do a tiny bit of coding while I was on holiday but not much. Back in snowy Bath this weekend I got some more done on the project. I've spent a lot of time on the documentation. The main reason for this is the fact that I keep doing bits then not looking at it for a couple of weeks and I forget where I was and what changes I'd made. I'm also hoping to use a lot of the circuit designs in the Mark 3 project at some point in the future and if they're out of date and un-documented it could result in some expensive and useless PCBs.
Actual real progress: Update BIOS image via debug port. A python library to make comms with the PIC easier. UART fitted and debugged. Some additional commands in the PIC firmware including the ability to perform a system reboot from the host PC.
After some head-scratching I managed to get the BIOS update via the serial port working. I basically copied the code examples fro