W65C265SXB

[Tor]

How did you order one, and from where? The website didn't provide anything useful on on their Store page.
Thanks in advance,
-Tor

[Tor]

To reply to myself: Today's newsletter from WDC announced that you can now buy the WDC boards from Amazon. I didn't see that one coming, but it's a good idea. I'll probably buy one of them when I go back to Japan.

EDIT: .. except for the dreaded 'This item does not ship to Japan.' Not to Norway either. So much for that. What happened to the supposed globalisation?

[joe7]

Mouser has been stocking them for awhile:
http://www.mouser.com/new/westerndesign ... xx-system/

[scotws]

Yes, I'm getting my via Mouser Germany (http://www.mouser.de/search/ProductDeta ... W65C265SXB). Shipping-tracking-thingie says they are sending it from Texas. Bought it together with four GLS29EE010-70-4C-NHE Flash ROM. -- The WDC store page is, shall we say, amazing. I like this line the best (http://wdc65xx.com/134_265_SXB-engineer ... ngstarted/):

Quote:

Unlike the Apple, Commodore, and Atari systems, no floppy or hard drive is needed.

Commodore? Atari? Floppy?

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Tor wrote:

EDIT: .. except for the dreaded 'This item does not ship to Japan.' Not to Norway either. So much for that. What happened to the supposed globalisation?

Just what is it they have against Japan and Norway?

[cbscpe]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Just what is it they have against Japan and Norway?

... and does not to ship to Switzerland either and many other countries as well not. It's not that they have something against Japan, Norway, Switzerland etc. but for logistical and legal reasons, many high-tech products are only shipped to US and EU. Globalization is only a buzzword.

[joe7]

Does anyone know what the I/O pin current limitations are on this thing?

[scotws]

Arrived today. That's the good part. The bad part is that actually having the thing in your hand drives the point home that the documentation is not just bad, it is a total disaster. What I have found out so far:

1. You do not have to attach the a second USB-to-TTL cable to J5 (the UART on the bottom right) like various websites would seem to imply. Plug in a normal (small) USB cable into J6, which is the power jack in the middle at the bottom, and the other end to your computer - Ubuntu running on my old white plastic MacBook in my case. A pretty little LED will go on. This is your big chance to cackle and whisper "It's alive!"

2. To find out which port on the host computer you're using, run

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dmesg | grep tty

In my case, it was /dev/ttyUSB0 .

3. Install a terminal program such as putty. For now, start it with

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sudo putty

from your shell until you want a more permanent solution (chmod 666 on /dev/ttyUSB0 for instance, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5347 ... untu-10-10). -- Under putty's Terminal setting, enable "Implicit LF in every CR". Under the Session setting, select "Serial" and use /dev/ttyUSB0 as the Serial Line. Then click "Open".

4. On the SXB, hit the Reset button.

5. Now the Mensch Monitor should come up - a 20 year old build, by the way. For some perspective, 1995 was the year that the Unabomber's manifesto was published. I'm just saying.

6. To do something cool to prove that the board is alive, you might want to make one of the LEDs blink following the instructions at https://rodbiresch.wordpress.com/tag/w65c816/ .

So yes, it works out of the box and is by far the easiest way to get started with a 65xx system. So, yay to that. However, we're basically going to have to write our own documentation if we're going to want anybody except us superfreaks using it, because we're left with all kinds of questions -- the Mensch Monitor Manual (http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/Wdc/ ... monrom.pdf) says you can't delete the "masked ROM" if you want to, but others here say you should make a backup (but how?); nothing tells me if the 32k is already accessible or if I have to enable that via "CS4B" -- and have fun with the datasheet (http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/ ... 265sxb.pdf) figuring out how to do that; some help in how to install and use Flash would be nice for a newbie as well.

Argh.

I have to go off and be an adult for a while (get the kids to bed, etc) but hope to find more time with it this weekend. Knowing me, I'm probably going to work myself up to the point where I'll start my documentation on GitHub, which would seem to be the easiest way to let other people here add to it. (Will that markup let me add pictures? Otherwise I might to with Google Docs.)

Also, I think we might need a nickname for this board, because "W65C265SXB" is just too much of a mouthful. My inner 14-year-old is convinced that "SXB" stands for "SeX Bot", but I've found it best not to listen to him, ever. For the moment, I'll go with "265SXB", but more fun suggestions are welcome.

[joe7]

SRAM from $0000-$7fff should be available. Zero-page locations from $00-$bf, and a stack at $100 are used by the monitor. The monitor ROM on the 265SXB is permanently baked into the chip, so a backup shouldn't be required. FWIW, it seems that calls to the subroutines for reading/writing characters etc need to be wrapped accordingly:

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sep #$20
jsl $e04b
rep #$30

Documentation could be better, but the W65C265S microcontroller datasheet and connector charts in the SXB datasheet are probably enough. I like the idea of a wiki though.

The names are an eyesore. W65C816SXB and W65C265SXB appear very similar at first glance, but the boards are completely different. I vote for:

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02SXB
816SXB
134SXB
265SXB

[scotws]

So write-and-read test would seem to establish that in fact the 32k are already activated. I've also created a place to collect my various notes at https://github.com/scotws/265SXB-Guide, though it's going to be rather unstructured for a while. The most valuable part at the moment is probably the link list (https://github.com/scotws/265SXB-Guide/ ... r/links.md). If anybody has stuff to add or suggestions, I'll be happy to include it all (or go all formal with a pull request). Will concentrate on memory system first because that seems to be where the documentation is most confusing.

[BitWise]

scotws wrote:

So write-and-read test would seem to establish that in fact the 32k are already activated. I've also created a place to collect my various notes at https://github.com/scotws/265SXB-Guide, though it's going to be rather unstructured for a while. The most valuable part at the moment is probably the link list (https://github.com/scotws/265SXB-Guide/ ... r/links.md). If anybody has stuff to add or suggestions, I'll be happy to include it all (or go all formal with a pull request). Will concentrate on memory system first because that seems to be where the documentation is most confusing.

Here's some code for your memory page to enable and disable the mask ROM

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MaskOn:
                lda     #$80                    ; Enable mask ROM
                trb     BCR
                jmp     NewCommand

MaskOff:
                lda     #$80                    ; Disable mask ROM
                tsb     BCR
                jmp     NewCommand

The BCR register is at $DF40. The Mensch ROM enables some interrupts so you need to disable them before turning the ROM off or do an SEI.

If you add me as a collaborator (I'm andrew-jacobs on Github) then I'll help add information directly.

[BitWise]

joe7 wrote:

SRAM from $0000-$7fff should be available. Zero-page locations from $00-$bf, and a stack at $100 are used by the monitor. The monitor ROM on the 265SXB is permanently baked into the chip, so a backup shouldn't be required. FWIW, it seems that calls to the subroutines for reading/writing characters etc need to be wrapped accordingly:

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sep #$20
jsl $e04b
rep #$30

I think it would be to save the caller's register sizes and restore them on return.

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php
sep #$20
jsl $e04b
plp

[scotws]

BitWise wrote:

If you add me as a collaborator (I'm andrew-jacobs on Github) then I'll help add information directly.

Ah, great, thank you! First time I've done this, so let me know if it worked (and if anybody else wants to join in on the fun, please let me know).

Feel free to change structure as you see fit, I'm pretty much out of it for the rest of the weekend. Snow to shovel, alas ...

[BitWise]

scotws wrote:

BitWise wrote:

If you add me as a collaborator (I'm andrew-jacobs on Github) then I'll help add information directly.

Ah, great, thank you! First time I've done this, so let me know if it worked (and if anybody else wants to join in on the fun, please let me know).

Feel free to change structure as you see fit, I'm pretty much out of it for the rest of the weekend. Snow to shovel, alas ...

I have access. I'll add some information and code.

I'm also preparing an update to the SXB-Hacker code. There are is a new disassembler, a RAM finder, built in ROM control features. I've also fixed some bugs in the ROM bank switching and flash erasing code. I've even updated the documentation.

[scotws]

So this is weird.

In theory, like, following the manual and the schematic (http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/ ... 265SXB.pdf), clearing bit 3 of the Chips Select enable register (CS3B, pin 73) at 00:DF27 should enable the external 32k SRAM chip that is on the 265SXB and turn on the the little LED. In other words, because that RAM is enabled out of the box, that bit should already be clear and the LED on.

However, the monitor gives me a $FB (%1111 1011) at this address (bit 2 are the on-chip registers and whatnot, which is perfectly correct). In fact, when I clear CS3B by changing 00:DF27 to $F3, it seems to disable the 32k RAM. This would be the exact reverse of the documented behavior. No LED then, either.

Or am I missing something?