Current Challenge:
"Discover how to read the keyboard output of the SUBOR $10 home computer."
CHALLENGE DEFEATED! By Brian Parker of RetroUSB.com
Read the solution here
- Dump the Cartridge ROMs that are included with the SUBOR. Pictures of the cartridges are here and here. Notice that they have an SST Flash memory chip!!
- You will need either an EPROM burner/reader or the CopyNES from retrozone.
- This may be a lead to a simple AVR-based EPROM/Flash Dumper/Writer: AVR EPROM Dumper
- You will need to reverse engineer the pinout. This NES<->SUBOR adaptor will help.
- Then we may need to make our own adaptor to read the cartridges, save them to disk, and publish them.
- It will also be useful to understand the hardware interface of the VT02 chip to the keyboard.
- This page begins documenting some of the various hardware pins of the SUBOR chipset.
- Disassemble the Code on the ROMs and discover where the keyboard-reading code is.
- We will be posting some tools to help with this soon on our Google Code Archive.
- The manual for the VT02, the NOAC on the SUBOR, will help. Get it here: VT02 Data Sheet RevisionA5_ENG__1.pdf
- The following page is where we're keeping notes on reverse-engineering the keyboard.
- Make a custom cartridge the proves the keyboard routines work.
- You can buy a SUBOR to work with from the Maker Shed here: Maker Shed SUBOR.
- You can debug the code using the PlayPower JavaScript in-browser SUBOR emulator, which is based on the JSNES in-browser NES emulator. For fastest running, use google Chrome browser.
- Hand off the code to developers to make a typing program to help underprivileged kids learn to type!
Read the solution here
Upcoming Challenges:
- Reproduce the tape player socket functionality of the famicom keyboard
- Successfully port a game from another 8-bit platform
- Develop source code that accepts keyboard input
- 1-click download of all relevant development tools
- Create a Code-to-hardware testing pipeline, enabling us to test code directly on a Famiclone
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